Local COVID-19 updates

[edschweppe]

As of 4PM this afternoon, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is reporting thirty-two more deaths from COVID-19 (for a total of 154 to date), 1228 new cases (for a total of 8966) and 4870 more persons tested (for a total of 56608). The "good" news, I suppose, is that we're not seeing exponential growth in these numbers.

According to the Boston Globe, there are 85 long-term care facilities in Massachusetts reporting at least one coronavirus case - well over one in ten of the 700 such facilities statewide. The Life Care Center in Littleton is now reporting at least seventeen people (patients and staff) who have tested positive, with at least one death and possibly as many as five. (They claim not to know what happened to people transported from their facility.) At least twelve of the eighteen veterans who recently died at the Holyoke Soldier's Home tested positive for COVID-19, as did two veterans who died at the Chelsea Soldier's Home.

The town of Acton is currently reporting six confirmed cases.

In flashier news, the New England Patriots private team airplane flew over a million N95 masks from China to Boston this afternoon. While getting that much protective gear is fantastic news for local hospitals, the shenanigans needed to actually get hold of the masks is ... not so good news.

Yet the story is as alarming as it is heartwarming, underscoring a harsh reality as the coronavirus pandemic spreads ever faster around the United States. Governor Charlie Baker and his counterparts throughout the country are forced to go to extraordinary lengths to secure life-saving medical equipment in the absence of a coordinated federal response.

"This is not how it is supposed to work," said Representative Katherine Clark of Melrose, a member of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership team. She described herself as "very grateful" for the Kraft family’s generosity and help getting the critical gear, but said "what we need is a coordinated federal system."

The red-white-and-blue-wrapped 767 touched down at Logan Airport around 6 p.m., bearing the first of two shipments of masks the Baker administration purchased from Chinese suppliers. The journey began, in the governor’s telling, roughly two weeks ago, when the federal government confiscated a shipment of more than 3 million N95 masks at the Port of New York and New Jersey that Massachusetts had arranged to buy.

"I just started reaching out to anybody and everybody I knew, trying to find some other path," Baker recounted in an interview.

Leveraging the Boston area’s universe of globally connected companies and academic institutions, the governor reached out to people with connections not only in Asia, but Europe and elsewhere. Eventually he found some people who thought they could help the administration navigate making a big purchase from Chinese manufacturers.

"The question then became: how do you actually make the pickup work," Baker said, noting it would probably be impossible with traditional commercial air transport.

"Who did I know that had a plane?" he recalled thinking. And he called his longtime friend Jonathan Kraft, president of both the Patriots and the Kraft Group — and the chairman of the board at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Still, a big resupply of masks on the ground at Logan Airport is seriously good news.