Maryland confirmed 958 new cases of the coronavirus Monday and 27 more people died due to complications from the illness since Sunday, briging the state’s totals to 39,762 cases and 1,903 fatalities.
The state said 120 more people have probably died due to the infection or complications of it, but those cases are awaiting laboratory confirmation.
The number of new daily fatalities was the lowest since May 3.
In Maryland, 1,447 people are currently hospitalized for the COVID-19 illness, with 555 in intensive care and 892 in acute or short-term care. Officials say 2,817 people have been released from isolation. More than 161,700 Marylanders have tested negative for the virus.
Gov. Larry Hogan has said officials are looking closely at hospitalizations and ICU cases in deciding when to further roll back restrictions put in place to stop the spread of the virus. The number of hospitalizations has held steady or decreased throughout May.
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Hogan highlighted on Twitter that the state has now conducted more than 200,000 coronavirus tests.
“Expanding our testing capacity is one of our critical building blocks to recovery, and we continue to increase testing efforts at community-based sites and in response to high-priority outbreaks and clusters,” the Republican governor tweeted.
Prince George’s and Montgomery counties continue to lead the state in total cases, with 11,608 and 8,417, respectively.
State data on rates of infection continues to show disparities across categories of race and ethnicity. Officials say more than 12,000 black Marylanders have tested positive for the virus and 777 have died. Hispanic people face one of the highest rates of infection of any race or ethnic group in Maryland, with a total 8,907 having tested positive and at least 154 fatalities.
Also Monday, Maryland prison officials confirmed a fifth inmate death from COVID-19, disclosing that an inmate in his 60s who was being held at the Patuxent Institution died in recent days.
The update came as the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services released weekly numbers showing increases at several facilities, including jumps at the Metropolitan Transition Center and Central Booking facilities in Baltimore.
The system does not identify inmates who die from COVID-19, citing health privacy laws.
The number of infected inmates at the Metropolitan Transition Center jumped from two last Monday to 10 this week. At Central Booking, the number of inmate cases went grew from two to nine, officials said.
Overall cases — including corrections officers and contract staff — at the facilities grew from 39 at the Metropolitan Transition Center last week to 50 this week, and from 14 to 25 at Central Booking.
Cases among corrections officers grew by four at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup, bringing the total to 34.
There have been 200 confirmed cases among uniformed officers, and no deaths, the system says.
