Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan Coronavirus Briefing Transcript April 24

Governor Larry Hogan: (00:00)
… well thought out, safe, effective, and gradual roadmap to recovery for Maryland. On Wednesday, in my role as Chairman of the National Governors Association, I released an NGA report giving guidance to all of the governors across America regarding how to safely open their states. Maryland’s Roadmap to Recovery, which we are launching today, utilizes the guidelines which were issued by the White House last week, incorporates many of the principles of my NGA plan and much of the work of the plans released by AEI and Johns Hopkins. We also solicited input from our team of scientists, public health, and business experts, and our multi-agency state government coronavirus team in order to create this roadmap for the recovery of Maryland.

The result is a well thought out, gradual, safe, and effective path forward for the people of our state. The federal guidelines issued by the president last week call for states to meet specific gating metrics before considering lifting restrictions. That includes a 14- day downward trend in key numbers. Here in Maryland we took some of the earliest and most aggressive actions in the nation to slow the spread of COVID-19. Because of those efforts of everyone, we have far fewer cases, hospitalizations, and deaths than all of the models we’re calling for. We have been successful in flattening and lengthening the curve in our state, and we have not had the very high spikes that you have seen in other states, but that is also why we are several weeks behind those other states who spiked and peaked earlier.

The number of new cases of COVID-19 is still rising here in Maryland and throughout the Maryland, D.C., and Virginia region. By the federal standards instituted last week and under the guidance given in the studies and reopening plans that we cited, Maryland is not yet able to lift our restrictions. We are dramatically increasing the amount of testing here in Maryland, and as a result we are going to continue to see the number of total cases increasing. For the purposes of our planning, the key numbers that we are most focused on are the rate of hospitalizations and the numbers of patients being admitted to ICU. We are watching these numbers very closely on a daily basis. (silence) Our gradual [inaudible 00:03:52] blocks, which needed to be firmly in place before we could consider lifting restrictions. First, we have exponentially expanded our testing capability. Second, we are exceeding our goals to increase hospital surge capacity. Third, we are making progress in increasing the supply of PPE. Fourth, we have quadrupled our capability to do contact tracing by building a robust force of 1,000 contact tracers and launching a state-of-the-art contact tracing platform called COVID Link.

Having these four building blocks, or pillars, in place gives us the public health infrastructure to try to attack this virus from every direction. This has allowed us to be in the best position possible to begin our reopening and recovery just as soon as we reach the necessary trends in the critical metrics. I’m optimistic that if Marylanders continue staying home, and continue practicing physical distancing a little while longer, that our numbers could continue to plateau. I’m hopeful that we could then be able to begin our recovery in early May.

Our Maryland Strong Roadmap to Recovery has three stages. Stage One would begin by lifting the stay at home order, and it would include the reopening of many of our small businesses. We would be able to restart many of our lower-risk community activities and quality-of-life improvements. Changes that could occur during our first stage would include the reopening of certain businesses and retail shops, the reopening of golf courses and recreational boating, and fishing, tennis, outdoor religious activities, along with outdoor fitness and gym classes, and the resumption of elective outpatient surgeries and procedures in certain counties with lower concentration of cases.

Local governments could also have additional flexibility to open things, including local parks and playgrounds, municipal recreation centers and libraries if they deemed that appropriate safety protocols could be followed. These decisions would be based on the ability to continue physical distancing and to continue to limit person-to-person contact. If Stage One activities resume successfully, without a spike in deaths, a sustained spike in ICU cases, or significant unforeseen outbreaks of community transmission, we would then be in a position to move into Stage Two where a larger number of businesses would open, non-essential workers who cannot telework could return to work, and other public activities would be able to come back online.

Indoor religious gatherings could resume with perhaps limited capacity and physical distancing measures. It would include raising the limits on the number of people in social gatherings, perhaps the returning to more normal public transit schedules, and the opening of restaurants and potentially bars with significant safety restrictions. Then the third and final stage would be reinstituting higher risk activities such as larger social gatherings, events, religious gatherings, and activities at entertainment venues, and a further lessening of restrictions at hospitals, and eventually nursing homes.

I want to stress that each of these recovery stages will need to be instituted in a safe, gradual, and effective manner. If we try to rush this, and if we don’t do it in a thoughtful and responsible way, it could cause a rebound of the virus, which could deepen the economic crisis, prolong the fiscal problems, and slow our economic recovery. I’m a lifelong small businessman, and the entire focus of my administration has been growing the private sector, creating jobs, and turning our economy around.

It’s the reason I ran for governor, and it breaks my heart to see so many Marylanders struggling and going through so much economic pain. Let me be very, very clear. Other than keeping Marylanders safe, saving lives, and defeating this hidden enemy, there is absolutely nothing more important to me than getting people back to work, getting our small businesses reopened, and getting our economy back on track. I want to assure you that we are going to do everything we possibly can to do that just as quickly as we possibly can in a safe way. In the days and weeks ahead-

Way. In the days and weeks ahead, we will continue to be open and transparent and we will continue to keep Marylanders as fully informed on the facts as we possibly can. Since day one of this crisis. We’ve been making our decisions based on the best advice of an incredible Coronavirus response team, which includes some of the smartest scientists and public health experts in the world. And as we move into this recovery phase, we’re going to continue to rely on their advice and also on the advice of some additional business and economic leaders.

Our Coronavirus response team has now transitioned into a Coronavirus recovery team with some additional distinguished leaders who have joined this effort, including my partner in government, Lieutenant governor Boyd Rutherford, who has been a major part of all of our efforts. Arnie Sorenson, the president and CEO of Marriott International, who is the co-chair of the COVID-19 task force of the business round table, Robert Doar, leading economist and the President of AEI, the American Enterprise Institute, Kevin Plank, the Executive Chairman of Under Armour and a trustee of the university of Maryland Foundation. Jim Davis, the Chairman and co-founder of Alegious group, the largest staffing firm in the United States. Mark McManus who is the General President of the UA, the United Association, which represents 355,000 members of the building trades and local unions all across North America and Augie Chiasera, who’s the president of M&T banks, Baltimore and Chesapeake regions, and a board member of the Economic Alliance of greater Baltimore.

The Coronavirus recovery team will be advising us and helping guide our real time decisions on Maryland’s recovery and reopening process. We have also assembled 15 industry specific advisory groups which will be coordinated by our department of commerce and the governor’s office of community initiatives. Leaders from key industry sectors including small businesses, retail, restaurants, financial services, construction, manufacturing, and many more, as well as representatives from churches, faith based organizations, service organizations and nonprofits are developing plans with proposed recommendations and guidelines, determining how their industries can reopen in a way that can keep their employees, their customers, and the public safe.

I want to stress that even as we begin our recovery, we won’t be able to just flip a switch. Unfortunately, life is not going to just immediately go back to normal. In fact, it is important to recognize that until a vaccine is developed, the way we go about our daily lives and the way we work is going to be significantly different for a while longer. But as we begin to reopen, it will be continue to be important for Marylanders, particularly older and more vulnerable Marylanders to continue to stay home as much as they can. And all Marylanders should continue to avoid crowds and gatherings and they should continue to practice physical distancing and to take precautions to protect themselves, their families and their fellow Marylanders.

The full details of our Maryland strong roadmap to recovery, the federal guidelines, the NGA plan as well as the AEI and Hopkins reports are all available at governor.maryland.gov/recovery. Together, we are going to defeat this deadly virus and together the state of Maryland will return stronger and better than ever.

And now I’m going to turn the mic over to Dr. Tom Inglesby who was going to discuss our current health situation here in Maryland and talk about where we currently are in the curve and what we should be looking for in order to begin stage one of our recovery process.

Tom Inglesby: (15:28)
Thank you governor Hogan. It’s good to be with you and your team here and I wanted to start by offering my words of support for the direction you are leading the state here. We all want the state to reopen as quickly as it can, but it’s clear that if we open the state today, we would risk fast acceleration in the epidemic to very high numbers.

The early social distancing measures put in place by the governor and his team stopped the rapid rise in cases and have flattened the curve in Maryland. New daily cases in the last two weeks have been plateauing. If we hadn’t put social distancing measures in place the way they have been instituted, the numbers in this state would still had been going up rapidly, perhaps doubling every five to six days as they have in many places in the world. At this point, for the state to move forward in easing social distancing in a lower risk way, there needs to be a period of declining hospitalization and ICU stays and deaths from COVID in Maryland.

There isn’t a decline yet and we need to keep going to get to a point where the numbers are starting to move downward. As we wait for that decline to happen, we also need to be moving as quickly as possible to ensure three other important conditions are in place in the state. We need to have widely available diagnostic testing and the arrival of 500,000 tests in Maryland this week in addition to the other testing efforts that are underway, has changed that situation dramatically for the better. We need to have enough masks, gowns and gloves for our healthcare workers and others in critical positions that are high risk, and that is something that the state and hospitals are fighting for all the time. There’s a lot of work going on around that. We also need to have built strong capacity to isolate cases, trace contacts, and have them get into quarantine.

It’s really great news to hear that the state has been able to hire a substantial workforce to do that work so it can start to make rapid progress to break the chains of transmission of COVID in our state. When reopening does happen, it will be important for people to understand the settings and work that are lower risk versus more high risk. Outdoors will be safer than indoors. Less social interactions will be better than more social interactions, and closer contact in high density will be higher risk than low density. Workplaces can take mitigation measures to lower their own risks and they should be planning on those now so they can lower the risks as best they can when their businesses begin to reopen.

Unfortunately, this virus is going to be in our state and our country until we have a vaccine and our population gets immunity. So even when the state does begin to reopen, it will be critical for the public to know that its own individual efforts will still be very important. Taking together all of our collective actions and decisions will either slow this virus down or they will speed up the spread. So we’re going to need to keep wearing cloth masks in public, we’re going to need to keep our physical space of six feet or more and we’re going to need to telecommute when we can and it doesn’t disrupt business operations. All of these things will make a big difference when we add them together collectively.

So in closing, I want to just say again that the plan that the governor is laying out today is the right path for this state. And I think it’s important now to focus hard on getting the plan and programs in place to lower the risks of reopening when that can begin. Thanks very much.

I’m going to ask our Secretary of Commerce, Kelly Schulz to talk about the plans with businesses.

Kelly Schulz: (19:54)
Thank you very much, governor. Thank you for the roadmap that you have laid out today. The team at the department of commerce continues to work furiously to assist our small businesses…

…Department of Commerce continues to work furiously to assist our small businesses through our emergency grant and loan funds. We had to ramp up incredibly quickly, and effectively build these new programs on the fly. But we are getting that money out to our small businesses in need and so far we have identified roughly $25 million worth of eligible applications within our grant program alone. But that’s not enough and we’ll continue to do more. We have also received over 230 applications for our Emergency Manufacturing Incentive to support Maryland companies who can produce PPE. We’re working quickly to process those applications so we can get grants to those great companies. Thus far, we have 15 grants that have been approved for manufacturing innovation.

While we have been taking those immediate steps, we have also been looking ahead towards recovery and reopening. For the past few weeks our Business Development Team at the Department of Commerce has been working closely with our partners in the business community to form 13 industry recovery advisory groups.

These will allow stakeholders in these industries to provide insight into the most efficient approach to restarting operations. While at the same time protecting the health of their employees and of all Marylanders. As the governor has said, we will not be able to just flip a switch and go back to business as usual. We should all expect there to be new safety considerations as we resume our daily lives.

Every industry has unique challenges and may need unique solutions to ensure a clean and healthy workplace. Our advisory groups are composed of stakeholders from key industry sectors that have been particularly impacted by the pandemic and by the difficult choices we had to make to reduce the spread of Covid-19. Tourism, to just name one, was hard hit in everything from attractions, to casinos, to accommodations, to those places where people come together such as restaurants and performance venues.

That advisory group was the first one we formed and brings together a variety of tourism and tourism related industry organizations, business leaders and partner organizations from throughout Maryland. There’ll be identifying the critical steps that will need to be taken to get our tourism businesses up and running again. Such as working with local health officials to possibly get approval occupancies, rehiring the local workforce or learning how and wondering when to start restocking the goods and relaunching the services that they are performing. We have also convened specialized panels within the tourism industry for restaurants and bars, accommodations, retailers, attractions, tourism transportation, destination and sports. The Manufacturing Industry Advisory group will ensure that industry has a seat at the table for discussions about the steps we’ll take when we’re ready to start opening up again. We’ll be identifying the critical information that will need to be considered to get our businesses up and running, such as making sure all manufacturers can open. We know some right now are open and some are not. In considering a push to buy local and encouraging businesses and consumers to purchase from Maryland based manufacturers, we also know that the price of some raw materials is now at a premium which poses yet another great challenge for this industry.

After launching the tourism and manufacturing panels, we expanded our scope over the past weeks. We now have an advisory group for construction and development, one for professional and financial services, and one focused on small businesses, which includes personal one-on-one services and the neighborhood mom-and-pop shops all across Maryland. Our advisory groups represent Marylanders from across the state and from across all walks of life. Each group is compiling recommendations and best practices for how they can operate safely and make sure they are protecting their employees and their customers.

I also want to note that we have convened a Maryland Arts Recovery Advisory group, which is a collaboration between the Maryland State Arts Council, the Fine Arts Office of the Maryland State Department of Education, Maryland Citizens for the Arts, and the Arts Education in Maryland Schools. They are developing a plan for the future of the arts in Maryland, including recommendations for virtual engagement, best practices for in-person engagement, designing a reopening marketing campaign, and strengthening arts advocacy messaging.

Maryland will rebound from this pandemic, but it will require collaboration and teamwork. There will be open lines of communication between the government and the private sector and we will work hand in hand with our business community as we continue down this path of recovery. Thank you.

Thank you, Kelly. And thank you, Dr. Inglesby. Kelly mentioned the 13 task forces, I said 15. Steven McAdams who is the director of the Governor’s Office of Community Initiative says two different additional task forces not business related that are with the faith-based and churches, or places of worship, and nonprofit groups that he’s also convening, and getting their input. But thank you. With that, I’d be happy to take a few-

Speaker 1: (25:51)
You plan mentions allowing some local jurisdictions some more flexibility. Do you anticipate the plan is going to allow jurisdictions or perhaps regions, rural areas, in Maryland to move more quickly through the phases that other areas of Maryland?

I know that that’s one of the things that we’ve discussed already with our current Coronavirus Team and one of the things that we’re going to continue to discuss. We’ve discussed it with both local government. We have weekly calls with our local government partners. We’ve had discussions with legislators and we’ve talked about it with our team of scientists and doctors. And we’ll be making those decisions as we move forward into Phase One. But it is certainly one of the things that we’re going to consider and it’s one of the things that I think is possible, but we want to also do that in a safe way.

Speaker 2: (26:37)
Governor, the unemployment website portal crashed this morning. It’s been a frustration of a lot of people trying to file for unemployment. What are you doing to make sure that gets fixed? And what do you say to those people who simply just can’t get online to file unemployment?

Well, first of all, I’m one of the people that’s very frustrated. So, I share their frustration and I’m sorry people had difficulties with that. It is now fixed and I’m happy about that. We were one of the first states in America to be able to handle this and launch this online. First of all, I had a call with the Vice President just before this meeting. I thanked the President for signing into law today the Paycheck Protection Plan, Phase 3.5. We’re happy to get that funding out so we can help folks. And we’re happy that they changed the law so we can now get funding out for the first time to 1099 people, and to gig workers, and folks that were not W2 employees. They never were able to get unemployment insurance before.

Part of the problem was the normal labor website didn’t have the ability to fill out these things online and we had 40,000 calls backing up into the call center, it was hard to do that. So we developed a brand new website with a vendor. We’re one of the first states in America to do that. We launched that this morning at 7AM, and it crashed from 7AM for about an hour because of the huge volume. They fixed that within an hour. There were 35,000 people logged on there to do different things, today. 15,000 new claims have been processed, which is, it’s unfortunate there’s that many people, but I’m glad that 15,000 people have been able to process their claims today and that 35,000 people have been able to access this new website. Most people in the country are still waiting on a phone call for most states.

But I’m very frustrated that the vendor did not have it ready for the volume. We’ve expressed that frustration to this outside vendor that developed the website. They put, I think, 100 people on it this morning to try to get it fixed. They did get it back up online. I think there are a couple of glitches still throughout the day, but it’s performing much better and we’re going to hold their feet to the fire to make sure they get all the glitches worked out. But we’re happy we launched site and I’m frustrated that it didn’t go off perfectly.

Speaker 3: (28:57)
Governor Hogan, the NGA roadmap which was put out by you, as the chair, recommends that governors get together and talk about interstate travel and how you govern that and make sure infected people aren’t traveling state to state. It also calls for private businesses to report positive Covid infections, the number of people isolated, quarantining, and absenteeism. Is that something that’s also included in the Maryland specific plan?

It’s not detailed out in our specific plan, but it’s certainly one of the recommendations that the scientists and doctors have made. It’s something that we put into the report as things that states should consider doing. This is our 17th call today, by the way, with all the nation’s governors. So there’s been a tremendous amount of collaboration and sharing of information. The report that we put out was at the request of the governors about, “Hey, let’s put out a set of guidelines and gather all of the best information, send that out to the governors.” Some of the smaller states perhaps didn’t have as much of the-

… and out to the Governors. Some of the smaller states perhaps didn’t have as much of the gathering of information as we had done here and maybe some other states that have been on top of it. So, it’s a set of guidelines that we sent out for the governors. But we’re taking a lot of that input into our plan. But we don’t specifically address that in our Maryland plan today.

Speaker 4: (30:17)
Governor, you had a powerful quote where you added early May at the end as a time frame. I know nobody knows yet. But do you have, based on your modeling and ideas, phase one, phase two, months, timeframe?

So, first of all, that’s a hopeful. I want to do it today, but as Dr. Inglesby said, as the president’s plan says, you have to see these numbers. We are hopeful because we are starting to see some plateauing and the numbers starting to round off. And we haven’t seen those spikes that we’re seeing in other places. That’s encouraging, but they’re not where they need to be. This is guesswork too a little bit. We’re just hopeful that those numbers are going to get better and continue. We’ve had a couple of days of things that look better, but a couple of days, three days does not make a trend. Right? We need like 14 days.

Speaker 4: (31:15)
We need three days?

So, that was hopeful saying early May. I’m still hoping we can do that. I’m going to press to do that. The president’s plan says you need 14 days. So, you should have 14 days between phases, a minimum of 14 days, to see the effects of the virus. The length of the virus is about 14 days. So, you kind of see, the doctors can probably give a better answer, but at least 14 days between phases, the first phase to the second phase. The later phases take a longer period of time. So, I think the phase two lasts a lot longer than phase one does. But all of it is subject to the numbers and watching the numbers. So, it’s a moving target.

Speaker 5: (31:57)
So, could we be on day three of a 14 day-

It’s possible. That’s what I’m hoping. I don’t think you can hold me to it. The doctors might argue about it, but our team is saying, hopefully we’re beginning that trend. And we watch it every day. Next week, I’m going to be saying to my doctors, are we there? Can we start to think about this?

Speaker 6: (32:15)
Governor, you talked about continuing to plateau. Could you talk a little bit about what data shows that we’re continuing to plateau, as we see that’s continuing and, the last couple of days, it’s continuing?

So, we had a couple of days in a row with downward numbers on hospitalizations and ICU’s. And then, we had one day where we jumped up, I think, by one number. So, it was like downward and it went up. But it’s still… there was a slide that was up here. It goes like this. It’s flattening. It’s not going up like it was. So, it looks like a pattern. But the doctors have said to me, they’re a lot smarter than me, and they say, Governor, three days does not make a trend. And I’m saying, why not?

Speaker 7: (33:00)
Governor, at first, your team of advisors were mainly healthcare professionals. Now, you’re adding a bunch of business leaders as well.

Yeah.

Speaker 7: (33:10)
Should we read into that? That you’re now thinking more about the economy and less about health? Or could you talk about that?

Well, no. For 40 some days it’s been about flattening the curve, and figuring out this virus, and what steps can we take to stop it. And we’ve taken almost every single step you can possibly take. On the very first day we had our very first case, I declared a state of emergency. It was one of the first ones in the country. I was first one to close the schools, one of the first ones that closed the bars and restaurants. We took unprecedented actions. I’ve done, I think, 37 executive orders basically dialing things back. That was based on the advice of the doctors who are staying involved.

But now, we’re moving into this potential recovery phase. We’re keeping all of those guys to make sure we do things safely, but we want the advice of the business people about how can you open with these doctors in a safe way. So, we’re now, instead of dialing things back, we’re hoping to dial things back up. We don’t want to just do that without getting the input of the businesses.

Speaker 8: (34:16)
Governor, you talked a little bit about the trends going up and going down a little bit. If we have a couple of days of trends going down and then a small deviation or a tick back up, does that reset the clock?

No. I mean, it doesn’t for me because people have talked about, if you’re looking at a thing going generally downward one day, sometimes the numbers are a little bit off because recording. Like there’s a batch of cases. We’ve noticed on Sundays the numbers are down. They go up on Monday because they don’t put as many of the tests in. Sometimes they don’t record things until Monday because people took off on Sunday. So, one little day of deviation, I’m not going to say, oh, we’re restarting our clock. It’s what does the trend look like over a period of time?

Speaker 8: (34:58)
Governor Hogan.

Yeah.

Speaker 8: (35:02)
How hopeful are we to open restaurants, and bars, and all that?

That’s one of the things that the Restaurant Association, the restaurant teams are going to be trying to come up with plans. We’re going to look and talk to the doctors. But I think there’s going to be ways to do it safely. It’s not going to be the first thing we do, that’s for sure. But I think restaurants will be able to open faster than bars. But, if you’re distancing, perhaps people have talked about limiting the occupancy, take out every other table. If tables are six feet apart, if the servers are masked, and gloved, it’s possible to open up restaurants in a safer way. We’re trying to encourage, we have been from the day one keeping as many of them as open as possible to do curbside and delivery. And we want to get our restaurant workers and we want to keep our restaurants in business. We want to keep those workers working. But we want to make sure that everybody is safe.

Speaker 9: (35:57)
Last thing.

Sorry.

Speaker 10: (35:58)
Where do schools fall into play?

She didn’t get one.

Speaker 11: (36:02)
So, we focus on hospitalization and ICU’s. Is that leaving out nursing homes, where many of the residents are under intubate orders or do not have-

Well-

Speaker 11: (36:13)
Hospitalization?

The nursing homes continues to be one of our biggest issues, parts of concern. It’s where many of our cases are. So, those are in the numbers because many of our ICU cases and many of our deaths, sadly, are coming from the nursing homes. They’re our most vulnerable population. So, they are in those numbers. But that’s also why that’s where we’re focusing our testing, and that’s where we’ve put these strike teams. That’s where we have these federal teams that are coming into assist us. And so, the nursing homes continues to be a place where we’re concerned about the outbreaks, but we’re not watching different numbers in nursing homes because they’re calculated into the increased numbers of cases, numbers of hospitalizations, number of ICU’s, and number of deaths. And unfortunately, they’re a high percentage of all of those. So, thank you all very much.

Speaker 11: (37:04)
Thank you, Governor.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan Coronavirus Briefing Transcript April 24

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