Two counties on Maryland’s Eastern Shore originally targeted as potential coronavirus hot spots are now seeing higher than average positivity rates as officials confirmed 577 new cases of the coronavirus Sunday and two more deaths.
Sunday’s additions bring the state’s total to 116,110 cases of the COVID-19 illness caused by the virus. In total, 3,695 people have died of the disease or complications from it since officials began tracking the virus in March.
As of Sunday, 351 people in Maryland are hospitalized for complications from COVID-19, 10 fewer than Saturday. Officials reported 14 fewer people in acute care units for a total of 262. However, four more coronavirus patients were moved into intensive care units, raising the total to 89.
The statewide seven-day average testing positivity rate is at 3.68%, effectively flat from Saturday’s 3.72% rate.
The Johns Hopkins coronavirus resource center, which calculates positivity rates differently, reported a positivity rate of 6.54% for the past week in Maryland, making it one of the 28 states above the recommended 5% positivity level the World Health Organization advises governments reach before considering reopening businesses and public spaces.
Hopkins uses the number of people tested, while the state’s figures are based on the number of tests administered. The Hopkins figure is consistently higher than the state’s, and the center counts 3,836 people as having died of the disease.
The majority of cases are from the state’s most populated jurisdictions. Nearly two-thirds of Sunday’s cases, 373, are from Prince George’s County (94), Montgomery County (78), Baltimore County (76), Baltimore City (71) and Anne Arundel County (54), and that’s where roughly two-thirds of the population lives.
However, the state’s Eastern Shore is seeing a rise in two counties' positivity rate as the neighboring Wicomico and Worcester counties now have seven-day rolling positivity averages above 6%, higher than any of the previously mentioned jurisdictions with populations several times larger.
Worcester County — which has a population of about 52,000 people and is home to Ocean City — posted an average positivity rate of 6.28% Sunday, an increase of 0.74 of a percentage point from Saturday. The county confirmed 10 new cases Sunday, for a total of 940, and has not had an average positivity rate below 5% since Aug. 25.
Wicomico County — which has a population of about 104,000 people and includes Salisbury — has an average positivity rate nearly double that of the state at 7.02%, an increase of 0.39 of a percentage point from Saturday. The county confirmed 16 new cases Sunday, for a total of 1,770, and has seen its average positivity rate climb by more than 2 percentage points since Sept. 5.
While the two largely rural counties account for less than 3% of Maryland’s total population, concerns have been raised about how both could serve as potential environments to spread COVID-19.
For Worcester County, officials have debated how to best regulate crowds at Ocean City, as the resort town reopened its boardwalk in May. Amid a spike in positive cases in July, Mayor Rick Meehan mandated that visitors wear masks on the boardwalk.
In Wicomico County, federal officials targeted the county’s poultry plants after it became apparent in April that Salisbury — home to Perdue Farms' corporate offices — had become a hot spot for the coronavirus as hundreds of industry workers on the Eastern Shore had contracted the disease. Officials have confirmed more than 100 new cases in the county in the past week as its positivity rate has continued to climb during that time.
Maryland has begun to enter its third and final stage of reopening, as Gov. Larry Hogan has allowed more venues like movie theaters and live entertainment to operate at 50% capacity if local officials agree.
However, other states have also placed Maryland on their travel advisory lists, sometimes threatening fines if visitors do not first self-quarantine for 14 days, as Johns Hopkins continues to report the state has above a 5% rolling positivity rate.
While the majority of Maryland’s schools and college campuses started classes virtually this month, young adults and children 10 years or older represent a disproportionate amount of Sunday’s newly confirmed cases.
Maryland officials reported that 150 of Sunday’s newly reported cases were in patients ages 20 to 29 years old and 108 cases were diagnosed in people ages 10 to 19 years old, the two highest counts for age demographics.
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Combined, people ages 10 to 29 years old represented nearly 45% of all of Sunday’s cases, despite the age demographic representing an estimated 27% of the state’s population, as of the 2010 U.S. census.
The pandemic continues to disproportionately affect the state’s Black and Latino populations. Roughly 64% of the state’s confirmed COVID-19 cases for which data on race was available, 62,844, were from 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 29% of all confirmed cases, with 28,240.
However, white people have a higher mortality rate compared with other races, with about 5.55% of cases proving fatal. About 4.07% of cases among Black residents and about 1.67% of cases among Latino residents were fatal.
The state does not have racial demographic data for 17,431 COVID-19 cases.