On Sept. 30, 2020, 6,206 Marylanders had tested positive for Covid-19 in the previous two weeks. This was Maryland’s most-recent nadir of coronavirus transmission, the lowest rate of cases seen after numbers spiked in late Summer.
Since then, the number of recently-confirmed coronavirus infections has steadily and sharply grown at rates not seen since the virus first took root in Maryland this Spring. As a result, Gov. Larry Hogan said the state was back in ‘the danger zone’ announced Maryland would be re-entering “Phase I” pandemic restrictions, sharply curtailing public gatherings.
As of Nov. 11, 2020, the population of Marylanders who tested positive for coronavirus has risen to 15,036 in the previous two weeks. Between Nov. 10 and Nov. 11, 1,714 Marylanders tested positive for the disease, and 16 people died from it. A testament to the persistence of this sharp increase in Maryland cases, the two week rolling-average of new confirmed cases increased to a record high of 1,143 cases per day, exceeding the in-state high set the day before, and the day before that.
The number of deaths from the disease in Maryland has also begun to increase, but at a slower uptick than case-count metrics.
The disease is spreading across wide swaths of Maryland, but nowhere more-so than in far-Western Maryland and in scattered rural ZIP Codes along the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River in Southern Maryland. Relatively-populated ZIP codes near Frostburg in particular have seen sharp increases in the per-capita rate of confirmed cases in the past two weeks when compared to Sept. 30.
Here in Prince George’s County, the number of new cases is also persistently rising, but luckily not as sharply as across the state. The two-week population of confirmed cases had remained relatively stable since early September at around 1,500 cases. But in late October, the number began to crawl upwards. As of Nov. 11, 2020, 2,346 cases had been confirmed in the previous two weeks.
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