Newton Coronavirus: Positive Cases Up And Down, Here's Why

NEWTON, MA — The number of people in Newton who have tested positive for the coronavirus rose to 573 Sunday, according to city data. The number of Newton residents who have reportedly died because of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus rose to 71 on April 28, the last day those numbers were updated.

Late last week, the mayor said there was good news within those numbers.

"The great news is that because of the disease mitigation efforts by so many of us in Newton and statewide, we are seeing fewer new cases each week," Mayor Ruthanne Fuller said in a statement citing two weeks ago the reported cases had increased by 110 cases, and last week the cases only increased by 43.

As Newton and state officials learn that some of the people previously reported to have tested positive for the virus don't actually live in Newton, the number of positive cases reported has also changed. On Wednesday the city announced the number of people in Newton who had tested positive was at 559. On Thursday it went down 553.

"Reassignments have happened before; however, in those instances, we had more new cases than reassigned ones, so our overall number didn’t go down," said Fuller.

She said this could happen again.

The city has also started releasing a dashboard showing more data related to coronavirus cases, including the sex and age ranges of reported cases in Newton.

About 59 percent of those who have tested positive for the virus in Newton, are reported to be female. Across the state 55 percent of those who test positive are female. When it comes to age, 34 percent of the people who tested positive in Newton are more than 80 years old and 25 percent are among people 60 to 79 years old.

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