State adds 418 cases, 6 deaths
Maryland officials reported 418 new cases of the coronavirus Monday and six more deaths.
The latest additions bring the state’s total to 73,527 cases of the COVID-19 illness caused by the virus. In total, 3,194 Marylanders have died due to the disease or complications from it since officials began tracking the virus in March.
The state’s seven-day average testing positivity rate remained below 5% for the 18th straight day at 4.63%, although that’s a slight increase compared to Sunday’s rate of 4.45%. The state reported 11,067 tests completed in the past 24 hours.
However, Johns Hopkins University, which calculates the rate differently, has Maryland’s positivity rate at 5.48% as of Monday, moving the state onto a list of 35 states who have higher than recommended positivity rates. The World Health Organization recommends that governments have a seven-day average rate below 5% for 14 days before they begin reopening measures.
The state also is following hospitalizations and the number of patients in intensive care as key metrics.
As of Monday, 386 people in Maryland are hospitalized due to complications from COVID-19, six fewer than Sunday. Officials reported 278 people are in acute care while 108 are in intensive care units as of Monday.
Monday’s numbers also show a drop in daily confirmed cases after the state started to see an uptick in cases late last week, ending with 642 newly confirmed cases Sunday. The country has seen another spike of new cases, particularly in Southern and Midwestern states that relaxed restrictions on businesses in May.
Florida reported 15,299 cases of the coronavirus Sunday, the most a state has reported for a single day since officials began tracking COVID-19 in March, and has a testing positivity rate of 18.65%, according to Johns Hopkins University.
While other states have set new daily records confirmed cases in recent weeks, Maryland has yet to see its daily totals reach the heights of May, when that figure regularly reached above 1,000 new cases.
Speaking Monday on WMAL radio in Washington, D.C., Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said the state’s coronavirus numbers “are all trending in the right direction.”
But the Republican governor cautioned that the coronavirus threat has not passed.
”It’s still a serious virus that we’re very concerned about,” he said. “We don’t want to see things spiking back up.”
Asked about how public schools will operate in the fall, Hogan acknowledged that there’s pressure to get kids back in classrooms.
He said that a return to in-person teaching would have to be done “as safely as we can.”
A key concern, he said, is that while children may not get as seriously ill as adults, they can be vectors to spread the virus to teachers, employees and their families.
”Kids are kind of spreaders,” Hogan said. “One kid in the classroom gets sick and they spread it to all their classmates, who take it home to the parents and grandparents.”
Another factor is that things could change in the weeks between now and the start of the school year.
”We don’t know where we’re going to be when schools start in late August and early September,” he said.
As of Monday, six of Maryland counties and municipalities have seven-day average testing positivity rates above the recommended 5% rate, including Queen Anne’s County (7.84%), Talbot County (7.68%), Prince George’s County (7.06%), Baltimore city (6.01%), Charles County (5.98%) and Baltimore County (5.13%).
Baltimore city announced plans last week to expand access to on-demand and mobile testing sites. Officials said they’ll target the areas hardest hit by the pandemic , such as the 21224 and 21215 ZIP codes, which lead the city in total cases per ZIP code, respectively. As of Monday, 1,353 cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in the 21224 ZIP code and 906 cases in 21215.
Prince George’s County continues to lead the state in total cases, with 19,773 as of Monday. The 20783 ZIP code — which includes parts of Hyattsville, Adelphi and Langley Park in Prince George’s County and is majority Hispanic, according to Census data — leads the state with 2,384 total cases as of Monday. Montgomery County, the state’s most populous county, has the second most cases, with 15,780 as of Monday. However, the county’s positivity test rate sits at 4.47% of Monday.
The pandemic continues to disproportionately affect the state’s Black and Latino populations. More than two-thirds of the state’s confirmed COVID-19 cases where data on race was available were Black or Hispanic residents. The two demographic groups represent less than half the state’s population. In comparison, whites, who comprise more than 58% of the state’s population, represented less than a quarter of all confirmed cases with 14,614.