Not a local COVID-19 update - yet

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has been pretty good about posting its "COVID-19 Daily Dashboard" every afternoon at or slightly after 4:00PM. It's now 7:40PM, and today's dashboard is still not available. There is a note on the COVID-19 Response Reporting page, right where the day's link is normally published, stating

Today's data report will be posted as soon as it is available

I haven't seen anything explaining what the delay is due to.

Local COVID-19 updates

As of 4PM today, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is reporting 16 newly reported confirmed deaths (for a total of 8,265), 270 newly reported confirmed cases (for a total of 107,683), and 16,133 new patients tested by molecular tests (for a total of 1,079,288), with a total of 1,391,221 molecular tests administered to date. The ratio of newly confirmed cases to individuals tested by molecular test is 1.7%. The state also reported zero newly reported probable deaths (for a total of 219), 57 newly reported probable cases (for a total of 6,964), and 1,366 patients tested by antibody tests (for a total of 88,712). Combining the confirmed and probable numbers gives 16 new deaths (for a total of 8,484) and 327 new cases (for a total of 114,647).

Deaths down slightly and tests way up, both good things. Cases up as well, but that appears to be due to the big jump in tests; the percent-positive rate ticked down slightly.

As I noted earlier, despite being officially updated by 4PM, this report didn't show up on the website until much later - I finally saw it available at 9:30. There's nothing on the website that I can see explaining this; however, there is a note on page 2 of the report:

Note: Due to the recent change in federal hospital reporting requirements and definitions which went live July 22, data accuracy and integrity issues were experienced with today's report. DPH and the reporting hospitals are making every effort to mitigate these reporting challenges and publish corrected data in the near future.The number of hospitals using surge has not been updated today due to data integrity challenges.

The town of Acton has yet to post an update today. As of the most recent report at 12:30PM on July 16, the town reported 180 cumulative cases of COVID-19 in Acton with 3 individuals in isolation, 156 recovered and 21 fatalities.