SECRETARY SLATER: Good morning. Thank you all for being here in our newly renovated operations center. I think some of you have been in our operations center.
Before I bring him up, I do want to take a minute and talk about our transportation system. The Governor was here this morning. We were giving him an update on what our system looks like up through the storm we had to deal with yesterday. It was a pretty sticky and complex storm for us. Sunday weather was 60 plus degrees so, as predicted, the precipitation started as rain so it limited our ability, but it transitioned between 4:00-5:00 a.m. When it starts with rain, we can’t pretreat, which puts us at a disadvantage. But after 7:00 it started to really fall down, and then the storm intensified between 7:00-12:00. The heaviest snow fall was in Prince George’s County, Anne Arundel County, Charles and Calvert Counties. It was a pretty diverse set of impacts, about 4 and a half inches in Harford County up to 12 inches in Denton and La Plata.
The rate of the snow fall was a particular challenge for us. We had up to 2 inches per hour with one period of 8 inches of snow in 5 hours. With our plows running a loop, the snow came down as quickly as we could plow. We were dealing with refreeze and system impacts, but our patrols responded to almost 500 incidents, four times our normal average. MSP responded to 220 crashes and another 260 disabled vehicles and more than 1,000 calls for service across the board.
You know, making things more challenging was what we were dealing with in terms of the limitations with our pandemic and the traffic and the protocols that we have in place. Traffic volumes on Monday were about at or a little bit over our normal every day volumes. Greater incidents prevented us from getting out there as quickly as we could. But that heavy wet snow was taking trees down which resulted in utility lines coming down. Route 50 corridor was our most challenging spot for the day, so we were continuing to fight that. We were fully staffed and then our COVID protocols allowed us to spread out and get a little bit more of our private sector resources and move resources from across the state, so we will continue to fight that fight.
By evening rush hour, most roads were completely clear or had isolated coverage, but the sunlight came out around 9:00-10:00 this morning, which is really helping us. Just looking at where we sit today, about 95 percent of our statewide network is in overall pretty good condition. There are some icy conditions on some of the main line roads. At this time, temperatures — when temperatures are below 20 degrees, salt is not effective. So we have to mix it with other materials to be able to fight that ice, but we’re expecting pavement and air temperature to get above freezing by mid-day and we’ll continue the cleanup. The local roadways will continue to be a challenge as their resources are limited as well.
On the air side, we do have reduced passenger volumes at BWI Marshall. 44 percent of our departures yesterday were canceled due to the storm. That’s 160 delays across the board. Today we’re sitting at 115 cancellations, mainly with where they’re headed and where they’re coming from and 16 delays so far today. TSA is fully staffed and all of our runways are open.
On the transit side, our system is working at full capacity today. Our biggest issue is we don’t have the ability to use the articulated buses in icy conditions because they have rear wheel power and that doesn’t work on icy roads, so we have to pull those bigger ones out, but our supervisors are out limiting diversions and those types of things, but our MARC and light rail are operational.
MVA, we have several offices closed today. We’re not able to give driver skill tests in Baltimore City, Beltsville, Easton, Elkton, Glen Burnie, Largo, and White Oak today due to conditions, but the appointments are available and we’ll start working through them at the other locations.
At this point, I’ll be happy to take any questions at the end, but I would like to turn it over to Governor Hogan for our fight against COVID-19 pandemic.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Thank you. Good morning. Secretary Slater, thank you for that update and thank you for your incredible service to our state. You’ve been an invaluable member of our team. You’ve been an outstanding Secretary of Transportation and a big part of the reason we’ve had so much success in rebuilding Maryland’s infrastructure.
I also want to give a shoutout and thank all of the SHA crews who have been working around the clock to clear state highways from yesterday’s winter storm.
I’m now going to move on to the COVID-19 emergency.
Last summer we were able to transition from the crisis phase of the emergency to a more sustained ongoing long-term public health management response. But I warned back then that COVID and its variants were going to be with us in one form or another for the foreseeable future. Right now we are experiencing the winter surge that we anticipated together with the convergence of delta variant, the flu season, and the omicron variant, which has spread like wildfire throughout the country and around the world.
Our focus has been and continues to be on preventing hospitalizations and deaths. Today Maryland hit a record high of 3,057 COVID hospitalizations, which is an increase of more than 500 percent in the last 7 weeks, which is now overwhelming normal operations at hospitals.
Last month we established a surge operation center to optimize bed capacity to fully utilize the alternate care sites that we stood up early in the crisis and which we continued to keep in place. Health officials issued a directive requiring hospitals to undertake actions upon reaching certain thresholds. When they reached 1200 COVID hospitalizations, Maryland hospitals began efforts to reduce the scheduling of certain nonurgent medical procedures to open all staff to bed capacity.
When they surpassed 1500 hospitalizations, Maryland hospitals immediately implemented their detailed pandemic surge plans. We recently committed $100 million in emergency funding for Maryland hospitals and nursing homes to address urgent staffing needs. This included $50 million to stabilize hospital workforce and staffing needs and another $50 million for hospitals and for nursing homes to expand the availability of COVID-19 testing, treatments, and vaccines.
State health officials are now requiring all nursing homes experiencing an outbreak to offer COVID-19 therapeutic treatments for residents. We can’t manufacture doctors and nurses who don’t exist. We have continued to do everything we possibly can at the state level in order to help our hospitals withstand this surge and to save lives. From day one of the crisis, I have told it to you straight, and so the truth is that the next 4-6 weeks will be the most challenging time of the entire pandemic. Our newest projections as of today show that COVID hospitalizations could reach more than 5,000, which would be more than 250 percent higher than our previous peak of 1,952 last year.
While we are hoping for the best, we are actively preparing for the worst. Moments ago I issued a proclamation declaring a 30-day state of emergency to take urgent short-term actions to combat the current crisis. I have also enacted two new executive orders. The first gives Maryland’s health secretary the power to regulate hospital personnel, bed space, and supplies. It includes the ability to direct and expedite the transfer of patients between hospital facilities as necessary. This executive order allows the Maryland Department of Health the authority to establish additional alternate care facilities to assist hospitals and nursing homes in addressing staffing shortages. The executive order allows interstate reciprocity for healthcare licenses. It allows inactive healthcare practitioners to practice without needing to reinstate their expired licenses. And it authorizes graduate nurses to work at any healthcare facility to provide full nursing services. And the order allows for healthcare practitioners to practice outside the scope of their licenses.
The executive order also authorizes the Health Department to regulate elective medical procedures as necessary and to issue directives to control and monitor COVID-19 in nursing homes and similar congregate care facilities.
The second executive order authorizes additional steps to further augment our EMS workforce, which is on the front lines and also being overwhelmed with COVID patients. Today at my direction we are mobilizing 1,000 members of the Maryland National Guard to assist state and local health officials with the state’s emergency pandemic response. Approximately 250 members of the guard will be deployed to support COVID-19 testing sites across the state, including at hospitals and skilled nursing facilities and to assist with patient transport as needed.
Last week we opened two new state COVID-19 testing sites at the University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake in Bel Air and at Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis. These two sites are accepting walk ups with no appointment necessary and are open 7 days a week from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Today we are assigning additional National Guard soldiers to support operations at these state-run sites.
In addition, they will be assisting us in the opening of another 20 testing sites outside hospitals all across the state in order to meet the rapidly rising demand for testing and to divert people away from visiting hospital emergency rooms just to get COVID tests.
As I have been repeatedly saying over and over again, the single most important thing that you can do to protect yourself, your family, and your fellow Marylanders from this virus and its variants is to get fully vaccinated and to get a booster shot. Throughout all of 2021, nearly 75 percent of those who tested positive for COVID-19 in Maryland were people who had not been fully vaccinated. Nearly 84 percent of all our COVID hospitalizations for the entire year were people who were not fully vaccinated. And more than 84 percent of the more than 4,700 additional Marylanders who died from COVID-19 last year were not fully vaccinated. These are not opinions or judgments; these are undisputable facts. The vaccines are safe and effective, and they’re keeping people out of the hospital and saving lives.
Following the latest action from the FDA, the state of Maryland is now able to provide COVID-19 booster shots for children between the ages of 12-15. Maryland is also — Marylanders are also now eligible to get a booster five months after completing their primary doses of Pfizer or Moderna instead of having to wait until six months after being vaccinated.
Today I have a call with the White House right after this press conference, and today I am urging federal officials to consider shortening that time frame even further for vulnerable people, particularly those in nursing homes and congregate care facilities.
In November, Maryland health officials authorized providers across the state to immediately begin scheduling appointments, holding clinics, and vaccinating the 515,000 eligible 5-11-year-olds in Maryland. While 92 percent of all Maryland adults are vaccinated, to date 33 percent of the 5-11-year-olds in our state have been vaccinated. We all want to keep our schools safely open, because there’s absolutely no substitute for in-person learning, and one of the best ways to do that is to get more of our school-aged children vaccinated as soon as possible.
Yesterday we announced that face coverings are now required in all state government buildings in Maryland and to encourage booster shots amongst state employees, the state is now providing 2 hours of paid leave for any employee to get a booster. We’re urging other employers across the state to follow our lead by providing leave for vaccinations and for boosters and by strongly encouraging the wearing of masks or face coverings indoors.
Next to the vaccines, wearing masks is one of the best mitigation strategies that we have. Everyone got a little complacent and I think maybe thought that we were starting to get back to normal, but with this new surge of omicron, it’s important for Marylanders to get back to using common sense and to doing the things that kept us safe before: Avoiding crowds, keeping your distance, washing your hands, and, yes, wearing the damn masks.
All of the emergency actions that we’re taking today are to keep our hospitals from overflowing, keep our kids in school, and to keep Maryland open for business. And we will continue to take whatever actions are necessary in the very difficult days and weeks ahead. But we also need the federal government to take decisive action. Today I’m calling on the Biden Administration to take immediate actions to increase the distribution of monoclonal antibodies, which are very effective, lifesaving clinical treatments. Last month we began distributing 1 million at-home rapid tests through local Health Departments, and we are working on emergency procurements to acquire as many more as we possibly can. But there is a serious national shortage, and the federal government needs to immediately expedite the approval of additional rapid tests and to push to increase production and distribution to the states.
We’re also calling on the Biden Administration to increase and expedite production and allocation of the new COVID-19 anti-viral pills, which were recently authorized by the FDA and which are another much-needed tool to prevent serious illness and death.
Finally, today, as we enter the third calendar year of this global pandemic, I want to again take a moment to thank all of our amazing healthcare heroes who have faced immense, unprecedented, and never ending challenges. For the past 2 years these men and women have selflessly and tirelessly worked around the clock and have made countless sacrifices to keep Marylanders safe, to treat patients, and to save lives. If you have a chance, please take a moment to thank them and their families. These heroes truly are the definition of Maryland Strong, and our state owes them a tremendous debt of gratitude.
May God bless each and every one of them, and may God bless each and every one of you and your families as we stay Maryland Strong and as we continue to fight this battle together.
At this time I’m going to turn it over to Major General Timothy Gowen, Adjutant General of the Maryland National Guard, with an update of the deployment of the 1,000 members of the National Guard across the state. General?
MAJOR GENERAL GOWEN: Thank you, Governor Hogan.
Good morning. Over the past 2 years we have worked closely to support the Maryland Department of Health and other state agencies to help ensure a rapid and unified response to the COVID-19 pandemic. If one characteristic has epitomized the Maryland National Guard’s response to COVID-19, it is pivoting to meet the needs of the community as new challenge as rise. This activation is no different.
Last week 40 soldiers already on duty supporting the Vaccine Equity Task Force were promptly reassigned to support COVID-19 test sites at the University of Maryland upper Chesapeake medical center in Bel Air and at the Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis. As the Governor stated we’ll be activating up to 1,000 soldiers and airmen to assist state and local health officials with the state’s pandemic response. Expected missions include COVID-19 testing, supporting local hospitals and skilled nursing facilities, and assisting with nonlife threatening patient transport. For every mission, guard support will be tailored to meet the needs of each site. Mission details are still being worked with the Maryland Department of Health and local facilities.
Other efforts to combat the virus will continue the Vaccine Equity Task Force continues to increase vaccination rates across the state. I would like to thank the Governor for his continued faith in the National Guard and recognizing our partners for the tireless work to protect the public from this virus, of which our efforts are only a part. Our guards members are always ready to help our community. We are a community-based force made up of dedicated military professionals ready to answer the call when we are needed. This is what we do. This is why we serve.
I’ll be followed by Dr. Ted Delbridge of the Maryland institute of emergency medical services. Thank you.
DELBRIDGE: Governor Hogan, General, Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.
And good morning. I would like to provide a sense of the healthcare system first by reiterating what Governor Hogan said. We owe them a debt of gratitude, the thousands of people who go to work in Maryland every day with a clear focus to help others. Earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic we thought of them as heroes and signs and banners expressing our appreciation were abundant. Now more than ever, they need our outward show of support. While our healthcare still and the skilled and dedicated people who comprise it are resilient, they have been tested over recent weeks and will continue to be in the weeks to come.
Currently there are 3,006 adults with COVID-19 in Maryland hospitals, representing a 100 percent increase since December 22, or doubling. Our hospitals are struggling to deal with the numbers of sick people coming to them. Yesterday afternoon, more than 600 patients were waiting in emergency departments for their turn to be admitted to a hospital bed. Our emergency departments are as busy as they have ever been. In many cases they are being asked to provide care that could be more appropriately sought in other places. Nearly all of Maryland’s emergency departments are broadcasting a yellow alert, requesting that EMTs and paramedics take patients to other facilities. Of course that’s not hospital when every nearby facility is also requesting no new patients. To help, we have developed a dashboard that tells them where ambulances are at area hospitals and how long they have been there. That way they can work to avoid facilities where there’s been an influx of new patients and has significant delays. We have heard from our EMS system leaders throughout Maryland, congested emergency departments lead to delays of transferring care of patients resulting in less availability of resources in the communities they serve and longer response times to all emergencies. Yes in close contact with leaders to make certain the issue is getting appropriate attention.
In the past several days it’s been necessary for us to be more deliberate in advising EMS personnel to avoid specific emergency departments for limited periods, allowing them to catch up and regroup and help ensure that ambulances do not become sequestered.
If you have visited the healthcare system recently, you can appreciate how much pressure is on them. Nonurgent systems are delayed. Nine hospitals are operating under crisis standards of care and three others are poised to do so. That’s 25 percent of Maryland’s hospitals adjusting internal standards to meet the needs of their communities. They have redeployed staff to where they’re needed most, to provide some benefit to the greatest need patients, to care for sicker people than initially designed for. They also continue to move patients, especially those requiring intensive care. Critical care coordination center at MEMS, serving the most critical patients, experienced its busiest month in December. It served as one of the models for the nation for optimal care. With today’s announcement, we will move briskly to ensure we have engaged all those with knowledge, skills, and interest to contribute to the healthcare system. For example, students may be able to serve as clinical externs, providing assistance while gaining valuable experience. There are actions we can all take. First and foremost, if you have not been vaccinated for COVID-19, I urge you to reconsider. I can think of no greater testimonial than to tell people, I and my family have been vaccinated. I am not advocating anything I wouldn’t do myself. If you have been vaccinated, plan to get a booster. It’s incredibly disheartening to be on the front lines and know that much of the current situation is avoidable. Vaccinations are akin to wearing a seat belt. They might not prevent you from being injured in a crash, but it certainly reduces the severity in injuries and fatalities. In Maryland, you are more than 10 times as likely to be admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 and even more likely to require intensive care. It’s just plain sad. It takes a toll on our healthcare heroes.
Last year, when we had a surge, there was no flu. Wearing masks and washing hands prevented it. This year, flu cases are rising. The flu is more than a bad cold. It kills thousands of people each year and puts people in the hospital. Please plan to get a flu vaccine. Both the flu and COVID-19 vaccine are available at pharmacies throughout Maryland. There are times when people should go to an emergency department. Examples include chest pain in doesn’t resolve in a couple of minutes, shortness of breath, new difficulty talking or walking, abdominal pain that doesn’t go away, or any time there’s a concern that immediate help is needed. But there are other times when people should seek care from their primary care provider, serving the emergency departments for more serious problems. Some of those examples include to get a COVID-19 test. Don’t go to the emergency department. Instead, go to one of the many testing sites throughout Maryland. As we said, more are on the way. A useful resource is covidlink.maryland.gov.
Don’t go to the emergency department to verify an at-home rapid test. It’s not necessary. Rapid tests are reliable, especially if the test result matches the situation. There is no need to double check. For example, if you have a cough and fever and your test is positive, you have COVID-19. Stay home. To be evaluated because of a positive test, unless you are short of breath, most people can take care of themselves at home. If you are higher risk, touch base with your doctor. Also, many insurers provide access to telehealth, to get advice about leaving your homes.
We must, all of us, continue to do our parts for our own health, our families, and our neighbors. If you’re sick, stay home. Otherwise, wear a mask in public or crowded places. Wash your hands. Keep your distance. And please, get vaccinated. That’s the very best tool. Thank you very much.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Thank you, Dr. Delbridge.
With that, we’ll take some questions.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: The real focus is, as I said, keeping people out of the hospital and preventing deaths. We’re taking all of the steps that we believe are necessary right now. We are taking steps just about every single day and we will continue to take the ones that we believe are necessary, as we have throughout the entire crisis for the past 2 years.
SPEAKER: Why not a mask mandate?
GOVERNOR HOGAN: I’m not sure people refusing to wear masks will wear one anyway and we don’t have the ability to enforce it. We’re just strongly encouraging people to wear the damn mask but we don’t need a mandate without the people to enforce it.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Yes. Thank you for asking. I had a 10-day staycation in the basement of the Governor’s mansion. I got a lot of work done and continued to stay in touch with my team at the Governor’s office, participate in a lot of calls, and even did a press conference Zoom from my isolation.
You know, for me it was like a pretty bad cold, and that’s because I was fully vaccinated and boosted. I’m thankful for that, so I didn’t end up in the hospital or a bed like so many other folks have in Maryland. I was able to get the monoclonal antibody treatment early on in my illness, and I’m very happy to have had the chance to do that. I don’t know whether that — I didn’t feel any instant — it didn’t make me feel instantly better. I didn’t feel anything at all. But I didn’t get sicker. So I’m thankful for the opportunity. There’s a shortage now across the country with respect to these treatments that should be widely available and that’s one of the things we’ll be talking with the White House later today.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: We’ve been taking actions with the hospitals nearly every day, and we put out information, although we haven’t had a press conference about it, but we have press releases nearly every day and actions are taken. Dozens of actions with respect to hospitals to give them the flexibility they need. I think they have most of what they needed. There were some concerns about from a liability standpoint for some of the smaller hospitals that weren’t taking actions because they felt I should declare a statewide state of emergency. But it’s not like we just decided to take action today. We’ve been taking different actions every day. It’s now gotten to a point where we crossed over the 3,000 hospitalization mark today. Our projections are dramatically different than they were a week or two ago, so we decided to take further action.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Well, absolutely. I think kids need to be in school. We’ve all seen the incredible damage being caused by people doing remote learning for over a year. So I agree with the elected officials yesterday who came out in support of kids in school. We provided unlimited amounts of money and testing and the ability to provide vaccines for kids, and the kids are doing pretty well. I mean, we have some outbreaks in some schools, but for the most part they’re not nearly as bad as the general population. They may be safer in school than not being in school. And so we’re going to take every step we can to keep our kids safe and we want to encourage them to get vaccinated but we don’t think closing schools and sending kids home for virtual learning is the way to go.
(Question off mic).
MAJOR GENERAL GOWEN: I’ll answer your second question first. Yes. I can’t activate them unless they’re vaccinated. It’s a requirement.
The first question, our overall objective is to not — you know, we want to be additive to the community. So our overall objective is to not call up people who are (inaudible). However, I’m going to leave that to the chain of command to make the decisions, calling up units based on the size of this organization, and I’ll leave it up to the chain of command to make those types of decisions.
(Question off mic)
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Yeah, these are decisions that the local Health Department, the local school boards can make on their own. You know, I understand they’re trying to keep kids in school, and perhaps making sure that they do more testing which is one of the reasons we provided testing to the school systems and put so much money into the schools emergency funding but I don’t know the exact details about what each independent local school system is deciding.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: I’m sorry?
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: We have an unlimited I think amount of the things that work for the previous variant but not the one, the current omicron variant. That’s one of the things we’ll be discussing with the White House today. There’s a nationwide shortage. It’s not a Maryland shortage. And I’m hoping that that’s one of the things that the President might address today in addition to talking with us and some fellow governors right immediately after this press conference. I think he plans on saying something today about the crisis. And I hope he will address the shortage of monoclonal antibodies, and I would like to hear more about the half a billion home testing we’re going to send out across the country. We’ve heard no details about that.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Maybe I’ll turn that over to Dr. Chan or Secretary Schrader maybe. Yes, it’s changing. We still have the 8 percent of the folks in the state unvaccinated are making up the hospitalizations but that small percentage is almost half. The other 90 percent is making up the other 40 some percent. So there are some people who are vaccinated but not fully vaccinated that are in the hospital, which is why we stress booster.
SPEAKER: So the cohort is changing?
GOVERNOR HOGAN: It is. Omicron is overtaking delta. Luckily it’s not — we are getting more people in ICUs and hospitals because so many people are getting it, but it’s not as deadly. It’s just an overwhelming number. I don’t know if there’s anything the secretary wants to add to that.
SPEAKER: No, Governor, you said it very well. We are tracking the omicron variant. Delta is still there. Omicron is rising. We’re working with our sequencing and we’re using a technique called PCR S-Gene, a PCR test to allow us to know. But we are seeing omicron rising.
SPEAKER: The number of vaccinated people in hospitals?
SPEAKER: No. That number has been stable. As the Governor said, it’s still 70-80 percent. So if you are unvaccinated, you are the one most likely to be in the hospital, unfortunately. So that’s why we’re continuing to push vaccinations.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Yeah. So I might have misstated that, but it is changing dramatically from all delta to nearly half and half at this point. But it’s not changing so much with respect to vaccinated versus unvaccinated.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Those are things that we’re obviously, we’ve been discussing for 2 years now, or vaccines for more than a year, and we’ll continue to talk about every day. Right now today we took a huge number of steps last week and the week before, over the past 30 days. These are the ones we’re going to take today. I can’t say what we may or may not do at any point in the future but right now we think this is the appropriate action.
Thank you.
Before I bring him up, I do want to take a minute and talk about our transportation system. The Governor was here this morning. We were giving him an update on what our system looks like up through the storm we had to deal with yesterday. It was a pretty sticky and complex storm for us. Sunday weather was 60 plus degrees so, as predicted, the precipitation started as rain so it limited our ability, but it transitioned between 4:00-5:00 a.m. When it starts with rain, we can’t pretreat, which puts us at a disadvantage. But after 7:00 it started to really fall down, and then the storm intensified between 7:00-12:00. The heaviest snow fall was in Prince George’s County, Anne Arundel County, Charles and Calvert Counties. It was a pretty diverse set of impacts, about 4 and a half inches in Harford County up to 12 inches in Denton and La Plata.
The rate of the snow fall was a particular challenge for us. We had up to 2 inches per hour with one period of 8 inches of snow in 5 hours. With our plows running a loop, the snow came down as quickly as we could plow. We were dealing with refreeze and system impacts, but our patrols responded to almost 500 incidents, four times our normal average. MSP responded to 220 crashes and another 260 disabled vehicles and more than 1,000 calls for service across the board.
You know, making things more challenging was what we were dealing with in terms of the limitations with our pandemic and the traffic and the protocols that we have in place. Traffic volumes on Monday were about at or a little bit over our normal every day volumes. Greater incidents prevented us from getting out there as quickly as we could. But that heavy wet snow was taking trees down which resulted in utility lines coming down. Route 50 corridor was our most challenging spot for the day, so we were continuing to fight that. We were fully staffed and then our COVID protocols allowed us to spread out and get a little bit more of our private sector resources and move resources from across the state, so we will continue to fight that fight.
By evening rush hour, most roads were completely clear or had isolated coverage, but the sunlight came out around 9:00-10:00 this morning, which is really helping us. Just looking at where we sit today, about 95 percent of our statewide network is in overall pretty good condition. There are some icy conditions on some of the main line roads. At this time, temperatures — when temperatures are below 20 degrees, salt is not effective. So we have to mix it with other materials to be able to fight that ice, but we’re expecting pavement and air temperature to get above freezing by mid-day and we’ll continue the cleanup. The local roadways will continue to be a challenge as their resources are limited as well.
On the air side, we do have reduced passenger volumes at BWI Marshall. 44 percent of our departures yesterday were canceled due to the storm. That’s 160 delays across the board. Today we’re sitting at 115 cancellations, mainly with where they’re headed and where they’re coming from and 16 delays so far today. TSA is fully staffed and all of our runways are open.
On the transit side, our system is working at full capacity today. Our biggest issue is we don’t have the ability to use the articulated buses in icy conditions because they have rear wheel power and that doesn’t work on icy roads, so we have to pull those bigger ones out, but our supervisors are out limiting diversions and those types of things, but our MARC and light rail are operational.
MVA, we have several offices closed today. We’re not able to give driver skill tests in Baltimore City, Beltsville, Easton, Elkton, Glen Burnie, Largo, and White Oak today due to conditions, but the appointments are available and we’ll start working through them at the other locations.
At this point, I’ll be happy to take any questions at the end, but I would like to turn it over to Governor Hogan for our fight against COVID-19 pandemic.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Thank you. Good morning. Secretary Slater, thank you for that update and thank you for your incredible service to our state. You’ve been an invaluable member of our team. You’ve been an outstanding Secretary of Transportation and a big part of the reason we’ve had so much success in rebuilding Maryland’s infrastructure.
I also want to give a shoutout and thank all of the SHA crews who have been working around the clock to clear state highways from yesterday’s winter storm.
I’m now going to move on to the COVID-19 emergency.
Last summer we were able to transition from the crisis phase of the emergency to a more sustained ongoing long-term public health management response. But I warned back then that COVID and its variants were going to be with us in one form or another for the foreseeable future. Right now we are experiencing the winter surge that we anticipated together with the convergence of delta variant, the flu season, and the omicron variant, which has spread like wildfire throughout the country and around the world.
Our focus has been and continues to be on preventing hospitalizations and deaths. Today Maryland hit a record high of 3,057 COVID hospitalizations, which is an increase of more than 500 percent in the last 7 weeks, which is now overwhelming normal operations at hospitals.
Last month we established a surge operation center to optimize bed capacity to fully utilize the alternate care sites that we stood up early in the crisis and which we continued to keep in place. Health officials issued a directive requiring hospitals to undertake actions upon reaching certain thresholds. When they reached 1200 COVID hospitalizations, Maryland hospitals began efforts to reduce the scheduling of certain nonurgent medical procedures to open all staff to bed capacity.
When they surpassed 1500 hospitalizations, Maryland hospitals immediately implemented their detailed pandemic surge plans. We recently committed $100 million in emergency funding for Maryland hospitals and nursing homes to address urgent staffing needs. This included $50 million to stabilize hospital workforce and staffing needs and another $50 million for hospitals and for nursing homes to expand the availability of COVID-19 testing, treatments, and vaccines.
State health officials are now requiring all nursing homes experiencing an outbreak to offer COVID-19 therapeutic treatments for residents. We can’t manufacture doctors and nurses who don’t exist. We have continued to do everything we possibly can at the state level in order to help our hospitals withstand this surge and to save lives. From day one of the crisis, I have told it to you straight, and so the truth is that the next 4-6 weeks will be the most challenging time of the entire pandemic. Our newest projections as of today show that COVID hospitalizations could reach more than 5,000, which would be more than 250 percent higher than our previous peak of 1,952 last year.
While we are hoping for the best, we are actively preparing for the worst. Moments ago I issued a proclamation declaring a 30-day state of emergency to take urgent short-term actions to combat the current crisis. I have also enacted two new executive orders. The first gives Maryland’s health secretary the power to regulate hospital personnel, bed space, and supplies. It includes the ability to direct and expedite the transfer of patients between hospital facilities as necessary. This executive order allows the Maryland Department of Health the authority to establish additional alternate care facilities to assist hospitals and nursing homes in addressing staffing shortages. The executive order allows interstate reciprocity for healthcare licenses. It allows inactive healthcare practitioners to practice without needing to reinstate their expired licenses. And it authorizes graduate nurses to work at any healthcare facility to provide full nursing services. And the order allows for healthcare practitioners to practice outside the scope of their licenses.
The executive order also authorizes the Health Department to regulate elective medical procedures as necessary and to issue directives to control and monitor COVID-19 in nursing homes and similar congregate care facilities.
The second executive order authorizes additional steps to further augment our EMS workforce, which is on the front lines and also being overwhelmed with COVID patients. Today at my direction we are mobilizing 1,000 members of the Maryland National Guard to assist state and local health officials with the state’s emergency pandemic response. Approximately 250 members of the guard will be deployed to support COVID-19 testing sites across the state, including at hospitals and skilled nursing facilities and to assist with patient transport as needed.
Last week we opened two new state COVID-19 testing sites at the University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake in Bel Air and at Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis. These two sites are accepting walk ups with no appointment necessary and are open 7 days a week from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Today we are assigning additional National Guard soldiers to support operations at these state-run sites.
In addition, they will be assisting us in the opening of another 20 testing sites outside hospitals all across the state in order to meet the rapidly rising demand for testing and to divert people away from visiting hospital emergency rooms just to get COVID tests.
As I have been repeatedly saying over and over again, the single most important thing that you can do to protect yourself, your family, and your fellow Marylanders from this virus and its variants is to get fully vaccinated and to get a booster shot. Throughout all of 2021, nearly 75 percent of those who tested positive for COVID-19 in Maryland were people who had not been fully vaccinated. Nearly 84 percent of all our COVID hospitalizations for the entire year were people who were not fully vaccinated. And more than 84 percent of the more than 4,700 additional Marylanders who died from COVID-19 last year were not fully vaccinated. These are not opinions or judgments; these are undisputable facts. The vaccines are safe and effective, and they’re keeping people out of the hospital and saving lives.
Following the latest action from the FDA, the state of Maryland is now able to provide COVID-19 booster shots for children between the ages of 12-15. Maryland is also — Marylanders are also now eligible to get a booster five months after completing their primary doses of Pfizer or Moderna instead of having to wait until six months after being vaccinated.
Today I have a call with the White House right after this press conference, and today I am urging federal officials to consider shortening that time frame even further for vulnerable people, particularly those in nursing homes and congregate care facilities.
In November, Maryland health officials authorized providers across the state to immediately begin scheduling appointments, holding clinics, and vaccinating the 515,000 eligible 5-11-year-olds in Maryland. While 92 percent of all Maryland adults are vaccinated, to date 33 percent of the 5-11-year-olds in our state have been vaccinated. We all want to keep our schools safely open, because there’s absolutely no substitute for in-person learning, and one of the best ways to do that is to get more of our school-aged children vaccinated as soon as possible.
Yesterday we announced that face coverings are now required in all state government buildings in Maryland and to encourage booster shots amongst state employees, the state is now providing 2 hours of paid leave for any employee to get a booster. We’re urging other employers across the state to follow our lead by providing leave for vaccinations and for boosters and by strongly encouraging the wearing of masks or face coverings indoors.
Next to the vaccines, wearing masks is one of the best mitigation strategies that we have. Everyone got a little complacent and I think maybe thought that we were starting to get back to normal, but with this new surge of omicron, it’s important for Marylanders to get back to using common sense and to doing the things that kept us safe before: Avoiding crowds, keeping your distance, washing your hands, and, yes, wearing the damn masks.
All of the emergency actions that we’re taking today are to keep our hospitals from overflowing, keep our kids in school, and to keep Maryland open for business. And we will continue to take whatever actions are necessary in the very difficult days and weeks ahead. But we also need the federal government to take decisive action. Today I’m calling on the Biden Administration to take immediate actions to increase the distribution of monoclonal antibodies, which are very effective, lifesaving clinical treatments. Last month we began distributing 1 million at-home rapid tests through local Health Departments, and we are working on emergency procurements to acquire as many more as we possibly can. But there is a serious national shortage, and the federal government needs to immediately expedite the approval of additional rapid tests and to push to increase production and distribution to the states.
We’re also calling on the Biden Administration to increase and expedite production and allocation of the new COVID-19 anti-viral pills, which were recently authorized by the FDA and which are another much-needed tool to prevent serious illness and death.
Finally, today, as we enter the third calendar year of this global pandemic, I want to again take a moment to thank all of our amazing healthcare heroes who have faced immense, unprecedented, and never ending challenges. For the past 2 years these men and women have selflessly and tirelessly worked around the clock and have made countless sacrifices to keep Marylanders safe, to treat patients, and to save lives. If you have a chance, please take a moment to thank them and their families. These heroes truly are the definition of Maryland Strong, and our state owes them a tremendous debt of gratitude.
May God bless each and every one of them, and may God bless each and every one of you and your families as we stay Maryland Strong and as we continue to fight this battle together.
At this time I’m going to turn it over to Major General Timothy Gowen, Adjutant General of the Maryland National Guard, with an update of the deployment of the 1,000 members of the National Guard across the state. General?
MAJOR GENERAL GOWEN: Thank you, Governor Hogan.
Good morning. Over the past 2 years we have worked closely to support the Maryland Department of Health and other state agencies to help ensure a rapid and unified response to the COVID-19 pandemic. If one characteristic has epitomized the Maryland National Guard’s response to COVID-19, it is pivoting to meet the needs of the community as new challenge as rise. This activation is no different.
Last week 40 soldiers already on duty supporting the Vaccine Equity Task Force were promptly reassigned to support COVID-19 test sites at the University of Maryland upper Chesapeake medical center in Bel Air and at the Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis. As the Governor stated we’ll be activating up to 1,000 soldiers and airmen to assist state and local health officials with the state’s pandemic response. Expected missions include COVID-19 testing, supporting local hospitals and skilled nursing facilities, and assisting with nonlife threatening patient transport. For every mission, guard support will be tailored to meet the needs of each site. Mission details are still being worked with the Maryland Department of Health and local facilities.
Other efforts to combat the virus will continue the Vaccine Equity Task Force continues to increase vaccination rates across the state. I would like to thank the Governor for his continued faith in the National Guard and recognizing our partners for the tireless work to protect the public from this virus, of which our efforts are only a part. Our guards members are always ready to help our community. We are a community-based force made up of dedicated military professionals ready to answer the call when we are needed. This is what we do. This is why we serve.
I’ll be followed by Dr. Ted Delbridge of the Maryland institute of emergency medical services. Thank you.
DELBRIDGE: Governor Hogan, General, Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.
And good morning. I would like to provide a sense of the healthcare system first by reiterating what Governor Hogan said. We owe them a debt of gratitude, the thousands of people who go to work in Maryland every day with a clear focus to help others. Earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic we thought of them as heroes and signs and banners expressing our appreciation were abundant. Now more than ever, they need our outward show of support. While our healthcare still and the skilled and dedicated people who comprise it are resilient, they have been tested over recent weeks and will continue to be in the weeks to come.
Currently there are 3,006 adults with COVID-19 in Maryland hospitals, representing a 100 percent increase since December 22, or doubling. Our hospitals are struggling to deal with the numbers of sick people coming to them. Yesterday afternoon, more than 600 patients were waiting in emergency departments for their turn to be admitted to a hospital bed. Our emergency departments are as busy as they have ever been. In many cases they are being asked to provide care that could be more appropriately sought in other places. Nearly all of Maryland’s emergency departments are broadcasting a yellow alert, requesting that EMTs and paramedics take patients to other facilities. Of course that’s not hospital when every nearby facility is also requesting no new patients. To help, we have developed a dashboard that tells them where ambulances are at area hospitals and how long they have been there. That way they can work to avoid facilities where there’s been an influx of new patients and has significant delays. We have heard from our EMS system leaders throughout Maryland, congested emergency departments lead to delays of transferring care of patients resulting in less availability of resources in the communities they serve and longer response times to all emergencies. Yes in close contact with leaders to make certain the issue is getting appropriate attention.
In the past several days it’s been necessary for us to be more deliberate in advising EMS personnel to avoid specific emergency departments for limited periods, allowing them to catch up and regroup and help ensure that ambulances do not become sequestered.
If you have visited the healthcare system recently, you can appreciate how much pressure is on them. Nonurgent systems are delayed. Nine hospitals are operating under crisis standards of care and three others are poised to do so. That’s 25 percent of Maryland’s hospitals adjusting internal standards to meet the needs of their communities. They have redeployed staff to where they’re needed most, to provide some benefit to the greatest need patients, to care for sicker people than initially designed for. They also continue to move patients, especially those requiring intensive care. Critical care coordination center at MEMS, serving the most critical patients, experienced its busiest month in December. It served as one of the models for the nation for optimal care. With today’s announcement, we will move briskly to ensure we have engaged all those with knowledge, skills, and interest to contribute to the healthcare system. For example, students may be able to serve as clinical externs, providing assistance while gaining valuable experience. There are actions we can all take. First and foremost, if you have not been vaccinated for COVID-19, I urge you to reconsider. I can think of no greater testimonial than to tell people, I and my family have been vaccinated. I am not advocating anything I wouldn’t do myself. If you have been vaccinated, plan to get a booster. It’s incredibly disheartening to be on the front lines and know that much of the current situation is avoidable. Vaccinations are akin to wearing a seat belt. They might not prevent you from being injured in a crash, but it certainly reduces the severity in injuries and fatalities. In Maryland, you are more than 10 times as likely to be admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 and even more likely to require intensive care. It’s just plain sad. It takes a toll on our healthcare heroes.
Last year, when we had a surge, there was no flu. Wearing masks and washing hands prevented it. This year, flu cases are rising. The flu is more than a bad cold. It kills thousands of people each year and puts people in the hospital. Please plan to get a flu vaccine. Both the flu and COVID-19 vaccine are available at pharmacies throughout Maryland. There are times when people should go to an emergency department. Examples include chest pain in doesn’t resolve in a couple of minutes, shortness of breath, new difficulty talking or walking, abdominal pain that doesn’t go away, or any time there’s a concern that immediate help is needed. But there are other times when people should seek care from their primary care provider, serving the emergency departments for more serious problems. Some of those examples include to get a COVID-19 test. Don’t go to the emergency department. Instead, go to one of the many testing sites throughout Maryland. As we said, more are on the way. A useful resource is covidlink.maryland.gov.
Don’t go to the emergency department to verify an at-home rapid test. It’s not necessary. Rapid tests are reliable, especially if the test result matches the situation. There is no need to double check. For example, if you have a cough and fever and your test is positive, you have COVID-19. Stay home. To be evaluated because of a positive test, unless you are short of breath, most people can take care of themselves at home. If you are higher risk, touch base with your doctor. Also, many insurers provide access to telehealth, to get advice about leaving your homes.
We must, all of us, continue to do our parts for our own health, our families, and our neighbors. If you’re sick, stay home. Otherwise, wear a mask in public or crowded places. Wash your hands. Keep your distance. And please, get vaccinated. That’s the very best tool. Thank you very much.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Thank you, Dr. Delbridge.
With that, we’ll take some questions.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: The real focus is, as I said, keeping people out of the hospital and preventing deaths. We’re taking all of the steps that we believe are necessary right now. We are taking steps just about every single day and we will continue to take the ones that we believe are necessary, as we have throughout the entire crisis for the past 2 years.
SPEAKER: Why not a mask mandate?
GOVERNOR HOGAN: I’m not sure people refusing to wear masks will wear one anyway and we don’t have the ability to enforce it. We’re just strongly encouraging people to wear the damn mask but we don’t need a mandate without the people to enforce it.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Yes. Thank you for asking. I had a 10-day staycation in the basement of the Governor’s mansion. I got a lot of work done and continued to stay in touch with my team at the Governor’s office, participate in a lot of calls, and even did a press conference Zoom from my isolation.
You know, for me it was like a pretty bad cold, and that’s because I was fully vaccinated and boosted. I’m thankful for that, so I didn’t end up in the hospital or a bed like so many other folks have in Maryland. I was able to get the monoclonal antibody treatment early on in my illness, and I’m very happy to have had the chance to do that. I don’t know whether that — I didn’t feel any instant — it didn’t make me feel instantly better. I didn’t feel anything at all. But I didn’t get sicker. So I’m thankful for the opportunity. There’s a shortage now across the country with respect to these treatments that should be widely available and that’s one of the things we’ll be talking with the White House later today.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: We’ve been taking actions with the hospitals nearly every day, and we put out information, although we haven’t had a press conference about it, but we have press releases nearly every day and actions are taken. Dozens of actions with respect to hospitals to give them the flexibility they need. I think they have most of what they needed. There were some concerns about from a liability standpoint for some of the smaller hospitals that weren’t taking actions because they felt I should declare a statewide state of emergency. But it’s not like we just decided to take action today. We’ve been taking different actions every day. It’s now gotten to a point where we crossed over the 3,000 hospitalization mark today. Our projections are dramatically different than they were a week or two ago, so we decided to take further action.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Well, absolutely. I think kids need to be in school. We’ve all seen the incredible damage being caused by people doing remote learning for over a year. So I agree with the elected officials yesterday who came out in support of kids in school. We provided unlimited amounts of money and testing and the ability to provide vaccines for kids, and the kids are doing pretty well. I mean, we have some outbreaks in some schools, but for the most part they’re not nearly as bad as the general population. They may be safer in school than not being in school. And so we’re going to take every step we can to keep our kids safe and we want to encourage them to get vaccinated but we don’t think closing schools and sending kids home for virtual learning is the way to go.
(Question off mic).
MAJOR GENERAL GOWEN: I’ll answer your second question first. Yes. I can’t activate them unless they’re vaccinated. It’s a requirement.
The first question, our overall objective is to not — you know, we want to be additive to the community. So our overall objective is to not call up people who are (inaudible). However, I’m going to leave that to the chain of command to make the decisions, calling up units based on the size of this organization, and I’ll leave it up to the chain of command to make those types of decisions.
(Question off mic)
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Yeah, these are decisions that the local Health Department, the local school boards can make on their own. You know, I understand they’re trying to keep kids in school, and perhaps making sure that they do more testing which is one of the reasons we provided testing to the school systems and put so much money into the schools emergency funding but I don’t know the exact details about what each independent local school system is deciding.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: I’m sorry?
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: We have an unlimited I think amount of the things that work for the previous variant but not the one, the current omicron variant. That’s one of the things we’ll be discussing with the White House today. There’s a nationwide shortage. It’s not a Maryland shortage. And I’m hoping that that’s one of the things that the President might address today in addition to talking with us and some fellow governors right immediately after this press conference. I think he plans on saying something today about the crisis. And I hope he will address the shortage of monoclonal antibodies, and I would like to hear more about the half a billion home testing we’re going to send out across the country. We’ve heard no details about that.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Maybe I’ll turn that over to Dr. Chan or Secretary Schrader maybe. Yes, it’s changing. We still have the 8 percent of the folks in the state unvaccinated are making up the hospitalizations but that small percentage is almost half. The other 90 percent is making up the other 40 some percent. So there are some people who are vaccinated but not fully vaccinated that are in the hospital, which is why we stress booster.
SPEAKER: So the cohort is changing?
GOVERNOR HOGAN: It is. Omicron is overtaking delta. Luckily it’s not — we are getting more people in ICUs and hospitals because so many people are getting it, but it’s not as deadly. It’s just an overwhelming number. I don’t know if there’s anything the secretary wants to add to that.
SPEAKER: No, Governor, you said it very well. We are tracking the omicron variant. Delta is still there. Omicron is rising. We’re working with our sequencing and we’re using a technique called PCR S-Gene, a PCR test to allow us to know. But we are seeing omicron rising.
SPEAKER: The number of vaccinated people in hospitals?
SPEAKER: No. That number has been stable. As the Governor said, it’s still 70-80 percent. So if you are unvaccinated, you are the one most likely to be in the hospital, unfortunately. So that’s why we’re continuing to push vaccinations.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Yeah. So I might have misstated that, but it is changing dramatically from all delta to nearly half and half at this point. But it’s not changing so much with respect to vaccinated versus unvaccinated.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Those are things that we’re obviously, we’ve been discussing for 2 years now, or vaccines for more than a year, and we’ll continue to talk about every day. Right now today we took a huge number of steps last week and the week before, over the past 30 days. These are the ones we’re going to take today. I can’t say what we may or may not do at any point in the future but right now we think this is the appropriate action.
Thank you.