Black and Latino Marylanders have received a disproportionately lower percentage of coronavirus vaccines, state data shows.
White Marylanders make up 58.5% of Maryland’s population, while about 31.1% of the state’s residents are Black, according to census data.
But of the 419,579 coronavirus vaccine doses that Maryland has administered as of Wednesday morning, white residents have received about 62% of the doses while Black residents have received less than 15%.
Although 10.6% of Marylanders are Hispanic or Latino, only 3.7% of doses have gone to individuals from that ethnic group.
Maryland’s Asian residents comprise 6.7% of the state’s population and have received 6.8% of the state’s vaccine doses.
Gov. Larry Hogan on Tuesday said that state officials are analyzing Maryland’s coronavirus data to provide better vaccine access to underserved communities.
Overall, Marylanders have received a total of 363,282 first doses and 56,297 second doses.
The state reported that in the past 24 hours it has administered 15,256 first doses and 7,662 second doses.
At least 346,559 Marylanders have tested positive for COVID-19, while 2,801,971 have tested negative as of Wednesday morning, according to the Maryland Department of Health’s COVID-19 Case Map Dashboard.
The state’s total number of confirmed coronavirus cases grew by 1,939, an increase of 0.56%.
Maryland has completed 6,819,049 coronavirus tests to date, with 34,887 test results reported in the past 24 hours.
On average, 6.38% of the state’s COVID-19 tests over the last seven days have come back positive.
The seven-day average rate of positive tests yesterday was 6.33% for Marylanders younger than 35 and 6.43% for Marylanders older than 35.
A total of 31,468 Marylanders have been hospitalized with coronavirus since the pandemic began, including 1,647 who are currently hospitalized.
Of those currently hospitalized, 1,273 are in acute care and 374 are in intensive care.
The number of acute care patients declined by two while the number of intensive care patients rose by seven, marking a net increase of five more people hospitalized with coronavirus compared to Tuesday.
A total of 6,821 Marylanders have died from COVID-19, with 33 additional deaths reported since Tuesday. There are also 175 deaths suspected to be related to coronavirus.
As of 10 a.m. Wednesday, there have been 66,535 confirmed cases in Prince George’s County; 57,685 in Montgomery County; 46,254 in Baltimore County; 37,281 in Baltimore City; 32,093 in Anne Arundel County; 15,239 in Frederick County; 14,250 in Howard County; 11,153 in Washington County; 11,039 in Harford County; 7,786 in Charles County; 6,750 in Carroll County; 6,172 in Wicomico County; 6,119 in Allegany County; 4,674 in Cecil County; 4,448 in St. Mary’s County; 3,304 in Calvert County; 3,008 in Worcester County; 2,312 in Queen Anne’s County; 2,208 in Somerset County; 2,017 in Dorchester County; 1,824 in Caroline County; 1,765 in Garrett County; 1,622 in Talbot County; and 1,021 in Kent County, according to the dashboard.
Of Maryland’s confirmed cases, 16,749 are people age 9 or younger; 32,515 are people ages 10-19; 63,184 are people ages 20-29; 60,096 are people ages 30-39; 53,016 are people ages 40-49; 52,351 are people ages 50-59; 35,266 are people ages 60-69; 19,993 are people ages 70-79; and 13,389 are people age 80 or older.
Maryland has identified 181,718 of the confirmed COVID-19 patients as female and 164,841 as male.
Of the Marylanders who have tested positive for COVID-19, 98,200 are Black, 57,054 are Hispanic, 117,997 are white, 7,564 are Asian, 16,213 are another race, and data is not available for the remaining 49,531.
Nationwide, there have been at least 25,445,700 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States, including at least 425,257 deaths. The U.S. has conducted more than 295.3 million coronavirus tests to date as of 10 a.m. Wednesday, according to a real-time dashboard created by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
One of the related issues is the reluctance of African Americans to get treatment due to the lingering fear of experimentation and exploitation as with Henrietta Lacks!