Monday update: Mass. vaccines up, COVID cases also grow – Milford Daily News

Since last Monday, the number of people in Massachusetts fully vaccinated against COVID-19 has grown by more than 17 percent. The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has also increased, by about 11 percent.

On the day that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Dr. Rochelle Walensky, a former Massachusetts General Hospital infectious diseases physician, reflected on the sense of “impending doom” she feels over the pandemic’s trajectory in the United States, Massachusetts public health officials reported 675 COVID-19 hospitalizations and 15 recent deaths.

Counting 340 deaths of people with probable cases of COVID-19, the state’s death toll stands at 17,130 since March 20 of last year. The average positive test rate for the past seven days is 2.37 percent, up from 2.25 percent a week ago.

Massachusetts could surpass a total of 600,000 COVID-19 cases this week — the cumulative caseload hit 594,242 on Monday with the addition of 1,464 newly confirmed cases, from 41,771 tests. The state crossed the half-million case threshold on Feb. 1, 2021, a year after the first COVID-19 case here was confirmed.

State and local governments should receive their latest infusion of federal stimulus funding around the second week in May, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch said Monday, describing cities and towns as “in desperate need of funding…just for the core costs of dealing with the pandemic.”

Vaccines racing against variant, health expert says

The B.1.1.7 variant of COVID-19, first detected in the United Kingdom, adds to the urgency of vaccination efforts, Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch told Boston city councilors Monday.

“We are in a race between vaccinating the population and having a bigger problem on our hands as B.1.1.7 spreads,” he said during a virtual hearing of the council’s Committee on Government Operations.

Lipsitch said 411 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant had been detected in Massachusetts as of Sunday. The variant seems to be more contagious, he said, meaning that control measures that have been in use over the past year “may not be as effective to contain this new form of the virus.”

“If we in the old days and the present time have had to stop something like two-thirds of the transmissions that were happening by doing social distancing, masking and other interventions, we may now have to stop something like 80 or 85 percent of transmissions for this new variant if it is twice as contagious, and that’s just more difficult and requires more intense interventions.”

Vaccine town hall features LL Cool J, Dr. Fauci 

Hip hop icon LL Cool J and DJ Jazzy Jeff, who will share his firsthand experience with COVID-19, are set to join Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday for a virtual town hall on SiriusXM titled “Is The Vaccine Safe For Us?”

Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, senior advisor to the White House COVID-19 Response Team, also plans to join the discussion. Organizers say it will touch on the importance of getting vaccinated, whether it’s safe for pregnant women to get vaccinated, why people should trust the vaccine, COVID survivor stories, demystifying misinformation and setting the record straight on conspiracy theories.

“Sadly, there’s a dangerous reluctance amongst our communities to get vaccinated, and the result will be devastating,” according to SiriusXM.

The one-hour conversation will also include questions submitted by SiriusXM subscribers, which Fauci will answer. The 6 p.m. town hall will simulcast across LL Cool J’s Rock The Bells Radio (SXM Ch. 43), Hip Hop Nation (SXM Ch. 44), The Heat (SXM Ch. 46) and SiriusXM FLY (Ch. 47).

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