COVID-19 In Maryland: More Than 12K Marylanders Have Died Since Start Of Pandemic
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- More than 12,000 Marylanders have died since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest data from the state health department.
The state reported 47 more people died from COVID-19, raising the death toll to 12,016 since the start of the pandemic.
Maryland reported 9,683 new COVID-19 cases on Monday while the statewide positivity rate remained flat and hospitalizations increased,
Hospitalizations increased by 78, bringing the total of Marylanders currently hospitalized with COVID-19 to 3,364. Of those, 2,788 adults are in acute care and 532 adults are in intensive care. Thirty-eight children are in acute care and six are in the ICU.
The positivity rate increased slightly to 27.98% over the past 24 hours, a 0.15% increase.
Maryland is under a state of emergency issued by Gov. Larry Hogan in response to rising hospitalizations, which have forced several hospitals to undertake crisis protocols to keep up with new admissions.
The total of confirmed cases since the pandemic began stands at 840,623.
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 the opening of 20 new testing sites statewide that will be staffed by the Maryland National Guard.
Hospitals statewide have freed up beds and scaled back non-emergency procedures, with some 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 here. A second order aims to beef up EMS response.
There are 4,294,676 Marylanders fully vaccinated and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 92.6% of the state's adults have gotten at least one dose. Among Marylanders age 5 and older, 86.5% of residents have gotten at least one does of the vaccine.
The state has administered 10,550,463 doses of the vaccine. Of those, 4,521,953 are first doses, 3,322 of them in the past 24 hours. Another 3,965,695 are second doses, 2,433 of them in the last day. The state has administered 1,733,834 booster doses, 9,829 in the past 24 hours.
A total of 328,981 Marylanders have gotten the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, 174 over the last 24 hours.
