7/29/2022 – Update – Earl Stoddard and MOCO DHHS Respond
7/26/2022 – MOCO Dashboard, DHHS, Elrich Claim High Communities Levels
See the MOCO Covid Dashboard here which began showing “Community Level Status: High” a few days ago: https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/covid19/data/
Here are some official tweets about it from DHHS and the County Executive:
7/28/2022 – CDC Does Weekly Thursday Update – Still Shows MOCO in Medium
When asked about discrepancies, the DHHS told us to wait until Thursday for the CDC weekly county data drop.
We did, and to little surprise, the CDC shows the County still in “Medium”:
Maryland Covid Levels shows Montgomery County AND all Neighboring Counties Medium or Low Community Transmission Levels
Why The Difference?
It seems that County dashboard shows that it takes hospitalization into account from neighboring counties as well whereas the CDC does not.
These areas don’t appear to be in the “High” category either and there was a really significant jump in the 7 day total on 7/22/2022 that is a bit suspicious. Since the county hides the real data (only showing 7 day total) it’s hard to say more.
But, it is interesting to note that the CDC Hospitalizations chart has no such jump as Montgomery County had at 7/22/2022 to get into the “High” category for hospital admissions testing positive for covid.
Here is one additional data chart from the State of Maryland which seems to line up closer to the CDC than Montgomery County:
MCPS and City Of Gaithersburg Send Out Information Regarding High Status Including Some Policy Changes
Meanwhile, MCPS sent out updated guidance in a note indicating the “High” status and The City of Gaithersburg according to reports sent out updated guidance requiring masking for summer programs effective immediately.
Link to 7/28/2022 MCPS Community Update: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/publicinfo/community/school-year-2022-2023/Community-Update-20220728-covid-final.html
Maryland Updates School Guidance
Also this week, State of Maryland updated school guidance which includes some guidance related to “High” community transmission: https://www.marylandpublicschools.org/newsroom/Documents/COVID/PreK-12SchoolandChildCareGuidance7.22.22.pdf
Good News With New Charts On Vaccinations Status
One positive addition to the Montgomery County Covid Dashboard is that they are now showing the cases, hospitalizations, and deaths by vaccination status and it appears the vast majority of serious cases are in the unvaccinated despite them being a minority in the county.
You can see all of the charts but we will highlight a few: https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/covid19/data/case-counts.html
Contact us to inquire about Internship Opportunities
In response to this passage in particular: “It seems that County dashboard shows that it takes hospitalization into account from neighboring counties as well whereas the CDC does not.”
That’s wrong. Both the county numbers and CDC’s dashboard are reporting based on the HSAs (Health Service Areas) as defined by CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics: https://seer.cancer.gov/seerstat/variables/countyattribs/hsa.html
The HSA for this area combines Montgomery, Prince George’s, Charles, and St. Mary’s Counties. If you click on any of those counties in the CDC Data Tracker you’ll see that their hospitalization stats are always identical there because they’re not actually tracked separately.
Ok yes I see but then why is MOCO so different?
By the way, did you see the County added a note to the bottom of their chart to indicate that the data from 7/22 to 7/26 was bad and has been fixed? We’re now in “High” according to DHHS but we were not when we started digging about that data point.