With COVID-19 surging across the Three Rivers Health District, as of Monday contact tracers were tracking over 1,800 district residents who had possibly been exposed to the virus.

“We are experiencing a dramatic increase in outbreaks in schools, long-term care facilities, businesses, churches, sports and recreational clubs, and other settings,” said District Director Dr. Richard Williams in his weekly update.

The district recorded 638 new cases of COVID during the past week, from Wednesday to Wednesday, for a total of 11,890 cases of the virus since the pandemic began. This is more than double last week’s 315 new cases recorded over a seven-day period.

There were 11 district residents newly hospitalized with COVID, for a total of 468 over the past year and a half, and two people died from it, for a total of 205 lives lost since March 2020.

Gloucester alone contributed a third of the new cases in the 10-county district, recording 211 cases over the past week, for a total of...