SPRINGFIELD — Officials said Monday that the city recorded 124 new COVID-19 cases cases last week in a “behavior related” increase traced to residential neighborhoods.
The number represented a jump of nearly two-and-a-half times the city’s total of 51 from the week of Sept. 14 to 20, and a sharp increase in cases that had been slowly creeping up.
In the week of Sept. 7 to 13, 39 cases were reported, and there were 29 new cases in the week before that.
Of the 124 new cases, 68 were from the weekend alone: 10 on Friday, 24 on Saturday and 34 on Sunday, officials said at the city’s weekly coronavirus update. The city also saw a spike in positive tests last Wednesday, when 24 new cases were reported.
"What we know is this uptick is behavior related, "said Health Commissioner Helen Caulton-Harris.
She identified the number of new cases by ZIP code, explaining that they were detected in residential neighborhoods but not linked by housing density or by income or ethnicity.
What does link the new clusters is behavior, Caulton-Harris said — people failing to follow precautions like wearing face coverings, hand washing, social distancing and isolating from others.
“There is nothing to prevent further community spread except for our behavior,” she said.
The city is doing contact tracing, she said, and officials know much more specific information about where the outbreaks are occurring that wasn’t shared publicly. The information was shared with emergency responders.
The state’s last weekly update on cases by community, released Sept. 23, gave Springfield a “yellow” designation, meaning the city had recorded an average daily case rate of four to eight per 100,000 residents for the last 14 days.
“We are going to work hard to get back into that green,” Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno said, referring to the state’s color for communities with lower rates. “But this is a trend we need to knock down.”
Sarno said the troubling numbers reaffirm the wisdom of banning Halloween trick-or-treating this year and of delaying the return of in-school instruction for the city’s school district.
He said cases might have increased as a result of family get-togethers over the Labor Day weekend.
Springfield has gone more than a month without a coronavirus death.
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