PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — There are some positive signs in Rhode Island’s fight against the coronavirus, according to statistics released Thursday.
The state Department of Health reported 853 new confirmed cases and nine more virus-related fatalities from the previous day, for totals of more than 103,000 known cases and 1,996 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
But the daily test positivity rate was 4.5%. Gov. Gina Raimondo had said Wednesday the goal was to get the rate to lower than 5%.
The latest seven-day average positivity rate in Rhode Island is also on the decline and is now lower than 5.9%. State health departments are calculating positivity rate differently across the country, but for Rhode Island the AP calculates the rate by dividing new cases by test encounters using data from The COVID Tracking Project.
The number of people in the hospital with the disease was 375 as of Tuesday, the latest day for which the information was available. That is down from 402 the prior day and the lowest single-day total since Nov. 21.
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