Maryland surpasses 2,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations

ANNAPOLIS, Md. – As of Wednesday morning, Maryland has surpassed 2,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations.

Governor Larry Hogan says the state is continuing several emergency actions due to this recent surge. Earlier this month, the state established a surge operations center to optimize bed capacity and fully utilize the alternate care sites kept in place. State health officials are continuing to work closely with licensing boards to augment the healthcare workforce, and have committed an additional $100 million for hospitals and nursing homes to address urgent staffing needs. Hospitals are required to implement pandemic plans to suspend elective surgeries and manage their patient census.

Last month, the state began distributing 500,000 at-home rapid test kits through local health departments and BWI Airport. In addition, the days and hours of state-run testing sites have been expanded, and officials are encouraging local health departments to follow suit. An additional $30 million has been made available to school systems to enhance their testing resources.

Hogan has also mobilized the Maryland National Guard to stand up multiple surge testing sites and directed state health officials to take whatever steps are necessary to acquire additional at-home rapid test kids.

“We have been calling on the federal government to do more to expand the availability of testing—including invoking the Defense Production Act—but as the president himself has acknowledged, those efforts have fallen short. Regardless, we will do all we can at the state level to further scale up testing operations,” Hogan said.

The governor adds that the state continues to be among the national leaders in using genomic sequencing to track and detect variants of COVID-19, and we continue to have one of the most aggressive booster shot campaigns in the country.

“As we have been projecting, our statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations have now reached record levels and surpassed 2,000 — a surge driven primarily by unvaccinated patients. It cannot be stressed enough that getting vaccinated and getting boosted are your strongest possible defenses against this virus and its variants. Again, this is not March of 2020. It’s important to use common sense and take precautions, but we have the tools, resources, and strategies in place to protect ourselves. We are closely monitoring this surge, and will continue to provide updates as additional actions are taken,” said Governor Hogan.