Throughout June and the beginning of July COVID infections were virtually nonexistent in the neighborhood with no residents testing positive for the virus in Jamaica Plain week after week.
However, with new variants of the virus penetrating the US Jamaica Plain is not immune to the recent spikes in cases that are sweeping the US and infecting unvaccinated people with avengence.
According to the weekly report released last Friday released by the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC), 813 Jamaica Plain residents were tested last week and 2.7 percent were found to be positive. This was the first time the number of residents testing positive spiked above 1 percent in a few months.
Of the 38,510 Jamaica Plain residents tested for COVID since the pandemic began, 7.6 percent overall were found to be positive–this was a 1.3 percentage decrease from the 7.7 percent reported by the BPHC on June 18.
Citywide, the weekly positive test rate increased. According to the BPHC 11,704 residents were tested and 1.5 percent were COVID positive–this was a 275 percent increase from the 0.4 percent reported by the BPHC a few weeks ago.
According to the BPHC data, Jamaica Plain’s infection rate increased roughly 1 percent since June 18 and went from 732.3 cases per 10,000 residents to 739.2 cases per 10,000 residents.
Twenty-eight additional Jamaica Plain residents became infected with COVID-19 since June 18 and the number of total cases here went from 2,957 cases to 2,985 cases in the neighborhood.
The statistics released by the BPHC as part of its weekly COVID19 report breaks down the number of cases and infection rates in each neighborhood. It also breaks down the number of cases by age, gender and race.
Citywide positive cases of coronavirus increased 0.6 percent since July 9 and went from 70,998 cases to 71,519 confirmed cases in a week. Two additional Boston residents died from the virus in the past two weeks and there are now 1,395 total deaths in the city from COVID.