Maryland COVID hospitalizations, positivity rate drop as state nears 50% of residents fully vaccinated

Baltimore Sun - 6/5/2021

As Maryland’s coronavirus hospitalizations and testing positivity rate continued to descend, the state approached a milestone in its vaccination campaign: nearly half of all residents have been fully immunized.

Here’s a look at where other COVID-19 indicators stood Saturday:

Cases

Maryland added 132 coronavirus infections, bringing the state’s pandemic case count to 460,471, according to the health department.

Deaths

Nine more people were reported dead from COVID-19, the disease that’s now claimed 9,426 casualties since health officials began tracking its effects in March 2020, the data shows.

Hospitalizations

The number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus in Maryland dropped by 16, with 302 still under hospital care, according to the state.

That’s the smallest tally of COVID-19 patients since Sept. 21, a lull in the pandemic before it surged later in the fall and into the winter with a shocking amount of hospitalizations.

Testing positivity

Maryland’s average testing positivity rate was 1.3%, down 0.06 percentage points from the day before, the data shows.

The figure Friday represented a new low mark for the rate, which measures the share of tests returned positive over the last week. However, the percentage has generally declined for more than a month. It’s about a third what it was May 4 and less than a fourth of where it was April 4.

About 24,715 tests were returned, according to the state, while almost 10.5 million nasal swabs from Maryland have been analyzed for COVID-19 throughout the pandemic.

Vaccinations

The state said more than 2.99 million Marylanders have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, either by completing Pfizer-BioNTech’s or Moderna’s two-dose vaccine courses or receiving Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot immunizations.

That means approximately 49.5% of the state’s roughly 6 million residents have been completely immunized.

On Saturday, the state reported 35,217 new vaccinations. Some 9,210 people received a first vaccine dose, 24,837 received their second dose and 1,170 got a single-shot vaccine, according to the health department.

The daily vaccination haul is the largest reported this month, though the state’s seven-day average of daily immunizations continued to drop, the data shows. Over the past week, officials reported an average of 23,527 shots every day.

More than 6.25 million vaccine doses have been administered in Maryland since Dec. 14, about 202,600 of which were doled out by federal entities in the state, according to the health department.

This article will be updated.