Updated 6:51 p.m.

Starting Monday at 5 p.m., indoor dining at Maryland restaurants can increase from 50% to 75% capacity, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced in a Friday press release. The announcement coincides with Maryland’s inaugural statewide Restaurant Week, which began Friday, Sept. 18 and runs through Sept. 27.

“As we continue with the third and final stage of our recovery, I want to commend our state’s restaurant industry for their incredible resilience this year and for their continued commitment to the health and safety of Marylanders,” Hogan said in his announcement. “To celebrate the first-ever Maryland Restaurant Week, I encourage Marylanders to support their favorite local businesses, whether you do so through delivery, curbside pickup, or by dining indoors or outside.”

Spokespeople for Prince George’s County, Montgomery County, and Anne Arundel County told WTOP they will keep indoor dining at 50% capacity. As with other reopening announcements, Hogan gave local jurisdictions discretion on whether to follow state guidance.

Maryland’s restaurant owners have been pushing for the change, according to reporting from WBAL. Marshall Weston, president of the Restaurant Association of Maryland, recently told the outlet that if indoor capacity could not increase as the weather gets colder and limits outdoor dining, “employees may be laid off” and some restaurants would have to consider closing altogether.

But as recently as Wednesday, Hogan said that health experts in the state did not want to see indoor dining capacity increase.

“I’m pushing to get more capacity and want them to, but our doctors — because our positivity has not stayed down, it has gone flat — they are really strongly against it,” Hogan said, adding that “a big chunk of the infection rates come from bars and restaurants.”

Maryland’s leisure and hospitality sector gained 5,800 jobs in August, the most job growth of any sector in the state — a  change Hogan linked to the state’s gradual reopening.

Hogan made the announcement about restaurants hours after the Baltimore Sun reported a spate of false-positive COVID-19 test results in Maryland nursing homes, linked to issues with the hundreds of thousands of tests that Hogan purchased from South Korea in April.

An analysis from the Center for American Progress last month found that when states reopened indoor dining, their COVID-19 case counts went up — and on the flip side, case counts declined when states closed indoor dining and bars. The analysis also says ” … because reopening indoor dining, even at limited capacities, is linked to increasing incidence, states should also reevaluate their decisions to allow restaurant patrons to dine indoors, especially in hotspots.”

While Maryland has moved into its third phase of reopening, Hogan has given discretion to individual counties to determine their own restrictions. Hogan said in the press release about restaurants that this same “flexible, community-based approach” will apply to decisions about restaurant capacity.

So far, Montgomery County and Prince George’s County have decided to remain in Phase 2.

Maryland is currently averaging 635 new COVID-19 cases per day, statewide. Its average case count declined steadily over August but remains above where it was in June, when the state saw its lowest COVID-19 case counts.

According to the Maryland Health Department, the state’s overall test positivity rate is 3.2%. The World Health Organization has recommended that jurisdictions maintain a positivity rate of less than 5% for two weeks before reopening further. But a tracker created by Johns Hopkins University puts the state’s positivity rate higher and says it has been over 6% for the past week. (Maryland lawmakers have previously questioned health department leadership about the difference between the Hopkins methodology and the state methodology.)

Local officials have pointed out aspects of the statewide data that concern them: In particular, a positivity rate more than double the state average in Worcester County, which includes Ocean City.

“One of the things I’d love to know is how many people who got COVID had a vacation in Ocean City,” said Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich at the briefing where he announced the county would not move to Phase 3. “We don’t exist in a vacuum. There’s no wall around Montgomery County.”

This story has been updated to include that Prince George’s, Montgomery, and Anne Arundel counties will not increase their indoor dining capacity.