Retrospective: COVID-19 in 2021

BALTIMORE – As the Maryland Department of Health continues to work to bring its systems back online, we take a look at how the state has handled COVID over the past year.

(The visualization does not include any data after December 4, 2021 due to the cybersecurity incident at MDH.)

We spoke with two people at Johns Hopkins University about the data – and how Maryland’s two weeks of missing data is impacting our view of the pandemic.

Patrick Semansky / AP

“We’re constantly tracking COVID data to understand, you know, how many cases are happening, what the severity looks like in terms of hospitalizations and deaths, what the hospitalization capacity is, to really understand how much this pandemic is affecting. our populations today, ”says Shaun Truelove, systems scientist at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

And as scientists and academics understand the pandemic better, their recommendations to public health officials are evolving as well.

Matt Rourke / AP

“And it’s not just the evolution of the virus,” he told WMAR-2 News. “It is the evolution of our perception of viruses and our willingness to act.”

Beth Blauer, data manager at the Corronavirus Resource Center, says she doesn’t just use data to understand the pandemic for work.

“You know, I’m looking at the data to figure out if my kids are going to be playing on dates, if we’re going to be able to entertain the people in our house,” she says.

The lack of data for more than two weeks in December really had an impact on individual decisions made and how public health officials might respond.

“It also calls into question this confidence in our government in our systems not only to deliver the data, but also to help us through these really difficult times,” she added.

Jérôme Delay / AP

Truelove says it’s hard to figure out not just what’s going on now, but what’s next.

“It makes it very difficult to understand what’s going on and predict what’s going to happen in the future.”

Between January 1, 2021 and December 4, 2021, 5,295 residents of Maryland died from COVID-19.

More than 350,000 Marylanders have tested positive for COVID-19 during the year.

Julio Cortez / AP

We started the year with a test positivity rate of 8.77% which hit a low for the year at the end of June with a 0.54% and was reaching all-time highs when data returned in late December – with 12 , 15% registered on December 22, 2021.

Guidelines and policies have changed throughout the year.

In June, Governor Larry Hogan announced the end of the state of emergency for COVID-19, with many policies ending in July and some extending through August.

Andrew Harnik / AP

This preceded the delta surge that hit in late summer.

Vaccines have become accessible to all adults, then open to children from the age of 5 years.

As of December 22, 2021, 69.9% of the total population of Maryland were fully vaccinated, with 34% of the population being boosted.

Aaron Favila / AP

Almost 81% of the adult population was fully vaccinated and 91% of the adult population had received at least their first dose of vaccine.

Governor Larry Hogan, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and Baltimore County Director Johnny Olszewski were among the big names in Maryland to have tested positive for the virus.

Eddie Kadhim

As Maryland heads into 2022, its state health department has restored much of its data, giving officials the information they need to understand the latest variant, Omicron.

Truelove says, “We’ve learned throughout the pandemic, kind of the nuances of every piece of data. And we’ve built systems and that are, you know, designed to help interpret that data and use that data. . ”

And Blauer adds that there is still concrete work to be done to help improve the data itself.

“I think we should remove all barriers to testing and anyone who wants a test should be able to access the test,” she said.