Danvers Designated 'High Risk' For Community Coronavirus Spread

DANVERS, MA — Danvers Public Schools could be one week from switching to fully remote after the town was designed a "high-risk" community for coronavirus spread in the state's weekly report released on Thursday.

Danvers had 8.8 cases per 100,000 residents, according to the state, higher than the 8.0 threshold the state uses to determine whether eased business restrictions must be rolled back and whether schools should consider going from hybrid learning to fully remote learning.

Danvers went from 3.3 cases to 6.5 cases per 100,000 over the past two weeks.

Town Manager Steve Bartha and public schools Superintendent Lisa Dana issued a joint statement on Monday saying that would happen in Danvers if the town remained "high risk" for two consecutive weeks.

"Town leaders agree that two weeks in the high-risk category is an appropriate benchmark for our schools and for other community-related activities," Bartha and Dana said in the joint statement.

The statement said sports and recreational program cancellations were among the other considerations.

"While the virus hit the area's long-term care facilities most hard in the spring, the scenario we now face is the disease among the community-at-large," the statement said.

There were 35 confirmed positive cases over the past two weeks in Danvers with a positivity rate of 1.52 percent.

If the town remains in the high-risk category for three weeks, businesses would revert back to step 1 of phase 3 of the state's reopening guidelines — which would force some businesses such as laser tag arenas and trampoline parks to close, restore the six-person maximum per table at restaurants and reduce capacity at other businesses, such as gyms.

There were 121 communities designated as high-risk for the coronavirus in the states latest town-by-town data release, up from 77 the week before. The positive test rate over the last two weeks increased in 184— or 52.4 percent — of the 351 communities in the state. The rate fell in 57 — or 16.2 percent of communities and held steady in the remaining 110.

The Danvers rates were below the 11.8 average daily cases per 100,000 residents across the state, putting the state above the high-risk threshold for a third consecutive week. Last week, the state reported a 9.2 average of daily cases per 100,000.

Full town-by-town by +can be found here.

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