County's Rate Of Cases At Highest Level Since June 10

ROCKVILLE, MD — Montgomery County on Friday added 139 new COVID-19 cases, bringing its overall total to 25,831 infections.

Since entering phase two in June, the county has seen an uptick in positive cases. And health officials are starting to believe that the rise isn't an anomaly — but a surge.

"We are at levels of virus that, if this had been May or June and we were making decisions about opening, we would not open," County Executive Marc Elrich (D) said during a COVID-19 press briefing Wednesday. "We got below these thresholds before we made decisions to open things up again."

The county has not yet announced any rollbacks, but it did recently update its COVID-19 indicators to monitor the county's progress. If the upticks persist, the county said it will likely tighten restrictions on social gathering sizes and indoor capacity limits at restaurants, retail, and houses of worship.

The county's rate of cases per 100,000 is 13 — the highest it has been since June 10. Ten is the threshold at which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers a region to be at high risk for coronavirus transmission.

Unlike case rates, the number of people dying daily from COVID-19 in recent months has been between zero and five.

On Friday, the county didn't record any new coronavirus-related deaths. The local death toll remains at 832.

Another 40, health officials say, may have had the virus but died before ever getting tested. For now, they are considered "probable deaths." They won't be added to the official fatality count until they are confirmed by a lab test.

Montgomery County has the second highest number of deaths and cases in the state, after Prince George's County, which has 835 fatalities and 32,937 infections, according to the latest figures.

Across Maryland, there have been 144,314 cases, 3,990 confirmed deaths, and 147 "probable deaths." Of the 513 people that are currently hospitalized, 126 are in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).