A group of Boston Public School students walked out Friday over COVID safety concerns, calling for a temporary return to remote learning. They also want more COVID-19 safety protocols to be in place.
Another 12,864 confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported in Massachusetts Friday, along with 64 new confirmed deaths.
The report from the Department of Public Health pushed the state's number of confirmed COVID-19 to 1,318,694, while the death toll rose to 20,450.
Massachusetts' COVID metrics, tracked on the Department of Public Health's interactive coronavirus dashboard, dashboard, have been spiking to heights not seen since last winter's surge, thought to be driven at least in part by the omicron variant.
However, cases appear to be declining in the last couple of weeks -- the Department of Public Health reported fewer new confirmed cases than it had the prior two Fridays, 26,187 on Jan. 7 and 21,397 on Dec. 31, which was a single-day record at the time.
Massachusetts' seven-day average of positive tests fell from 20.34% Thursday to 19.9%. The metric was once above 30%, but had dropped under 0.5% until the delta variant began surging in the state.
The number of patients in Massachusetts hospitals with confirmed COVID-19 cases rose to 3,223, the most since May 8, 2020. The figure reached nearly 4,000 early in the pandemic, but dipped under an average of 85 at one point this July.
Of those currently hospitalized, 1,547 are fully vaccinated, 460 are in intensive care units and 279 are intubated.
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Nearly 13.2 million vaccine doses have now been administered in Massachusetts.
That includes, from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, over 5.6 million first shots, more than 4.8 million second shots and over 2.4 million booster shots. There have been more than 337,000 doses of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine administered.
Health officials on Friday reported that a total of 5,148,269 Massachusetts residents have been fully vaccinated.
