Massachusetts' coronavirus death toll rose by 57 on Tuesday, state health officials said, the sixth day in a row that the state reported fewer than 100 deaths. Just 44 deaths were reported Monday.
Nearly 6,500 people with the virus have now died in the Bay State. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health also reported 422 more people have tested positive for the virus, bringing the total to 93,693.
Massachusetts has exited the "surge" of the coronavirus, Gov. Charlie Baker said Tuesday, and the metrics on the virus are "trending in the right direction."
The Department of Public Health's 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.
Once again, none of the six indicators was trending negatively Tuesday, 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.
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 -- just over 540,000 tests have been conducted as of Monday, according to the Department of Public Health.
