Yep, it's official.

As promised - or threatened, depending on one's point of view - the Commonwealth of Massachusetts today announced that they're scrapping their current five-days-a-week COVID-19 data reporting, instead going to a once-per-week update:
( Official DPH Press Release )

Once a week is better than nothing, I suppose. On the other hand, Massachusetts has for the most part been much better at keeping their raw-data feeds synched with their public facing websites than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been. (CDC APIs are all too frequently either a day ahead or a day behind their website. For example, the most recent Community Transmission API is showing 2,809 counties with High transmission, while the COVID Data Tracker Community Transmission page is showing 2,836.)

I'd also feel a lot better about the state going to once-per-week updates if the deaths and cases counts weren't climbing again ... but that's a rant for today's update.

Local COVID-19 updates - the last for a while

Today is the last of the weekday reports from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

Beginning Monday, July 11, 2022, Massachusetts will be updating COVID-19 data reporting on a weekly basis, to reflect the evolving COVID-19 response in the Commonwealth. Learn more in the July 8 press release.

Not that the actual numbers are any good:

( Wall-o-text )

Deaths (19) are up slightly from yesterday, marking the third day in a row with at least eighteen newly reported deaths. Cases are also up compared to yesterday; today's 1,850 newly reported cases are the highest Friday total since June 10. Hospitalizations, at least, ticked down slightly. On the other hand, all four of the seven-day averages are up from yesterday, with percent-positive up to 7.87%.

The state is saying they'll have a new dashboard out next Thursday (July 11). I'm going to guess (from their press release) that they'll be changing their raw data file format as well, which (from experience) will break my wall-o-text builder. And, since I plan to be on Star Island next week, my interest in debugging stuff is going to be just about nonexistent. I might try to do something with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention datasets that I could run on weekdays; on the other hand, I might not bother trying until after I get back. So this is likely the last update for a while.

I do wish there was some good news to be included in it.

The town of Acton's current Google Data Studio dashboard is showing 31 active and 3,668 cumulative cases as of July 6, and has not been updated since. In the most recent "newsflash style update" at 7PM on December 21, 2021, the town reported 1538 cumulative cases with 89 individuals in isolation, 1417 recovered and 32 fatalities.