TestMV reported one new case of Covid-19 over the weekend, bringing the Island’s total coronavirus caseload to 102 patients since the pandemic began.
Meanwhile, Nantucket reported its second death of a coroanvirus patient last Friday as a case spike that began after Labor Day continues, manifesting itself in three new hospitalizations throughout the week. The death reported from Nantucket is the first among island patients since early April.
The death was confirmed in a joint statement on Friday by the Nantucket board of health and Nantucket Cottage Hospital.
In a daily case update on the Vineyard, the Island boards of health reported one new case of coronavirus on Monday. The new patient is a female in her 40s, according to the report.
There have now been 78 people on the Island to test positive for the virus through a laboratory (PCR) test. Of those, 30 have tested positive at the TestMV site and 47 have tested positive at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. TestMV continues to test asymptomatic patients for the virus, while the hospital is testing symptomatic patients and their close contacts.
Another 24 Island patients have either been symptomatically diagnosed with the virus or tested positive for viral antibodies.
According to the report, the Island has now tested more than 21,000 patients for the virus between the hospital, TestMV and the boards of health. More than 15,000 tests have been conducted at the high school site, more than 5,000 at the hospital and nearly 300 through a program with the town of Aquinnah board of health.
No patients on Martha’s Vineyard have died from the virus, although a Covid-19 patient who was transferred off-Island earlier this spring died of non-Covid related causes.
In an email to the Gazette Monday, Nantucket Cottage Hospital spokesman Jason Graziadei said the Nantucket patient who died Friday did not die at the hospital. Mr. Graziadei could not comment on further demographic information.
The previous death on Nantucket occurred at the hospital in early April. The individual who died was a man in his 80s with pre-existing conditions.
A statement from the CEO at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital that went last week said three Covid-19 positive patients had been transferred off-Island in recent days, including a very ill patient Friday. Nantucket has had 38 patients test positive in the past 10 days and has a seven-day positive test rate of nearly five per cent — much higher than the state average and putting it in the high risk zone for cases.
“To underscore the seriousness of this situation, I will share with you that one of our inpatients who tested positive for Covid-19 was transferred by Medflight helicopter to a higher level of care due to the severity of the illness this person was experiencing,” Mr. Shaw wrote. “This is the third Covid-positive patient who has needed to be transferred by Medflight in the past week.”
Nantucket has had more than 80 new cases reported since the beginning of September. An original spike was contact-traced back to the contracting and landscaping communities, while a more recent case rise was partially traced back to a church gathering, according to a previous release from the hospital.
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