Two of Maryland’s key coronavirus indicators — its positivity rate and the number of people hospitalized — continued to climb slightly Tuesday as the state closed in on administering 1.95 million COVID-19 vaccine doses.
Here’s where Maryland’s coronavirus indicators stood as of Tuesday.
Cases
Maryland added 658 new coronavirus cases Tuesday, bringing the state’s case count to 394,716 since health officials began tracking the virus’ effects last March.
Tuesday marks the third consecutive day that the number of daily infections remained below 1,000, a mark eclipsed Saturday for the first time in about a month.
Maryland has averaged 864 new cases daily over the past week.
Deaths
State health officials reported that COVID-19 caused 23 more deaths, bringing the death toll due to the disease to 7,896 people in Maryland.
The state has averaged 12 fatalities per day over the last 14 days, the lowest rate since mid-November.
Hospitalizations
The number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus climbed for the third day in a row Tuesday, with 805 people in Maryland hospitals facing the disease’s effects. That’s 28 more patients than the day before. Of those hospitalized, 213 required intensive care.
Vaccinations
Vaccinators across Maryland administered 41,921 immunizations over the last 24 hours, state health officials reported Tuesday. About 29,672 first doses, 10,748 second doses and 1,501 single-shot vaccines were shot into the arms.
Maryland is approaching 1.95 million vaccine doses administered, with approximately 710,000 people fully immunized, or about 12% of the state’s population, according to state data. Roughly 1.2 million, or 20% of residents, have received preliminary inoculations.
Over the past seven days, the state has averaged 43,123 vaccines administered daily, according to state health department data.
Vaccines by age:
More than 60% of Marylanders aged 65 and older have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine. About 137,986 between 70 and 79 years old have been completely vaccinated, the largest number among age groups designated by the department of health.
Vaccines by race and ethnicity:
About 3.7 times as many white people have been fully vaccinated in Maryland compared to Black residents. White people make up about 58.5% of Maryland’s population; Black people account for 31%.
Latino residents, who make up about 11% of Marylanders, have gotten about 4% the vaccine doses for which the recipients ethnicity was known, health department data shows.
Vaccines by county:
Eastern Shore counties Kent, Worcester and Talbot continue to pace the state with the proportions of their populations fully vaccinated.
Kent, the state’s smallest jurisdiction, has completely immunized almost 20% of its roughly 19,000 residents. To the south, about 18% of the residents of Worcester County, population 52,000, havereceived both doses of the two-dose vaccines or a single-shot immunization. And about 17.78% of Talbot County’s approximately 37,000 people have been fully vaccinated.
Prince George’s, Charles and Cecil counties continue to trail the rest of the state. All three have fully vaccinated fewer than 10% of their residents.
With about 909,000 people, Prince George’s has seen about 6.6% of its people completely immunized. Charles County, population 163,000, has fully vaccinated about 8.3% of its residents. Both counties are located in the Washington D.C. region and are majority Black.
Cecil County, which has about 103,000 people and is about 88% white, has completely vaccinated about 9.8% of its people.
About 10% of majority Black Baltimore’s 593,000 people have finished their vaccinations.
Testing Positivity
The state’s average testing positivity rate, which measures roughly the amount of tests returned positive over the last seven days, climbed for the fifth day in a row. The rate reached 3.96% Monday, up from 3.84% to a day earlier.
It’s still considerably lower than the peak of the winter surge of the virus, when the average testing positivity rate was 9.47% Jan. 3.
Case Rate
Baltimore’s seven-day average of new daily infections per capita topped the state Tuesday, according to state health department data. The rate was 20.68 cases per 100,000 residents.
Maryland’s average case rate per 100,000 residents was 14.3. The next highest rate after the city was its neighbor Baltimore County, where the rate was 16.75 cases per capita over the last week.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott decided last week to keep stricter coronavirus restrictions in place despite Gov. Larry Hogan easing many measures across the state. Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski opted to fall in line with the state, along with most counties in the Baltimore metropolitan area.