Massachusetts confirmed 30 new coronavirus deaths and 986 new cases Thursday, the highest number of cases in a day so far this fall.
Back on May 24 the Massachusetts Department of Public Health reported 1,013 cases in a single day, according to archived data on its website.
There have now been 9,589 confirmed deaths and 143,927 cases, according to DPH. The percentage of coronavirus tests coming back positive, on average, has risen to 1.4%, according to Thursday's report.
The total number of coronavirus deaths in the daily COVID-19 report, however, is listed as 9,810, which would indicate there are 221 more deaths that are considered probable at this time.
The number of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 has increased to 521. Of that number, 103 were listed as being in intensive care units and 38 are intubated, according to DPH.
While announcing a new COVID-19 economic recovery package earlier in the day, Gov. Charlie Baker said health officials are not seeing a great deal of spread in formal settings.
"Household transmission, intergenerational transmission is where we are seeing a lot of new case growth," Baker said. "People are doing the right things in formal settings — downtowns, supermarkets. That's not where we're seeing most of the growth in cases. A huge portion is people between 19 to 39, and most of that is related to personal contact, in many cases with groups of friends and people they know without any of the guidance we've talked about with respect to distance or masks being applied."
Similarly, the governor said there is "very little evidence" that schools are a spreader.
"People are not finding K-12 schools to be a big issue with respect to spread," he said. "And if you look at our colleges and universities, we're testing a lot more than in other places. We aren't seeing the massive cases. Most of the spread is off-campus and at gatherings — familiar people behaving in a familiar way."
