Town continues to ‘trend higher’ in covid cases

Dec 1, 2020

From Nov. 26-28, there were 17 new confirmed cases of covid-19 and three additional probable cases in Wareham, according to Town Administrator Derek Sullivan. At the Tuesday, Dec. 1, Board of Selectmen meeting, Sullivan said the town was “still trending higher,” and added that he felt he was providing “basically the same update week in, week out.”

Selectman Peter Teitelbaum said he anticipates a rise in the town’s covid cases as a result of Thanksgiving travel. 

“It’s the biggest travel weekend of the year, and even though travel was down there was still a lot of people traveling,” he said. “Many people ignored the CDC’s recommendation to just have Thanksgiving with your usual family unit, and I would just ask everybody please be careful. I think in a week’s time we’re going to see what the fruits of all this travel was in this country, and it’s not going to be good.”

Selectman Alan Slavin also noted the state’s hospitals are now at 65 percent capacity, with intensive care units at 50 percent capacity.

“I’m hoping — and so is the state — that this will level off because if we get much higher it’s going to be a problem for people who want elective surgeries, etcetera,” Slavin said.

The most recent state report — which tracked cases through Nov. 25, the day before Thanksgiving — showed Wareham continued to trend up in covid-19 cases ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. According to that weekly report, Wareham had an average daily incidence rate of 17.1 cases per 100,000 people, in the last 14 days.

Given Wareham’s population, this means there were about 3.93 new cases each day over the last two weeks. The week of Nov. 19, there were about 3.47 new cases daily.

Wareham remained yellow as of the Nov. 27 state report, which is the same classification it had the week before.

Wareham Public Schools is reporting one new student case of covid-19 in the past week, as of Nov. 30.