Around Maryland

Respiratory illnesses, including flu and COVID-19, are on the rise again in Carroll County, leading health care officials to issue a plea for residents to take measures to protect themselves. Though the impact of Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, a common respiratory virus that usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms, is starting to decrease, flu cases are increasing rapidly in Maryland, according to the county health department, and COVID cases are also on the rise.

With Christmas near and the Hanukkah season underway, Frederick County health care leaders are hopeful — but not sure — that there won’t be a repeat of last winter’s tsunami of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths. The predominant variant of the virus circulating in the Maryland region continues to be versions of the omicron strain, which people as young as 6 months old can now be protected against by receiving an updated booster shot.

One of Maryland’s two 529 college savings plans has frozen interest payments to participants and blocked access to some accounts altogether because of unresolved internal calculation problems, panicking parents as another round of college payments come due early next year.

Maryland officials approved a $500,000 grant Wednesday for Baltimore to move forward with a redevelopment plan for the city’s State Center complex. The Board of Public Works also approved leases Wednesday for the Department of Labor and the Department of Information Technology — the last two state agencies remaining at State Center — to move to office spaces on Charles Street downtown, clearing the way for the complex to be officially vacated next Fall.

Anne Palmisano once waited 10 hours on a gurney in an emergency room hallway after arriving by ambulance to a hospital in the Maryland suburbs for a severe reaction to medications. When she finally got to a room she spent several days in treatment. Palmisano, head of the advocacy group Marylanders for Patient Rights, said she’s heard many stories of long waits in Maryland emergency departments.

Concerns about illness or inflation aren’t stopping Americans from hitting the roads and airports this holiday season. But a massive winter storm might. Forecasters predict an onslaught of heavy snow, ice, flooding and powerful winds from Thursday to Saturday in a broad swath of the country, from the Plains and Midwest to the East Coast. A surge of Arctic air will follow. The Christmas weekend could be the coldest in decades.

Baltimore’s spending board approved $645,000 on Wednesday to settle two more legal disputes related to the city police department’s disgraced Gun Trace Task Force, bringing the total amount paid out related to the rogue unit to more than $16 million. The two settlements, one for $330,000 with Jamar Bowles and another for $315,000 with Alex Holden, close out two lawsuits filed in August alleging task force officers planted drugs.

Gas prices have been falling in America since the midterm election, approaching $3 a gallon and dipping below that marker in some areas, but the dramatic rise in prices earlier this year brought about a question yet unanswered by Maryland lawmakers. Will the legislature act to unlink the gas tax from inflation?