BALTIMORE — Maryland added more than 25,000 new coronavirus cases over the holiday weekend, which included two record-breaking days since the state last updated its coronavirus data dashboard on Dec. 23.
On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, more than 9,000 cases were logged — 9,859 and 9,350 respectively — with an additional 5,826 cases reported on Sunday. The three days reflect more than triple the number of new cases reported over the same time last year.
The numbers reported obliterated totals from the week where the highest day of cases was on Thursday with 6,869. The new totals are a grim milestone in the pandemic with case rates surging higher than even before vaccinations were widely available. Previously, the state’s highest total was on Dec. 4, 2020, with 3,792 new cases.
The positivity rate among Marylanders climbed to nearly 16%, jumping about 3% higher in just 48 hours. The total number of new cases reported over the holiday weekend is unclear.
Nearly 65,000 tests were conducted on Christmas Eve with a daily positive rate of 15.14%. That testing number dropped to just over 33,000 on Christmas Day but the daily positivity rate surged to 24.86%. The seven-day positivity rate climbed from 12.8% since Thursday to 15.85% on Sunday.
“All data are preliminary and subject to change based on additional reporting,” wrote Maryland Department of Health spokesman Andy Owen in a message. “Surveillance reporting may include data from both the date of report and previous data that may have required an adjustment.”
Some 1,584 Marylanders are hospitalized with COVID-19, according to state date, which is 34 more than previously reported. Of those patients, 326 required intensive care. Health officials reported 16 children are hospitalized because of the virus, including four in the ICU. State health experts previously said more than 70% of coronavirus patients were unvaccinated.
The hospitalization rate continues to hold steady above 1,500, which is the state-instituted threshold that triggers hospitals to implement their emergency pandemic plans immediately. That bench mark was initially reached on Thursday.
Under Gov. Larry Hogan’s directive, Maryland hospitals are to optimize bed capacity and bring in additional staffed beds, redeploy or alter staffing models, reduce non-urgent and elective surgical procedures, transfer patients to alternative care sites and convert spaces used for administrative or other functions to be utilized for clinical care, Hogan’s office said in a news release.
The Republican governor recently contracted the coronavirus, despite being fully vaccinated and boosted.
State projections show COVID-19 hospitalizations could climb above 2,000 in the new year, Hogan said . If that occurs, it would be the largest number since the pandemic began.
Testing sites across the region have been inundated with long lines, and most places advertising free at-home tests quickly ran out. After taking tests at home, users are asked to report their results via an app, though not all will.
As of Sunday, about 70% of Marylanders have completed their first course of vaccinations either by receiving two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccines or the single-shot inoculation made by Johnson & Johnson, according to the health department. Roughly 1.52 million booster shots have been administered in Maryland.
The steady stream of COVID-19 patients is further straining hospitals, which are treating people with other ailments like the flu and are struggling to grapple with fatigued health care professionals.
And now, both the vaccinated and unvaccinated are getting sick with the rise of the highly transmissible omicron variant. The pandemic’s latest variant accounts for About 40% of Maryland’s cases. Experts say vaccinations and booster shots are powerful tools to blunt the effects of COVID-19, though they may not prevent illness altogether.
U.S. health officials have said that omicron is the dominant strain of the virus circulating nationally. So far, preliminary results from studies out of the United Kingdom have shown that omicron infections tend to be milder than with previous COVID-19 variants. Those who contract the omicron variant are 15% to 20% less likely to end up in the hospital than those who contracted the delta variant, and they’re 40% to 45% less likely to be hospitalized for a night or more, according to The New York Times.
Some of that reduction may be attributed to the fact that omicron is better at infecting individuals who have previously tested positive for COVID-19, and those individuals are less likely to be hospitalized. But hospitals are expected to continue to be flooded, given that the variant spreads so quickly, experts say.
The full scope of omicron’s dominance has not yet been fully seen in Maryland, after a cyberattack at the Maryland Department of Health caused a two-week data outage.
As a result of the cyberattack, some COVID-19 data for Maryland remains unavailable, including the number of deaths tied to COVID-19 since Dec. 4. Data for the number of cases by jurisdiction or demographic data associated with those cases is also unavailable. Officials have not provided a timeline for when that data will be available again.
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