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 to the state’s total.
Testing also increased, with the 431 new cases coming from 26,758 tests conducted during the reporting period. That works out to a positive test rate of 1.61 percent 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 percent.
The number of people hospitalized in Massachusetts with COVID-19 dropped by 49 to 322 as of midday Friday, DPH 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 the lives of at least 8,670 lives, or 8,901 when counting people who died with probable cases of COVID-19.
On Friday night, the pipeline through which labs report COVID-19 test results to DPH will be shut down to facilitate the transfer of a data system from a DPH server to the Amazon Web Services cloud.
As a result, the daily update DPH publishes Saturday “may suggest lower testing numbers,” Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said. DPH will not publish a daily report Sunday, but Monday’s update “will include all the lab results from the weekend.”
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