Maryland health department releases monkeypox county dashboard, with limited data
Aug. 30—The Maryland Department of Health started reporting some county-level data on monkeypox cases last week but is still not providing a specific case count for Frederick County.
The state health department on Friday published an online dashboard that tracks the number of positive monkeypox cases by county and provides sex, age and race information about those who have been infected.
The dashboard lists an asterisk, instead of a number, for any county with fewer than 10 cases to protect patient privacy, according to a news release from the state health department on Friday.
Frederick County — like most of Maryland's 24 jurisdictions — has an asterisk for the number of local monkeypox cases.
That means there have been zero to nine cases of the virus identified in the county, state health department spokesman Chase Cook wrote in a text message on Monday.
The dashboard will be updated every Friday, Cook wrote.
As of Aug. 26, there were 461 monkeypox cases in the state, most of which — 175 — were in Prince George's County.
Baltimore City had 133 cases, Montgomery County had 57, Baltimore County had 36 and Anne Arundel County had 29. The remaining counties had fewer than 10 cases.
The vast majority of the cases have been diagnosed in men. As of Friday, 95.2% of cases in Maryland were among males and 4.3% were among females, according to the dashboard. Two cases did not have sex data reported.
Although most monkeypox cases have historically been identified in Central and West Africa, in May of this year, several clusters of the disease were reported in countries that usually don't report cases.
Monkeypox can be spread during sex, but it is not a sexually transmitted disease. The virus can also be transmitted through other forms of close personal contact, including kissing, cuddling, hugging, and sharing blankets or towels.
Symptoms of the disease can include a fever, headache, swollen lymph nodes, chills, exhaustion and a pimple-like rash that can appear on multiple body parts.
So far, there has been a disproportionate number of monkeypox cases identified among Black Marylanders, according to the state health department database.
As of Friday, 57.3% of cases were among Black people. In Maryland, 31.4% of the population is Black or African American, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
More than half of Marylanders — 57.8% — are white, but only 14.3% of diagnosed monkeypox cases have been among this population, according to the database.
For 21.3% of cases, the patient's race was not reported.
Most monkeypox cases — 47.5% — have so far been identified among people between 30 and 39 years old. About a quarter have been reported among people 20 to 29 years old.
Only 1.5% have been identified among people 60 years and older and only 2.2% have been identified among people younger than 20.
The state has so far administered vaccines to 2,124 people, according to the database. The Maryland Department of Health said this month that it had received enough doses of the two-dose Jynneos vaccine to immunize 3,202 people.
Follow Angela Roberts on Twitter: @24_angier
