Worcester students, staff contracting virus outside schools
WORCESTER – While city schools have been closed, COVID-19 has still infected hundreds of school-age children and district staff since the school year began, according to the School Department’s records.
As of last week, 205 students and 118 district employees had tested positive for the virus since September – up from 103 students and 72 staff members reported by the School Department in the first week of December. The district, which has been reporting its COVID cases to the state throughout the fall, plans to begin posting those numbers on its website weekly beginning this week.
None of the district’s youth cases would have occurred at school, since students have been learning remotely from home in Worcester since March. Of infected school employees, 61 had been going into their school buildings, while the rest were working from home, which makes workplace transmission likely a minimal factor in their cases as w
Hospital systems proposing merger file with state
December 26, 2020 GMT
WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) UMass Memorial Health Care and Harrington Health Care System have taken another step forward in their proposed merger by filing with state regulatory agencies.
The health care systems have jointly submitted the first in a series of required filings for UMass Memorial to become the parent company of Harrington, UMass Memorial said in a statement, Masslive.com reported.
Worcester-based UMass Memorial said it could take up to four months to complete the final regulatory steps.
Officials from both health care systems say a merger would benefit Central Massachusetts through investments to support clinical care; maintaining existing acute care hospital facilities in Southbridge and Webster for at least five years; and strengthening common goals of continuously improving quality of care and patient safety, while providing better access and affordability.
Ahead of Christmas, Worcester officials fear another spike due to travel; daily cases of COVID have doubled since Thanksgiving
Updated Dec 24, 2020;
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Numbers released by officials in Worcester on Thursday showed the impact the Thanksgiving surge of coronavirus cases had on the city.
In the week leading up to Thanksgiving, the city averaged about 92 cases per day, officials said. In the three weeks since the holiday, Worcester’s daily average jumped to 181.
On Christmas Eve, Mayor Joseph Petty and Medical Director Dr. Michael Hirsh feared holiday travel would further increase those numbers.
“Regarding holiday gatherings and restrictions placed on them, I know these are very challenging, some of these steps,” Petty said. “But I also know they’re going to take us in the right direction.”
Coronavirus cases in the city of Worcester have risen by nearly another 1,000 in the past six days, indicating a sustained high level of spread in the weeks after Thanksgiving.
That rate roughly tracks with the past few weeks. The city s previously reported eight-day period a day longer than normal because of the Dec. 17 snowstorm included a count of 1,390. The new count of 977 over six days reported on Thursday represents a slight drop from the past two weeks.
Though cases have stopped rising, they remain far higher than before Thanksgiving, and Worcester Mayor Joe Petty said Thursday that the city is increasing enforcement of business regulations that limit how many people can be gathered indoors at once. Many have already been warned, and compliance will be aimed most at repeat offenders.
UMass Memorial starts administering Moderna vaccine to staff
Updated Dec 23, 2020;
At 7 p.m. Tuesday, the last available doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine were distributed to UMass Memorial Health Care caretakers. Hours later on Wednesday, the system was administering its first doses of the Moderna vaccine.
If weekly shipments of vaccines continue to come through, UMass Memorial expects to have a steady flow of employees getting shots to protect from the coronavirus, officials said.
UMass Memorial has received 3,200 doses of the vaccine by Cambridge-based Moderna. The first doses of that vaccine went out Wednesday at a community site at Marlborough Hospital and at HealthAlliance, according to Elizabeth Radigan, who is leading the system’s vaccination distribution effort.