Updated on November 25, 2020 at 11:33 am
Mass. Dept. of Public Health
For the last few weeks, the number of Massachusetts cities and towns in the coronavirus red zone has roughly doubled, going from 16 to 30 to 62. And yet, there are still fewer communities in red now than there were a month ago.
So what happened? A sweeping, though abrupt, change to how the state Department of Public Health measures the risk of coronavirus transmission, which dropped the number of towns in red from 121 to 16.
There were more changes, too: The map showing all Massachusetts community risk levels was removed, which a representative of the department told NBC10 Boston was because the map was no longer seen as being as helpful as it once was, now that coronavirus cases are being seen in most communities.