Health

P-1 cases up in Massachusetts: Is that fueling Cape outbreak?

YARMOUTH, Mass. — Another Thursday, another state public health report, another opportunity for Bruce Murphy to mount his soapbox over the need for more vaccine doses on the Cape to battle a sudden uptick in Covid.

“I still think we’re in the third surge,” Murphy, who serves as Yarmouth’s Health Director said. “I think we’re seeing it continue surging and we just need to get vaccine to get ahead of it.”

Yarmouth, along with six other Cape communities, remained in the state’s highest-risk ‘red’ category on the weekly public health report, though the percent of Covid tests coming back positive stabilized at 7.82%. Barnstable’s case count increased, but it saw a slight dip in tests coming back positive from 10.2% to 9.63%.

That was the good news. The bad -- the number of yellow towns on the Cape which saw more cases of Covid and a higher percentage of positive tests.

“From what I’ve heard and what I’ve read it appears that it’s been the Brazilian variant,” said Mitchell Syp of Dennis, one of the Cape’s red towns.

The Brazilian variant -- known as P-1 -- was first identified in the state on March 16 in Barnstable County. Since then, 58 cases have been identified, out of 224 nationwide -- 26% of the U.S. total.

“We’re seeing a difference in the transmission characteristics with some of these new variants in that they seem to be spread more easily,” said Dr. Beth Thielen, PhD of the University of Minnesota.

Thielen also said the variants seem to have a higher ‘attack rate.’

“Meaning the number of people who get infected on exposure to an infected person seems to be -- has been -- quite large in a number of cases,” she said.

Exposure is still an issue on the Cape, Murphy said. He said gatherings have no doubt contributed to the surge. And that component of the spread isn’t likely to get better.

“Well there’s always concern with more travel going on, more people coming down to the Cape, opening up their houses,” Murphy said.

Steve Smith of Barnstable was looking forward to the pandemic wrapping up. He and his wife recently got their first and second vaccine doses.

“It’s just very, very upsetting that it’s going in that direction,” he said. “The only issue is the variants. And we don’t really know what’s going to happen. So we are still concerned.”

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