WESTFIELD – COVID-19 cases continued to surge this week as the local and state records for weekly and daily transmission continue to be broken.
The City of Westfield reported 117 new cases and two deaths due to COVID-19 this week. The number of new confirmed cases represents a new weekly record for the city since the beginning of the pandemic and brought the city’s confirmed total number of cases above 1,000.
Westfield State University reported two new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Thursday. Though the number is small, only a few hundred students remain on campus after in-person learning was suspended last month. Those students remain because they have coursework that is impossible to conduct in an online setting.
The Town of Southwick reported 37 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 this week in a reporting period that was lengthened due to Thanksgiving last week. The town will roll back to Phase 3, Step 1 of Gov. Charlie D. Baker’s reopening plan on Monday after weeks of being considered a high risk community for COVID-19 transmission.
Massachusetts as a whole saw a dramatic increase in the number of daily cases this week, with multiple days shattering the record for the number of new daily cases set back in the Spring. Acorss the state, 6,477 cases were confirmed on Dec. 3. The percent-positivity rate for the week across the state was 3.9 percent.
On Thursday, Lowell General Hospital announced that it would reopen the state’s second field hospital in order to keep up with the demand for hospital beds that will more than likely be needed by COVID-19 patients and to prevent the state’s hospital system from collapsing. Another field hospital has already been reopened in Worcester.
Nationally, the surge of COVID-19 continues virtually everywhere. Unlike in the Spring and Summer when there seemed to be parts of the country that were more greatly impacted than others at a given time, COVID-19 now seems to be spreading uncontrollably everywhere. On Dec. 2, the U.S. reported a daily record of more than 206,000 cases.
The following day, Dec. 3, that record was broken again with more than 215,000 reported cases.
Simultaneously, the U.S. reported the single-day record for the number of COVID-19 related deaths with more than 2,800 people dying from the virus on Wednesday and Thursday each.
