Massachusetts will stop daily COVID case count report, switch to weekly
BOSTON -- The Massachusetts Department of Public Health will no longer release coronavirus case numbers five days a week, they announced Friday. Instead, they'll post COVID-19 data on a weekly basis.
"The changes taking effect next week are part of our ongoing efforts to adapt to the pandemic and focus on the metrics most useful at a given time. The updated reporting reflects the current status of COVID-19 and its impact," said State Epidemiologist Dr. Catherine Brown.
"While we all have become used to checking the numbers every day, monitoring trends over time is actually the most useful way to apply the COVID-19 data," said Dr. Helen Boucher, Interim Dean of Tufts University School of Medicine, Chief Academic Officer at Tufts Medicine, and member of the Governor's Medical Advisory Board. "Given that Massachusetts has one of the best vaccination and booster percentages in the nation, these changes make sense at this stage in our COVID-19 response."
Starting next week, data will be released on Thursdays. The population will be updated to reflect more recent census numbers going forward, the state said.
In the Interactive Data Dashboard, the Contact Tracing and Clusters tabs will be removed from the COVID-19 Cases section. Higher education data will also no longer be available.
The vaccination report will now be released on Wednesday instead of Thursday.
Last year, the dashboard went down from updates seven-days a week to five.