Maryland sees first detainees test positive
Cases at prison facilities and psychiatric hospital
The Maryland prison system reported its first confirmed cases of coronavirus Monday, with one inmate and two contract employees testing positive at two separate facilities, while health officials confirmed a separate outbreak at the state’s maximum security psychiatric hospital.
The cases follow weeks of warnings from advocates that the highly contagious virus could be catastrophic if it is able to get behind the walls of such secure facilities.
The three prison system cases are associated with correctional facilities in Baltimore and Jessup, officials said. They did not immediately specify which facilities were affected or how the system was conducting tests, if at all.
“The Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services has COVID-19 Response Teams working to determine whether any other staff or inmates may have had contact with the three individuals who tested positive,” corrections spokesman Mark Vernarelli said.
A corrections officer and union shop steward at the Jessup Correctional Institution said the state has been keeping information from its officers.
“The department gave us no information at all; everything we have found out is through word of mouth from officer to officer,” said Oluwadamilola Olaniyan. “They are still not screening all people entering the jail from all entrances, and they have removed the medical staff that were providing the screening — now [corrections officers] are doing it. And we have no idea what the department’s plan for handling another inmate or employee who is infected.”
by testing.
Testing remains limited because the state continues to face a shortage of testing supplies, said Fran Phillips, deputy state secretary for public health services during a morning news conference at which Hogan issued a stay-at-home order for everyone in the state.
“The availability and speed for COVID-19 testing is an absolute health care industry priority across the country,” Schwartzberg said.
The university health system now can perform some diagnostic testing at five of its 13 hospitals, including the flagship University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore and others in Cheverly, Glen Burnie, La Plata and Towson. Its capacity is expected to continue growing as supplies increase, officials said. The system’s Upper Chesapeake Medical Center was also among the first to open a drive-thru station to take swabs for testing.
John Hopkins Hospital began diagnostic testing about two weeks ago, and others, including LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics, are testing samples collected at Maryland hospitals and elsewhere in some of its labs.
The state Department of Health reported Monday that Maryland had run fewer than 15,000 tests for t he related disease COVID-19, confirming infections in just over 1,400 people in a state with a population of about 6 million.
The relatively slow pace of testing is not unusual in the United States, where testing has lagged behind some other countries. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bungled development of the initial test and catching up there and at private labs has been slow as supplies have been limited.
Since the first three cases were confirmed March 6, testing has shown about 45% of the state’s 1,413 cases as of Monday have been in the Washington, D.C., suburbs.
Hogan noted in Monday’s conference that the cases are not all among seniors. He said 51% of all positive cases involve people who are age 50 and younger and 56% of hospitalizations involve people younger than age 60.
To prevent more cases, Hogan has joined several other states ordering most everyone to stay home and away from others who could be infected and do not know. Many people are asymptomatic and others don’t show symptoms such as fever, cough or shortness of breath for days.
“This virus and this disease is sneaky,” Phillips said. “What you do today, what you do tomorrow, matters.”
It’s unclear when the availability of testing will expand, which health officials consider important to understanding the virus and how to stem its spread.
More expansive testing would help “situational awareness,” said Justin Lessler, an associate professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s department of epidemiology.
That means understanding just how much disease is out there or how much was out there.
He said that can help show policymakers whether social distancing fails to stem the spread and whether other measures are necessary, something that should be clear in two to three weeks as those who are just infected become sick enough to head to the hospital.
Widespread testing also can show that measures are working and restrictions can be lifted. Then testing could be used to aggressively identify people who are infected so they, and anyone they’ve come in contact with, could be isolated rather than the public generally, Lessler said.
“We’re not there yet,” he said of widespread testing. “I know capacity is building fast.”
While the state is now releasing more data on how many tests are being performed, officials haven’t said how fast testing is expected to ramp up.
Johns Hopkins began testing about two weeks ago, and it’s now testing about 500 to 600 samples a day, with results in about 24 hours, said Dr. Karen Carroll, director of the division of medical microbiology at the Hopkins School of Medicine.
She said supplies of materials for testing are sufficient and she expected the lab to reach 1,000 a day in the next week. Hopkins had hoped the lab also could offer more rapid testing on other platforms, however, “kits are in high demand and inventory is low,” Carroll said.
Most hospitals are now able to take samples to send to labs. The samples taken at the state’s drive-thru sites will add to the workload at those labs.
The sites include Motor Vehicle Administration emissions stations in Bel Air, Glen Burnie and Waldorf, as well as another at FedEx Field in Landover.
They, too, will be “strictly limited” to those with doctor’s orders and an appointment, Hogan said.