Massachusetts reported no new deaths from the coronavirus for the first time in more than three months Tuesday.
State health officials indicated they are decreasing the official count of patients who have died or are presumed to have died from the virus in the state, citing “ongoing data cleaning, which identifies and removes duplicate reports,” according to the Boston Globe.
The new official count of people in Massachusetts who have died of COVID-19 sits at 8,054.
Gov. Charlie Baker celebrated the news at a press conference Tuesday but urged residents to continue practicing social distancing, wearing masks, and following other statewide protocols established during the pandemic.
“We do not want to take one step forward and two steps back as we keep climbing out of this horrific pandemic,” Baker said.
Nationwide, several states, especially in the South and West, have seen spikes in new cases even as the single-day death rate from the virus fell to a three-month low last month.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease doctor, warned Tuesday of what he called a “very disturbing trend” of virus flare-ups as some states move through phased reopenings of their local economies.
“I can’t make an accurate prediction, but it is going to be very disturbing — I will guarantee you that — because when you have an outbreak in one part of the country even though in other parts of the country, they’re doing well, they are vulnerable,” Fauci told lawmakers on Capitol Hill. “We can’t just focus on those areas that are having the surge. It puts the entire country at risk.”
As of Wednesday, more than 2.6 million people in the United States have contracted the coronavirus, and 127,000 have died from the resulting disease.
