COVID-19 In Maryland: More Than 17K Cases & 52 Deaths Reported Sunday
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Maryland recorded 17,252 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday while the statewide positivity rate and hospitalizations decreased, according to the latest round of data from the Department of Health.
Hospitalizations decreased by 20, bringing the total of Marylanders currently hospitalized with COVID-19 to 3,286. The state reported 52 more people died, raising the death toll to 11,969 since the start of the pandemic.
The positivity rate decreased to 27.83% over the past 24 hours, a 1.45% decrease.
Sunday's figures come as Maryland is under a state of emergency issued by Gov. Larry Hogan in response to rising hospitalizations, which have forced several hospitals to undertake crisis protocols to keep up with new admissions.
The total of confirmed cases since the pandemic began stands at 830,940.
This week, Hogan attributed the surge in cases to the highly transmissible Omicron variant, which he said is "now clearly the dominant variant among our state's lab-confirmed cases."
The governor said genome sequencing by the University of Maryland found that 88% of recent samples tested positive for Omicron, with that figure rising to 91% among samples taken from hospitalized patients.
In recent weeks, the state has ramped up its testing operations in an effort to keep up with public demand. That includes the opening of 20 new testing sites statewide that will be staffed by the Maryland National Guard.
Hospitals statewide have freed up beds and scaled back non-emergency procedures, with some shifting to crisis standards of care, in response to the COVID-19 surge.
Hogan issued an executive order Tuesday empowering the Department of Health to regulate hospital capacity and resources, and authorizing retired, out-of-state and graduate nurses to practice here. A second order aims to beef up EMS response.
Of those hospitalized, 2,704 are adults in acute care and 540 are adults in intensive care, state health department data show. There are 42 children in acute care and 8 more in the ICU.
There are 4,292,069 Marylanders fully vaccinated and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 92.6% of the state's adults have gotten at least one dose.
The state has administered 10,543,705 doses of the vaccine. Of those, 4,518,631 are first doses, 5,043 of them in the past 24 hours. Another 3,963,262 are second doses, 4,032 of them in the last day. The state has administered 1,724,005 booster doses, 15,376 in the past 24 hours.
A total of 328,807 Marylanders have gotten the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, 93 over the last 24 hours.