5 dead as coronavirus cases surge past 600 in Mass.; Marshfield reports first case

BOSTON -- Five people in Massachusetts are dead from COVID-19, the disease associated with the new coronavirus, as confirmed cases soared past 600 across the state Sunday, with Marshfield reporting its first case.

The state Department of Public Health announced Sunday afternoon that there are 646 cases of COVID-19 in Massachusetts. Reported cases increased to 75 in Norfolk County and 25 in Plymouth County, according to the update.

Want news like this sent straight to your inbox? Head over to PatriotLedger.com to sign up for alerts and make sure you never miss a thing. You pick the news you want, we deliver.As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases continues to grow, Gov. Charlie Baker, before Sunday's update, tried to put the rising numbers into a larger context, stressing that the higher figures are in part a result of increased testing in Massachusetts.

Baker, who spoke to reporters after participating in a service at the Morning Star Baptist Church in Boston, said testing increased 50 percent each of the past two days. The total number of cases, he said, is "going to climb.""The reason that number is going to climb is because we're testing more," Baker said. "That's not necessarily a bad thing. And by the way, people are recovering at the same time that new people are coming on."

On the South Shore, Marshfield reported its first COVID-19 case on Saturday. Several communities reported their first case of the virus on Friday, including Scituate, Norwell, Duxbury and Rockland.

The number of cases in Quincy remained at 13 on Sunday, said Chris Walker, chief of staff to the mayor.

Previous cases include three each in Milton and Randolph, two each in Braintree and Pembroke and one each in Hanover and Hingham.

Through Sunday afternoon, the state public health laboratory had tested 3,403 patients since the start of the outbreak, while commercial labs had tested at least 2,700. As of Sunday, the age group with the highest number of cases of COVID-19 were people in their 40s, with 134, followed by people in their 50s, with 119, and people in their 30s with 112.

The Baker administration said it aims to have the capacity to test 3,500 patients per day beginning this week.Increasing the availability and frequency of tests is "one of the key elements of success" in fighting the virus' spread, Baker said Sunday."I fully expect that testing is going to go up in leaps and bounds based on changes in the federal standards and availability of additional test capacity here in Massachusetts," he said. "I've said now for five or six days that as we test more, we're going to find more people who are infected, and that's then going to lead to a lot more aggressive approaches to deal with tracing and isolation."By Sunday, every county in the state had at least one case of COVID-19.

Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket had been the last areas in the state without detected infection, but one case emerged on Martha's Vineyard on Saturday and Nantucket Cottage Hospital reported its first positive test Sunday.Nantucket officials issued a shelter-in-place order for the island Sunday, effective from Monday at 5 p.m. through April 6. Baker has resisted calls for a similar statewide order.Asked about Nantucket's first case, Baker said officials from both islands have reported that non-permanent residents are flowing in to stay at their vacation homes in attempts to avoid the virus, a practice the governor said creates risks."We would prefer they not do that and that they stay on the mainland and don't create additional issues for both of those islands at a point in time when they don't have the same level of service capacity in place they would typically have in the summer," he said.Talks are ongoing between the Baker administration and both the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about using vacant college dormitories, closed nursing facilities and other spaces to create more space for the surge in cases that public health officials expect.Baker said Sunday that his staff would offer suggested sites "over the next few days" that could be converted. Once a location is selected, he said, the federal agencies could set up field hospitals in two to three weeks."Between dormitories and hotels and decommissioned hospital beds and nursing homes, we have a lot of different kinds of capacity that can be brought up relatively quickly," Baker said. "One of the things the (coronavirus) command center is working on with folks in the health care community is what the actual requirement would look like, where it would need to be in terms of the commonwealth generally, and what kind of capacity it would be."Another key element of the state's response will be acquiring personal protective equipment for those on the front lines, and Baker -- who earlier this week told President Donald Trump that states were being outbid by the federal government -- said governors across the country are "chasing PPE as hard as we possibly can."

Material from the State House News Service was used in this report. Reporter Joe Difazio can be reached at jdifazio@patriotledger.com.

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