COVID-19 In Maryland: 3,200+ New Cases As Hospitalizations & Positivity Rate Dip
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Maryland added more than 3,200 additional COVID-19 cases Monday as its positivity rate and hospitalizations continued to fall, according to data released Tuesday by the Maryland Department of Health.
Hospitalizations slid by two over the past 24 hours, bringing the total of COVID-19 patients in Maryland's hospitals to 3,060. With the state reporting 3,215 new cases of COVID-19, 909,424 cases have been confirmed since the pandemic began.
According to the latest health department data, the percentage of people testing positive statewide is 19.77%, a 0.48% decrease since Monday and a significantly lower rate than the nearly 30% positivity rate earlier this month.
Maryland's death toll now stands at 12,535 after the state Department of Health recorded an additional 68 deaths over the past 24 hours.
Maryland is in the midst of a 30-day state of emergency issued this month by Gov. Larry Hogan in response to surging infections and hospitalizations, which pushed several hospitals to near- or at-capacity levels.
Of those hospitalized, 2,487 are adults in acute care and 542 are adults in intensive care. Another 24 are children in acute care, while seven children are in the ICU.
Appearing Sunday on CBS News' Face The Nation, Gov. Hogan acknowledged that hospitalizations and the positivity rate have faded over the past few days but was reluctant to say those metrics are now in a downward trend.
"We did a lot of things to try to help increase the capacity of our hospital systems—sent in 1,000 members of the National Guard," Hogan said. "We're taking a lot of actions directly and we're trying to get as much help as we can from the federal government."
Last week, the governor announced the state would distribute 20 million N95 and KN95 masks through health departments and other partners across the state.
Hogan has 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 opening 20 new testing sites statewide with support from the Maryland National Guard.
Hospitals statewide have freed up beds and scaled back non-emergency procedures, with 14 shifting to crisis standards of care, in response to the COVID-19 surge.
Hogan issued an executive order on Jan. 4 empowering the Maryland Department of Health to regulate hospital capacity and resources, and authorizing retired, out-of-state and graduate nurses to practice. Another order shored up EMS response.
There are 4,341,861 Marylanders fully vaccinated and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 93,3% of the state's adults have gotten at least one dose. Among Marylanders age 5 and older, 87.4% of residents have gotten at least one does of the vaccine.
The state has administered 10,793,620 doses of the vaccine.
Of those, 4,575,922 are first doses, 3,583 in the last 24 hours. Another 4,011,347 are second doses, 2,383 in the past day. A total of 330,514 Marylanders have gotten the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, 88 in the past day.
The state has administered 1,875,837 boosters, 9,863 in the past 24 hours.
