The city of Boston is getting ready to reopen its public schools with dozens of teachers out sick, a bus driver shortage and the belated delivery of COVID tests, but administrators are warning that more classes may be canceled.
Massachusetts health officials reported another 31,184 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 39 new deaths Monday, in a report that includes data from over the weekend.
It pushed the state's number of confirmed COVID-19 cases to 1,091,147 since the start of the pandemic and its death toll to 19,860.
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 in part by the omicron variant.
Massachusetts Department of Public Health COVID reports on Mondays, or Tuesdays after holiday weekends, include all the data reported since Friday's update. This weekend's cases average to about 10,395 per day, after Friday brought 21,397 new cases, the most in one day in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts' seven-day average of positive tests rose from 18.42% Friday to 19.87% Monday, the highest it's been since April 27, 2020. 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 above 2,000 to 2,221, the most since Jan, 14, 2021. The figure was once nearly 4,000, but reached under an average of 85 at one point in July.
Of those currently hospitalized, 813 are fully vaccinated, 402 are in intensive care units and 245 are intubated.
More COVID News
Nearly 12.8 million vaccine doses have now been administered in Massachusetts.
That includes, from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, shy of 5.6 million first shots, nearly 4.8 million second shots and more than 2.1 million booster shots. There have been more than 335,000 doses of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine administered.
Health officials on Monday reported that a total of 5,098,386 Massachusetts residents have been fully vaccinated.
