The number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose by 14% as of Monday, state officials said, prompting Gov. Larry Hogan to issue a stay-at-home order for all residents except for essential activities.
The rising number of cases in Maryland and the greater Washington, D.C., region, including outbreaks over the weekend at a Carroll County nursing home and a Howard County psychiatric hospital, led the governor to predict on FOX News Monday that the state could see outbreaks as bad as the one in New York, which is nearing 1,000 deaths.
In Annapolis, Hogan said the DC-Maryland-Virginia area was reporting 2,709 confirmed cases.
“We’re just kind of the next wave of hot spots,” the Republican governor said in the TV interview.
The number of COVID-19 deaths in Maryland remained at 15 Monday morning, after rising from 10 Saturday, officials said. The number of confirmed cases in the state was 1,413, as of Monday.
The 174 new cases Monday represented a slightly smaller increase than over the weekend, when the nursing home outbreak was confirmed. On Sunday morning, Maryland announced that 247 new cases had been confirmed since Saturday morning, including 72 in Carroll County.
Officials at the Clifton T. Perkins psychiatric hospital in Howard County Sunday night confirmed a coronavirus outbreak there involving an unspecified number of both health-care workers and patients.
Montgomery and Prince George’s counties continue to lead the state in known cases with 341 and 294, respectively, as of Monday. Baltimore County had 186, Baltimore City had 142, Anne Arundel County had 110, Howard County had 96, Carroll County had 82, Charles County had 33, Frederick County had 26 and Harford County had 24, the state said.
Of those confirmed to have the disease, 274 were in their 50s; 262 were in their 40s; 219 were in their 60s; 188 were in their 20s; 139 were in their 70s, and 27 were ages 10-19, the state said. Fifty-two of those with confirmed cases were older than 80 and five were younger than 9.
Women represented 716 of the patients, and the other 697 were men, according to the state.
The number of negative coronavirus tests administered in Maryland has reached 13,316, and 43 people have been released from isolation, state officials said.
The coronavirus outbreak that infected 66 residents and killed one at the Pleasant View Nursing Home in Mount Airy over the weekend was “tragic,” Hogan said in the TV interview.
In addition to the dozens of residents who tested positive and nearly a dozen who were hospitalized, Hogan said 27 employees of the nursing home have symptoms and will be tested for the coronavirus.
Hogan repeated his assertion that Maryland could follow in the steps of New York in the number of confirmed cases and deaths in the next few weeks. The rise in cases in Maryland is particularly concerning, given the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who live in the state, the governor said.
“It’s quite a crisis, not only for our state, but for the folks who are leading the federal response,” Hogan said.
Hogan plans to lead another call with the nation’s governors, the president and vice president Monday.
The governor praised Vice President Mike Pence as “terrific” but did not mention President Donald Trump specifically.
Given the “tremendous shortage” of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers, Hogan said, he’s asked the federal government to distribute “everything in the national stockpile.”
The arrest of a Charles County man for hosting a large party, in violation of the state’s executive order banning gatherings of more than 10 people, should send a message to Marylanders that the state is “not playing around” when it comes to enforcing orders to protect public health, Hogan said.
“We’ve been taking unprecedented and very aggressive action for 24 straight days,” Hogan said.
