County Adds 185 COVID Cases Tuesday As Test Positivity Rate Rises

SILVER SPRING, MD — Montgomery County on Tuesday added 185 new COVID-19 cases and four new deaths, bringing its overall totals to 27,731 infections and 855 fatalities.

The number of new coronavirus cases has been steadily increasing since September, county public health data shows. Monday marks the 20th straight day in which the number of daily infections has tipped into triple digits.

The latest fatality count does not include the 41 others whose deaths were linked to the virus, but never confirmed by a lab test. For now, they are considered "probable deaths."

The county — which is home to roughly 1.1 million residents — has the highest number of deaths in the state. It also has the second highest number of confirmed cases, after Prince George's County, which has 34,856, according to the latest figures.

Across Maryland, there have been 156,709 coronavirus cases, 4,084 confirmed deaths, and 149 "probable deaths." Of the 761 patients being hospitalized for the disease statewide, 176 are in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

The state has conducted more than 3,702,500 tests to date. The positivity rate now stands at 5.24 percent — up 0.19 from the day before. In comparison, Montgomery County's test positivity rate is 4.48 percent. A day earlier, it was 4.05 percent.

Here's a closer look:

MD Launches Phone App That Alerts Users Of COVID-19 Exposures

On Tuesday, the Maryland Department of Health launched MD COVID Alert, a phone app that notifies the public of COVID-19 exposures.

iPhone and Android users can opt in to the service, which is free and can be disabled anytime. On iPhones, go to "Settings" and "Exposure Notifications" to use the service. For Android, find the MD COVID Alert app on Google Play.

MD COVID Alert assigns each user a random ID, which changes every two minutes to ensure they cannot be used to identify people or their whereabouts, according to the Maryland Department of Health.

The service uses Bluetooth Low Energy to detect where a person has been, so Bluetooth must be enabled. People must self-report their positive test results, and they will be given a code to use to report it from contact tracers.

Several times a day, officials say the app processes the random ID numbers to determine whether anyone who has tested positive for coronavirus has been within 6 feet of another person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period starting from two days before the symptoms began for an infected person or two days before the positive test result specimen was collected from an asymptomatic person.

If someone meets these criteria, then the user will get an exposure notification.

Click here to learn more about MD COVID Alert.