State health officials are now holding COVID testing and death data among residents working in the commercial sex industry, according to the daily Chapter 93 Chapter 93 in Massachusetts.
The Chapter 93 Act, passed last year, seeks to address differences in COVID treatment by requiring that certain demographic information be included in the testing and case data that local health councils share with the Department of Public Health.
Officials told the Boston Herald that they only included the category on Dec. 3 after a Massachusetts resident was recently tested on COVID-19 as a commercial sex worker. The data show that no new test results, cases or deaths were reported among sex workers during the last 24 hours.
“Due to a small number of reports about the profession, no additional information is available,” a spokesman told the newspaper.
Public health officials hold COVID data in various occupations, from medical and emergency workers to food service workers, construction workers, teachers, plumbers, among others.
Health officials on Sunday confirmed 4,283 new cases of COVID-19, including the first case of the highly contagious variant of the respiratory infection identified in the UK. Sixty-seven deaths were also reported.
The person who tested positive for the new strain is a Boston woman in her twenties who fell ill after traveling to the UK, DPH officials said Sunday.
At least 448,311 Massachusetts residents have contracted the virus worldwide and 13,372 have died since the pandemic began.
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