Around Maryland

As the D.C. region continues to deal with a surge in respiratory infections, Maryland officials are hoping to provide some guidance through a new resource. The Maryland Department of Health has launched a new Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) webpage. It also provides guidance for the flu and COVID-19, while encouraging residents to get vaccinated. The new website is part of Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s statewide effort to address the recent spike in RSV cases, which has had a severe impact on young children. While there is no specific treatment for RSV, the site outlines transmission, prevention and ways to relieve symptoms, according to guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

How can Baltimore’s faith community help people without housing? That was the theme of a new forum, “Voices of the Unsheltered & Homeless Community,” held Saturday morning in Northeast Baltimore. The meeting was the first of what will be monthly meetings every second Saturday, said Christina Flowers, an advocate for Baltimore’s homeless population and the forum’s organizer. “What we are doing today is starting a community initiative where we’re working with our interfaith community and some of our clergies to come up with some strategies and ideas to really help our unsheltered, homeless community,” Flowers said.

Body temperature, pulse rate, respiration rate and blood pressure — the four vital signs. They’re the most routinely monitored measurements of the body’s basic functions. In the mid-1990s, the American Pain Society tried to add a fifth — pain.

A group of federal and state law enforcement agencies, led by U.S. Attorney in Maryland Erek Barron and Gov. Larry Hogan, announced a new set of initiatives Thursday aimed at curbing violent crime in Baltimore. A combination of different Maryland agencies will increase visibility and step up traffic enforcement on the major highways and arteries leading in and out of Baltimore city, with the Maryland State Police, the Baltimore County Police, Anne Arundel County Police and the Maryland Transportation Authority Police joining in, Barron said.

With the count of mail-in ballots beginning Thursday, candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty, a national conservative political action group focused on parental rights in schools, are in the lead for four of the six seats up for grabs on the Harford Board of Education. “There are thousands of mail-in and provisional ballots yet to be counted,” said Zack Frink, communications director of the Harford County Democratic Central Committee. “The committee is waiting until all ballots are counted until taking a course of action.”

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott will hold a news conference on Thursday to announce the Squeegee Collaborative’s final report. Scott convened the Squeegee Collaborative in July. He gathered a cross-section of youth, business, community and government leaders to meet weekly to develop a citywide, public, private and community-based response.

“Justice” will come to Maryland. Maryland voters Tuesday approved a constitutional amendment to change the name of the state’s top judicial tribunal from the Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court of Maryland and the title of its jurists from judge to justice, with the chief judge becoming the chief justice. The name of Maryland’s intermediate court will also change, from the Court of Special Appeals to the Appellate Court of Maryland. Its judges, however, will still be called judges.

Baltimore’s short-staffed public works department has no timeline yet for resuming weekly curbside recycling pickup since scaling back the service at the start of this year. Department of Public Works Director Jason Mitchell told city council members during a quarterly briefing Wednesday that, even if the agency is able to boost staffing levels again, they’re “still going to have some challenges” returning to a weekly recycling schedule.