GOVERNOR HOGAN: Good afternoon, everybody. Joining me today are Brigadier General Janeen Birckhead of the Maryland National Guard, Dr. Ted Delbridge, the executive director of the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems, and Dr. David Marcozzi from the University of Maryland Medical System, who serves as our senior medical adviser on COVID-19.
For nearly a year now in our battle against COVID-19 pandemic, our primary goals have been saving lives and keeping our hospitals from being overcrowded. Thanks to our early and aggressive actions, which we redoubled in response to the fall and winter surge, and thanks to the continued vigilance of Marylanders, we have seen significant improvements in all of our key statewide COVID-19 metrics.
Over the last 4 weeks the positivity rate has dropped by more than 46 percent to 5.08, which is the lowest since November 8th. The case rate per 100,000 has dropped by more than 60 percent to 20.9, the lowest since November 9. 20 of the state’s 24 jurisdictions have now dropped out of the red zone per cases per 100,000 as designated by the federal government. The case rate has dropped across all age groups, with Marylanders 65 and older, who are the primary focus of our current vaccination efforts showing the biggest drop over the last 4 weeks.
COVID hospitalizations have declined each week over the last 4 weeks and have dropped by 34 percent from nearly 2,000 to 1272, the lowest number of COVID hospitalizations since November 22nd.
This decline in hospitalization is consistent across all regions of the state. The 7-day average for deaths has decreased by 26 percent just over the last 2 weeks. And the number of nursing homes with active COVID cases has dropped to the lowest level since before Thanksgiving.
We are pushing back against this invisible enemy, and we’re making great progress. However, we need to remain cautious and vigilant as we continue doing all of the things that have helped us make that tremendous progress.
As a result of all these improved metrics, we’re able to take additional steps for our families who have been unable to visit their loved ones in hospitals and nursing homes and to try to provide them with some much-needed relief. In coordination with the Maryland Hospital Association, the Maryland Department of Health will be issuing orders to allow for limited visitation to resume at Maryland hospitals subject to the policies set by each facility.
In addition, state health officials will also issue guidance, which will provide for limited indoor visitation at Maryland nursing homes beginning March 1st, with proper testing protocols in place.
The state superintendent of education will give students the opportunity to get back into the classrooms in the coming weeks. Since that announcement, there has been a great response all across the state. As of today, 22 of our 24 county school systems have already begun in-person instruction or have agreed to do so by March 1st.
In addition to the guidance that state health officials provided last month, CDC officials will provide additional federal guidance this week, I believe tomorrow, on steps to get school systems safely reopened.
Similar to the Maryland Department of Health’s policy, the CDC does not require that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to return. However, here in Maryland, that process of vaccinating teachers is already underway.
Today we’re announcing additional support to promote and facilitate school reopenings. The Maryland Department of Health and the Maryland State Department of Education have offered to provide nearly 1 million COVID-19 tests to local school systems between now and the end of June. This testing program which will include both rapid antigen tests and full diagnostic testing will be available to any public or nonpublic schools that want to launch a testing program or that want to supplement an existing testing program.
We’re also offering an unlimited supply of PPE to all schools, and we are, in addition, distributing more than $1 billion in funding to help more children get safely back into the classrooms.
I want to commend all the teachers, parents, and health officials to do everything they can to get students the chance to get safely back into the classrooms.
Throughout this week I’ve been in daily discussions with White House officials about ways to get the federal government to provide us more vaccines to the states. On Tuesday I urged the Biden Administration officials to consider utilizing the Defense Production Act to get more pharmaceutical companies involved in manufacturing more vaccines. Yesterday I was part of a call with the executive committee of the National Governors Association. As a result of that discussion, today we are issuing a letter requesting that the federal government more closely coordinate with the individual states regarding the allocations that they are sending directly to pharmacies and other providers. Am.
In addition, yesterday Governor Northam, Mayor Bowser and I asked federal officials to take a more direct responsibility for vaccinating the hundreds of thousands of essential federal employees in the national capital region. And tomorrow I will be in the Oval Office with President Biden. Every state, every county, and every city in America is facing the exact same problem: We are simply not receiving enough vaccines to meet the demand.
Federal guidelines and our state policies currently make 2 million Marylanders eligible for vaccines. The state of Maryland only receives approximately 11,000 doses per day. Unfortunately, just because you may be eligible does not mean that a vaccine or an appointment for a vaccine is currently available to you. And we’ve been told by the federal government that this problem will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.
I know that this is extremely confusing and very frustrating for everyone involved, especially tens of thousands of our older residents who ask every day, why can’t I get an appointment scheduled. The fact is, they can’t schedule an appointment for a vaccine that does not yet exist.
The basic problem is pretty simple: We need more damn vaccines. If I needed to drain the entire rainy-day fund to buy enough vaccines for every eligible Marylander, I would do so today. Unfortunately, we have no control whatsoever over this supply problem. Only the federal government can buy the vaccines, and only the federal government can send us the vaccines.
What we can do and what we are doing every single day is rapidly scaling up the infrastructure to utilize every single dose that we are allocated. And to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
Six weeks ago Maryland providers were averaging about 3,000 shots per day. At the time, the state allocations were being deployed primarily to hospitals for their front-line healthcare workers and to 24 local Health Departments for them to vaccinate their own first responders and critical healthcare workers. The process was way too slow. To increase the pace of vaccinations, we deployed vaccines to more and more providers in every county. We stood up a special National Guard vaccination support teams, assigned Maryland Responds medical reserve personnel to county clinics. Clinics were set up in every nursing home in Maryland and at assisted living facilities all across the state, and every congregate living facility in the state.
Both the federal and state government began pilot programs to make pharmacies — make vaccines available in neighborhood pharmacies. We opened mass vaccination sites in central locations, and we dramatically expanded the provider and vaccinator network, which now includes not just 24 local Health Departments and 80 hospitals, but more than 2300 points of distribution. As a result, Maryland increased the number of vaccines administered by more than 770 percent over the past 6 weeks and is rapidly accelerating our daily vaccines administered from 3,000 a day to now averaging a record high 26,211 shots per day.
100 percent of all the doses allocated to the state of Maryland have already been distributed to providers, and 78 percent of all first doses received have already been administered. Most of the rest of them are already scheduled and spoken for.
As of today, Maryland has administered 785,170 vaccines to the 2.1 million Marylanders who are currently eligible. At this point we are simply waiting every week for more vaccines to arrive. Everyone who lives or works in a Maryland nursing home has been offered a vaccine. The clinics in most assisted living facilities are now complete. And clinics are currently underway in all the other independent living facilities across the state.
We are doing vaccinations currently at more than double the current supply that we are being given, and we have built an infrastructure that is able to administer anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 shots per day as soon as they’re made by the manufacturers and allocated to us by the federal government.
Following both the federal and state vaccination plans, we are continuing to broaden the distribution network to ensure as many points of access as possible in each and every county. Some leaders, local leaders, have indicated that they want us to go backwards and to simply give the 24 local Health Departments sort of a monopoly on all the doses. That is absurd, and it is simply not a realistic way to vaccinate millions of people all across the state.
While approximately 30 percent of each county’s total allocation is being done, does go to a local Health Department, approximately 70 percent of the doses in each county are being done by others at the other 2,000 distribution points, including hospitals, pharmacies, community health centers, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other congregate care settings in each of the counties.
This is what the state plan and the Biden Administration’s plan have always called for. Here’s just one example if you look on the screen here of how this works, how this growing network works to get more shots into more arms. 89,000 doses have been administered to Montgomery County residents across hundreds of points of distribution. 27 percent have been vaccinated by the local Health Department, and 73 percent have been done by others. So when you hear, which we’ve heard over the past week or so, county leaders say, we only get X number of doses for our county, it’s false. They’re actually referring to what their local Health Department received, not what their county has received. So we’re providing far more vaccines for every single county across way more providers.
The federal and state plans call for more points of distribution, not less. Of course we fully understand their frustration, because no state, no county, no local Health Department, no hospital or pharmacy has enough vaccines yet. And we do need far more vaccines for every single provider, from hospitals to pharmacies to local Health Departments. And we’re all in this together, and that’s what we’re all pushing for.
Another area where we agree with the local leaders is on their request for more certainty on the allocations with regard to the weekly allocations for their local county Health Departments. Earlier this week at the direct request, myself and the other governors, the CDC officials have now agreed to begin providing states with two-week allocation projections instead of one. Up until now, state health officials have had to wait until Thursday, Friday, and sometimes even Saturday night each week to know what we could allocate to anyone for the following week.
I now directed the Maryland Department of Health to provide county officials with four-week allocation projections so that they can plan ahead and can open up more appointments for their clinics. We will also continue to increase allocations to each county across all the providers in those counties, including pharmacies, hospitals, and local Health Department clinics, and others. As the vaccine supply increases. And those allocations will be made equitably based on the population of each county.
The 6 Flags and Baltimore Convention Center mass vaccination sites in their first week are on track to vaccinate more than 15,000 Marylanders, which is 100 percent of the doses they have been provided. Right now we can do thousands more per day at each of these sites immediately, just as soon as we receive allocation from the federal government.
Residents from 22 of the state’s 24 jurisdictions have already been vaccinated and/or scheduled for appointments for vaccinations at the state’s 6 Flags site in Prince George’s County.
At the same time, we also continue to prioritize appointment slots for eligible Prince George’s County residents, and we’re reaching out directly to preregistration lists provided by county officials, making thousands of calls and contacting them for these priority appointment slots.
Each week we set aside dedicated appointments for county residents to ensure access.
In partnership with the University of Maryland Medical System, the state’s mass vaccination site at M and T Bank Stadium will open two weeks from today on Thursday, February 25th. Appointments for the site will become available sometime next week. We are also finalizing additional mass vaccination sites in western Maryland, southern Maryland, and on the Eastern Shore, and we will be ready to open them next month as more vaccines become available to us from the federal government.
For updates on when appointments for mass vax sites will become available, I encourage Marylanders to text MDREADY to 898-211.
In addition, next week we will also be launching a statewide call center to assist Marylanders with making appointments for mass vaccination sites. You can also visit COVIDvax.maryland.gov to find more information for vaccination providers in your area.
Because the supply remains so limited, vaccinations can only be done by appointment. I caution that all appointments will continue to fill up very quickly. For example, the initial 10,000 appointments that we made available to members of the public at the 6 Flags site were all completely reserved within 20 minutes. We simply cannot schedule appointments for vaccines that we do not yet know that we will receive.
From the beginning we’ve been focused on ensuring equitable access to vaccines, especially for populations that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. In the interest of public health and transparency, Maryland was one of the first states in America to publish comprehensive racial data for COVID-19 vaccinations. It shows that one of the biggest problems facing us is significant vaccine reluctance and hesitancy in minority communities. As the state focuses on mass vaccination, we’re calling on county Health Departments who know their communities best to help us reach hard to reach areas and underserved populations. Brigadier General Janeen Birckhead has requested that each county appoint an equity officer to serve as a liaison to her in order to closely coordinate on equity initiatives. In addition, she and her task force, along with the equity officers appointed from each county, will all be working with local organizations and clinical partners to stand up local vaccinations and pop-up clinics to reach critical populations. Equity will be a constant focus for us at the state level in the weeks and months ahead, and we’re calling on local leaders across the state to also make this a top priority as well.
I want to wrap up by thanking all of our vaccinators who have been working around the clock to get those 785,000 shots into the arms of our most vulnerable, and I’ve had the opportunity to speak to many of them. I can assure you that they are just as anxious as I am to receive more vaccines so that they can accomplish even more.
On that front, there is some exciting news on the horizon. On Monday, I visited the Emergent BioSolutions facility in east Baltimore, where millions of doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, a single-dose vaccine, are already being manufactured. This vaccine candidate is currently under review by the FDA, and the federal government told us a couple of days ago that they anticipate that this should be approved by the end of this month. This could very well be a major breakthrough in terms of increasing the supply of vaccines, and we’re very proud that a Maryland company will be a part of that.
But even with this good news, this will continue to be a long process for many months before any of us have the amount of vaccine that we all need. We are fully prepared to allocate, deploy, distribute, and utilize every single dose that we are allocated, and I will not rest until a vaccine is available for every Marylander who wants one. We will continue to provide daily updates on the progress, and we urge Marylanders to please remain patient and to please take the vaccine as soon as one becomes available to you so that we can keep ourselves, our friends, and our communities safe and so we can finally bring this pandemic to an end. We are all in this together. We will get through this together.
At this time, Brigadier General Janeen Birckhead will provide an update on our vaccine equity task force.
BRIG GEN JANEEN BIRCKHEAD: Good afternoon. Thank you, Governor Hogan.
As you all know, I received my first dose of vaccine and will receive my second soon. As a personal story, it was not a foregone conclusion that my own mother would take the vaccine. After many conversations and continued information sharing, she’s decided to go for it. Like others in her age range and risk category, now she is waiting her turn. Thankfully I was able to overcome this distrust with transparency and education.
As I am a trusted voice for my mother, there are trusted voices in the community. Part of my task is to reach those trusted agents, give them a platform to provide pertinent information to friends, families, and loved ones. This is what the equity task force will be for people like my mom and for people like those families, a reliable source of information. In part that means sharing your personal stories with friends, neighbors, and families, but also I need leaders at the grassroots level to play a vital role. Faith leaders, elected officials, community organizers, and other social leaders have a huge part to play. They also are the people best situated to know where the vaccine is getting and where it isn’t, and I look to them to help me solve that problem.
I want to especially thank the local Health Departments for working tirelessly on the vaccine effort, because I know they know their communities best. The equity task force will only add, support, and amplify their efforts. This is an all-hands-on-deck response, and we are actively engaged. The vaccine equity task force is here to make sure every Marylander knows the facts and facility the opportunity for vaccination in underserved communities, vulnerable communities, and at-risk groups. Equity matters. With targeted investments in education, outreach, vaccine locations, we can mitigate the impact of inequality of the vaccine and what we’re seeing in the uptick of vaccine. The equity task force is energized and engaged, and we’re looking forward to working with you and your community.
I will be followed by Dr. Delbridge. Thank you.
DELBRIDGE: Good afternoon. Thank you both for your leadership. I’m going to change gears a little bit.
Last fall we helped hospitals prepare for a surge. Today, we are optimism that we have weathered the most recent phase of the storm. It’s been all hands on deck. We’ve represented the efforts of all aspects of governments, healthcare systems, hospitals, front line workers of all sorts, and to be certain, the general public. Hospitals exercise creative innovation to care for as many patients as they safely could. We maintained increased capacities at care sites in partnerships with hospitals in Takoma Park, Laurel, and the Baltimore Convention Center field hospital. Working with every single respiratory care in Maryland, we have credentialed more than 1300 nursing and respiratory care students, many who are remaining on deck and ready to help. We split up the critical care coordination center to match the intensive care needs of patients with available resources throughout Maryland. Nearly 600 people have been helped.
As of this morning, as Governor Hogan mentioned, we have over 1,000 patients in Maryland hospitals. As other indicators improve, we are optimistic that hospitalizations will do so as well. Improvements in the care of COVID-19 patients mean fewer patients in intensive care. Less than 25 percent of hospitalized patients required ICU care now compared with over 40 percent in the spring. We are by no means out of the fire. We have quite a way to go. However, we are optimistic that COVID-19 hospitalizations will continue to improve in the near term, and that’s a good news story. We also remain vigilant with no plan to stand down.
Finally, hospitals and emergency departments are busy doing the work they always do. However, they remain, as always, to care for other people as well. Do not ignore important systems like chest pain, shortness of breath, or sudden weakness. These can be signs of serious problems that deserve prompt attention. Thank you.
With that, I’ll turn it over to Dr. David Marcozzi for the University of Maryland Medical System and adviser to the Governor.
MARCOZZI: Governor Hogan, fellow Marylanders, good afternoon. Just over 1 year ago, although it seems much longer to many of us, our country declared a public health emergency due to the coronavirus outbreak. Within this time, the U.S. has realized over 27 million positive COVID-19 cases and 486,000 deaths. Staggering numbers.
Since the start of this pandemic, we have weathered personal protective equipment shortages, testing shortages, school closures, surging patients needing hospitalization, and holidays without friends or family members.
Importantly, though, also within this past year we have and continue to persevere during challenging times. We learned how to protect ourselves and show respect for each other by wearing masks to prevent the spread of this virus. I realize that we are all in this together. We have stayed connect to ensure that no one feels alone during these anxiety-provoking times.
Finally, within this past year, vaccines have been developed and are now being administered to protect us against COVID-19. The step the Governor announced today to allow for increased hospital and long-term care visitations is an important one. The restricted visitation policies put in place previously were necessary to protect patients, families, and hospital staff due to our limited understanding of the evolving COVID-19 threat, but we’ve always recognized this is yet another stressor on someone who needs hospitalization. All of us are keenly aware from hospital admission to discharge, family members and care partners are a critical component to a patient’s recovery. Understanding this, if long-term care facilities and hospitals are let to relax visitation policies, facilities must confirm that personal protective equipment supplies are sufficient and robust infection control practices are in place to assure continued safety of patients, staff, and visitors while embracing a holistic approach to a patient’s healing.
I would like to briefly address two questions that have been noteworthy recently. The first one is there the Johnson and Johnson vaccine protect me like the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines do. First, we should all be excited for the potential of another vaccine. The more vaccines available, the more quickly we can all get vaccinated. All of the COVID-19s, including the J and J vaccine submitted to Emergency Use Authorization on February 4th, have proven to be effective and safe, and they prevent hospitalizations and death. Specifically in the United States, the J and J vaccine was shown to be 72 percent effective against both moderate and severe COVID-19 infections and provided 100 percent protection against hospitalizations and death 28 days from vaccination. This is truly good news.
What is unique about the J and J vaccine is that it can be stored at normal refrigeration temperatures, which means that it will allow for more opportunities for additional vaccine administration locations. The side effects of the J and J vaccine are similar to the others, and include site injection pain, fatigue, muscle pain, joint pain, and on occasion fever. These side effects are a sign that our immune systems are kicking into gear, and they are normal and should be expected after vaccination.
If this vaccine receives approval, it will be a significant step forward and enable more of us to be protected against COVID-19.
That said, the chance is never zero that you won’t get COVID-19 after being vaccinated. But all of the vaccines, Pfizer, Moderna, and hopefully J and J, will reduce the severity of symptoms and prevent both the need for hospitalization and most importantly they will prevent deaths.
The second question that may need clarity is around masking. Should I continue to wear a mask after I am vaccinated? Do I need to take other precautions? And what about this double masking that I’m hearing about?
Yes, we will all still need to wear masks after vaccination until the majority of us are vaccinated. I know this may seem counterintuitive, but here is the reality: The vaccine will protect you from getting sick, but you could still spread it to those who might become sick who have not been vaccinated. This is even more important as we continue to see new variants that are perhaps more transmissible than the original strain.
Yesterday the CDC released new masking guidance based on a series of experiments they conducted. It can be confusing, but the bottom line is this: The transmission of this virus is decreased when we wear well-fitting masks with multiple layers. To make sure you’re masking properly, follow these simple steps. First, check your fit. Make sure your mask covers your nose and mouth and should have no gaping sides.
Two, if your mask doesn’t fit, consider folding in the sides, knotting in the ear to allow a snug fit, or layering on a second mask to increase protection. There are other instructions on the CDC website in this regard.
Make sure you’re always fitted with a proper mask and those around are you fitted with a proper mask is also important. It has been a challenging year, and the challenge isn’t over. I would like to pause and thank our state’s healthcare and essential workers who tirelessly and courageously kept going. It is because of them that we were all able to keep going.
Thank you to the teachers who adapted and figured out how to best educate our children during the pandemic. Thank you to the business owners who realized the seriousness of this threat and saved lives by modifying their operational models.
This virus continues to change and try to get the upper hand on us, but our collective actions, all of us, are making a difference.
Governor?
GOVERNOR HOGAN: With that, we would be happy to take some questions.
(Question off mic).
Yeah, look, we were very pleased that the RELIEF Act passed unanimously in the Senate. We’ve been talking with the presiding officers for more than a month about this. This is emergency legislation that is desperately needed to put money in the pockets of individuals and small businesses that are in need, and we’ve been working in good faith with both the House and the Senate on our shared priorities, and we were prepared to sign that bill into law so we could start sending things out.
We just heard today out of nowhere that the House is proposing something which I haven’t even heard the details of yet. But I can just assure you that any attempts at delay will prevent the desperately needed relief from getting out to Marylanders. And it’s unfortunate. We hope that together with the Senate we can talk some sense into the House, but we look forward to getting this historic RELIEF Act through. If the House has some other ideas about doing other things, perhaps they could do that with a separate piece of legislation.
(Question off mic).
Anything that they do to attempt to change the bill that’s already been passed unanimously by the Senate and been discussed by the speaker and Senate President and myself for a long time threatens the bill. Anything along those lines, they’re talking about $5 million out of a $1.7 billion package, they ought to just do that with separate legislation as it was yesterday before this latest monkey wrench.
(Question off mic).
I wasn’t on the call, but, you know, a former member fought this. I had a talk with the caucus this morning. Keeper said to them anything that jeopardizes this is going to harm all of the 400,000 low-income Marylanders who need the relief and threaten all of the small businesses that need help.
(Question off mic).
So we just got the invitation from the White House just this afternoon. I believe it’s going to be a couple of governors and perhaps a couple of mayors. It’s a small group that will be in the Oval Office.
I think that the President mainly wants to talk about the RELIEF Act, which we’re obviously very interested in. They’ve been pressing all these other issues about the vaccines as well so I’m hoping to be able to talk about that as well.
(Question off mic).
People are going to continue to struggle to get an appointment, as we’ve said over and over and over again at probably the last eight press conferences. You can’t schedule an appointment if we don’t have the vaccine, it doesn’t matter what website you use. We won’t schedule something we don’t have. It doesn’t matter how you address that. It won’t fix the problem until we get the supply. People have to make their own decisions about their own healthcare and based on their own situation how they want to go about it, but this is the way, other than I think three or four other states, very small states, about the size of Montgomery County or smaller, those states have one central place. The risk of we run is one central point of failure where millions of people try to get on one website and crash it when there are no appointments and vaccines to schedule.
So it seems to work well. It is not working well enough because we don’t have enough vaccines to schedule. But 770 percent increase tells me we’re on the right track.
(Question off mic).
That would be absolutely wrong and we would like to know the specifics of that. If someone is not qualified, they’re not qualified. If they’re not eligible, they should not be receiving a vaccine.
(Question off mic).
No, no, no. We’ve asked all the hospitals to expand their provisions to everyone that’s in level 1A, B, and C. 2.1 million people are part of the distribution. Vaccines all across the communities for anybody in those three categories.
(Question off mic).
I know that a part of it is the scheduling. I don’t know what Hopkins is doing or what you’re referring to. I just know what the state policy is. If somebody is doing something against state policy or vaccinating people who are not eligible, I’m sure the state Health Department will take action against them. But they are trying their best to expand and doing partnerships with the local county governments, with the state, on standing up additional over 2,000 distribution points. The hospitals are a big part of that. Some of the local vaccination sites in Baltimore City, partnering with hospitals. Johns Hopkins are standing up at the Baltimore Convention Center, M&T Stadium, they are doing a lot of things in the community but I don’t know the specifics. But nobody should be jumping the line for any reason.
(Question off mic).
There’s no question about that. That’s why all the steps we’re taking, the appointment of General Birckhead, the reason why our first testing site was in PG County and our first statewide vaccination site is in PG County, it’s the first place we’ve sent the National Guard in to assist the county. We’ll be there tomorrow at pop up clinics in conjunction with the hospital. We’re engaging Prince George’s leaders in the process, as the General touched on. We’re doing a major public information campaign to encourage folks.
But let me give you an example of the problem we’re talking about with the reluctancy. Prior to the opening of the Prince George’s County site, we went there and said, our goal is to get you caught up. They’re in last place on getting the vaccines into arms. They had a huge supply sitting on the shelf so to speak in the freezer. We want to help them do that. The County Executive said to me, we really have a hard time convincing people to take the vaccine. You were with me when both the County Executive and I were in District Heights inside the beltway at Giant foods talking to people in the parking lot. And many Black residents of PG County said, we don’t want the vaccine. A lot of reluctance. We’re working on all of those issues.
We’re going to do everything we can to continue to support Prince George’s.
We set aside just for PG County and said, you guys are backed up, how can we help. Days of asking them, they finally provided us with a list of 2,000 names that had preregistered somewhere. We hired contractors at the state level to call them all three or four times over several days, made 6,000 some calls. Only 19 people registered for an appointment.
Since then I think we’re now doing outreach to a broader group. We’ve made 6,000 calls in a day, collectively trying to convince people. As more vaccines became available, we only sent emails to the Prince George’s County list, only. No one else anywhere. Very few people accepted it but they did forward those emails to others outside the county who immediately filled them up.
We’re trying to attack this from every direction. It is a critical priority for us. We’re having similar issues in Baltimore City and Charles County and it’s why we’re talking about mass vaccination sites in all those counties and why it’s the focus of our efforts to get the counties involved in the equity task force.
(Question off mic).
Let me just say, other than watching the coverage on the news, can I tell you a story particularly? If these allegations are true, it’s outrageous. I know that the IG did an extensive look into it. I believe this is — although we don’t know, but it sounds like something the state prosecutor probably has jurisdiction over and may take up. They might have to take a look at the situation, because I don’t see the state’s attorney prosecuting the state’s attorney.
SPEAKER: Last question.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: We do that every day. It’s not complete, because let me give you an example. The federal government on their own decided to send some undisclosed number of doses out to their pharmacy program but didn’t tell us how many or to where. We have two metrics. One is the one that we have directed, like I told you, in the Montgomery County, a couple hundred sites and what percentage. Those numbers come out every day.
We’ve had meetings and discussions with the Maryland Association of Counties. I’ve had personal discussions with four or five county executives. All the information is available. We don’t have all of it because there’s other things outside of our control happening in those counties, but we do know public information, put on a website, we can provide you any additional information you want, but we’ve just been gathering it recently because it’s scattered all over the place. Hospitals, for example, big hospital systems allocated to them, they make this determination about which of their hospitals and where to send them. We tracked down how many of those went into Montgomery County hospitals versus Baltimore City hospitals.
I think it will get refined and even more detailed and probably more accurate as we move forward, but we know pretty rough numbers. Like we had a number of people vaccinated in Montgomery County and who did them. Who has how many left in the freezer is something that’s changing every day or every hour. It’s a little harder to track, but we’re trying our best to do that.
Another thing that we don’t have any control over is the Department of Defense are allocated some amount of doses. We don’t know how many. And they’re doing their own vaccinations of Marylanders in other states. We’re trying to get that clarity from the feds. I said earlier that we asked the federal government to get involved in vaccinating their own federal workers in the region. The NIH and the FDA are major facilities here in our state, critical healthcare workers who don’t have vaccines and they’re begging the state for vaccines. The top federal health agencies don’t have vaccines. When the county Health Departments say we don’t have any vaccines and we tell them, we don’t either, neither does the FDA or the NIH.
Thank you.
For nearly a year now in our battle against COVID-19 pandemic, our primary goals have been saving lives and keeping our hospitals from being overcrowded. Thanks to our early and aggressive actions, which we redoubled in response to the fall and winter surge, and thanks to the continued vigilance of Marylanders, we have seen significant improvements in all of our key statewide COVID-19 metrics.
Over the last 4 weeks the positivity rate has dropped by more than 46 percent to 5.08, which is the lowest since November 8th. The case rate per 100,000 has dropped by more than 60 percent to 20.9, the lowest since November 9. 20 of the state’s 24 jurisdictions have now dropped out of the red zone per cases per 100,000 as designated by the federal government. The case rate has dropped across all age groups, with Marylanders 65 and older, who are the primary focus of our current vaccination efforts showing the biggest drop over the last 4 weeks.
COVID hospitalizations have declined each week over the last 4 weeks and have dropped by 34 percent from nearly 2,000 to 1272, the lowest number of COVID hospitalizations since November 22nd.
This decline in hospitalization is consistent across all regions of the state. The 7-day average for deaths has decreased by 26 percent just over the last 2 weeks. And the number of nursing homes with active COVID cases has dropped to the lowest level since before Thanksgiving.
We are pushing back against this invisible enemy, and we’re making great progress. However, we need to remain cautious and vigilant as we continue doing all of the things that have helped us make that tremendous progress.
As a result of all these improved metrics, we’re able to take additional steps for our families who have been unable to visit their loved ones in hospitals and nursing homes and to try to provide them with some much-needed relief. In coordination with the Maryland Hospital Association, the Maryland Department of Health will be issuing orders to allow for limited visitation to resume at Maryland hospitals subject to the policies set by each facility.
In addition, state health officials will also issue guidance, which will provide for limited indoor visitation at Maryland nursing homes beginning March 1st, with proper testing protocols in place.
The state superintendent of education will give students the opportunity to get back into the classrooms in the coming weeks. Since that announcement, there has been a great response all across the state. As of today, 22 of our 24 county school systems have already begun in-person instruction or have agreed to do so by March 1st.
In addition to the guidance that state health officials provided last month, CDC officials will provide additional federal guidance this week, I believe tomorrow, on steps to get school systems safely reopened.
Similar to the Maryland Department of Health’s policy, the CDC does not require that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to return. However, here in Maryland, that process of vaccinating teachers is already underway.
Today we’re announcing additional support to promote and facilitate school reopenings. The Maryland Department of Health and the Maryland State Department of Education have offered to provide nearly 1 million COVID-19 tests to local school systems between now and the end of June. This testing program which will include both rapid antigen tests and full diagnostic testing will be available to any public or nonpublic schools that want to launch a testing program or that want to supplement an existing testing program.
We’re also offering an unlimited supply of PPE to all schools, and we are, in addition, distributing more than $1 billion in funding to help more children get safely back into the classrooms.
I want to commend all the teachers, parents, and health officials to do everything they can to get students the chance to get safely back into the classrooms.
Throughout this week I’ve been in daily discussions with White House officials about ways to get the federal government to provide us more vaccines to the states. On Tuesday I urged the Biden Administration officials to consider utilizing the Defense Production Act to get more pharmaceutical companies involved in manufacturing more vaccines. Yesterday I was part of a call with the executive committee of the National Governors Association. As a result of that discussion, today we are issuing a letter requesting that the federal government more closely coordinate with the individual states regarding the allocations that they are sending directly to pharmacies and other providers. Am.
In addition, yesterday Governor Northam, Mayor Bowser and I asked federal officials to take a more direct responsibility for vaccinating the hundreds of thousands of essential federal employees in the national capital region. And tomorrow I will be in the Oval Office with President Biden. Every state, every county, and every city in America is facing the exact same problem: We are simply not receiving enough vaccines to meet the demand.
Federal guidelines and our state policies currently make 2 million Marylanders eligible for vaccines. The state of Maryland only receives approximately 11,000 doses per day. Unfortunately, just because you may be eligible does not mean that a vaccine or an appointment for a vaccine is currently available to you. And we’ve been told by the federal government that this problem will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.
I know that this is extremely confusing and very frustrating for everyone involved, especially tens of thousands of our older residents who ask every day, why can’t I get an appointment scheduled. The fact is, they can’t schedule an appointment for a vaccine that does not yet exist.
The basic problem is pretty simple: We need more damn vaccines. If I needed to drain the entire rainy-day fund to buy enough vaccines for every eligible Marylander, I would do so today. Unfortunately, we have no control whatsoever over this supply problem. Only the federal government can buy the vaccines, and only the federal government can send us the vaccines.
What we can do and what we are doing every single day is rapidly scaling up the infrastructure to utilize every single dose that we are allocated. And to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
Six weeks ago Maryland providers were averaging about 3,000 shots per day. At the time, the state allocations were being deployed primarily to hospitals for their front-line healthcare workers and to 24 local Health Departments for them to vaccinate their own first responders and critical healthcare workers. The process was way too slow. To increase the pace of vaccinations, we deployed vaccines to more and more providers in every county. We stood up a special National Guard vaccination support teams, assigned Maryland Responds medical reserve personnel to county clinics. Clinics were set up in every nursing home in Maryland and at assisted living facilities all across the state, and every congregate living facility in the state.
Both the federal and state government began pilot programs to make pharmacies — make vaccines available in neighborhood pharmacies. We opened mass vaccination sites in central locations, and we dramatically expanded the provider and vaccinator network, which now includes not just 24 local Health Departments and 80 hospitals, but more than 2300 points of distribution. As a result, Maryland increased the number of vaccines administered by more than 770 percent over the past 6 weeks and is rapidly accelerating our daily vaccines administered from 3,000 a day to now averaging a record high 26,211 shots per day.
100 percent of all the doses allocated to the state of Maryland have already been distributed to providers, and 78 percent of all first doses received have already been administered. Most of the rest of them are already scheduled and spoken for.
As of today, Maryland has administered 785,170 vaccines to the 2.1 million Marylanders who are currently eligible. At this point we are simply waiting every week for more vaccines to arrive. Everyone who lives or works in a Maryland nursing home has been offered a vaccine. The clinics in most assisted living facilities are now complete. And clinics are currently underway in all the other independent living facilities across the state.
We are doing vaccinations currently at more than double the current supply that we are being given, and we have built an infrastructure that is able to administer anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 shots per day as soon as they’re made by the manufacturers and allocated to us by the federal government.
Following both the federal and state vaccination plans, we are continuing to broaden the distribution network to ensure as many points of access as possible in each and every county. Some leaders, local leaders, have indicated that they want us to go backwards and to simply give the 24 local Health Departments sort of a monopoly on all the doses. That is absurd, and it is simply not a realistic way to vaccinate millions of people all across the state.
While approximately 30 percent of each county’s total allocation is being done, does go to a local Health Department, approximately 70 percent of the doses in each county are being done by others at the other 2,000 distribution points, including hospitals, pharmacies, community health centers, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other congregate care settings in each of the counties.
This is what the state plan and the Biden Administration’s plan have always called for. Here’s just one example if you look on the screen here of how this works, how this growing network works to get more shots into more arms. 89,000 doses have been administered to Montgomery County residents across hundreds of points of distribution. 27 percent have been vaccinated by the local Health Department, and 73 percent have been done by others. So when you hear, which we’ve heard over the past week or so, county leaders say, we only get X number of doses for our county, it’s false. They’re actually referring to what their local Health Department received, not what their county has received. So we’re providing far more vaccines for every single county across way more providers.
The federal and state plans call for more points of distribution, not less. Of course we fully understand their frustration, because no state, no county, no local Health Department, no hospital or pharmacy has enough vaccines yet. And we do need far more vaccines for every single provider, from hospitals to pharmacies to local Health Departments. And we’re all in this together, and that’s what we’re all pushing for.
Another area where we agree with the local leaders is on their request for more certainty on the allocations with regard to the weekly allocations for their local county Health Departments. Earlier this week at the direct request, myself and the other governors, the CDC officials have now agreed to begin providing states with two-week allocation projections instead of one. Up until now, state health officials have had to wait until Thursday, Friday, and sometimes even Saturday night each week to know what we could allocate to anyone for the following week.
I now directed the Maryland Department of Health to provide county officials with four-week allocation projections so that they can plan ahead and can open up more appointments for their clinics. We will also continue to increase allocations to each county across all the providers in those counties, including pharmacies, hospitals, and local Health Department clinics, and others. As the vaccine supply increases. And those allocations will be made equitably based on the population of each county.
The 6 Flags and Baltimore Convention Center mass vaccination sites in their first week are on track to vaccinate more than 15,000 Marylanders, which is 100 percent of the doses they have been provided. Right now we can do thousands more per day at each of these sites immediately, just as soon as we receive allocation from the federal government.
Residents from 22 of the state’s 24 jurisdictions have already been vaccinated and/or scheduled for appointments for vaccinations at the state’s 6 Flags site in Prince George’s County.
At the same time, we also continue to prioritize appointment slots for eligible Prince George’s County residents, and we’re reaching out directly to preregistration lists provided by county officials, making thousands of calls and contacting them for these priority appointment slots.
Each week we set aside dedicated appointments for county residents to ensure access.
In partnership with the University of Maryland Medical System, the state’s mass vaccination site at M and T Bank Stadium will open two weeks from today on Thursday, February 25th. Appointments for the site will become available sometime next week. We are also finalizing additional mass vaccination sites in western Maryland, southern Maryland, and on the Eastern Shore, and we will be ready to open them next month as more vaccines become available to us from the federal government.
For updates on when appointments for mass vax sites will become available, I encourage Marylanders to text MDREADY to 898-211.
In addition, next week we will also be launching a statewide call center to assist Marylanders with making appointments for mass vaccination sites. You can also visit COVIDvax.maryland.gov to find more information for vaccination providers in your area.
Because the supply remains so limited, vaccinations can only be done by appointment. I caution that all appointments will continue to fill up very quickly. For example, the initial 10,000 appointments that we made available to members of the public at the 6 Flags site were all completely reserved within 20 minutes. We simply cannot schedule appointments for vaccines that we do not yet know that we will receive.
From the beginning we’ve been focused on ensuring equitable access to vaccines, especially for populations that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. In the interest of public health and transparency, Maryland was one of the first states in America to publish comprehensive racial data for COVID-19 vaccinations. It shows that one of the biggest problems facing us is significant vaccine reluctance and hesitancy in minority communities. As the state focuses on mass vaccination, we’re calling on county Health Departments who know their communities best to help us reach hard to reach areas and underserved populations. Brigadier General Janeen Birckhead has requested that each county appoint an equity officer to serve as a liaison to her in order to closely coordinate on equity initiatives. In addition, she and her task force, along with the equity officers appointed from each county, will all be working with local organizations and clinical partners to stand up local vaccinations and pop-up clinics to reach critical populations. Equity will be a constant focus for us at the state level in the weeks and months ahead, and we’re calling on local leaders across the state to also make this a top priority as well.
I want to wrap up by thanking all of our vaccinators who have been working around the clock to get those 785,000 shots into the arms of our most vulnerable, and I’ve had the opportunity to speak to many of them. I can assure you that they are just as anxious as I am to receive more vaccines so that they can accomplish even more.
On that front, there is some exciting news on the horizon. On Monday, I visited the Emergent BioSolutions facility in east Baltimore, where millions of doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, a single-dose vaccine, are already being manufactured. This vaccine candidate is currently under review by the FDA, and the federal government told us a couple of days ago that they anticipate that this should be approved by the end of this month. This could very well be a major breakthrough in terms of increasing the supply of vaccines, and we’re very proud that a Maryland company will be a part of that.
But even with this good news, this will continue to be a long process for many months before any of us have the amount of vaccine that we all need. We are fully prepared to allocate, deploy, distribute, and utilize every single dose that we are allocated, and I will not rest until a vaccine is available for every Marylander who wants one. We will continue to provide daily updates on the progress, and we urge Marylanders to please remain patient and to please take the vaccine as soon as one becomes available to you so that we can keep ourselves, our friends, and our communities safe and so we can finally bring this pandemic to an end. We are all in this together. We will get through this together.
At this time, Brigadier General Janeen Birckhead will provide an update on our vaccine equity task force.
BRIG GEN JANEEN BIRCKHEAD: Good afternoon. Thank you, Governor Hogan.
As you all know, I received my first dose of vaccine and will receive my second soon. As a personal story, it was not a foregone conclusion that my own mother would take the vaccine. After many conversations and continued information sharing, she’s decided to go for it. Like others in her age range and risk category, now she is waiting her turn. Thankfully I was able to overcome this distrust with transparency and education.
As I am a trusted voice for my mother, there are trusted voices in the community. Part of my task is to reach those trusted agents, give them a platform to provide pertinent information to friends, families, and loved ones. This is what the equity task force will be for people like my mom and for people like those families, a reliable source of information. In part that means sharing your personal stories with friends, neighbors, and families, but also I need leaders at the grassroots level to play a vital role. Faith leaders, elected officials, community organizers, and other social leaders have a huge part to play. They also are the people best situated to know where the vaccine is getting and where it isn’t, and I look to them to help me solve that problem.
I want to especially thank the local Health Departments for working tirelessly on the vaccine effort, because I know they know their communities best. The equity task force will only add, support, and amplify their efforts. This is an all-hands-on-deck response, and we are actively engaged. The vaccine equity task force is here to make sure every Marylander knows the facts and facility the opportunity for vaccination in underserved communities, vulnerable communities, and at-risk groups. Equity matters. With targeted investments in education, outreach, vaccine locations, we can mitigate the impact of inequality of the vaccine and what we’re seeing in the uptick of vaccine. The equity task force is energized and engaged, and we’re looking forward to working with you and your community.
I will be followed by Dr. Delbridge. Thank you.
DELBRIDGE: Good afternoon. Thank you both for your leadership. I’m going to change gears a little bit.
Last fall we helped hospitals prepare for a surge. Today, we are optimism that we have weathered the most recent phase of the storm. It’s been all hands on deck. We’ve represented the efforts of all aspects of governments, healthcare systems, hospitals, front line workers of all sorts, and to be certain, the general public. Hospitals exercise creative innovation to care for as many patients as they safely could. We maintained increased capacities at care sites in partnerships with hospitals in Takoma Park, Laurel, and the Baltimore Convention Center field hospital. Working with every single respiratory care in Maryland, we have credentialed more than 1300 nursing and respiratory care students, many who are remaining on deck and ready to help. We split up the critical care coordination center to match the intensive care needs of patients with available resources throughout Maryland. Nearly 600 people have been helped.
As of this morning, as Governor Hogan mentioned, we have over 1,000 patients in Maryland hospitals. As other indicators improve, we are optimistic that hospitalizations will do so as well. Improvements in the care of COVID-19 patients mean fewer patients in intensive care. Less than 25 percent of hospitalized patients required ICU care now compared with over 40 percent in the spring. We are by no means out of the fire. We have quite a way to go. However, we are optimistic that COVID-19 hospitalizations will continue to improve in the near term, and that’s a good news story. We also remain vigilant with no plan to stand down.
Finally, hospitals and emergency departments are busy doing the work they always do. However, they remain, as always, to care for other people as well. Do not ignore important systems like chest pain, shortness of breath, or sudden weakness. These can be signs of serious problems that deserve prompt attention. Thank you.
With that, I’ll turn it over to Dr. David Marcozzi for the University of Maryland Medical System and adviser to the Governor.
MARCOZZI: Governor Hogan, fellow Marylanders, good afternoon. Just over 1 year ago, although it seems much longer to many of us, our country declared a public health emergency due to the coronavirus outbreak. Within this time, the U.S. has realized over 27 million positive COVID-19 cases and 486,000 deaths. Staggering numbers.
Since the start of this pandemic, we have weathered personal protective equipment shortages, testing shortages, school closures, surging patients needing hospitalization, and holidays without friends or family members.
Importantly, though, also within this past year we have and continue to persevere during challenging times. We learned how to protect ourselves and show respect for each other by wearing masks to prevent the spread of this virus. I realize that we are all in this together. We have stayed connect to ensure that no one feels alone during these anxiety-provoking times.
Finally, within this past year, vaccines have been developed and are now being administered to protect us against COVID-19. The step the Governor announced today to allow for increased hospital and long-term care visitations is an important one. The restricted visitation policies put in place previously were necessary to protect patients, families, and hospital staff due to our limited understanding of the evolving COVID-19 threat, but we’ve always recognized this is yet another stressor on someone who needs hospitalization. All of us are keenly aware from hospital admission to discharge, family members and care partners are a critical component to a patient’s recovery. Understanding this, if long-term care facilities and hospitals are let to relax visitation policies, facilities must confirm that personal protective equipment supplies are sufficient and robust infection control practices are in place to assure continued safety of patients, staff, and visitors while embracing a holistic approach to a patient’s healing.
I would like to briefly address two questions that have been noteworthy recently. The first one is there the Johnson and Johnson vaccine protect me like the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines do. First, we should all be excited for the potential of another vaccine. The more vaccines available, the more quickly we can all get vaccinated. All of the COVID-19s, including the J and J vaccine submitted to Emergency Use Authorization on February 4th, have proven to be effective and safe, and they prevent hospitalizations and death. Specifically in the United States, the J and J vaccine was shown to be 72 percent effective against both moderate and severe COVID-19 infections and provided 100 percent protection against hospitalizations and death 28 days from vaccination. This is truly good news.
What is unique about the J and J vaccine is that it can be stored at normal refrigeration temperatures, which means that it will allow for more opportunities for additional vaccine administration locations. The side effects of the J and J vaccine are similar to the others, and include site injection pain, fatigue, muscle pain, joint pain, and on occasion fever. These side effects are a sign that our immune systems are kicking into gear, and they are normal and should be expected after vaccination.
If this vaccine receives approval, it will be a significant step forward and enable more of us to be protected against COVID-19.
That said, the chance is never zero that you won’t get COVID-19 after being vaccinated. But all of the vaccines, Pfizer, Moderna, and hopefully J and J, will reduce the severity of symptoms and prevent both the need for hospitalization and most importantly they will prevent deaths.
The second question that may need clarity is around masking. Should I continue to wear a mask after I am vaccinated? Do I need to take other precautions? And what about this double masking that I’m hearing about?
Yes, we will all still need to wear masks after vaccination until the majority of us are vaccinated. I know this may seem counterintuitive, but here is the reality: The vaccine will protect you from getting sick, but you could still spread it to those who might become sick who have not been vaccinated. This is even more important as we continue to see new variants that are perhaps more transmissible than the original strain.
Yesterday the CDC released new masking guidance based on a series of experiments they conducted. It can be confusing, but the bottom line is this: The transmission of this virus is decreased when we wear well-fitting masks with multiple layers. To make sure you’re masking properly, follow these simple steps. First, check your fit. Make sure your mask covers your nose and mouth and should have no gaping sides.
Two, if your mask doesn’t fit, consider folding in the sides, knotting in the ear to allow a snug fit, or layering on a second mask to increase protection. There are other instructions on the CDC website in this regard.
Make sure you’re always fitted with a proper mask and those around are you fitted with a proper mask is also important. It has been a challenging year, and the challenge isn’t over. I would like to pause and thank our state’s healthcare and essential workers who tirelessly and courageously kept going. It is because of them that we were all able to keep going.
Thank you to the teachers who adapted and figured out how to best educate our children during the pandemic. Thank you to the business owners who realized the seriousness of this threat and saved lives by modifying their operational models.
This virus continues to change and try to get the upper hand on us, but our collective actions, all of us, are making a difference.
Governor?
GOVERNOR HOGAN: With that, we would be happy to take some questions.
(Question off mic).
Yeah, look, we were very pleased that the RELIEF Act passed unanimously in the Senate. We’ve been talking with the presiding officers for more than a month about this. This is emergency legislation that is desperately needed to put money in the pockets of individuals and small businesses that are in need, and we’ve been working in good faith with both the House and the Senate on our shared priorities, and we were prepared to sign that bill into law so we could start sending things out.
We just heard today out of nowhere that the House is proposing something which I haven’t even heard the details of yet. But I can just assure you that any attempts at delay will prevent the desperately needed relief from getting out to Marylanders. And it’s unfortunate. We hope that together with the Senate we can talk some sense into the House, but we look forward to getting this historic RELIEF Act through. If the House has some other ideas about doing other things, perhaps they could do that with a separate piece of legislation.
(Question off mic).
Anything that they do to attempt to change the bill that’s already been passed unanimously by the Senate and been discussed by the speaker and Senate President and myself for a long time threatens the bill. Anything along those lines, they’re talking about $5 million out of a $1.7 billion package, they ought to just do that with separate legislation as it was yesterday before this latest monkey wrench.
(Question off mic).
I wasn’t on the call, but, you know, a former member fought this. I had a talk with the caucus this morning. Keeper said to them anything that jeopardizes this is going to harm all of the 400,000 low-income Marylanders who need the relief and threaten all of the small businesses that need help.
(Question off mic).
So we just got the invitation from the White House just this afternoon. I believe it’s going to be a couple of governors and perhaps a couple of mayors. It’s a small group that will be in the Oval Office.
I think that the President mainly wants to talk about the RELIEF Act, which we’re obviously very interested in. They’ve been pressing all these other issues about the vaccines as well so I’m hoping to be able to talk about that as well.
(Question off mic).
People are going to continue to struggle to get an appointment, as we’ve said over and over and over again at probably the last eight press conferences. You can’t schedule an appointment if we don’t have the vaccine, it doesn’t matter what website you use. We won’t schedule something we don’t have. It doesn’t matter how you address that. It won’t fix the problem until we get the supply. People have to make their own decisions about their own healthcare and based on their own situation how they want to go about it, but this is the way, other than I think three or four other states, very small states, about the size of Montgomery County or smaller, those states have one central place. The risk of we run is one central point of failure where millions of people try to get on one website and crash it when there are no appointments and vaccines to schedule.
So it seems to work well. It is not working well enough because we don’t have enough vaccines to schedule. But 770 percent increase tells me we’re on the right track.
(Question off mic).
That would be absolutely wrong and we would like to know the specifics of that. If someone is not qualified, they’re not qualified. If they’re not eligible, they should not be receiving a vaccine.
(Question off mic).
No, no, no. We’ve asked all the hospitals to expand their provisions to everyone that’s in level 1A, B, and C. 2.1 million people are part of the distribution. Vaccines all across the communities for anybody in those three categories.
(Question off mic).
I know that a part of it is the scheduling. I don’t know what Hopkins is doing or what you’re referring to. I just know what the state policy is. If somebody is doing something against state policy or vaccinating people who are not eligible, I’m sure the state Health Department will take action against them. But they are trying their best to expand and doing partnerships with the local county governments, with the state, on standing up additional over 2,000 distribution points. The hospitals are a big part of that. Some of the local vaccination sites in Baltimore City, partnering with hospitals. Johns Hopkins are standing up at the Baltimore Convention Center, M&T Stadium, they are doing a lot of things in the community but I don’t know the specifics. But nobody should be jumping the line for any reason.
(Question off mic).
There’s no question about that. That’s why all the steps we’re taking, the appointment of General Birckhead, the reason why our first testing site was in PG County and our first statewide vaccination site is in PG County, it’s the first place we’ve sent the National Guard in to assist the county. We’ll be there tomorrow at pop up clinics in conjunction with the hospital. We’re engaging Prince George’s leaders in the process, as the General touched on. We’re doing a major public information campaign to encourage folks.
But let me give you an example of the problem we’re talking about with the reluctancy. Prior to the opening of the Prince George’s County site, we went there and said, our goal is to get you caught up. They’re in last place on getting the vaccines into arms. They had a huge supply sitting on the shelf so to speak in the freezer. We want to help them do that. The County Executive said to me, we really have a hard time convincing people to take the vaccine. You were with me when both the County Executive and I were in District Heights inside the beltway at Giant foods talking to people in the parking lot. And many Black residents of PG County said, we don’t want the vaccine. A lot of reluctance. We’re working on all of those issues.
We’re going to do everything we can to continue to support Prince George’s.
We set aside just for PG County and said, you guys are backed up, how can we help. Days of asking them, they finally provided us with a list of 2,000 names that had preregistered somewhere. We hired contractors at the state level to call them all three or four times over several days, made 6,000 some calls. Only 19 people registered for an appointment.
Since then I think we’re now doing outreach to a broader group. We’ve made 6,000 calls in a day, collectively trying to convince people. As more vaccines became available, we only sent emails to the Prince George’s County list, only. No one else anywhere. Very few people accepted it but they did forward those emails to others outside the county who immediately filled them up.
We’re trying to attack this from every direction. It is a critical priority for us. We’re having similar issues in Baltimore City and Charles County and it’s why we’re talking about mass vaccination sites in all those counties and why it’s the focus of our efforts to get the counties involved in the equity task force.
(Question off mic).
Let me just say, other than watching the coverage on the news, can I tell you a story particularly? If these allegations are true, it’s outrageous. I know that the IG did an extensive look into it. I believe this is — although we don’t know, but it sounds like something the state prosecutor probably has jurisdiction over and may take up. They might have to take a look at the situation, because I don’t see the state’s attorney prosecuting the state’s attorney.
SPEAKER: Last question.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: We do that every day. It’s not complete, because let me give you an example. The federal government on their own decided to send some undisclosed number of doses out to their pharmacy program but didn’t tell us how many or to where. We have two metrics. One is the one that we have directed, like I told you, in the Montgomery County, a couple hundred sites and what percentage. Those numbers come out every day.
We’ve had meetings and discussions with the Maryland Association of Counties. I’ve had personal discussions with four or five county executives. All the information is available. We don’t have all of it because there’s other things outside of our control happening in those counties, but we do know public information, put on a website, we can provide you any additional information you want, but we’ve just been gathering it recently because it’s scattered all over the place. Hospitals, for example, big hospital systems allocated to them, they make this determination about which of their hospitals and where to send them. We tracked down how many of those went into Montgomery County hospitals versus Baltimore City hospitals.
I think it will get refined and even more detailed and probably more accurate as we move forward, but we know pretty rough numbers. Like we had a number of people vaccinated in Montgomery County and who did them. Who has how many left in the freezer is something that’s changing every day or every hour. It’s a little harder to track, but we’re trying our best to do that.
Another thing that we don’t have any control over is the Department of Defense are allocated some amount of doses. We don’t know how many. And they’re doing their own vaccinations of Marylanders in other states. We’re trying to get that clarity from the feds. I said earlier that we asked the federal government to get involved in vaccinating their own federal workers in the region. The NIH and the FDA are major facilities here in our state, critical healthcare workers who don’t have vaccines and they’re begging the state for vaccines. The top federal health agencies don’t have vaccines. When the county Health Departments say we don’t have any vaccines and we tell them, we don’t either, neither does the FDA or the NIH.
Thank you.