This story was updated at 10:17 a.m. on June 4, 2020 to include comments from Dr. Travis Gayles, the county’s health officer.
County officials have said nine criteria had to be met or show substantial progress, based on the most recent 14 days of data.
Before Tuesday, only two of the nine criteria had been met or showed substantial progress over a two-week period.
Dr. Travis Gayles, the county’s health officer, explained why the benchmarks that have been met jumped from two to six in a day during a media briefing on Wednesday. The county changed the way it’s presenting the data in order to follow CDC guidelines, he said.
“Instead of comparing today with yesterday’s three-day rolling average, we are comparing it to what it was 14 days ago and that is how we are getting the number of declining days over a 14-day period,” he said.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the county’s Department of Health and Human Services data dashboard showed that COVID-19-related hospitalizations, emergency room visits, intensive care hospitalizations, percentage of ventilators, the intensive care unit bed utilization rate and the test positivity rate had all hit the county’s 14-day benchmarks.
The county updates its benchmark data by 2 p.m. each day. The data posted Tuesday afternoon were:
• Number of new confirmed positive cases each day: 160 (three-day average); 6 declining days out of the last 14
• Number of COVID-19-related emergency room patients: eight (three-day average); 14 declining days
• COVID-19-related intensive-care unit hospitalizations: 113 (three-day average); 14 declining days
• Acute care bed utilizations rate: 70% (three-day average); the county benchmark of 70% or less has been met two of the last 14 days
• Intensive Care Unit bed utilization date: 71% (three-day average); the county benchmark of 80% or less has been met 14 out of the last 14 days
• Percentage of ventilators in use: 55% (three-day average); the county benchmark of 70% or less has been met 14 out of the last 14 days
• Test positivity rate: 12% (three-day average); 14 declining days
As of Tuesday, the county was testing an average of 1,251 people, which is a three-day rolling average. The county has achieved 3.2% testing capacity in the last 30 days.
On Wednesday, the number of COVID-19 cases in Montgomery County rose to 11,924 — an increase of 1.6%. The daily increase by percentage has been in single digits every day since May 2.
The county also recorded 9 more confirmed deaths on Wednesday, bringing the total to 593.
There also are 40 “probable” deaths related to the virus in the county. “Probable” deaths have coronavirus listed as the cause on death certificates but haven’t been confirmed by laboratory tests.
Across the state, there have been 54,982 confirmed cases of the virus as of Wednesday morning. There have been 2,519 confirmed deaths.
The state’s positivity rate is now 9.5%. A total of 380,716 tests have been conducted and 272,643 people have tested negative.
There are currently 1,109 patients in the hospital across the state with COVID-19. Of those, 638 are in acute care and 471 are in intensive care.
The breakdown of cases and deaths by race/ethnicity on Wednesday was:
- African Americans had 15,856 cases and 1,043 deaths
- Whites had 10,757 cases and 1,057 deaths
- Hispanics had 14,155 cases and 238 deaths
- Asians had 1,048 cases and 98 deaths
- People of other races had 2,765 cases and 33 deaths
- Data were not available for 10,401 cases and 50 deaths
Dan Schere can be reached at daniel.schere@moco360.media