Eight new COVID-19 cases Wednesday

Surge in cases continues as Island heads into Thanksgiving holiday.

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Martha's Vineyard had a record number of cases of COVID-19 this week.

There were eight new confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported on Martha’s Vineyard Wednesday as the Island heads into its fourth week in a surge of cases and the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

As of Wednesday, the hospital, which tests individuals based on a strict set of criteria including those who are symptomatic, has tested 7,873 individuals since testing began in March. Of those, 198 have tested positive, 7,587 have tested negative, and 88 are pending results.

The hospital also has one patient admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 who has been admitted since last Thursday. The hospital airlifted a COVID patient earlier this week who was in critical condition.

As of Wednesday, TestMV, which tests asymptomatic individuals, has tested 23,072 individuals since it began testing in May. Of those, 85 have tested positive, 21,228 negative, and 1,388 pending results.

TestMV is also returning to five-day-a-week testing to meet demand amid the surge in cases.

The town of Aquinnah is also conducting its own testing. Aquinnah has tested 339 individuals with zero positives, 316 negatives, and 23 pending results.

The Island reported 63 new cases last week, and 62 cases the week before that. The new cases also come as the Island heads into its fourth week of a jump in cases that began on Oct. 26, when public health officials reported a cluster of cases linked to a wedding at the Lambert’s Cove Inn. Since then, the Island has seen 192 cases of COVID-19 — more than all the cases reported on the Island between March and Oct. 25 combined.

According to an expanded report from the Martha’s Vineyard boards of health on Friday, there are 68 active cases of COVID-19 that health officials are still following. All of the active cases are from individuals who tested positive between Nov. 8 and Nov. 20. All other cases are no longer symptomatic, and have been released from isolation. Of all the cases, 108, or 44 percent, are connected to at least one other case. A majority of these connections are within family and household groups or small social groups. Two groups are considered clusters — the October wedding, to which health officials connected eight cases, and Cronig’s Market, which has reported 19 cases.

Of the Island’s 278 confirmed cases, 144 are female and 134 are male. Of those, 64 are in their 30s, 46 are in their 20s, 45 are in their 50s, 47 are in their 40s, 44 are younger than 20, 22 are in their 60s, and 10 are older than 70.

The boards of health are also keeping track of probable cases. On Monday there was one new symptomatically diagnosed and one antibody positive. There are 27 probable cases reported on the Island. Of those, 22 received positive antibody tests, and five have been symptomatically diagnosed. Of those, 15 are female and 12 are male. There are seven in their 60s, six in their 20s, six in their 50s, three in their 40s, two younger than 20, and three older than 70.

The surge in cases is happening statewide. On Tuesday, the Department of Public Health reported 2,225 positive cases — a 3.02 percent seven-day positivity rate, with an estimated 40,449 active cases statewide.

The state continues to see new deaths as well, with 20 reported Tuesday, for a total of 10,551 statewide.

6 COMMENTS

  1. I received an e mail from a certain person who I have for years publicly disagreed with on a wide variety of topics.He said that Anthony Fauci was an idiot.
    It’s incredible to me that this apparenty intelligent individual would completely deny the fact that Fauci has been on the money with his warnings througout this pandemic.
    You don’t have to look too hard to see that Fauci warned us of a fall surge, while trump went into his bunker and told us everything would be all right, and that “socialism” was the real threat to our society.
    I see heavy traffic throughout town, and things pretty near normal here.
    We will pay a price for complacency.

    And,off topic, I woulld like to throw in an appeal to the editor of this publication–could you please put a spell checker on the comments ?
    It makes us all look stupid as we all make typos and spelling errors, but it certainly makes the “under educated” that the outgoing president loves, seem even dumber than they are .
    In the interest of fairness, please give the “under educated” a fair chance at at least appearing to know basic English.

      • It seems the spell checker is now on. Perhaps my suggestion helped George work out a bug in the new system. Now we can spend more time discussing real issues, like how to keep our hospital from going bankrupt or whether the current president will accept the free and fair election of president elect Joseph Robinette Biden and vice president elect Kamala Devi Harris, rather than being the spelling and grammar police.

        Thank you for pointing out my misspellings — I knew you would. 😉

    • Hi Don,

      I’d like to second the spell checker idea. We can put a man on the moon but my iPhone can’t understand what I’m writing half the time. Google does but I’m not sure why. BTW, some of us really struggle with spelling and it’s not necessarily because of lack of intelligence or education. For me, spell checking has been a godsend and has helped me improved my confidence in writing. Thankfully there’s no need to lug the Webster around anymore.

      • mr woodruff-
        my point exactly– you are an intelligent person and an irreplaceable asset to our community. Who cares if you , or i , or anyone else misspells a word ?
        But , it seems shallow people will seek to berate someone who disagrees with their opinion over something as trivial as spelling a word ending in”le” or “el” .
        And as far as the Time’s policy of real names, I really appreciate it. I think as a community, we should have nothing to hide from each other.
        And just to put it up here, In my opinion, you are one of the most respected people on this island.
        At least for me.

    • Mr Keller, perhaps it was me who sent you that email. Fauci just flip flopped recently in telling us schools should be open–something we have known for 8 months while the government tortured our kids on a disease they never get or get well after mild cases.Even DeBlasio is opening schools in a city hardest hit. One day we will admit this has been a shameful episode of misinformation. The person who sent you that email has it right.

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