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Local COVID-19 updates
Mar. 25th, 2020 08:43 pmThe town of Acton is still reporting no cases of COVID-19 as of this morning. The town election has been postponed from March 31 to June 2; Town Meeting has also been postponed, but the new date is TBD.
Masschusetts Governor Baker has extended the order closing all the schools (public, private and "non-emergency daycare") in the state; they now will be closed at least through May 4. He also added some jawboning at banks and landlords, asking them to be flexible with renters and mortgage payers who run into financial problems; he also ordered grocery stores and pharmacies to take various minor steps to further reduce the risk of viral transmission, including shutting down salad bars, requiring at least one hour per day reserved for senior citizens, and prohibiting reusable grocery bags.
The current Massachusetts death toll is 15. As of 4 p.m. today, Massachusetts has 679 new cases of COVID-19 for a total of 1,838 cases. A total of 19,794 Massachusetts residents have been tested for COVID-19 by the State Public Health Laboratory and commercial and clinical labs.
The good news is that the number of tests being completed daily is rising rapidly. The number of tests completed as of 4 p.m. yesterday was only 13,749. I'm not sure how much throughput is needed before the commonwealth can think about shifting from complete stay-at-home to a test/trace/isolate model, but getting six thousand tests a day is a huge improvement over just a few days ago.
Masschusetts Governor Baker has extended the order closing all the schools (public, private and "non-emergency daycare") in the state; they now will be closed at least through May 4. He also added some jawboning at banks and landlords, asking them to be flexible with renters and mortgage payers who run into financial problems; he also ordered grocery stores and pharmacies to take various minor steps to further reduce the risk of viral transmission, including shutting down salad bars, requiring at least one hour per day reserved for senior citizens, and prohibiting reusable grocery bags.
The current Massachusetts death toll is 15. As of 4 p.m. today, Massachusetts has 679 new cases of COVID-19 for a total of 1,838 cases. A total of 19,794 Massachusetts residents have been tested for COVID-19 by the State Public Health Laboratory and commercial and clinical labs.
The good news is that the number of tests being completed daily is rising rapidly. The number of tests completed as of 4 p.m. yesterday was only 13,749. I'm not sure how much throughput is needed before the commonwealth can think about shifting from complete stay-at-home to a test/trace/isolate model, but getting six thousand tests a day is a huge improvement over just a few days ago.