Around New England

Massachusetts Not Releasing Town-By-Town Totals of Coronavirus Cases

April 7, 2020

Want to know how many people in your town have tested positive for coronavirus?

If you live in Massachusetts, you might not be able to get that figure.

The head of the Massachusetts Department of Health, Marylou Sudders, told MassLive.com why that is the case. 

“There’s stigma attached to all sorts of communicable diseases, and there were several individuals very early on who tested positive through social media were identified locally, and they were really cyberbullied,” Sudders said, according to MassLive.com. “If a family wants to disclose, that’s obviously in their right,” she added.

As New Boston Post reported on Sunday, March 29, in late March state health officials asked town and city boards of health to stop announcing the number of coronavirus cases in their communities. Some local boards of health thought it was an order from the state, though a state health department spokesman later clarified that it wasn’t.

However, in neighboring Connecticut, the state is still providing numbers on a town-by-town basis.