Maryland COVID cases and testing positivity continue to decline as hospitalizations rise slightly

Maryland’s new coronavirus cases and testing positivity rate continued to trend downward Saturday, while the state reported 10 new deaths and hospitalizations rose slightly.

Here’s how the rest of state’s indicators, released by the Maryland Department of Health, stacked up:

Cases

Maryland added 656 new coronavirus cases Saturday, on par with the current 7-day average, according to state health department data, pushing the state’s pandemic case count to 452,691.

Deaths

Ten additional Marylanders died due to complications from COVID-19, bringing to 8,652 the number of fatalities since health officials began to track the disease in March 2020.

Hospitalizations

The state reported 869 people were hospitalized Saturday, 10 more than the prior day. The rise follows 10 consecutive days of declining hospitalizations.

A total of 42,101 Marylanders have required hospitalization due to COVID-19.

Testing positivity

The state’s testing positivity rate declined again Saturday to 3.44%, the fourth consecutive day the rate has fallen.

Measuring the share of COVID-19 tests returned positive over seven days, the positivity rate is approaching mid-March levels, when the state was reporting the lowest positivity rates of the year.

In the last 24 hours, 37,880 tests were performed across Maryland.

Vaccinations

Providers in Maryland administered 22,456 doses of COVID-19 vaccines Thursday, health department data shows.

The majority of the vaccines shot into arms over the past 24 hours — 16,195 — were the second of two-dose immunization regimens made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. About 5,700 got their first immunization, while 532 received Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot immunization.

About 2.3 million of Maryland’s more than 6 million residents have been fully vaccinated.