ON THE FINAL DAY of the COVID-19 surge projected by the Baker administration, the number of new cases dropped for the fourth day in a row and hospitalizations remained manageable.
It’s still too early to tell if the state is on track to start reopening schools and businesses on May 4, but the odds would suggest that’s unlikely. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh came right out and said his city’s schools would not be reopening on May 4.
The White House’s guidance for reopening states leaves the decision to governors, but recommends a decrease in new confirmed coronavirus cases over a 14-day period and enough hospital capacity to “treat all patients without crisis care.”
The number of new coronavirus cases in Massachusetts has fallen from 2,263 on Thursday to 1,566 on Monday, a modest start toward the goal of a 14-day decline.
The state appears to have plenty of hospital capacity, with 57 percent of its hospital beds empty. Intensive care capacity varies across the state, but overall 14 percent of ICU beds are empty.
Gov. Charlie Baker, in an interview with Boston 25 News on Monday, said the state’s hospital systems will not be overwhelmed. He said a decision about reopening schools would be made soon.
On April 2, Baker projected the COVID-19 surge peak in Massachusetts would come somewhere between April 10 and Monday. He has largely stuck with that prediction over the last week to 10 days.
The end of the projected surge period on Monday coincided with the release of a new Department of Public Health dashboard providing a statistical analysis of the state’s battle against COVID-19. The dashboard, unveiled hours later than previous data updates, promised all the same information that had been released and more, and attempted to present it in an easier-to-follow graphic form.
In several ways, the dashboard delivered. Current hospital capacity was highlighted with easy-to-read charts and the number of hospitalizations was shown on a graph rising from 1,370 on April 4 to 3,804 on April 19.
Age information was presented graphically and average ages were provided for the first time for COVID-19 cases (54), hospitalizations (68), and deaths (81).
Some information on deaths was helpful. For example, the dashboard provided total deaths by county (Middlesex County was tops with 402) and deaths per 100,000 people for each county (Hampden County was tops with 47, followed by Norfolk at 37, Franklin at 36, and Suffolk at 32).
But the dashboard’s analysis of nursing home cases and fatalities was totally inadequate. The Department of Public Health abruptly stopped reporting on Monday the total number of deaths at long-term care facilities, a number that has been rising swiftly and steadily and as of Sunday accounted for 52 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in the state.
The information on testing and new cases at nursing homes was presented in a confusing manner. The new dashboard presented a vague, numerical range for COVID-19 cases at most but not all of the state’s long-term care facilities and no information on deaths at those facilities. One glaring omission: there was no mention at all of the Chelsea Soldiers’ Home.
On April 2, Baker made a number of projections about how COVID-19 would impact Massachusetts. The unique virus makes projections difficult, but nevertheless the end of the projected surge period provides an opportunity to compare what was projected to what has actually occurred so far.
Baker projected the death toll from the coronavirus would be somewhere between 705 and 2,580. We currently are at 1,809.
The governor projected the number of COVID-19 cases would be somewhere between 47,000 and 172,000. We are currently at 39,643.
Baker projected 1.5 percent of those infected would end up dying. The actual percentage as of Monday was 4.6 percent.