MAYORS AND CITIES – All of Maryland’s 24 jurisdictions have reached the 10 percent testing milestone for Covid-19, Governor Larry Hogan announced on Saturday.

Hogan noted that the aggressive testing is helping the state in its tracing and treatment of Covid-19 infections, as its COVID-19 positivity rate has dropped to 4.47 percent.

“Our aggressive statewide testing strategy is helping us to understand, identify, and stop the spread of this virus, and I want to commend all of our local jurisdictions for stepping up to meet our goal of testing 10% of their populations,” Hogan said.

 “The State of Maryland continues to make unlimited quantities of tests available to any jurisdiction that needs them,” he added.

The state health officials last June 18 have encouraged the stepping up of testing efforts and meet the goal of testing 10 percent of their populations.

Maryland Department of Health Secretary Robert Neall and Deputy Secretary Fran Phillips have appealed for the said testing effort in a letter.

 “As part of our COVID-19 testing expansion, Maryland continues to make large quantities of specimen collection kits directly available to local health departments. Given that the state has a long-term strategic supply of tests, there is no need to stockpile these resources or turn away our allocations. Instead, we ask that your local health departments use these tests to increase the number and capacity of community-based testing sites. We urge you to make every effort and come up with innovative ways to provide your residents and businesses with open and convenient access to testing,” part of the appeal letter read.

To date, Maryland has conducted 1,245,767 COVID-19 tests, including 31,003 tests over the last 24 hours.

A total of 929,354 residents, or 15.4 percent of the state’s population, have now been tested for COVID-19.

The daily positivity rate dropped to 3.44 percent.

The positivity rate is above 5 percent in four of the state’s 24 jurisdictions: Baltimore County (5.53%), Baltimore City (6.12%), Prince George’s County (6.35%), Talbot County (5.49%).

Meanwhile, the state has 592 total current COVID-19 hospitalizations with 132 ICU beds in use.