Five new cases of COVID-19 reported Friday make 19 new cases since Monday as Martha’s Vineyard continues to see an uptick in positive tests for the virus.
Cases on the Island have steadily risen this week following reports of a cluster linked to a wedding over the long weekend earlier this month.
Of the Island’s now 107 confirmed COVID-19 cases, 88 are no longer symptomatic and have been released from isolation, but the 19 most recent cases are being monitored by public health officials.
Through contact tracing, the cases of 43 individuals, or 42 percent of the Vineyard’s cases, have been linked to another individual.
Martha’s Vineyard Hospital has tested 6,200 patients since testing began in March. Of those, 59 have tested positive, 6,104 tested negative, and 37 are pending results. The hospital has also reported two hospitalizations this month — both have been discharged. In April, the hospital transferred three COVID-19-positive patients off-Island. One of those patients died in Boston, “due to medical complications not proven to be related to COVID-19,” according to a hospital spokesperson at the time.
TestMV has tested 18,584 individuals with 45 positive tests, 17,842 negative tests, and 697 pending results. The town of Aquinnah has tested 305 individuals. Of those, 301 have tested negative, and four are pending results.
The Martha’s Vineyard boards of health have confirmed three other cases, bringing the Island’s total number of confirmed cases since March to 103.
Due to the hospital, boards of health, and the town of Aquinnah all reporting their own data at different times of day, and due to some people being tested at multiple sites, exact numbers can be difficult to calculate. Also, due to some patients being tested at the hospital and TestMV, the number of confirmed cases from each testing site and the total number of cases can not add up.
Of the 107 confirmed cases, 61 are female and 46 are male. Nineteen of the cases are 50-59 years old, 24 are 20-29 years old, 13 cases are 60-69 years old, 20 are 30-39 years old, 14 are 20 years old or younger, eight are 40-49, and seven are 70 years or older.
The boards of health are also reporting on probable cases. The Island’s total number of presumed positives is 24. Of those, 21 were positive antibody tests, and three were symptomatically positive.
Of the probable cases, 14 are female and 10 are male. Of the 24 presumed positive cases, seven are aged 60-69, five are aged 50-59, three are aged 40-49, five are aged 20-29, two are under 20 years old, and two are over the age of 70.
The Island’s new cases come as Massachusetts has seen case totals this week that have rivaled April and May during the pandemic surge. On Friday, the state reported 1,488 new cases — the fifth day in a row of more than 1,000 cases — totaling 153,229 cases since testing began. The state is also continuing to see COVID-related deaths, with 23 new deaths on Friday totaling 9,750 since the pandemic began.
