Around Maryland

Shirlonda Tucker didn’t leave the house much in the past year, and she double-masked when she did. So her positive COVID-19 test came as a shock. “I said, ‘Are you sure, you’re really sure?’” she quizzed the nurse who tested her last month after she began showing symptoms. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all down significantly in Maryland from the winter surge, but people continue to get sick — in some cases, very sick. On Tuesday, 442 were hospitalized, 118 in intensive care..

Some schools are half empty across the Baltimore area, and parents in significant numbers are signaling that they aren’t sure they are ready for their children to return in the fall. But those hesitant parents will find a phalanx of educators — from the U.S. Secretary of Education down to their school principal — nudging them to return their children to a school building. Determined to return to normalcy, leaders throughout Maryland are planning to open schools five days a week, 180 days a year starting this fall.

Kimberly Alster first purchased property near Deep Creek Lake in Maryland’s Garrett County 12 years ago. At the time, the idea was to use the home for frequent family vacations. When the pandemic struck, however, the Alsters decided to trade city life for the great outdoors and move permanently. In doing so, families like the Alsters are fueling a housing boom in locations not accustomed to such activity.

For the second time in three years a state audit of Maryland’s health insurance exchange system found continued problems in the program’s verification of some applicants’ income to determine their eligibility for Medicaid over a three-year period. A 2018 audit of the quasi-governmental agency that oversees the Maryland health exchange found similar problems with Medicaid eligibility screenings over fiscal years 2015 to 2017. The latest review, examining fiscal years 2018 to 2020, found that the Medicaid eligibility process did not take some applicants’ federal tax data into account, limiting it to only state wage information.

Maryland ranks near the bottom among states in terms of the pace of its recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, according to a recent study. The WalletHub study was released on Tuesday. It said that Maryland is the state with the 10th slowest recovery from COVID-19. South Dakota has the fastest recovery of any state and Michigan has the slowest recovery of any state. Minnesota, West Virginia, Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey are the other states/jurisdictions that have slower recoveries than Maryland.