Local COVID-19 updates

The wall of text below was actually generated on July 28, once I got a wall-o-text builder working for the state's new and (un)improved once-a-week format.

( Wall-o-text, covering 7 days of data )

Local COVID-19 updates - sorta

The good news is that Massachusetts actually did report data today (the dashboard link is here and the raw data file link is here). The bad news is that at first glance deaths, cases, hospitalizations and percent-positive are all up compared to last Thursday. The more frustating news (for me, at least), is that there have been a whole bunch of changes to their data layouts, and it's going to take more work than I expected to try and get my custom data loader to work with these new changes. Once I do get it working, of course, I'll need to do a backdated entry for last Thursday (which I didn't do at the time because I was on Star Island and didn't want the hassle then.)

The very quick summary, though, is that today the state reported 42 newly confirmed deaths over seven days (6.00 deaths per day) compared to 31 newly confirmed deaths over six days last Thursday (5.17 deaths per day). The state reported 10,250 newly confirmed cases over seven days today (1,464.69 cases per day) compared to 7096 newly confirmed cases over six days last Thursday (1,182.67 cases per day). The state's current hospitalization count (as of July 19) is 589; that's up from 552 from the previous update (as of July 12).

I am personally of the opinion that when case, death and hospitalization counts are all rising, it is a bad time to reduce your reporting frequency, if the goal is to keep people updated on trends. But I don't get to run the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, so I don't get a vote.

Meanwhile, President Biden tested positive for the coronavirus following his visit to Massachusetts yesterday:
( Read more... )

I'm certainly glad that Biden is doing well. But apparently the plan was to run around maskless and just let the President get infected? Whiskey, tango, foxtrot, over?

The town of Acton's current Google Data Studio dashboard is showing 26 active and 3,743 cumulative cases as of July 20. 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.