MA Is Now A Coronavirus 'Hot Spot': Here's What That Means

Alex Newman
Updated ·3 min read

Massachusetts is among several coronavirus hot spots, as Gov. Charlie Baker over the weekend declared the state is in the middle of the surge of the pandemic. The Bay State has the third-highest number of cases in the country, with the count standing at 38,077 Sunday. New York has more than 242,800 cases and New Jersey has more than 85,300, according to data compiled by The New York Times.

In an interview on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday, White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said she is concerned about Massachusetts, and Boston in particular.

"We're still very much focused on Boston and across Massachusetts where the epidemic continues to spread across Massachusetts as well as in Boston, and we're watching very closely Chicago," Birx said. "And then we watch every single outbreak that occurs in different states around the Untied States including the most recent one in Ohio."

This weekend was among the deadliest of the outbreak in Massachusetts. The state reported 146 new deaths Sunday, 156 deaths on Saturday and a single-day high of 159 fatalities on Friday. There have been 1,706 total deaths across the state.

The Boston Globe ran 16 pages of death notices Sunday, compared to seven pages on the same Sunday last year, painting a grim picture of the virus's impact in Massachusetts. While not all of the deaths were attributed to the coronavirus, several of the notices mentioned COVID-19.

Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told CNN Monday Massachusetts is "really in the thick of it." Harvard researchers interviewed by the network said the country needs to be conducting at least 500,000 coronavirus tests a day before it can successfully reopen the economy. The United States is currently doing about 150,000 tests daily.

Despite the concern for Massachusetts, not everyone supports the statewide shutdown. Protesters on Cape Cod over the weekend joined the growing movement across the country to reopen the economy. United Cape Patriots, a grassroots group of more than 100 people, gathered at the Bourne Rotary Sunday afternoon.

The group told WCVB it wants Gov. Baker to consider lifting restrictions in parts of the state that meet the federal "Phase One" criteria for reopening. This includes Barnstable County, where the economy relies heavily on the upcoming summer season on the Cape.

Baker hasn't decided whether to open up certain parts of Massachusetts ahead of others. The governor said Friday he wants to see 14 days of declines in positive coronavirus tests before he reopens the state.

Right now, the state's focus is on responding to the coronavirus surge. Baker's administration recently announced that about 200,000 respirator masks are being given to first responders. The state has also implemented additional resources for the homeless and victims of domestic violence and is giving foster parents an extra $100 per month per child.

Over the weekend, Baker said field hospitals have enabled the medical system to continue to treat patients without coronavirus at a normal capacity. The strategy to make sure the health care system would not be overwhelmed treating the coronavirus "has worked exactly as many of us had hoped it would," Baker said.

The latest across Massachusetts

This article originally appeared on the Boston Patch