6 new Mass. cities, towns added to high-risk map for virus

BOSTON — Seventeen cities and towns now fall in the Department of Public Health’s highest-risk category for COVID-19 transmission, including six newly added as of Wednesday.

The department’s weekly update to its color-coded risk designations added Nantucket, Plainville, Saugus, Tyngsboro, Worcester and Wrentham to the “red” category assigned to communities with an incidence rate of more than eight cases per 100,000 residents in the previous 14 days. Chelsea, Dedham, Everett, Framingham, Lawrence, Lynn, Lynnfield, Monson, New Bedford, Revere and Winthrop remained coded red, while Chatham and Methuen shed their red designations from last week.

Public health officials announced Wednesday that they will now report COVID-19 data from colleges and universities, and this week’s report includes information from 59 higher education institutions that are testing on-campus. The higher education data is in aggregate and not broken down by school.

A total of 499 COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts are associated with higher education, according to the department, including 168 that are new since last week.

In the state as a whole, there has now been a total of 123,720 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 295 newly reported Wednesday. Twenty new deaths bring the death toll to 9,036, or 9,245 with fatalities among probable cases added in.

The state’s town-level data is now available in an interactive map. You can explore the data in more detail below or view a full-screen version here:

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