Public health officials reported more new coronavirus cases on Friday than they have on any day since early June, adding 431 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, to the state’s total.
Testing also increased, with the new cases coming from 26,758 tests conducted during the reporting period. That works out to a positive test rate of 1.61% for the single day, while the Department of Public Health said Friday the state’s seven-day average of the positive test rate had hit a new low of 1.2%.
The number of people hospitalized in Massachusetts with COVID-19 dropped by 49 to 322 as of midday Friday, the department said. That drove the three-day average of hospitalized COVID-19 patients down to its own all-time low of 353.
Since Feb. 1, there have been 115,741 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Massachusetts. The virus has claimed at least 8,670 lives, or 8,901 when counting people who died with probable cases.
On Friday night, the pipeline through which labs report COVID-19 test results to the department was to be shut down to aid the transfer of a data system from a department server to the Amazon Web Services cloud. As a result, the daily update the department publishes Saturday “may suggest lower testing numbers,” Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said.
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