For the second straight week, the Tri-Town saw a slight decline in new covid cases in the week leading up to Sept. 30, however, cases within the Old Rochester Regional School District increased significantly in the second week of reporting.

Among the towns, Mattapoisett had 7 new cases, down from 11 the week before, and Rochester had 3, down from 12. Marion, however, saw its new cases rise from 9 last week to 14 this week, for a total of 24 new cases in the Tri-Town.

Over the last four weeks, the Tri-Town has averaged 27 new cases per week.

ORR School District has already seen a significant spike in its covid numbers since reinstating its covid dashboard a week ago.

Last week, the dashboard showed only two active cases, but this week it jumped to 20, with 11 coming from Center School, five from Sippican School, and four from Old Hammondtown.

The large number of cases coming from a single second-grade class at Center School led Superintendent Mike Nelson to transition the class to remote learning until the outbreak could be contained.

Since the start of the school year, the district has reported 42 total cases.

This week, the school began reporting the percentage of students 12 and older who have been fully vaccinated against covid.

So far, 54.9% of ORR Junior High and 71.8% of ORR High School students are fully vaccinated.

An aggregate of both students and staff members at the Junior High and High School shows 56.8% fully vaccinated. In order for the school to be excluded from the state mask mandate starting Nov. 1, 80% of students and staff would need to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 15.

State covid data is released every Thursday evening and ORR covid data is released every Friday evening.