BALTIMORE, MD—The Maryland Department of Health this week announced changes to how it will continue providing COVID-19 information as the federal Public Health Emergency ends in May. The department has launched a set of new COVID-19 webpages where information on vaccines, testing, treatment, data, and other resources may be found long-term.
“These changes reflect the new phase of COVID-19 that we are in today,” said Maryland Department of Health Secretary Dr. Laura Herrera Scott. “We will continue to actively monitor trends related to COVID-19 and offer robust information about COVID-19 on our new webpages.”
The information provided through the current websites, covidLINK.maryland.gov and coronavirus.maryland.gov, will be migrated to the new page starting Friday, April 28, 2023. After this time, they will not be accessible. Visitors to these sites will be directed to the appropriate location. The department will continue to provide relevant information on COVID-19 as the federal response changes and as necessary for public health.
Maryland COVID data may be accessed on health.maryland.gov/COVID and the open data portal with a reporting cadence aligned with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public health reporting.
In addition to these website changes, which include replacing Maryland’s testing and vaccine locators with federal locators, the state health department is also changing its COVID contact tracing services. The current system of outreach to COVID patients ended on April 25, and the MD COVID Alert system ends on May 9. However, outreach will continue in response to COVID-19 institutional outbreaks and other situations of public health importance. Local public health departments will continue to distribute at-home COVID-19 tests to facilitate public awareness and response to COVID-19.
The MD COVID Alert system was supported by the department of health and the Association of Public Health Laboratories in partnership with Google, Apple, and Microsoft. During the pandemic, more than 70,000 Marylanders used MD COVID Alert to anonymously alert others of possible exposure to COVID-19, generating more than half of a million exposure notifications to others to help slow the spread of community infection.
“We are proud of how receptive Marylanders were to using this technology to reduce the spread of COVID-19,” said Marcia Pearlowitz, Chief of the Contact Tracing Unit at the state health department. “MD COVID Alert was an important tool early in the pandemic, with more than 30% of Marylanders enabling this technology in the first few months of the system’s launch. We are trained and ready to use this tool, and our expertise, should we need it again in the future.”
Users of MD COVID Alert will be automatically notified when the application is no longer operational. They will not need to do anything at that time.
Photo via Pixabay
