ARLINGTON, Mass. — It’s beginning to look a lot like...November in Massachusetts; at least in terms of the pandemic. During the first 15 days of December, the state added more COVID-19 cases to its total than the entire record-setting month of November.
December’s more than 65,000 additional COVID-19 cases has Massachusetts nearing a total of 300,000 cases since the pandemic began last winter. Fueling this month’s incredible surge: the incredible number of families who may have ignored public health advice and gathered for Thanksgiving.
“There were at least a million people in the airports just to get to their families during Thanksgiving,” said Dr. Sowmya Viswanathan, the chief medical officer at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester and MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham. “And predictably so, two weeks post-Thanksgiving, cases started rising.”
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Back on December 1, the state’s case count stood just above 221,000. It’s now around 287,000 with 16 days left in the month and two major holidays on the way.
“Christmas tends to be a heavy-hitter in terms of travel and a lot more gathering that lingers for a longer period of time just because people have traditionally taken the whole week off after Christmas,” Dr. Viswanathan said. “We are expecting another surge after Christmas just because of the social gathering potential for that time. Despite all the education that goes around, I think families are just yearning to gather.”
Outside the Arlington Whole Foods, psychotherapist Kathleen Hennessy lamented the rising numbers and the fact that even good, smart people were giving up on following public health advice.
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“The people are getting angry and then other people are getting sloppy because they think the vaccine is here, and so people are relaxing things that they didn’t relax the last time we were in a state we’re in now,” she said.
Hennessy, like Arlington High School senior Matthew Noonan, isn’t optimistic things will turn around in the short term.
“People just want to go out and party and they can’t respect just wearing a mask,” Noonan said. “And it’s as simple as that.”
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