As a result of Maryland’s stabilizing COVID-19 health metrics, Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) said Thursday that changes will be made to how child care centers and nursing homes can operate.
Effective immediately, nursing homes and elder care facilities will be allowed to have in-person visitations, Hogan said at a State House news conference.
“As a result of new federal and state guidelines, and our advances in rapid testing, indoor visitation is now able to begin in all nursing homes that are not experiencing an outbreak or have not experienced any new positive cases in the last 14 days,” the governor said.
Federal guidelines say that those indoor visits would have to stop if a jurisdiction’s positivity rate rose above 10%.
Hogan said the state is committing an additional $6 million in funding to pay for the testing of nursing home staff members. Additionally, Hogan said that all of Maryland’s 227 nursing homes are set to receive rapid coronavirus testing supplies by next week.
The statewide positivity rate has dipped to below 3% and has remained there for several weeks.
Thursday marked the first full day since March in which no deaths attributed to COVID-19 had been reported in the state.
As part of Maryland Matters’ content sharing agreement with WTOP, we feature this article from Zeke Hartner. Click here for the WTOP News website.