March 17, 2020
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Good morning. At this moment, we have 57 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Maryland, a 54% increase since yesterday, which is the largest one-day jump that our state has experienced so far.
There are now more than 130 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Washington region. Over the past few days, we have announced a number of unprecedented actions aimed at protecting the health and saving the lives of Maryland residents.
Today, once again, we have some additional important announcements. And I want to begin by addressing the upcoming April 28 elections in Maryland. I have two main priorities: Keeping Marylanders safe and protecting their constitutional right to vote.
Yesterday we announced that gatherings of more than 50 people are prohibited statewide, and it would endanger public health to allow thousands of people to assemble in places like schools and senior centers, which are already closed under the state of emergency. And it would put Marylanders at risk, especially the poll workers and election judges, most of whom are retirees and in the most vulnerable population.
Therefore, I am issuing a proclamation to postpone the April 28th primary to June 2, just as a number of other states have done and as other governors are expected to do later today or in the days ahead.
I am directing the State Board of Elections to develop a comprehensive plan by April 3 to conduct the primary election in a way that protects public health and preserves the integrity of the democratic process in our state.
For the sixth congressional district seat, which was vacated by the death of Congressman Elijah Cummings, it is imperative that the people of the seventh congressional district have a voice in the House of Representatives and that Maryland has a full delegation representing our state in Congress. After consulting with the State Board of Elections, we will be moving forward with the special general election. We believe that they are able to move forward with this special election to fill the Maryland seat. We’re directing the State Board of Elections to implement a vote-by-mail system for this particular election in the seventh district only, and we want them to do everything possible to ensure that this process moves forward in a fair and timely manner.
Free and fair elections are the very foundation of American democracy, and while there are many valid reasons for unease and uncertainty right now, ensuring that the voices of Maryland citizens are heard shouldn’t be one of them.
In addition, following this morning’s announcement that the Kentucky Derby will not be held in May for the first time in 75 years and will be postponed until Labor Day weekend, we have been in discussions with the Stronach Group regarding the second leg of the Triple Crown, the Preakness, to be sometime in September.
We are taking some proactive actions to maintain essential transportation services while also taking steps to limit the spread of COVID-19. All vehicle emissions inspection program sites will cease operations on inspections, and we have directed the Health Department and the Department of Transportation to immediately prepare to have them repurposed to be used as drive through coronavirus centers across the state.
We all saw the chaotic scenes at airports around the country last weekend. I am urging all Maryland citizens to avoid any unnecessary travel. At BWI Marshall Airport, we are taking immediate steps to increase social distancing and are urging anyone from entering the terminal unless they are a traveling passenger or reporting to a job. We are eliminating check in lines, changing the hours of operation to allow for deeper cleaning of the BWI Marshall terminal and allowing only for carryout options at airport restaurants.
The Maryland Transportation Authority will close all of its customer service centers, and we will immediately move to 100% cashless tolling statewide in order to reduce person-to-person interactions. Consistent with WMATA and metro and our neighbors in the region, we are reducing MARC Train service by 50%. Beginning tomorrow we will reduce all local bus, light rail, metro, and commuter bus services while continuing to prioritize and provide medical trips such as dialysis, chemotherapy, hospitals, clinic, and mental facilities.
We are reducing hours at the Motor Vehicle Administration and suspending all noncommercial driver’s license tests. And as chairman of the National Governors Association, on behalf of the nation’s governors, I have sent a letter to the President today requesting that the deadline for federal Real ID compliance be extended both here in Maryland and all across the country.
19 days ago, when I met with my full cabinet and held a press conference at the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, I said that all levels of government were working proactively and taking every possible precaution to respond to threats of public health. The state of Maryland has been operating under a state of emergency for nearly two weeks. We have the best team of people working around the clock to address this crisis. We will continue to keep you informed, and we will continue to do whatever is necessary to keep people safe, but we also need each and every one of our Maryland citizens to be a part of these efforts to help us flatten the curve.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the CDC and the White House issued new guidelines yesterday on what we should all do over the next 15 days to help slow the spread. If you feel sick, stay home, do not go to work, and contact your medical provider.
If your children are sick, keep them at home and contact your medical provider.
If someone in your household has tested positive, the entire household needs to remain home and contact your medical provider.
If you’re an older person, stay at home and away from people as much as possible.
And if you’re a person with a serious underlying health condition, stay home and stay away from other people.
At the same time, everyone should use common sense. Panic buying just increases person-to-person exposure. Instead of hoarding cleaning and hygiene products, share with your neighbors. All the stores are going to remain open. They’re all restocking the shelves. We’re not going to run out of those basic necessities. We’re all in this together, and it will take every one of us working together to keep people healthy and to save lives. I know that people all across our state, there’s a lot of anxiety out there and a lot of stress. Folks are worried about what lies ahead and how we’re going to get through this.
I remember five years ago after that devastating night of the riots in Baltimore City, and I immediately went to North and Penn to try to comfort the residents and to hug neighbors as they were sweeping out debris from their homes and small businesses. Despite all of that chaos and despite the uncertainty, and the fears and the doubts, we said that we would emerge from those days of fire. And we did. And the community came together. And that’s really what Marylanders are all about.
And now our entire state is facing another period of fear and doubt. And we’ve all seen the jarring images of empty streets in Italy and France. We’re all worried about our family members and our loved ones, about our communities and neighborhoods. But I want everybody in Maryland to know that if we continue to lead, we continue to work together, and if we rely on and help each other, we will get through this crisis.
With that, I’ll be happy to take a couple of questions.
The other remaining elections, as other states have done, will be postponed until June, which gives them plenty of time to prepare, to do it properly, based on whatever they think is the right thing, in consultation with the Health Department and everything else.
And the first answer is no, we don’t have enough test kits and neither does any other state. And no, the federal government does not have an answer. And we are behind. And that’s going to continue to be a problem that we’re all trying to address. So we’re all trying to take decisions in our own states to ramp up whatever capabilities we can without the federal government, and we’re also trying to push the federal government to be able to speed up their response. We did get on certain things we got from the National Stockpile, some deliveries on certain things that we need. And I’ll let maybe the Health Department address. Fran Phillips can address some of these things in more detail a little bit later.
But no. Testing is a problem. The equipment, personal protective equipment, is a problem. And these are issues that we’re trying to address.
There were arguments back and forth yesterday about what the President said or didn’t say, what the federal government is doing or not doing. And I’m not here to finger point or to say who didn’t do what. We just all have to get this together, and we all have to work together to try to protect our citizens.
Some states have opened up testing facilities with no ability whatsoever to do the test. They have drive throughs overloaded with thousands of people with no ability to do the test. We do not want to be in that kind of situation, so we’re working together to make sure we can get people tested but that we can actually get a result. We don’t want people lined up jamming in places to get a test that they can’t get or that we can’t process.
No, that’s changing on a daily basis, but maybe the Health Department can address that.
But there are — look, we can make significant changes. You’ve seen — everybody has seen the news and different people talking about the curve and flattening the curve, which is the effort we’re doing with social distancing. If we do nothing, the numbers are catastrophic and the curve goes straight up like this and it overwhelms the healthcare system and we don’t have the acute beds to handle it and we don’t have the medical personnel to handle it or the emergency rooms to handle it.
If we do things, like closing the schools made a dramatic difference in that curve. The actions we took yesterday make a further dramatic difference in that curve. It doesn’t stop the virus. It’s not going to stop a lot of people from being infected. It’s not going to stop some people — unfortunately we’re going to lose some lives. But it will potentially stop hundreds of thousands of people from getting the disease and potentially save thousands of lives here in Maryland.
Congress, the House passed emergency legislation to deal with unemployment benefits. We need the Senate to do that hopefully immediately at the federal level. Our Department of Commerce and Department of Labor are working with their federal partners. There are going to be significant financial difficulties and hardships for people. And both the legislative leaders at the federal and state level are trying to address it. The executive branches and agencies are trying to address it.
But there’s no question, not only are we protecting the health and safety and lives of people, but we understand that their economic lives are being disrupted as well and we have to look at all the things we can do to help them.
As the Governor said, we are developing plans right now, that’s with personnel, with the infrastructure, with all of the work that we need to put those clinics in place.
The problem is with the test equipment themselves.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Let me just add to that one. Ramping up the drive throughs is a relatively easy part. We can do that, but we don’t want to do it if we can’t get the lab capability, because we’re just giving false hope and creating chaos and crisis. It’s the back end of the house that needs to get up to speed with the testing availability and the labs being up to speed, because we can get a bunch of people to go through drive throughs probably tomorrow. But that would be a really bad idea if we are not able to do something with those.
DENNIS SCHRADER: Yeah, so we’ve got three or four models that we’re building to double check, because each model has got its variability. Yesterday the Governor mentioned that the worst-case scenario we’re planning for is about 6,000 beds. We’re working in collaboration with the Maryland Hospital Association. They’ve got a planning group that we’re working collaboratively with. But the most important thing is, through the Governor’s interventions, we’re looking for lower numbers than the worst case.
So we’ve got some planning numbers that are coming together over the next couple days. We’re working with the Hospital Association on targeted facilities. And over the next week, we’ll have a lot more detail on that.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Thank you.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Good morning. At this moment, we have 57 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Maryland, a 54% increase since yesterday, which is the largest one-day jump that our state has experienced so far.
There are now more than 130 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Washington region. Over the past few days, we have announced a number of unprecedented actions aimed at protecting the health and saving the lives of Maryland residents.
Today, once again, we have some additional important announcements. And I want to begin by addressing the upcoming April 28 elections in Maryland. I have two main priorities: Keeping Marylanders safe and protecting their constitutional right to vote.
Yesterday we announced that gatherings of more than 50 people are prohibited statewide, and it would endanger public health to allow thousands of people to assemble in places like schools and senior centers, which are already closed under the state of emergency. And it would put Marylanders at risk, especially the poll workers and election judges, most of whom are retirees and in the most vulnerable population.
Therefore, I am issuing a proclamation to postpone the April 28th primary to June 2, just as a number of other states have done and as other governors are expected to do later today or in the days ahead.
I am directing the State Board of Elections to develop a comprehensive plan by April 3 to conduct the primary election in a way that protects public health and preserves the integrity of the democratic process in our state.
For the sixth congressional district seat, which was vacated by the death of Congressman Elijah Cummings, it is imperative that the people of the seventh congressional district have a voice in the House of Representatives and that Maryland has a full delegation representing our state in Congress. After consulting with the State Board of Elections, we will be moving forward with the special general election. We believe that they are able to move forward with this special election to fill the Maryland seat. We’re directing the State Board of Elections to implement a vote-by-mail system for this particular election in the seventh district only, and we want them to do everything possible to ensure that this process moves forward in a fair and timely manner.
Free and fair elections are the very foundation of American democracy, and while there are many valid reasons for unease and uncertainty right now, ensuring that the voices of Maryland citizens are heard shouldn’t be one of them.
In addition, following this morning’s announcement that the Kentucky Derby will not be held in May for the first time in 75 years and will be postponed until Labor Day weekend, we have been in discussions with the Stronach Group regarding the second leg of the Triple Crown, the Preakness, to be sometime in September.
We are taking some proactive actions to maintain essential transportation services while also taking steps to limit the spread of COVID-19. All vehicle emissions inspection program sites will cease operations on inspections, and we have directed the Health Department and the Department of Transportation to immediately prepare to have them repurposed to be used as drive through coronavirus centers across the state.
We all saw the chaotic scenes at airports around the country last weekend. I am urging all Maryland citizens to avoid any unnecessary travel. At BWI Marshall Airport, we are taking immediate steps to increase social distancing and are urging anyone from entering the terminal unless they are a traveling passenger or reporting to a job. We are eliminating check in lines, changing the hours of operation to allow for deeper cleaning of the BWI Marshall terminal and allowing only for carryout options at airport restaurants.
The Maryland Transportation Authority will close all of its customer service centers, and we will immediately move to 100% cashless tolling statewide in order to reduce person-to-person interactions. Consistent with WMATA and metro and our neighbors in the region, we are reducing MARC Train service by 50%. Beginning tomorrow we will reduce all local bus, light rail, metro, and commuter bus services while continuing to prioritize and provide medical trips such as dialysis, chemotherapy, hospitals, clinic, and mental facilities.
We are reducing hours at the Motor Vehicle Administration and suspending all noncommercial driver’s license tests. And as chairman of the National Governors Association, on behalf of the nation’s governors, I have sent a letter to the President today requesting that the deadline for federal Real ID compliance be extended both here in Maryland and all across the country.
19 days ago, when I met with my full cabinet and held a press conference at the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, I said that all levels of government were working proactively and taking every possible precaution to respond to threats of public health. The state of Maryland has been operating under a state of emergency for nearly two weeks. We have the best team of people working around the clock to address this crisis. We will continue to keep you informed, and we will continue to do whatever is necessary to keep people safe, but we also need each and every one of our Maryland citizens to be a part of these efforts to help us flatten the curve.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the CDC and the White House issued new guidelines yesterday on what we should all do over the next 15 days to help slow the spread. If you feel sick, stay home, do not go to work, and contact your medical provider.
If your children are sick, keep them at home and contact your medical provider.
If someone in your household has tested positive, the entire household needs to remain home and contact your medical provider.
If you’re an older person, stay at home and away from people as much as possible.
And if you’re a person with a serious underlying health condition, stay home and stay away from other people.
At the same time, everyone should use common sense. Panic buying just increases person-to-person exposure. Instead of hoarding cleaning and hygiene products, share with your neighbors. All the stores are going to remain open. They’re all restocking the shelves. We’re not going to run out of those basic necessities. We’re all in this together, and it will take every one of us working together to keep people healthy and to save lives. I know that people all across our state, there’s a lot of anxiety out there and a lot of stress. Folks are worried about what lies ahead and how we’re going to get through this.
I remember five years ago after that devastating night of the riots in Baltimore City, and I immediately went to North and Penn to try to comfort the residents and to hug neighbors as they were sweeping out debris from their homes and small businesses. Despite all of that chaos and despite the uncertainty, and the fears and the doubts, we said that we would emerge from those days of fire. And we did. And the community came together. And that’s really what Marylanders are all about.
And now our entire state is facing another period of fear and doubt. And we’ve all seen the jarring images of empty streets in Italy and France. We’re all worried about our family members and our loved ones, about our communities and neighborhoods. But I want everybody in Maryland to know that if we continue to lead, we continue to work together, and if we rely on and help each other, we will get through this crisis.
With that, I’ll be happy to take a couple of questions.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Well, they should be reassured that we called up 2,200 members of the National Guard to try to protect and help keep safe the people in the community, including three units of medical professionals and people that are helping us with transport, people that are helping us transport all of the things from the National Stockpile. And this is a great thing. These are citizen soldiers who have stepped up to help the community. And, you know, it may look a little intimidating. We’re running a crisis in a state of emergency, and you’re going to see people in uniform. You’re going to see an increased police presence. You’re going to see National Guard air and soldiers who are going to be across the state. And they’re all here to help. They shouldn’t be intimidated by that; they should feel comfortable and thankful that they’re here to help us.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Yes, so the State Board of Elections contacted us last Wednesday and said they were concerned about being able to conduct the election. Things have changed dramatically since last Wednesday, obviously around the world, around the country, and the state of Maryland, where we now can’t go into senior centers and schools. That was the reason. They could not possibly do the mail in for the whole state. They told us they were incapable of getting that done in time. But we didn’t want to have people without representation for that long in that district, so we are asking them, and they can — this is a trial basis, never been done before, but on a small basis in one congressional district for that one vacancy, we’re going to ask the Board of Elections to conduct that election on time. We’re going to encourage people to vote absentee as much as possible, and those who aren’t doing their normal absentee ballot, you will do whatever additional steps they decide to take for mail in ballots.
The other remaining elections, as other states have done, will be postponed until June, which gives them plenty of time to prepare, to do it properly, based on whatever they think is the right thing, in consultation with the Health Department and everything else.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: They shouldn’t make too much of that because, in honesty, the number —
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Well, it’s a really good question that there’s no answer to. I can tell you that there’s quite a bit of frustration on the part of all of the governors that we don’t have answers to those questions.
And the first answer is no, we don’t have enough test kits and neither does any other state. And no, the federal government does not have an answer. And we are behind. And that’s going to continue to be a problem that we’re all trying to address. So we’re all trying to take decisions in our own states to ramp up whatever capabilities we can without the federal government, and we’re also trying to push the federal government to be able to speed up their response. We did get on certain things we got from the National Stockpile, some deliveries on certain things that we need. And I’ll let maybe the Health Department address. Fran Phillips can address some of these things in more detail a little bit later.
But no. Testing is a problem. The equipment, personal protective equipment, is a problem. And these are issues that we’re trying to address.
There were arguments back and forth yesterday about what the President said or didn’t say, what the federal government is doing or not doing. And I’m not here to finger point or to say who didn’t do what. We just all have to get this together, and we all have to work together to try to protect our citizens.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: So that’s a great question that we don’t have the answer to right now. There are not enough tests, and only the people that really have — that we need the test, need to get their test. Everybody is panicked. Everybody here would like to have a test, but we don’t want to overload the system.
Some states have opened up testing facilities with no ability whatsoever to do the test. They have drive throughs overloaded with thousands of people with no ability to do the test. We do not want to be in that kind of situation, so we’re working together to make sure we can get people tested but that we can actually get a result. We don’t want people lined up jamming in places to get a test that they can’t get or that we can’t process.
No, that’s changing on a daily basis, but maybe the Health Department can address that.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Yeah, well, maybe — I’m going to finish answering the question, but I’m going to let perhaps Dennis Schrader or Fran Phillips, both from the Health Department, address that.
But there are — look, we can make significant changes. You’ve seen — everybody has seen the news and different people talking about the curve and flattening the curve, which is the effort we’re doing with social distancing. If we do nothing, the numbers are catastrophic and the curve goes straight up like this and it overwhelms the healthcare system and we don’t have the acute beds to handle it and we don’t have the medical personnel to handle it or the emergency rooms to handle it.
If we do things, like closing the schools made a dramatic difference in that curve. The actions we took yesterday make a further dramatic difference in that curve. It doesn’t stop the virus. It’s not going to stop a lot of people from being infected. It’s not going to stop some people — unfortunately we’re going to lose some lives. But it will potentially stop hundreds of thousands of people from getting the disease and potentially save thousands of lives here in Maryland.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: So I think today hopefully, we were hoping for it last week or yesterday, but I hope today the legislature is going to pass the emergency legislation that will try to address some of the unemployment issues.
Congress, the House passed emergency legislation to deal with unemployment benefits. We need the Senate to do that hopefully immediately at the federal level. Our Department of Commerce and Department of Labor are working with their federal partners. There are going to be significant financial difficulties and hardships for people. And both the legislative leaders at the federal and state level are trying to address it. The executive branches and agencies are trying to address it.
But there’s no question, not only are we protecting the health and safety and lives of people, but we understand that their economic lives are being disrupted as well and we have to look at all the things we can do to help them.
FRAN PHILLIPS: What you just described is a way to distance. It’s a social distancing maneuver so that it doesn’t put the individual at risk or the healthcare worker who can effectively collect that specimen.
As the Governor said, we are developing plans right now, that’s with personnel, with the infrastructure, with all of the work that we need to put those clinics in place.
The problem is with the test equipment themselves.
FRAN PHILLIPS: So what we’re doing now is working across all the hospitals in the state as well as the commercial labs to understand exactly what their capabilities are to bring up volumes of testing such that we can support those kinds of drive throughs. We know that this is an issue that people are very concerned about, as well as their doctors. So we are developing that right now as we speak so we have the infrastructure ready as soon as we have the lab equipment capability to go forward with that.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Let me just add to that one. Ramping up the drive throughs is a relatively easy part. We can do that, but we don’t want to do it if we can’t get the lab capability, because we’re just giving false hope and creating chaos and crisis. It’s the back end of the house that needs to get up to speed with the testing availability and the labs being up to speed, because we can get a bunch of people to go through drive throughs probably tomorrow. But that would be a really bad idea if we are not able to do something with those.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: A number of states have tried it and failed miserably and shut them down after thousands of people crammed in there and they couldn’t get the tests done. So we don’t want to make the same mistakes that other states have made. So far I think the decisions we have made have been pretty good. And you know, I would like them opened yesterday, but all these smart folks said, we don’t want to do what happened in other states, where they crashed and failed.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: No, it’s now — maybe Fran can address this. It’s mostly community transmission and not travel overseas. Travel from Europe has been shut down. There’s very little travel coming in from other places. And I think most of our cases are now being passed from one person in our state to another person in our state.
FRAN PHILLIPS: Thank you. That’s a very good question, to make sure that testing when it does become available is available for everyone that needs it. And so that is the plan we are putting together would be absolutely without regard to ability to pay and without payers. There’s been a number of provisions that have been made by the Maryland Insurance Administration to reduce the cost burden, the out-of-pocket costs for individuals that do have insurance, and we absolutely are going to make sure that we take care of people without insurance, without that coverage.
FRAN PHILLIPS: Sure, sure. There’s been a lot of work here. My colleague, Dennis Schrader, has worked very closely with the hospitals and on some modeling projections in that regard.
DENNIS SCHRADER: Yeah, so we’ve got three or four models that we’re building to double check, because each model has got its variability. Yesterday the Governor mentioned that the worst-case scenario we’re planning for is about 6,000 beds. We’re working in collaboration with the Maryland Hospital Association. They’ve got a planning group that we’re working collaboratively with. But the most important thing is, through the Governor’s interventions, we’re looking for lower numbers than the worst case.
So we’ve got some planning numbers that are coming together over the next couple days. We’re working with the Hospital Association on targeted facilities. And over the next week, we’ll have a lot more detail on that.
DENNIS SCHRADER: All of the above.
KAREN SALMON: Right. Schools were asked yesterday — I’m having a call every other day with all the local superintendents, and they have submitted to me this morning their plans, if we need to have further closures, for continuity of instruction. I’ll be analyzing those plans today to make sure that they’re equitable across the state and finding out what additional state resources I might need to bring to some of the counties that are not able to do some of those things.
KAREN SALMON: Well, these two weeks were really giving our school systems time to plan and time to do what they need to do for the duration of this state emergency. And as I said, we’ll be working on those and we’ll be hopefully implementing some of those plans as soon as next week.
KAREN SALMON: We’re looking at many different models, and we’re going to be making those decisions in the next week or so.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Thank you.