CORONAVIRUS IN MARYLAND
State reports 458 new cases, 3 deaths
Officials haven’t recorded an average positivity rate of 4% or higher since Aug. 5
The latest additions bring the state’s total to 108,249 cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. In total, 3,612 people have died due to the disease or complications from it since officials began tracking the virus in March.
As of Monday, 377 people in Maryland are hospitalized due to complications from COVID-19, an increase of 19 compared to Sunday,
The statewide seven-day average testing positivity rate stands at 3.26%, with a single-day positivity rate of 2.8% from a total of 19,691 completed tests. The state has not reported an average positivity rate of 4% or higher since Aug. 5, when the seven-day average rate was 4.03%.
The World Health Organization recommends 14 straight days with a rate of 5% or lower before governments begin relaxing social distancing and business restrictions.
Baltimore County led the state in newly confirmed cases in the past 24 hours with 97.
More than 71% of Monday’s newly confirmed cases, 326, came from Maryland’s five most populated jurisdictions — Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, Baltimore County, Baltimore City and Anne Arundel County — which represent more than 65% of the state’s population.
Worcester County, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, is the state’s only jurisdiction to have a seven-day rolling average positivity rate above 5%, sitting at 6.38% as of Monday. The county is unique in that more than 28% of its population is 65 years or older, nearly double the statewide average of 15.9%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
While the county of roughly 52,000 people is not seeing the same spikes in new cases it saw earlier in the month,
Young adults again made up a large portion of the state’s new cases — 179 of the 458 newly confirmed cases were from patients aged from 20 to 39 years old, or roughly 39% of Monday’s cases. For comparison,
The pandemic continues to disproportionately affect the state’s Black and Latino populations. Roughly two-thirds of the state’s confirmed COVID-19 cases in which data on race was available, 60,529, were in Black or Hispanic residents. The two demographic groups represent less than half the state’s population.
By comparison, white residents, who constitute more than 58% of the state’s population, or about 50% when accounting for those who identify as Hispanic or Latino, represented about 27% of all confirmed cases with 20,895.
However, white people have a higher mortality rate compared with other races, with about 6.19% of cases proving fatal. About 4.29% of cases among Blacks and about 1.62% of cases among Latinos were fatal. All of these rates have been slowly decreasing in recent weeks.
The state does not have racial demographic data for 16,293 COVID-19 cases.
On Monday, Maryland’s Public Service Commission extended a moratorium on terminating residential gas, water and electric services through Nov. 15, citing residents’