It’s time for an update on the Town and schools’ latest figures.
NSBORO cases and screening program update
The Northborough-Southborough schools’ latest Covid-19 Dashboard (for data through February 13th) show that both new cases and combined isolations and quarantines are the lowest they have been since Thanksgiving.
The Dashboard format has been updated with new details and clarifications. This week only 7 cases were confirmed among staff/students in the ten schools, bringing the cumulative total to 212. The number of students/staff kept home for isolation/quarantine was 50 last week – way down from prior weeks.
The report clarifies that those figures and prior ones reported in the weekly tables and graphs are from the hybrid population. Separately, it notes there were no cases in the Stand Alone Remote Program (SARP) population this week, but there have been 19 cumulative cases since the start of the school year.
Also added was the information that there have been 5 potential cases of in-school transmission since September – though none last week.
Last week shows that the pilot screening program launched at four NSBORO schools last week didn’t confirm any new cases. The percent of students who participated in the pilot appears to be far below the percent initially shown as having signed up. That may be related to some parents not realizing that in addition to registering, they had to complete and return a one-time consent form to take part in the program.
Over February break this week, Algonquin students are being added to the screening program. The school announced that screening will be mandatory for anyone participating in ARHS Athletics and in-person extracurriculars. (The administration isn’t allowed to mandate participation for the general student body, but can for optional in-person programs.)
Trottier Middle School has announced that their students can participate in screening starting next week. The program should be extended to all NSBORO schools by the week of March 5th.
Data from the latest Dashboard is below, along with my charts capturing data since the start of school from past announcements.
The Town of Southborough’s figures
The Town’s Covid-19 figures were updated this morning “as of” 9:00 am yesterday, February 15th. As of the update, the Town’s cumulative total was increased to 383 cases with 57 cases labeled active.
19 cases were confirmed in the prior 14 days, 11 of those in the prior 7 days. The 2-week total is the lowest it has been since Thanksgiving week. (For details, click on graphs below.)
This morning, the Town issued an update on another regional Covid-19 clinic for residents ages 75+. Click here for the most recent clinic announcements.
Or governor’s new, highly touted website – vaxfinder – has crashed over and over again this morning.
He should have been a bit more cautious in how much he expanded the eligibility group. Enabling one million new users at once was bound to be problematic.
Heres an update to my earlier post. It is now 2:45pm. I’ve only stepped away from my computer for bathroom breaks. The times I gained some visibility in to the site, there were maybe 10k-12k appointments available at Gilette. I’d estimate that I was bounced out of the registration site more that 200 times since I started my search for an appointment at around 7:30am today. I’d get 1 or 2 or 3 screens into the multi screen registration form and get a variety of error messages ( low level handling error, application error, down for maintenance, etc. ). Each time I’d get part way in to the system, the available appointment count would get lower… and lower. As of a few minutes ago, there are no more appointments left at Gilette or Fenway and the state’s new VAXfinder app shows a couple of sites in Springfield and Greenfield with 1 appointment each… and i’m sure those will be gobbled up before I get to them.
7 hous of my life that I’ll never get back … and still no appointment scheduled.
It will take me some time to forgive our Governor for releasing so much volume into this system as he did today. Bad decision.
Never forgive a politician who cannot fix problems or enters office and makes things worse. On both counts, Governor Baker is guilty.
It’s rare that we agree, Frank but ..on this point, we certainly do. I still don’t have an appointment and the site bounced me once today with a “too much traffic” message. And the number of doses/appointment entered to the system today seems to be incredibly small.
After bookmarking 7 or 8 different sites to refresh every couple of hours thruout the past few days, I just now finally got thru to a date/time at Gillette… Even as I was on it, appointments were being consumed so fast…
My advice: if there’s lots of times available, do NOT try for the earliest ones..they’ll be gone before you complete your registration… select something later in the day…and if there are multiple days available, select a later day.. entering all the registration info takes time and there seem to be hundreds or even thousands of people all doing the same searching..so it really is a race. You don’t need to be first or earliest..you just need to finish successfully.
good luck, everyone