State sets new vaccine milestone

As Maryland begins its second year of the coronavirus pandemic, the state marked a new milestone Saturday for its approximately 3-month-old vaccination campaign.

Here’s how the state’s virus-related metrics stacked up Saturday.

Cases

State health officials reported 932 new coronavirus cases Saturday morning, with the state having now eclipsed 386,000 infections. On Friday evening, Gov. Larry Hogan hosted a twilight vigil at the Maryland State House to mark one year since the first cases were confirmed March 5, 2019.

Deaths

Eleven more people were reported dead from COVID-19 Saturday, bringing to 7,759 the disease’s casualty count in Maryland.

Hospitalizations

The tally of people hospitalized with the disease in Maryland declined by 19 Saturday, with 830 people in hospitals across the state. Of those, 230 required intensive care — one more than a day earlier. Some 35,572 people have been hospitalized because of the disease’s effects in Maryland since state health officials began reporting hospitalizations.

Vaccinations

A record 50,484 doses of the coronavirus vaccine were administered across the state Friday, with about 31,000 people receiving their initial immunization and 19,000 receiving their second shot.

Two of three approved vaccines require a two-dose regimen to prevent severe illness. The state health department reported approximately 988,000 people, or 16.3% of Maryland’s population, have received their first dose; about 546,000, 9% of residents, have been fully vaccinated.

More than 1.5 million vaccines have been shot into the arms of people in Maryland since Dec. 14, with an average of 37,635 immunizations daily over the last seven days.

In a statement released by his office, Hogan lauded the new benchmark, acknowledging progress after a year that upended most residents’ lives. He thanked vaccinators around the state for “working around the clock to get shots into arms.”

“As promised, we have built the infrastructure to do more than 50,000 shots a day, and we are ready to do 100,000 shots a day as soon as the federal government can get us that level of supply,” Hogan said. “After a year of hardship and grief, these incredible strides in our vaccination campaign bring us closer to a return to normalcy with each passing day.”

Vaccines by age: More than 47% of Marylanders 65 and older had gotten their preliminary vaccines as of Friday, one percentage point more than the day before.

Vaccines by race and ethnicity: White people in Maryland have gotten 937,299 vaccines, approximately 65% of all doses for which the race of the recipient was known. That’s 3.8 times as many as Black people, who received 245,054 immunizations, or 17% of the doses where race was documented.

White residents make up about 58.5% of the state’s population and have accounted for about 40% of coronavirus cases and 52% of deaths for which the race was known. Meanwhile, about 31% of Maryland residents are Black. Black residents accounted for about a third of cases and 35% of COVID-19 fatalities.

Hispanic or Latino people, who make up about 11% of the state’s population, have received 4.3% of the immunizations for which the recipient’s ethnicity was known. That demographic accounted for about 18.5% of coronavirus cases and about 9% of deaths for which race and ethnicity were documented.

Vaccines by county: Both majority Black, Prince George’s and Charles counties continue to lag behind the rest of the state in terms of the proportion of their residents who’ve received initial immunizations. As of Saturday, Prince George’s had given first doses to about 9.7% of its residents and Charles about 11.6%.

Baltimore, which had consistently ranked in the bottom three, surpassed Somerset County in the metric. About 13.71% of Baltimore’s majority Black population has gotten a first dose, while about 13.706% of Somerset’s majority white population on Maryland’s Eastern Shore have gotten first doses.

The three counties which have vaccinated the largest proportions of their populations are also located on the Eastern Shore: Talbot, Kent and Worcester counties. All more than 80% white, Talbot, Kent and Worcester have preliminarily vaccinated about 23.9%, 23.7% and 23.4% of their populations. Those counties have about 37,000, 19,000 and 52,000 people, respectively.

Among Maryland’s 10 most populous counties, Howard County leads the way. Approximately 20% of its roughly 326,000 people have received a first dose.

Positivity rate

The state’s average testing positivity rate climbed over the last 24 hours, for the second day in a row. The rate was 3.35%, 0.07 percentage points higher than the day before.

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Already under a third of their December peak, estimated daily infections could fall to 15,000 by June, projects the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Alternative models simulate near universal masking and a "worse case" where variants' threat increases and the vaccinated lower their guard.