Thursday brought the news of 93 more coronavirus deaths in Massachusetts and 675 additional tests returning positive.
The death toll now stands at 6,640 and 94,895 people have tested positive for the virus, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
The state is no longer in its coronavirus surge, as recent numbers have shown and Gov. Charlie Baker said this week. But the fear of a second surge in late summer or early autumn prompted the cancellation of the Boston Marathon as an in-person event, announced by Mayor Marty Walsh earlier Thursday.
"All the experts are saying that a potential second surge could happen any time between August and October," Walsh said at a news conference.
The Department of Public Health's daily report contains six indicators that are informing how fast Massachusetts can move through the four phases of its reopening plan. They are: the COVID-19 positive test rate, the number of individuals who died from COVID-19, the number of patients with COVID-19 in hospitals, the health care system's readiness, testing capacity, contact tracing capabilities.
As they have for over a week, none of the six indicators was trending negatively Thursday, and two were trending positively: the positive test rate and the testing capacity. All of the other four metrics were rated "in progress," the intermediate metric.
The progress the state has steadily seen is because "people have been playing their part, they've been washing their hands, covering their faces when out in public, distancing when they can," Baker said Thursday, adding, "we all have to keep it up."
Thursday's report did show a very slight uptick in the number of people in Massachusetts hospitals with the virus, up six from the day before after a week of consecutive drops. But the 2,112 people in hospitals as of Thursday is still nearly half the patient population at the height of the surge.
Massachusetts has for weeks been one of the epicenters of COVID-19 in the U.S. It has the fourth-most cases among all states and third-most deaths.
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Baker and other health officials have said Massachusetts' high tallies may be due to the state testing among the most residents per capita in the country, according to the Department of Public Health.
