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In a statement released on Facebook Hogan said: "It cannot be stressed enough that getting vaccinated and getting boosted are your strongest possible defenses against this virus and its variants."
Hogan says the surge in COVID-19 is driven primarily by the unvaccinated and that he has taken a number of emergency actions in preparation for the spike in cases to include:
- Establishing a surge operations center to optimize bed capacity and fully utilize the alternate care sites we have kept in place.
- Committing an additional $100 million for hospitals and nursing homes to address urgent staffing needs.
- Distributing 500,000 at-home rapid test kits through local health departments and BWI Airport.
- Expanding the days and hours of state-run testing sites, and encouraged local health departments to do the same.
- Made an additional $30 million in funding available to school systems to enhance their own testing resources.
- 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 kits.
- 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.
- Expanded genomic sequencing to track and detect COVID-19 variants.
- Aggressively promoted booster shots, which provide the strongest possible protection against the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
According to the state's COVID-19 dashboard there are 686,237 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Maryland and 11,467 deaths from the virus so far,
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