North End, Surrounding Area’s COVID Cases Jump 30 Percent

It’s a good thing the City’s new mask mandate policy for indoor venues went into effect last Friday because the North End and the surrounding area’s COVID numbers increased dramatically between August 23 and August 30.

City health officials are scrambling to knock down the highly contagious Delta variant of the COVID virus here and across Boston as infections among the unvaccinated and breakthrough infections among the vaccinated continue to climb.

Ahead of the new mask mandate the North End and the surrounding area’s weekly positive COVID test rate decreased 21 percent between August 16 and August 23 but skyrocketed last week.

According to the weekly report released last Friday released by the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC), 2083 North End, Beacon Hill, Back Bay, West End and Downtown residents were tested and 3.4 percent were positive. This was a 31 percent increase from the 2.6 percent of residents that tested positive between August 16 and August 23.

Overall since the pandemic started 61,415 North End, Beacon Hill, Back Bay, West End and Downtown residents have been tested for COVID-19 and the data shows that 6.4 percent of those tested were COVID positive. This was the same percentage reported by the BPHC on August 13.

Citywide, the weekly positive test rate decreased 10 percent last week. According to the BPHC 22,636 residents were tested and 3.6 percent were COVID positive–this was a 3 percent increase from the 3.5 percent reported by the BPHC on August 23.

The BPHC data released last Friday showed North End, Beacon Hill, Back Bay, West End and Downtown had an infection rate of 699.8 cases per 10,000 residents–a 2 percent increase from the 685.5 cases per 10,000 residents reported on August 23.

Eighty additional residents have been infected with the virus between August 23 and August 30 and the total number of cases in the area increased to 3,900 cases overall since the pandemic began.

The statistics released by the BPHC as part of its weekly COVID19 report breaks down the number of cases and infection rates in each neighborhood. It also breaks down the number of cases by age, gender and race.

Citywide positive cases of coronavirus increased 1.3 percent since August 23 and went from  74,940 cases to 76,036 confirmed cases in a week. There were three additional deaths in Boston from the virus in the past two weeks and the total COVID deaths is now at 1,406.