For the time being, and also following CDC guidance, public transportation, healthcare settings and schools will be the only exception. For anyone who has not yet been vaccinated, masks are still strongly recommended in most situations. However, if you’re fully vaccinated, which means two weeks have passed since you received your second shot or your one dose of Johnson and Johnson, you should feel safely to resume any activities without wearing mask, indoors or outdoors.
Businesses across the state and other work places are obviously free to set their own policies with respect to masking, and we support their ability to do so. There will just no longer be any legal mandate from the state. Those who have not been vaccinated are strongly advised to immediately do so. The easiest way to be protected from COVID is to get vaccinated right away.
We now have 704 pharmacies and 271 doctors’ offices providing vaccines. 13 vaccination sites remain open and operational with direct scheduling available, as well as no appointment opportunities where you can simply walk up or drive through and immediately get your vaccine. Thanks to the massive vaccine infrastructure that we built, and with 5.5 million vaccinations that have already been administered, it is now easier than ever to find and to receive a vaccine in Maryland at more than 3,000 different locations. And it is clearer than ever that these vaccines are working.
As we’ve gotten those 5.5 million shots into the arms of Marylanders, the result has been amazing declines in all of our health metrics all across the board and all across the state. Maryland’s case rite rate per 100,000 has dropped by 68 percent over the past four weeks to its lowest level since last July. Hospitalizations have now dropped below 700 for the first time since last November, and they’re all the way down to 680. And today, we have reached 1.91 percent. Our second lowest daily positivity rate ever throughout the entire pandemic.
It has now been one year, two months and nine days since we first began taking unprecedented actions to bring our entire public health arsenal to bear against this visible enemy. Together, we summoned every ounce of our strength and every resource at our disposal to defeat this threat. We built field hospitals and expanded our surge capacity by 6,000 beds. We procured millions of gowns, masks and other PPE and deployed thousands of contract tracers across the state.
We built an entire testing infrastructure from scratch, going from doing just 50 COVID tests per day to now surpassing 10 million tests. As soon as vaccines became available, our team began working around the clock to get shots into the arms of every single eligible Marylander. This effort grew to 400,000 people across the state who have now successfully administered those 5.5 million vaccines into the arms of Marylanders, including 87 percent of our most vulnerable citizens. Today is the day that so many of us have been waiting for and working towards. We finally do clearly see that light at the end of the tunnel.
Our long, hard‑fought battle against the worst global pandemic in more than a century is final nearing an inch. Of we say thank you to the countless Marylanders who helped us get to this point. Our healthcare heroes, the doctors and nurses who work day in and day out on the frontlines are Maryland national guard citizen shoulders who distributed meals to kids and built and staffed our testing and vaccination sites. We thank every Marylander who volunteered, gave blood, donated to food banks, and all the businesses that shifted their entire operations overnight to make masks, produce sanitizers, to manufacture face shields. And we thank every single Marylander who has gotten their vaccine. We resolve to never forget any of the 8,716 Marylanders who have been taken from us by this invisible killer.
Now as many of us take off our masks and start to put this pandemic behind us, I ask each and every one of you to please just be kind and respectful of one another. Some people feel comfortable getting back to normal life right away. For others, it may take more time before they feel safe. That’s perfectly okay. And we should all respect each other. You are all Maryland strong, and I’m so proud of the people of this great state. From the beginning of this crisis, we Marylanders have truly been through all of this together. With that, I would be happy to take some questions.
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We desperately needed it. The legislator already reviewed it, for the entire legislative session. Can’t afford to do it with investigators and lawyers. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. The procurement was great. Every single one of those 500,000 tests was utilized. Not a sing the false reading. All the stories were false. It’s just partisan nonsense. I would say this was our biggest and greatest accomplishment during the entire fight on COVID. With and I know there are people for partisan reasons that want to try to undermine that and lie about it, but it’s crazy. It’s just nonsense. This is just the latest stunt.
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The other people, whatever it takes to convince them, we’re going to try to be as creative as we can.