Worcester Coronavirus Update: 42 New Cases, 482 Total

WORCESTER, MA — The past nine days have produced the majority of the City of Worcester’s 482 confirmed coronavirus cases, which include 42 new positive tests that were announced Thursday during the city's daily press briefing . City leaders announced that three more people at the city’s two hospitals have died, taking the number of coronavirus-related deaths to 22.

Since April 1, city officials announced that 367 new cases have been confirmed as local and statewide health officials anticipate the peak in cases will arrive on or around April 19.

Among the newest cases is Billy Riley, who manages the St. John’s Food For the Poor program and soup kitchen. City officials said Thursday that they learned of Riley’s diagnosis on Wednesday night and immediately implemented a testing program due to the large number of volunteers who work at the pantry as well as the homeless clients from the SMOC shelter who eat breakfast at St. John’s each morning.

Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty said Thursday that St. John’s typically feeds between 300-700 people per day and more than 100,000 people each year, making Riley ­– who has run the soup kitchen six days a week for the past seven years - an invaluable member of the community.

“Bill is an exceptional person who is very hands-on, very dedicated to serving the most needy in our community,” Worcester City Manager Edward Augustus said at Wednesday’s briefing. “He does that with a lot of passion, a lot of energy and a lot of patience.”

Coronavirus testing began Thursday morning at the food pantry where 50 people, including volunteers, were screened with the expectation that even more people would be tested Thursday afternoon. Dr. Michael Hirsh, the city’s director of public health, said that test results are typically available within 12 hours. City officials said that the SMOC shelter was the only facility where people had to be tested since those who stay at the city’s other shelters do not use the St. John food pantry.

Hirsh said Thursday said the testing was needed because he and other officials feared what could be a hot flashpoint of potential new positive cases, especially if volunteers and staff at St. John’s had been in close contact with Riley along with homeless clients who frequent St. John's on a daily basis. The city has already implemented a comprehensive plan to deal with the city’s homeless population and other parts of the city’s population that may be more vulnerable as it relates to the pandemic.

“The (pandemic) has pointed out that there are pockets of vulnerability in our health system – the elderly, the homeless, the community of color, the poor – that we really have to beef up our support for so they can better withstand these kinds of events," Hirsh said Thursday. "I hope they’re not frequent, I hope they’re not recurrent but I think we’ve all learned our lesson that wishing and hoping won’t make a dent in this in the future.”