A small Eastern Shore Maryland ZIP code has the highest per-capita rate of confirmed coronavirus infections in the past two weeks, underscoring how the virus continues to spread across urban and rural communities alike.
The ZIP code with the highest rate of confirmed cases in the past two weeks is now the 21649 ZIP code. Centered on Templeville on the eastern shore, bordering Delaware, it has 29 cases within the past two weeks, a population of 1,858, for a two-week per-capita rate of 15 cases per 1,000 residents.
But Northern Prince George’s County remains the center of the outbreak in Maryland, with several ZIP codes inside the Beltway between U.S. 50 and the Montgomery County Border bearing persistently high rates of confirmed cases. Adelphi Maryland’s 20783 ZIP Code has the second-highest rate of confirmed cases in Maryland, with approximately 1.4 percent of its more than 44,500 residents, or 642 people, confirmed to have the disease in the past two weeks, a two-week per-capita rate of approximately 14 per 100,000 residents. Riverdale Park and East Riverdale have the third-highest rate of confirmed cases, with 246 cases among more than 1,150 residents, or 12 cases per 100,000 residents.
Route 1 Reporter has been tracking, on a rolling basis, the number of new cases confirmed over the past 14 days. You can read the reasoning here. In theory, and if the case counts are in any way tied to actual incidence of coronavirus infection locally, persistent declines in this number should indicate the pandemic is receding. Unfortunately, this number is not decreasing. On May 3, there were more than 12,600 cases confirmed in the past 14 days. As of May 10, that number had climbed to more than 14,000.
Likewise, the daily number of new cases has been persistently trending upward in Maryland. On May 10, 1,053 new cases had been confirmed. On a rolling average, 988 cases per-day had been confirmed in the two weeks prior. On May 3, that 14-day average stood at 877 cases per-day.
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