Massachusetts reported 109 new confirmed coronavirus cases Saturday and an additional 20 deaths, with the positive test rate for COVID-19 to 1.1%.
However, Saturday's coronavirus report likely reflects lower testing numbers because the Massachusetts Department of Public Health is moving its data system from its own server to the Amazon web services cloud, officials said this week.
There have now been 8,690 confirmed deaths and 115,850 confirmed cases, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's daily COVID-19 report. The total number of coronavirus deaths in the report, however, is listed as 8,921, which would indicate there are 231 more deaths that are considered probable at this time.
Massachusetts Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said this week that the weekend's data will be affected by the server switch.
DPH planned to shut down the pipeline through which labs report test results Friday night to facilitate the shift, according to a statement from the agency. No new data will be added to the DPH system while the system transfer is underway.
However, all of the existing data “‘will be accessible by DPH epidemiologists and local public health departments,’” Sudders said.
Massachusetts DPH will not publish a daily coronavirus report Sunday due to the switch in data systems. Monday’s update is expected to include all lab results from the weekend.
Saturday's report noted that "Monday’s report will include all laboratory results, cases, and deaths received after 5 PM Friday and will be assigned to their respective test dates."
Additionally, the weekly DPH report that features town-by-town data will now be released at 6 p.m. every Wednesday, instead of 4 p.m. Daily reports on every other day of the week will still be posted by 4 p.m., according to Sudders.
“‘This data set has grown over time and with the amount of data that must be gathered from several sources, organized and quality check(ed) for each Wednesday’s report, it’s become increasingly difficult to meet the 4 p.m. self-imposed deadline,’” she said Thursday.
