Framingham’s daily rate of known new cases per 100,000 population rose to 25 in the most recent 14-day period as reported by Mass Dept of Public Health today. That’s up from 18 last week and 13.8 the week before. Number of tests administered to Framingham residents were up 3% from last week but down from the week before.
PCR test positivity rose to 4.97%, which is just under WHO’s suggested rate of 5% to conduct adequate surveillance. Test positivity is up sharply compared with 3.7% last week and 2.52% the week before and is the highest it’s been since Feb. 10’s 7.79%. It’s hard not to conclude that cases in Framingham are rising.
Numbers are still a lot lower than during the January Omicron surge, though, which is good news.
MWRA South wastewater trends are better, too. They’re seen as a leading indicator and not a measure of current cases. So it’s possible there’s still good news in the region overall and cases will go down soon. However, I think current wastewater results are affected somewhat by college students leaving for Spring break and families with school-age children traveling for vacation week. Is that balanced by the influx of people last weekend for the Boston Marathon? It’s hard to know, except to be sure that this has not been a typical population week.
I’ll be interested to see what the MWRA wastewater tests show after people return from Spring Break travel next week.
My app with updated local Framingham and MWRA Covid-19 data has more graphs.
See latest Covid-19 data coverage at http://www.district2framingham.com/tags/covid19/.
Sign up for the District2Framingham.com email list!!