Around Maryland

The University of Maryland Medical System and several other Baltimore-area hospital systems have begun lifting masking requirements for public areas that have been in place since April 2020, shortly after the coronavirus pandemic struck. At UMMS’ 11 hospitals and other facilities, masks still will be required for employees and visitors when they are in contact with patients, but not in waiting rooms, lobbies and hallways, a spokesperson for UMMS said in a statement.

A new state-by-state analysis of COVID-19 death rates showed Maryland had the fifth fewest deaths in the country per 100,000 residents, while D.C. had the second-highest rate in the nation. The study, published in the medical journal The Lancet, showed death rates varied dramatically by state, in analyzing the rates of COVID deaths in the U.S. between January 2020 and July 2022.

The Maryland Department of Health announced Tuesday it will begin accepting applications for enrollment in the Abortion Clinical Training Program, $3.5 million in funding for which was released by Gov. Wes Moore at the start of his term. According to a press release, the program will “help expand the number of healthcare professionals with abortion care training, increase the racial and ethnic diversity among healthcare professionals with abortion care education, and support the identification of clinical sites in need of training.”

Maryland hospitals largely escaped the financial crisis that struck providers nationwide in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, when elective procedures were canceled and routine care was postponed. That’s thanks, in part, to a unique system for regulating hospital revenue. The same system saved taxpayers $781 million in Medicare costs over three years and improved quality of care, according to a recent report.

Maryland ranked fifth in the nation for having the fewest COVID-19 deaths per capita in a comprehensive study on variations in pandemic policies and behaviors among states published Thursday in The Lancet. The state was likely helped during the pandemic by its relatively low poverty rate and high level of educational attainment, said Emma Castro, a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle and a co-lead author on the paper.

City and county officials shared “grave concerns” when the news broke Friday that a company in South Baltimore would be treating contaminated water from the Norfolk Southern train derailment in Ohio and disposing it to the city sewer system, and eventually the troubled Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant in Dundalk.