A coronavirus world: Masks, social distancing likely required for next two years, Anne Arundel County health o

Public health directives to wear a mask in public spaces, keep six feet from other people and limit unnecessary activities need to be facets of society’s “new normal” for years to come, the Anne Arundel County health officer said.

Dr. Nilesh Kalyanaraman said people must follow health guidelines, likely for the next two years, to keep the coronavirus pandemic under control. The United States is experiencing a surge in cases around the Sun Belt and an increase in cases in Maryland and Anne Arundel County.

“I think people are struggling with this idea,” Kalyanaraman said. “That is not going to change. This is our new normal. We can’t go back to the way things were.”

People are skirting health guidelines when attending parties, visiting bars and gathering in groups, the health officer said. These behaviors threaten to reimpose closures on businesses, an unfavorable action that health officers from six jurisdictions said they are considering. Anne Arundel County has already taken some action to scale back interactions between people such as limiting late-night dining hours.

The growth in cases, especially in people under 35, has prompted the county to staff 125 more health workers to keep up with contract tracing efforts and other coronavirus interventions. Health workers are now routinely tracing 10 to 20 contacts for each person infected with COVID-19, a “massive” amount of contacts to track and monitor, as people move around more and take the virus with them.

Contact tracers typically tracked three to four contacts during the stay-at-home order. Health workers are also asking young people, who are less likely to answer their phone, to tell their contacts to answer the call.

The additional staff will also man phone lines and administer COVID-19 tests at county locations like the Vehicle Emission Inspection Program site in Glen Burnie.

Anne Arundel County confirmed 89 new coronavirus cases and no deaths in the past 24 hours, state health data show. Maryland continued its upward trend with 1,128 coronavirus cases and six new deaths.

Numbers released Monday morning show the county now has 6,469 confirmed cases and 206 deaths. Another eight people may have died from the disease, but a lab test was never performed. Maryland now has 84,876 confirmed cases and 3,315 deaths.

In an emergency town hall last week, County Executive Steuart Pittman and Kalyanaraman cited mobility data — data that tracks people’s travel patterns from their cell phones — as a cause for concern. Since the stay-at-home order was lifted, people are leaving their homes at a rate seen before the pandemic began — creating the potential for the virus to spread.

“If people aren’t taking the precautions they need to take, we are simply replicating the conditions of March,” Kalyanaraman said, referring to the month the virus spread unchecked before the government-mandated residents to stay quarantined inside.

The effects of people moving around is reflected in the rate COVID-19 is spreading in the community.

The transmission rate is measured by an individual’s rate of community contact, the probability of the infection being transmitted during contact and the contagiousness of the disease. Anne Arundel’s rate of 1.2 shows the virus is spreading faster than it was in June. A rate of spread above 1.0 is considered uncontrolled.

Across Maryland, at least 1,120,761 tests have been conducted, an increase of more than 23,000 in the last 24 hours, bringing the statewide rate of positive cases to 4.61%. Anne Arundel’s rate of positive cases is 4.16%.

Statewide, 536 people are currently hospitalized with 145 patients in the ICU and 391 patients in acute care.

Here is an alphabetical breakdown of the number of cases in each ZIP code in Anne Arundel County as of Monday. This data uses the county’s numbers. State numbers are in parentheses.

ZIP codes that overlap more than one county are in italics. The state numbers also account for cases at congregate living facilities in those ZIP codes, which the county numbers do not include.

The county has said that they remove cases from this data as they determine they are from congregate housing, such as nursing homes or retirement communities, which may also account for discrepancies.