Question: You showed some Maryland data a couple of weeks ago. Any positive updates?

Answer: We talked about Maryland in our Q&A of 5/11. With another two weeks under our belts, here are some updated charts (Figures 1 and 2) I made using data from covidtracking.com. The good news is that deaths have continued a downward trend and testing capacity has increased. The bad news is that the percent positive tests is still very high, the number of cases is increasing, and the number of hospitalizations has plateaued for a number of weeks.

As you’ll see in the green bar chart, Maryland has been slowly but surely increasing its testing capacity. Meanwhile, the proportion of tests that are positive is still high at 17% (rolling 7-day average), meaning that testing needs to be further expanded. The number of daily cases in Maryland showed a very small dip starting around May 7th, but then showed an increasing trend around May 19th (yellow bar chart). Since then, we have averaged about 1,000 new cases/day. Since flattening the hospitalization curve in mid-April (orange bar chart), hospitalizations had plateaued for about a month, hovering around 1,000 patients hospitalized per week (beginning week of April 12). The week of May 10, hospitalizations declined to 823 patients, but in the last week, they’ve popped back up to 1,070 patients. Meanwhile, deaths have been decreasing since the week of April 19th (red bar chart).

Figure 1. Maryland Deaths, Hospitalizations, Cases, and Tests

Figure 2. Weekly Deaths, Hospitalizations, Cases, and Tests in Maryland