A “worrisome” trend of rising coronavirus cases continued on Thursday when Massachusetts health officials reported 742 new COVID infections as the highly contagious delta variant spreads.
Health officials also reported 8 new deaths bringing the total number of COVID-19 fatalities to 17,711, according to state Department of Public Health data. As of Thursday, a total of 671,644 total infections have been reported in the commonwealth since the beginning of the pandemic.
The seven-day average of daily cases hit 428, which is nearly seven times the 64 daily cases seen on average in late June.
Hospitalizations are also beginning to climb again following a long decline and plateau as coronavirus vaccines became more widely available.
Last week Dr. Davidson Hamer of Boston University’s infectious disease department said the “worrisome” trend is likely due to the more infectious and more deadly Delta variant.
Cases have continued to climb since then. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says the variant is now responsible for 83% of new infections across the nation.
Gov. Charlie Baker this week on Wednesday gave a definitive “no” when asked by a Herald reporter this week if he was considering travel restrictions for Massachusetts residents and visitors as a cluster of cases that emerged earlier this month in Provincetown ballooned to more than 800 confirmed infections — mostly among vaccinated people.
Massachusetts’ seven-day average of positive tests hit 1.92% on Thursday — far below the 5% threshold for restrictions officials identified earlier in the pandemic. While it’s higher than the 0.5% positive test rate seen prior to the emergence of the delta variant, it’s still a fraction of the 30% positive test rate the state saw when caseloads first peaked in the spring of 2020.
More than 4.3 million Massachusetts residents were fully vaccinated as of Thursday, according to state health data.