GOVERNOR HOGAN: Good afternoon, everybody. I’m pleased to be joined this afternoon by Dr. Mohan Suntha, the President and CEO of the University of Maryland Medical System, Brigadier General Janeen Birckhead of the Maryland National Guard, and Dr. Jeff Woolford, assistant Secretary of Health and chief medical officer at the Maryland Department of Health.
Back in April of 2020, we officially reopened this renovated and reconfigured Laurel Medical Center as part of an unprecedented hospital surge plan. This facility provided an additional 135 COVID beds, including 35 intensive care beds to treat patients infected with COVID-19. This was one of the very first alternate care sites that we stood up early in the crisis and which we have kept operational throughout the pandemic for surges just like this one. I’m pleased to announce today that it is also the location of one of the 20 new testing sites outside of hospitals that we are standing up 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.
After declaring a 30-day state of emergency earlier this week, to mobilize 1,000 members of the Maryland National Guard, to assist state and local health officials with the state’s emergency pandemic response, and to provide operational support to help open and operate these testing sites. In addition to Laurel Medical Center, today I’m announcing that by the end of next week, we will be opening 10 hospital-based testing sites, including the University of Maryland Charles regional medical center in La Plata, University of Maryland capital region medical center in largo, Doctors Hospital in LAN ham, Meritus Health in Hagerstown, Frederick Health, University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore City, Johns Hopkins, also in Baltimore City, MedStar St. Mary’s Hospital in Leonardtown, and Northwest Hospital in Randallstown. We will be launching these sites in the coming days, and they will all be fully operational by the end of next week.
In addition, next week in partnership with the federal government, we will be opening a testing site at Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, where FEMA will provide some staffing support as well.
All of these sites will be open for walk ups 7 days a week with no appointment necessary. Or drive throughs with no appointment necessary. One of the primary goals of this effort is to ease the burden on hospitals and emergency rooms. We’re already getting great encouraging reports that emergency room traffic for testing has dropped dramatically as a result. University of Maryland in Bel Air, for example, has already seen a 72 percent drop in emergency room visits since we stood up testing sites. I continue to urge federal officials to address the serious national shortage of rapid testing. We have had little update from them, but it appears that it will still be several weeks before the federal government is able to begin distributing any more rapid tests.
Thanks to our thought and planning efforts at the Maryland Department of Health, we continue to acquire more and more tests throughout the crisis, and we currently have an abundant supply of PCR tests. And in addition, we’re in the process of distributing 1 million at-home rapid tests to local Health Departments, and we’re finalizing numerous additional emergency procurements to acquire as many more rapid tests as we possibly can from multiple sources, and we’re on track to receive another half million rapid tests in the next week.
Every 24 hours, as part of our aggressive sequencing program, we are analyzing more samples to detect the omicron variant, which as of today we now estimate accounts for approximately 90 percent of all of our lab-confirmed cases in the state as well as 90 percent of all hospitalized cases.
I grew up right here in Prince George’s County, and at the very beginning of this crisis, nearly 3 years ago, one of my first ideas was to reopen this closed Laurel Hospital, and for nearly two years now, this facility has been open and staffed by incredible medical professionals and healthcare workers who have been working day in and day out to treat patients and to save lives. Today the hospital is nearly at full capacity.
Earlier this week I asked Marylanders to take a moment to thank our healthcare workers, and today I just got a chance to say thank you myself. I want everybody to thank all of the heroes here at the Laurel Medical Center.
And now I’m going to turn it over to another medical hero, and that’s Dr. Mohan Suntha, President and CEO of UMMS, who will discuss why these testing sites are so important to our hospitals.
SUNTHA: Thank you, Governor.
Good afternoon. Let me start on behalf of all of the healthcare workforce across the state of Maryland saying thank you, Governor, for your leadership. And thank you for continuing to lean in to the challenge that we are collectively facing. You summarized it incredibly well to say that our hospitals in the state of Maryland are under incredible stress, and that stress is borne by our front line healthcare workforce. We are seeing a rapid rise in patients arriving to our hospitals with COVID-19, very specifically, as you described, as a consequence of the omicron variant of COVID-19. We have some facts that we need to share with our communities. Across our health system at the University of Maryland Medical System, a month ago we had 200 patients with COVID-19. Today that number stands at 800. In one month’s time. That’s a fourfold increase.
We see that burden borne not just in caring for COVID patients but caring for all of the patients who require our need and come to us with that great need. 75 percent of the patients who are currently admitted in our hospitals with COVID-19 have cost the medical system are unvaccinated. It’s an important fact that needs to be reinforced.
Another critical point to be appreciated is that less than 5 percent of all patients who are hospitalized with COVID-19 are patients who have been not just vaccinated but also received their boosters. So it is an important message in helping support our healthcare workforce is to be vaccinated and to be boosted, because the data I just gave you are facts. And that is what we can do most notably. As the Governor mentioned, another important piece of our fight is now standing up these testing centers outside of our emergency rooms, because the burden that it is placing on our emergency rooms and on our workforce is a disproportionate burden to not just take care of the patients coming to us with other healthcare needs, but now those people who are coming in search of testing and in search of understanding whether they’ve been exposed to COVID-19. These testing facilities will be an incredible resource right now in the fight against COVID-19.
I understand that it can sometimes be confusing, as we continue to share our knowledge, as we evolve our understanding of the COVID-19 virus. What I will tell you is we will continue to speak fact and speak our understanding of the science so that you can make informed decisions about what you can do to support each other, our communities, and importantly our healthcare workforce.
So thank you.
Thank you, Governor.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Thank you, Dr. Suntha.
With that, we would be happy to take a few questions.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: You know, I think that has to do with the fact that we have stood up some more testing centers. The demand is still there. I think we’ve still done 46,000 tests in a day, about the same as it was, but I have noticed as well, I left the State House and saw I think 2-3 people standing out in a line blocks long before. So we’re making progress. We’ve opened up a couple now already and with the additional 10 sites by the end of next week and another 10 after that, hopefully it’s going to make a difference. And as I’ve mentioned, we don’t have statewide results to look at, but from the one hospital where we stood up a testing site outside, the fact that people going in the emergency room are decreasing. We don’t need to go to an emergency room to get a test. There are people who are sick going to the emergency rooms that our healthcare heroes need to take care of.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Well, you know, maybe I’ll turn that over to the medical professionals because they probably have more credibility than me.
SUNTHA: So we would absolutely recommend those who have symptoms be tested. And symptoms now, again, include things like sore throat, things like cold symptoms. You should be tested. And the reason we want you to be tested is because if you are found to be positive, then things like quarantining and mask wearing can help reduce spread. If you’ve been exposed to somebody who you know has now tested positive, you should be tested. So again, it’s about trying to understand who is positive so we can decrease the risk of spread.
(Question off mic).
SUNTHA: So again, we are seeing across the state of Maryland a rise in children being hospitalized with COVID. We would continue to advocate to follow the guidelines of the CDC, for children who are eligible to be vaccinated. We understand that it is safe, and we understand that vaccination is an important tool in helping decrease the risk of hospitalization and severe healthcare impact. So absolutely, we would continue to advocate for children to be vaccinated according to the guidelines of both CDC and FDA approvals.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Maybe I’ll let Dr. Woolford tack that one. We’ll be offering rapid tests and PCR testing. Both are important. And yes, the rapid tests are not as accurate, especially with omicron being a concern, but it is an important screening tool if you need a quick answer. If you have it, it will pop up. It never tells you you have it when you don’t. But we have to do both. Hopefully get the rapid tests for a quick answer and then do the more detailed test and wait for those results to come in. But we want to be able to quickly isolate. If you have a rapid test that says positive, you should isolate and take all precautions to keep your friends and family and neighbors and coworkers safe.
Do you want to add to that?
On the volume, as many as we can get done. We have an unlimited number of PCR tests. We’re serving a million rapid tests and have another half a million coming in in another week or so and we’re looking to acquire as many as we can get.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Look, we’re mostly right now focused on a couple of emergencies, crises. The omicron variant is overflowing hospitals. Standing up these testing sites and getting people vaccinated and boosted, and dealing with snow emergencies, which by the way we’re expecting more weather to come in this evening through tomorrow morning and potentially pretty serious accumulations. Could be problems with the roads tomorrow.
But obviously, legislation is about to start. We have had conversation with legislative leaders. We’ll be focused on a couple of key priorities. You’ve mentioned one of them. Crime is a big issue. Trying to get fair maps drawn and congressional redistricting. And we’re going to be pushing for tax relief to try to help Maryland’s families and small business owners.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: I don’t really have much to say about that. It’s not really that much of a big deal. We addressed it about a week ago. There’s noggin appropriate with what we do. It doesn’t take the place of official government communications, but we certainly have the ability to communicate in an informal way, in person, on the phone. It’s a common practice and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: I think we are being very transparent, yes.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Well, thank you, it’s a wonderful question. That’s what we’re working on. We are one of the most vaccinated states in America. More than 92 percent of our residents have been vaccinated. But you’re not fully vaccinated until you get the two shots, and you really need the booster to be protected by this new variant. We’ve continued to message over and over again. We’re excited we are now able to do booster shots for 12-17-year-olds, which just came about as of yesterday, and that we’re now able to get our younger children vaccinated, and we hopefully will be able to get them vaccinated and boosted. We just encourage everybody. I know some people still, although it’s a low number of people here in our state, 8 percent of the people who refuse to get the vaccine, we still encourage you to do it. As Dr. Suntha said, less than 8 percent of the people are responsible for 75 percent of the hospitalizations and deaths. I mean, I don’t know how much clearer to make it to ya. The vaccines and the boosters work.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: That’s a great question. Our Health Department team and together with the National Guard and our hospital partners, it’s just how fast can we get something open and where is the biggest need. We would love to have one in Montgomery County. I think that’s probably something that is in the works although it’s not this week. And we have great partners like UMMS who have been responsible for a lot of these sites in conjunction with us. We’ll get as many of them open in as many places as we can.
SPEAKER: Last question.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: I think it’s safe to say that the governors in general are somewhat frustrated. I mean, everybody is doing the best job they can, and they have made some progress on certain things. But the confusing guidance is still a problem. They tried to take care of the confusion but they made it more confusing. And the problem of kind of overpromising and underdelivering, I think it was quite a while ago when they said they were going to deliver half a billion rapid tests out to people’s homes, and we’ve heard nothing about that since then. And we asked about it. We don’t have any updates. But we’re going to continue to try to work together with them. We’re happy they’re standing up the one testing center with us at Saint Agnes and providing staffing help. I know they’re working hard. We’ve been pushing the federal government on a couple of issues: One, to get more rapid tests produced and acquired and out to the states; to get more lifesaving treatments out, including the monoclonal antibody treatments that will work with omicron; and to help do whatever we can with the Defense Production Act or whatever to get the new Pfizer anti-viral pills produced and out to the states because it can help save lives and none of us can do that without the federal government.
I feel great. Thank you very much. I’m happy to be fully back to work, and I’m glad I’m able to get out of my locked room. My wife had me on lock down. I didn’t come out of the room for 10 days. Luckily she dropped some food outside the door.
Thank you, guys.
Back in April of 2020, we officially reopened this renovated and reconfigured Laurel Medical Center as part of an unprecedented hospital surge plan. This facility provided an additional 135 COVID beds, including 35 intensive care beds to treat patients infected with COVID-19. This was one of the very first alternate care sites that we stood up early in the crisis and which we have kept operational throughout the pandemic for surges just like this one. I’m pleased to announce today that it is also the location of one of the 20 new testing sites outside of hospitals that we are standing up 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.
After declaring a 30-day state of emergency earlier this week, to mobilize 1,000 members of the Maryland National Guard, to assist state and local health officials with the state’s emergency pandemic response, and to provide operational support to help open and operate these testing sites. In addition to Laurel Medical Center, today I’m announcing that by the end of next week, we will be opening 10 hospital-based testing sites, including the University of Maryland Charles regional medical center in La Plata, University of Maryland capital region medical center in largo, Doctors Hospital in LAN ham, Meritus Health in Hagerstown, Frederick Health, University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore City, Johns Hopkins, also in Baltimore City, MedStar St. Mary’s Hospital in Leonardtown, and Northwest Hospital in Randallstown. We will be launching these sites in the coming days, and they will all be fully operational by the end of next week.
In addition, next week in partnership with the federal government, we will be opening a testing site at Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, where FEMA will provide some staffing support as well.
All of these sites will be open for walk ups 7 days a week with no appointment necessary. Or drive throughs with no appointment necessary. One of the primary goals of this effort is to ease the burden on hospitals and emergency rooms. We’re already getting great encouraging reports that emergency room traffic for testing has dropped dramatically as a result. University of Maryland in Bel Air, for example, has already seen a 72 percent drop in emergency room visits since we stood up testing sites. I continue to urge federal officials to address the serious national shortage of rapid testing. We have had little update from them, but it appears that it will still be several weeks before the federal government is able to begin distributing any more rapid tests.
Thanks to our thought and planning efforts at the Maryland Department of Health, we continue to acquire more and more tests throughout the crisis, and we currently have an abundant supply of PCR tests. And in addition, we’re in the process of distributing 1 million at-home rapid tests to local Health Departments, and we’re finalizing numerous additional emergency procurements to acquire as many more rapid tests as we possibly can from multiple sources, and we’re on track to receive another half million rapid tests in the next week.
Every 24 hours, as part of our aggressive sequencing program, we are analyzing more samples to detect the omicron variant, which as of today we now estimate accounts for approximately 90 percent of all of our lab-confirmed cases in the state as well as 90 percent of all hospitalized cases.
I grew up right here in Prince George’s County, and at the very beginning of this crisis, nearly 3 years ago, one of my first ideas was to reopen this closed Laurel Hospital, and for nearly two years now, this facility has been open and staffed by incredible medical professionals and healthcare workers who have been working day in and day out to treat patients and to save lives. Today the hospital is nearly at full capacity.
Earlier this week I asked Marylanders to take a moment to thank our healthcare workers, and today I just got a chance to say thank you myself. I want everybody to thank all of the heroes here at the Laurel Medical Center.
And now I’m going to turn it over to another medical hero, and that’s Dr. Mohan Suntha, President and CEO of UMMS, who will discuss why these testing sites are so important to our hospitals.
SUNTHA: Thank you, Governor.
Good afternoon. Let me start on behalf of all of the healthcare workforce across the state of Maryland saying thank you, Governor, for your leadership. And thank you for continuing to lean in to the challenge that we are collectively facing. You summarized it incredibly well to say that our hospitals in the state of Maryland are under incredible stress, and that stress is borne by our front line healthcare workforce. We are seeing a rapid rise in patients arriving to our hospitals with COVID-19, very specifically, as you described, as a consequence of the omicron variant of COVID-19. We have some facts that we need to share with our communities. Across our health system at the University of Maryland Medical System, a month ago we had 200 patients with COVID-19. Today that number stands at 800. In one month’s time. That’s a fourfold increase.
We see that burden borne not just in caring for COVID patients but caring for all of the patients who require our need and come to us with that great need. 75 percent of the patients who are currently admitted in our hospitals with COVID-19 have cost the medical system are unvaccinated. It’s an important fact that needs to be reinforced.
Another critical point to be appreciated is that less than 5 percent of all patients who are hospitalized with COVID-19 are patients who have been not just vaccinated but also received their boosters. So it is an important message in helping support our healthcare workforce is to be vaccinated and to be boosted, because the data I just gave you are facts. And that is what we can do most notably. As the Governor mentioned, another important piece of our fight is now standing up these testing centers outside of our emergency rooms, because the burden that it is placing on our emergency rooms and on our workforce is a disproportionate burden to not just take care of the patients coming to us with other healthcare needs, but now those people who are coming in search of testing and in search of understanding whether they’ve been exposed to COVID-19. These testing facilities will be an incredible resource right now in the fight against COVID-19.
I understand that it can sometimes be confusing, as we continue to share our knowledge, as we evolve our understanding of the COVID-19 virus. What I will tell you is we will continue to speak fact and speak our understanding of the science so that you can make informed decisions about what you can do to support each other, our communities, and importantly our healthcare workforce.
So thank you.
Thank you, Governor.
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Thank you, Dr. Suntha.
With that, we would be happy to take a few questions.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: You know, I think that has to do with the fact that we have stood up some more testing centers. The demand is still there. I think we’ve still done 46,000 tests in a day, about the same as it was, but I have noticed as well, I left the State House and saw I think 2-3 people standing out in a line blocks long before. So we’re making progress. We’ve opened up a couple now already and with the additional 10 sites by the end of next week and another 10 after that, hopefully it’s going to make a difference. And as I’ve mentioned, we don’t have statewide results to look at, but from the one hospital where we stood up a testing site outside, the fact that people going in the emergency room are decreasing. We don’t need to go to an emergency room to get a test. There are people who are sick going to the emergency rooms that our healthcare heroes need to take care of.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Well, you know, maybe I’ll turn that over to the medical professionals because they probably have more credibility than me.
SUNTHA: So we would absolutely recommend those who have symptoms be tested. And symptoms now, again, include things like sore throat, things like cold symptoms. You should be tested. And the reason we want you to be tested is because if you are found to be positive, then things like quarantining and mask wearing can help reduce spread. If you’ve been exposed to somebody who you know has now tested positive, you should be tested. So again, it’s about trying to understand who is positive so we can decrease the risk of spread.
(Question off mic).
SUNTHA: So again, we are seeing across the state of Maryland a rise in children being hospitalized with COVID. We would continue to advocate to follow the guidelines of the CDC, for children who are eligible to be vaccinated. We understand that it is safe, and we understand that vaccination is an important tool in helping decrease the risk of hospitalization and severe healthcare impact. So absolutely, we would continue to advocate for children to be vaccinated according to the guidelines of both CDC and FDA approvals.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Maybe I’ll let Dr. Woolford tack that one. We’ll be offering rapid tests and PCR testing. Both are important. And yes, the rapid tests are not as accurate, especially with omicron being a concern, but it is an important screening tool if you need a quick answer. If you have it, it will pop up. It never tells you you have it when you don’t. But we have to do both. Hopefully get the rapid tests for a quick answer and then do the more detailed test and wait for those results to come in. But we want to be able to quickly isolate. If you have a rapid test that says positive, you should isolate and take all precautions to keep your friends and family and neighbors and coworkers safe.
Do you want to add to that?
On the volume, as many as we can get done. We have an unlimited number of PCR tests. We’re serving a million rapid tests and have another half a million coming in in another week or so and we’re looking to acquire as many as we can get.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Look, we’re mostly right now focused on a couple of emergencies, crises. The omicron variant is overflowing hospitals. Standing up these testing sites and getting people vaccinated and boosted, and dealing with snow emergencies, which by the way we’re expecting more weather to come in this evening through tomorrow morning and potentially pretty serious accumulations. Could be problems with the roads tomorrow.
But obviously, legislation is about to start. We have had conversation with legislative leaders. We’ll be focused on a couple of key priorities. You’ve mentioned one of them. Crime is a big issue. Trying to get fair maps drawn and congressional redistricting. And we’re going to be pushing for tax relief to try to help Maryland’s families and small business owners.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: I don’t really have much to say about that. It’s not really that much of a big deal. We addressed it about a week ago. There’s noggin appropriate with what we do. It doesn’t take the place of official government communications, but we certainly have the ability to communicate in an informal way, in person, on the phone. It’s a common practice and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: I think we are being very transparent, yes.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: Well, thank you, it’s a wonderful question. That’s what we’re working on. We are one of the most vaccinated states in America. More than 92 percent of our residents have been vaccinated. But you’re not fully vaccinated until you get the two shots, and you really need the booster to be protected by this new variant. We’ve continued to message over and over again. We’re excited we are now able to do booster shots for 12-17-year-olds, which just came about as of yesterday, and that we’re now able to get our younger children vaccinated, and we hopefully will be able to get them vaccinated and boosted. We just encourage everybody. I know some people still, although it’s a low number of people here in our state, 8 percent of the people who refuse to get the vaccine, we still encourage you to do it. As Dr. Suntha said, less than 8 percent of the people are responsible for 75 percent of the hospitalizations and deaths. I mean, I don’t know how much clearer to make it to ya. The vaccines and the boosters work.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: That’s a great question. Our Health Department team and together with the National Guard and our hospital partners, it’s just how fast can we get something open and where is the biggest need. We would love to have one in Montgomery County. I think that’s probably something that is in the works although it’s not this week. And we have great partners like UMMS who have been responsible for a lot of these sites in conjunction with us. We’ll get as many of them open in as many places as we can.
SPEAKER: Last question.
(Question off mic).
GOVERNOR HOGAN: I think it’s safe to say that the governors in general are somewhat frustrated. I mean, everybody is doing the best job they can, and they have made some progress on certain things. But the confusing guidance is still a problem. They tried to take care of the confusion but they made it more confusing. And the problem of kind of overpromising and underdelivering, I think it was quite a while ago when they said they were going to deliver half a billion rapid tests out to people’s homes, and we’ve heard nothing about that since then. And we asked about it. We don’t have any updates. But we’re going to continue to try to work together with them. We’re happy they’re standing up the one testing center with us at Saint Agnes and providing staffing help. I know they’re working hard. We’ve been pushing the federal government on a couple of issues: One, to get more rapid tests produced and acquired and out to the states; to get more lifesaving treatments out, including the monoclonal antibody treatments that will work with omicron; and to help do whatever we can with the Defense Production Act or whatever to get the new Pfizer anti-viral pills produced and out to the states because it can help save lives and none of us can do that without the federal government.
I feel great. Thank you very much. I’m happy to be fully back to work, and I’m glad I’m able to get out of my locked room. My wife had me on lock down. I didn’t come out of the room for 10 days. Luckily she dropped some food outside the door.
Thank you, guys.