Massachusetts ranks high for coronavirus variant cases, as infections spike across state
Original article from Boston Herald , 2021
As coronavirus cases continue to spike across Massachusetts, the state has the second highest number of reported cases of the more contagious Brazilian variant in the U.S. and ranks high for U.K. variant cases, prompting public health experts urge residents to stay on high alert.
The Bay State was leading the country for the number of reported cases of the P.1 Brazilian variant until Florida moved ahead on Sunday. Massachusetts has reported 102 P.1 cases, Florida has 126 cases.
Massachusetts also has the fourth-highest number of reported cases of the B.1.1.7 U.K. variant. The state has reported 1,100 of the B.1.1.7 cases.
“This is a serious strain,” said Boston University infectious diseases specialist Davidson Hamer, noting that the U.K. variant is 60% to 70% more transmissible, and is more likely to cause severe disease and death.
“It really fits the term ‘variant of concern.’ We should be concerned about this,” he added.
Meanwhile, as the variants spread across the state, virus case counts have been spiking during the last month. Massachusetts had a daily average of 2,227 cases during the first week of April, compared to an average of 1,378 daily cases in the first week of March.
The number of high-risk communities in Massachusetts has jumped from 14 one month ago to 77 in the state’s most recent weekly report.
“It is a race between variants and vaccines,” Hamer said. “The state numbers have sort of bumped up, drifted up a little bit recently. That’s in particular because B.1.1.7 is circulating pretty widely. We need to keep moving as fast as we can to get vaccines out, and try to minimize vaccine hesitancy to really get this under control.”
The variant cases are based on a sampling of COVID-19 positive specimens, and do not represent the total number of variant cases that may be circulating.