Worcester County’s positivity rate is 9.65%, nearly two percentage points higher than the state average. Image courtesy of https://coronavirus.maryland.gov/
BERLIN – As Worcester County’s COVID-19 positivity rate jumped above 9% this week, health officials can’t say for certain why local rates are now exceeding state positivity levels.
On Sunday, Worcester County’s positivity rate inched ahead of the state rate. By Thursday, the rate in Worcester County was 9.65% while statewide it was 7.73%. The daily positivity hit its December high on Thursday at 9.65%, up from 6.43% last Tuesday, Dec. 8. The last time the positivity rate exceeded 9% in Worcester County was on May 31.
cnn s polo sandoval joins us now from new york with the latest. so polo, police say the 911 dispatcher had turned in her two-weeks notice as well as a result? it is, she was, she no longer is on the job, fred. i can tell you having listened to the entire audio, it is upsetting to hear the desperation and the panic in the voice of debra stevens. she s a 47-year-old woman whose final words were recorded a week ago during a 911 call that she made into the fort smith, arkansas, police department. some background here. ridesi rising flood waters started to overtake her suv as she was out on her normal newspaper delivery route early in the morning. audio of the call reveals the tone of a dispatcher as you point out, and as fort smith police are calling and describing a callous and an uncaring tone at times, so i want to play for you a portion of the audio, and it does come with a warning. it is extremely upsetting. i don t want to die. you re not going to die.
die. the dispatcher then responds, ms. debbie, you re breathing just fine because you re screaming at me, so calm down. i know you re scared. hold on for me. stevens is not heard again, and not long after that, rescuers did finally reach the suv about 58 minutes after the end of the call. sadly, they could not revive her. the interim police chief had this reaction to what you just heard. i completely understand the disgust and the concern that we all have. i understand that listening to a person going through the panic that ms. stevens was in those final moments of her life, and we would all hope that we would get a little bit better response than perhaps what she was given. i don t want us interacting with anybody in that way, whether it s a life and death situatio or not. absolutely no criminal, we ve looked at that, and there s she did nothing criminally wrong. i m not even going to go so far
as to say she violated policy. police say the dispatcher had turned in her two weeks notice before the call had come in, so she was, victor and christi working her last shift when she received a call from ms. stevens. just heard from the police chief, no criminal charges expected here, possibly no policy violations. it does beg a closer look at some of the tones used by dispatchers at that department. all right, polo sandoval, thank you for walking us through it. all right, coming up, hurricane dorian, the projection as of 10:20 eastern is that it won t have a florida landfall but a lot of people are getting out of town anyway, and there are long lines at the gas stations. we ll have a live report next. and senator bernie sanders says he s coming up with a plan to wipe out billions of dollars of medical debt. when you read the plan, you think, wait a minute, is he telling voters what they want to hear or is there some way to
minutes after the end of the call. they could not revive her. the interim police chief had this reaction to the audio. i completely understand the disgust and the concern that we all have. i understand that listening to a person going through the panic that ms. stevens was in those final moments of her life, and we would all hope that we would get a little bit better response than perhaps what she was given. i don t want us interacting with anybody in that way, whether it s a life and death situation or not. i don t think the dispatcher realized or understood the severity of the situation. she did nothing criminally wrong. i m not even going to go so far as she violated policy. even before the call was made, the dispatcher was already scheduled to leave her post. you see police saying she had turned in her two weeks notice two weeks before the call, and this call, fred, actually came in on the last day of her shift.