NEW BEDFORD — Compared to cities with similar population size, New Bedford and Fall River have relatively low numbers of positive cases of COVID-19.
According to New Bedford Public Information Officer Jonathan Carvalho, as of Monday morning the city of over 95,000 was reporting 188 positive cases and nine deaths related to COVID-19.
Later on Monday, Mayor Jon Mitchell posted on Facebook that the city’s Health Department determined that the confirmed positive cases reported by the state were not keeping up with the cases the city was tracking from the healthcare providers in the region and the department has tracked more than 250 cases in New Bedford.
Though the number increased by 62 cases, it still remains lower than many other Gateway cities.
Nearby Fall River is also reporting lower case numbers than many Gateway cities. Fall River Mayor Paul Coogan reported on Monday that there were 184 positive cases in the city of under 90,000 and three deaths.
Comparatively, Brockton, a city that also has a population of over 95,000, reportedly has more than 1,200 positive cases according to information from the city and the Department of Public Health.
On Sunday, The Enterprise of Brockton reported that in a matter of four weeks the Sunday obituary page went from having three obituaries to 28, nearly three full pages.
According to The Enterprise, as of Sunday morning Brockton alone had at least 48 of Plymouth County’s 128 deaths attributed to COVID-19.
Quincy, which also has a population around 95,000, is reporting 534 cases and 38 deaths as of Sunday, according to The Patriot Ledger.
According to the city of Lowell’s website, as of Sunday 897 residents have tested positive for COVID-19.
According to a coronavirus report with information from April 16, 16 residents in the city of over 110,000 have died from COVID-19 related causes.
Comparing the data can be hard, according to Cheryl Bartlett, CEO of Greater New Bedford Community Health Center, “when you don't tease out some more demographics about the populations.”
Bartlett said they’ve been pushing for more data about the racial and ethnic backgrounds of the individuals who contracted the virus because “we’re beginning to see there’s a big disparity between populations.”
“Numbers alone don’t really tell the whole story,” Bartlett said, because there’s a whole section of people who are asymptomatic and are not getting tested.
Dr. Douglas Golenbock, chief of infectious diseases at UMass Medical in Worcester, said on Monday that the state doesn’t have universal testing by any means.
“The result of that,” Golenbock said, “Is that a lot of the numbers that we have about the incidence that we have are based on the availability of testing.”
Golenbock did note that the death rate statistics are not based on the availability of testing.
Worcester and Boston have started testing groups that are not able to socially distance, like the homeless, and Golenbock said they’ve “discovered a startling number of asymptomatic patients.”
“These are people who wouldn’t have qualified for a test based on current criteria,” Golenbock said.
Being able to identify asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 is going to be key to fighting the spread of the disease, he said.
“If we don’t reach out and eliminate the asymptomatic disease we will never be able to stop this disease in its tracks,” Golenbock said.
Even though the data currently only tells part of the story, Bartlett said, it is a very helpful public health tool to watch the trends and determine where the virus is going.
“The more details you have about how a pandemic or communicable disease is moving around the better you can target your resources,” Bartlett said.
Bartlett knows a thing or two when it comes to pandemics; she worked at the Department of Public Health as the Commissioner of Public Health during ebola and H1N1 outbreaks.
“I do think we’re doing a really good job in New Bedford, having been involved in several different pandemics and epidemics,” Bartlett said.
As examples, Bartlett noted the enforcement of social distancing in the city and daily calls between city departments and local healthcare providers including Greater New Bedford Community Health Center and Southcoast Health.
According to Mayor Jon Mitchell there are two likely reasons why New Bedford’s overall case count is lower than other Gateway cities.
One is that New Bedford is not part of the Boston-area like the other cities and Boston is one of the epicenters of COVID-19 in the state, Mitchell said on Friday.
The other reason, according to Mitchell, is that the city “got out ahead of this comprehensively even before we had the first positive case.”
One of the most important decisions early on was to cancel the New Bedford Half Marathon, which was scheduled to take place on March 15, he said.
“3,000 people would have been jammed in fairly close quarters,” with some coming from the Boston area, Mitchell said.
In addition to canceling the half marathon, Mitchell said the city started working on contact tracing, which is an effort to identify individuals that have been in contact with an infected individual, a month ago when the state only started to ramp up contact tracing within the last couple of weeks.
Mitchell also noted that the city has been strict about social distancing in areas like playgrounds and basketball courts and enacted emergency orders to protect the most vulnerable populations in the city.
Fall River Mayor Paul Coogan also declared a state of emergency early into this crisis, shutting down non-essential businesses, limiting gatherings, and closing schools and playgrounds.
Gov. Charlie Baker said last week that Massachusetts is experiencing the surge of coronavirus cases
At the Greater New Bedford Community Health Center, Bartlett said they started to notice an increase in telehealth phone calls and people coming in sick, “I definitely think our volume is reflecting a surge.”
Golenbock said it's possible for a surge to hit different parts of the state at different times, “But we’re more or less in the same phase in Massachusetts I think, that’s the impression I get.”
He’s been in touch with other infectious disease specialists at different hospitals in the state and said, “We’re all sort of at the same place in terms of patients in the units and the number who we’ve admitted.”
At UMass Medical, Golenblock said, “Right now we're thinking that we are in the surge and we’ve had a steady flow of patients coming into the hospital and a couple of deaths every day, but I think that our hospital is well prepared for this, we've been preparing eight weeks for the surge.”
Golenbock said the state will start to see how well social distancing measures that were enacted a month ago worked in the coming week, since it takes 30 days for a person to become infected with the disease and die.
If social distancing worked, the numbers of cases and deaths should start to fall off next week, Golenbock said.
Coogan posted on Facebook this past weekend: "Please don't be surprised if this week the numbers jump because we are supposed to be in the middle of the surge. Fall River is doing well compared to some other Massachusetts cities - Persist!"
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Compared to cities with similar population size, the Whaling City seems to have a relatively low number of positive cases of COVID-19. [File Photo]
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