Maryland reports 617 new COVID cases, 7 deaths

After dropping substantially from their peaks in mid-January, Maryland’s coronavirus pandemic indicators have started to tick up slightly in recent days.

Notably the positivity rate, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 and the seven-day average of new cases reported daily are up, which might be attributable to the spread of more contagious variants.

Ahead of St. Patrick’s Day, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has relaxed capacity restrictions on businesses, while maintaining masking and social distancing requirements.

Here’s where the data stood Monday:

Cases

The daily case count remained below 1,000 for the second straight day after rising above that mark Saturday. Prior to Saturday, daily cases had been below 1,000 since Feb. 19.

Maryland health officials reported 617 new cases of the coronavirus Monday. The seven-day average of new cases reported daily was 860 Monday, up from about 746 on March 7.

Deaths

Health officials reported seven new deaths from the virus statewide Monday, the lowest daily total since March 4. Fewer than 20 deaths have been reported in each of the last six days.

In mid-January, as many as 67 deaths were reported in one day.

Hospitalizations

As of Monday, 777 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Maryland, officials said, three more than Sunday. It was the third straight day of small increases. The number of people hospitalized from the virus has remained below 1,000 since Feb. 20.

Positivity Rate

For the fourth day in a row, Maryland’s seven-day average testing positivity rate increased, up to 3.85% from 3.73%.

Vaccinations

State health officials reported administering 26,474 new doses of the vaccines Monday — 16,679 first doses, 8,641 second doses and 1,154 doses of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

At least a fifth of the state is now at least partially vaccinated, according to state and Centers of Disease Control and Prevention data. About 11.5% of the state is fully vaccinated, according to the state’s figures.

Vaccines by age

So far, 53.6% of the Marylanders who are at least partially vaccinated are 60 and older. The largest number of Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech shots have gone to Marylanders in their 70s, but the largest amount of Johnson & Johnson doses have gone to people in their 60s.

Vaccines by race and ethnicity

About 22% of the people who are at least partially vaccinated in Maryland are Black, where race data is known, despite the fact that 31% of Marylanders are Black, according to US census data. White people are over represented among vaccinated individuals, since they’ve received about 68% of shots but are about 59% of the population.

Hispanic and Latino people also are underrepresented. Some 4.2% of those who have received at least one shot identified as such, where ethnicity data was available, but they make up 10.6% of the state population.

Vaccines by county

Prince George’s County has vaccinated the smallest percentage of its population with at least one dose of the vaccine — 13.5%. The majority-Black county has lingered behind the rest of the state throughout the vaccine rollout. Its large population could be a factor, but its neighbor, Montgomery County, has more residents and has vaccinated 21.7% of them. Montgomery also has administered the greatest raw number of shots, more than 300,000.