Data for the 20770 zip code specifically are still not yet available due to the Maryland state data security breach that affected Covid data sets. Some numbers have emerged at the county level to give a partial indication of what may be happening here and nearby – and there’s no doubt the county is solidly in the red zone for high community transmission and so, most likely, is Greenbelt. On January 4, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency giving hospitals in the state more flexibility in staffing and mobilizing the National Guard. Overall, he reported that the number of hospitalized patients had increased some 500 percent in the last seven weeks.
This presents a confusing picture, especially as not all Covid statistics are yet available online to allow visibility into the detailed local numbers. Hogan also said that he was working to accelerate the availability of rapid tests.
Reader Beware
It is vital, if perusing websites on local data, to look closely at the dates. At the time this article was written, the Prince George’s County Covid-19 Dashboard mixes data from the last week in November with data current on January 2 – often on the same page. To access the dashboard, go to princegeorgescountymd.gov/3397/Coronavirus, then find the link to COVID-19 Dashboard under COVID-19 Case Data.
Data for this article were drawn from the dashboard’s “current status” page on Jnauary 5 at noon and can be found by clicking on the bottom right of that page to go to the “Daily Updates” link. This brings up a PowerPoint briefing dated January 3 and hospitalization numbers are current as of January 2, with other data lagging a few days behind.
Key Metrics
The county uses several key CDC-based metrics to judge the severity of the situation. Of these, the average daily case rate and the percentage of positive tests are now both at the fourth and most critical level, with an average recent daily case rate of ~294 (a daily average of cases over seven days, per 100,000 population) and positive tests at about 26.5 percent. But in keeping with the lowered severity resulting from vaccination and the possibly less severe effects of the Omicron variant, hospitalization utilization parameters were only at the medium level (the second step of four) with approximately 40 to 50 percent capacity still available.
The state of emergency seems out of synch with that statistic and possibly means that Prince George’s County is doing better than some areas. Data are also available for Montgomery County through January 4. Numbers indicate that though case rates are extremely high, hospital/ICU utilization is in the ‘Low’ category – lower even than Prince George’s.
Hospitalizations Up
At the beginning of December, under 100 people were hospitalized with Covid-19 in the county. But by the last week of the month, there were three days with around 300 hospitalized. December 31 reached 314 and January 2 was 302. The rate of new cases, running about 150 per day at the end of November, and already influenced by Delta infections, rose to a total of 2,000 to 2,500 individuals per day in the county for the last few days of December as Omicron surged.
This acceleration was much sharper than the concomitant rise in hospitalizations, meaning, fortunately, that though more county residents are infected, a much smaller proportion so far seems to have become seriously ill. Hospitalizations and deaths generally trail cases and may continue to increase for a while even if infections were to tail off – though there’s no evidence of a downtick yet and New Year’s gatherings may yet stoke the boiler.
Beds Steady
There continues to be rightful concern about hospital capacity but, so far, the county is holding steady. Counts of available county beds are available through January 2 and the supply seems to have plateaued even as Covid-19 hospitalizations rose – presumably from managing the flow of other procedures. There are 656 regular medical/surgical beds and an additional 160 beds that can be pulled into use. As of January 2, Covid-19 and other in-patients occupied 479 beds of the total 962 – with Covid patients representing just over half that number. None of the emergency capacity was in use. Similarly, of the county’s 123 ICU beds, 95 were in use (half of those for Covid patients) with another 43 emergency ICU beds available, of which 12 were in use. At the moment, at least, for those who get sick, there’s a bed to lay their head.