After skipping a day, Mass. reports 179 confirmed coronavirus cases and 12 deaths

Senior Boston College nursing student Danielle Palmieri administered the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to BC sophomore John Petit inside Boston College's Conte Forum.Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff

Combining two days of data, Massachusetts on Tuesday reported 179 new confirmed coronavirus cases and 12 confirmed coronavirus deaths.

The Department of Public Health did not issue a coronavirus statistics report Monday, the Memorial Day holiday. Instead it added Monday’s numbers into Tuesday’s report.

The new cases brought the state’s total to 661,294. The new deaths brought the state’s total to 17,520.

The DPH also reported more than 34,000 coronavirus shots were administered for the two days.

Experts and officials say the protection from vaccinations is kicking in, and the pandemic appears to be subsiding after more than a year of wracking the state. Governor Charlie Baker said last week “brighter days are very much upon us.”

The DPH said 5,918 people were estimated to have active cases of the potentially deadly virus, and 225 confirmed coronavirus patients were in the hospital.

The DPH also reported that 28,829 more tests had been conducted for coronavirus over the two-day period. The total number of tests administered climbed to more than 22.9 million.

The seven-day average rate of positive tests, calculated from the total number of tests administered, was at 0.68 percent.

The DPH said the rate would be 1.0 percent if the effect of college testing programs — in which asymptomatic people can be tested repeatedly in an effort to rapidly identify new cases — is factored out.

The state reported 20,162 vaccinations for Monday and 13,904 for Tuesday. The new vaccinations reported brought the total administered in Massachusetts to 7,862,416.

The total administered amounted to around 85.7 percent of the 9,177,740 doses shipped to providers in the state so far, the Department of Public Health said.

The total shots administered included 4,190,328 first shots and 3,420,683 second shots of the Moderna and Pfizer two-shot vaccines. It also included 251,405 shots of the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine.

The number of people fully vaccinated — with either two shots of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines or one shot of the Johnson & Johnson — rose to 3,672,088.

To take a deeper dive into the state’s coronavirus statistics click here.