Massachusetts will start reporting city and town-by-town data on COVID-19 cases, Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said Wednesday.

Since the state started releasing data on COVID-19 data, the cases have been broken down by county, not town. For weeks, lawmakers and health officials have called for more granular details about the cases to help determine if there are hotspots within particular towns and if resources should be re-directed to those communities.

Sudders previously argued against releasing coronavirus cases by town to the public because some of the first people who became infected with COVID-19 were outed.

“There’s stigma attached to all sorts of communicable diseases, and there were several individuals very early on who tested positive through social media were identified locally, and they were really cyberbullied,” Sudders said last month in response to a MassLive question.

On Wednesday, Sudders said the new town-by-town data will be available in the report released around 4 p.m. Wednesday.

“Public health folks are always trying to balance privacy, data," Sudders.

Some cities and towns have been reporting the data on their own, despite being discouraged to do so by the state in a conference call with health officials across the state last month.

Worcester was one of the cities that had continued reporting the data.

“We’re not giving anybody’s name, we’re not giving anybody’s address,” City Manager Edward Augustus Jr. said previously. “But we’re trying to show the seriousness of this, and the pace of new cases, so people understand why we’re taking all of the actions that we’re taking. If we did that in the absence of any data or any information, I’m not sure people who have a sense of the seriousness of this.”

The Baker administration approached reporting on cases of vaping-related lung illness and deaths throughout the state in the same way, opting not to identify cases and deaths by town or city. MassLive attempted to request records in October to get a sense of the scope of vaping-related lung illnesses across the state. Health officials initially declined, even after being twice-ordered by the Secretary of State’s office to do so, citing patient privacy concerns, among other things.

Government accountability advocates were also calling for more detailed reporting. Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, told MassLive the state ought to be sharing more specific information with municipalities so that residents can better understand how the virus is affecting communities at large.

“Transparency during this pandemic is crucial,” he said. “We need to have timely information about the coronavirus so we can make the best decisions about keeping ourselves and our families safe. Without knowing how many cases of the virus are in our towns, it’s difficult if not impossible to assess the threat.”

As of Tuesday, 28,163 people have tested positive for the coronavirus and 957 people have died, according to the state Department of Public Health. Nearly half of those who died lived in long-term care facilities.

Gov. Charlie Baker said a surge of cases will likely hit Massachusetts between April 10 and April 20, but the worst isn’t over. Baker said last week the models suggest new cases will peak closer to April 20 than April 10.

MassLive reporter Tanner Stening contributed to this report.

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