MD Governor Larry Hogan COVID Press Conference Transcript February 23

Governor Larry Hogan: (00:00)
Good afternoon. Joining me from the Maryland Department of Health, our secretary, Dennis Schrader, and Deputy Secretary for Public Health, Dr. Jinlene Chan. In Just 10 days, it will be one year since we confirmed the first cases of COVID-19 in the state of Maryland. After a long and difficult year, we approach this anniversary knowing that our early and aggressive actions, the ongoing vigilance of Marylanders, and now the availability of safe and effective vaccines, are all continuing to bring us closer to a return to normalcy. The very encouraging news is that we continue to see significant improvement in all of our key COVID-19 metrics.

In the past seven weeks, the positivity rate has dropped by 58% to 3.90 today, the lowest level since October 31st. The case rate per 100,000 has dropped dramatically by 76% to 12.8, also the lowest level since late October. COVID hospitalizations have declined each week for the last six weeks, dropping by 50% from nearly 2,000 last month to 978 today. This decline in hospitalizations is consistent across all regions of the state. The number of nursing homes with active COVID cases has dropped by 47% to the lowest level since mid-October. But sadly, we have now lost more than 500,000 Americans to COVID-19, including 7,580 Marylanders. We mourn each and every one of them, and we continue to pray for their families.

And even as our key health metrics continue to decline, we do remain concerned and are working very closely with CDC officials to monitor the new variants of the virus which have reached our shores. While these variants are not known to cause more severe illness, they do tend to be more contagious. So it is critically important that we stay ahead of them by aggressively testing, tracing and quarantining as needed. Our state public health laboratory has already been testing for these variants at a much higher rate than other states using sequencing to track the mutations of the virus, including the UK, South African and Brazilian variants, all of which we have identified here in our state in recent weeks.

I’m announcing today that in order to expand the screening capacity, the state has just entered into agreements with both the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University, which will increase our state coronavirus sequencing vial volume by more than 100%. this enhanced capacity will enable us to screen and sequence over 10% of all COVID-19 cases, giving Maryland one of the strongest surveillance programs in America. Doing 300% more than the nation as a whole. And if Maryland were a country, it would rank us sixth in the world in terms of percent of cases being sequenced. Dr. Chan is going to discuss this in more detail in just a few moments.

The presence of these variants makes it even more clear that the global vaccination campaign is a race between vaccines and variants. The state’s vaccination rate has continued to rise every day. We’ve now administered more than 1.1 million vaccines, including more than 200,000 in just the last seven days. Even with a winter storm and delays in federal shipments, providers have administered 99.6% of all the first doses we have received from the federal government. The state is averaging 29,096 shots per day, which is far more than we are currently receiving, and nearly a 1000% increase over the last eight weeks. Every nursing home resident and employee in Maryland has been given access to a vaccine, vaccination clinics at assisted living facilities are nearly complete, and clinics at other independent living facilities are underway. The state’s mass vaccination sites are administering vaccines to residents from all 24 of the state’s jurisdictions.

Thursday marks another milestone in that effort with the opening of a 55,000 square foot mass vaccination site at M&T Bank Stadium. At full capacity, the site will utilize nearly 300 personnel daily, including vaccinators, pharmacists, nurses, and nurse practitioners. The first 10,000 appointments have already been scheduled for the site, which as of next week will be administering 2,000 shots per day with the capacity to do thousands more per day as the supply increases. I want to thank all of our partners, including the Maryland Department of health, Maryland National Guard, University of Maryland Medical System, the Maryland Stadium Authority, and the Baltimore Ravens for their efforts.

The fourth mass vaccination site will open in Southern Maryland at the Blue Crabs stadium in Charles County in the next couple of weeks. At the state’s request, the Southern Maryland vaccination site will be supported by FEMA, which has agreed to provide more than 100 personnel, including trained vaccinators to help staff the site and provide technical assistance. I want to thank President Biden, the White House COVID-19 Coordinator, Jeff Zients, and the entire team at FEMA for their support along with the Charles County Regional Medical Center, which has agreed to be the clinical partner for this FEMA-supported site. Southern Maryland site will also be capable of administering thousands of shots per day just as soon as supplies become available.

In addition, we will be opening mass vaccination sites on the Eastern shore and in Western Maryland in the coming weeks. We’re also launching a statewide appointment pre-registration system for all of the state mass vaccination sites. These mass sites will continue to be supplemented by hundreds of pharmacies, hospitals, local health departments and federally qualified health centers, and other providers at clinics all across the state as part of the expanding statewide network that now includes 2,366 distribution sites. Following both the federal and state vaccination plans, we continue to broaden the distribution network to ensure as many points of access as possible in every single county. We are utilizing every single dose we are allocated and building an infrastructure with the capability of doing up to 100,000 shots per day. Just as soon as they are made available, they’re made by the manufacturers and allocated to us by the federal government.

In every state, every city, and every county in America, they currently have the same problem. There simply are not yet enough vaccines and people all across America, very rightfully so, are frustrated that they cannot get a vaccine, they can’t get an appointment for a vaccine. The basic problem quite simply is that you cannot schedule an appointment for a vaccine that does not yet exist. And unfortunately all across America, the demand continues to far, far exceed the available supply. This morning, I had a teleconference with White House and CDC officials. During that call, governors continued to press the Biden administration on the desperate need to get more doses produced and distributed to the states as quickly as possible.

Today’s call included an update on the single dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine candidate, which is being made right here in Maryland at the Emergent BioSolutions plant in East Baltimore. Federal officials said that they anticipate that emergency use authorization could be granted by the FDA very shortly, and that we can expect to see allocations of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to the states as early as next week. We’re very excited about having another vaccine coming online and we will provide more information as it becomes available from the federal government.

State superintendent of schools and I have been strongly pushing to get students safely back into the classroom for in-person instruction by March, and I’m pleased that nearly every school system in the state has either already done so or has indicated that they will meet the deadline. Last week, we submitted a $1.5 billion supplemental budget to provide additional support for the safe reopening of schools. We’ve offered more than 1 million COVID-19 tests to any public or private schools, as well…

… to any public or private schools, as well as an unlimited supply of PPE. Today, I am executing an executive order to clarify that masks are required for anyone over the age of five, in any area of a school setting where interaction with others is likely. Including classrooms, hallways, cafeterias, auditoriums and gymnasiums. I’m looking forward to visiting school systems all across the state in the coming weeks to thank all of the teachers, staff, and administrators who have been working so hard to get our kids back into the classrooms.

Lastly, there have been increased reports of fraud connected to COVID-19 vaccines, including calls from people claiming to represent the health department and asking for payments and Social Security numbers. Last week, the US attorney filed a criminal complaint against three Baltimore area individuals for a scheme to allegedly sell COVID-19 vaccines by replicating the website of a well-known biotech company.

I want to make this very clear: no one can sell you a vaccine. No one can charge you for a vaccine. It is free. No insurance information is required and no Social Security information is required. You can access and verify information regarding all authorized providers at COVIDVAX.maryland.gov. And if you see something that doesn’t look right or sound right to you, if you suspect any type of fraudulent activity, we ask that you immediately report it to law enforcement so that we can go after them and shut them down, and that we can arrest the individuals responsible. Anyone who attempts to prey on innocent people in this life and death crisis will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. At this time, I’m going to turn it over to Dr. Chan to discuss the expanded surveillance program.

Dr. Chan: (12:25)
Thank you, governor and good afternoon. I’m going to focus my remarks as the governor indicated on the variants of concern that have been identified here in Maryland and the work that we are doing to expand our capacity to be able to do increased amount of sequencing. We have seen that the virus has continued to change across the entire course of the pandemic. And so the mutations, we’ve seen that in the sequencing that have been done to even at our state lab, the differences though between those mutations we’ve seen and some of the new variants of concern that have been identified, is that those mutations have not changed the behavior of the virus itself. Some of the variants that have been identified more recently that are circulating globally, and also here in Maryland, differ from the earlier strains of COVID-19 virus in that they tend to be more transmissible. Though, again, the severity of disease does not appear to be increased. Through the vigilance of the work at our state public health lab, as well as our partners on the private sector and in academia, we have actually identified a number of variants here in the state, beginning with the B117 variant, which is also known as the UK variant, the B351 variant, which is also known as a South African variant and the P1 variant also known as the Brazilian variant. And again, this is because we have increased our sequencing efforts over the last couple of months. There are, across the United States right now, over 1600 documented cases with variants who’ve been identified in the US. The majority of those are the B117 or again, the UK variant. About 60 cases have been identified in total here in Maryland with the majority, again, being the UK variant. We know that these do spread more easily and there are more studies being done now, looking at the severity of disease.

Dr. Chan: (14:49)
With vaccines, there have been some recent studies that have been done in a laboratory setting that suggests that antibodies produced in response to both the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccine may not be as protective, but more study is clearly needed to really determine what the impact of the vaccines there will have, or that the variants will have on the vaccine. It is still believed that having the vaccine is still an important step towards protecting against disease from COVID-19 even those caused by some of the variants of concern. As the governor indicated, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is currently under consideration by the FDA and we anticipate a lot more detail about the efficacy of that vaccine coming out shortly this week, we’re anticipating at any day now. Some of their clinical trials, it’s important to note was actually done in South Africa with the circulating South African variant.

Dr. Chan: (15:50)
And so the additional information will be very helpful to understand what the impact of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be. And the early data that has been released shows that it is effective against preventing severe disease due to COVID-19. Now, here in Maryland, we have been learning more about the variants in the state, and we have expanded now our genomic sequencing initiative. Now the viral genome is essentially a set of genetic instructions that help to build the viral structure. And so what genomic sequencing does is it basically gives us the details of what those instructions look like.

Dr. Chan: (16:34)
So it helps us understand how the virus instructions or the genome might change over time, and also helps us identify those variants of concern. That again, some of which we have mentioned and have already been found here in this state. Both state and local public health use this genomic sequencing information along with very comprehensive and targeted contact tracing efforts to identify and track cases throughout the state, to understand how they have spread, to identify additional contacts and appropriately isolate and quarantine them.

Dr. Chan: (17:13)
We also are using this information as we do these contact tracing interviews, to understand how the variants of concerned might impact individuals. The state, again, as the governor indicated, has just signed these agreements with the University of Maryland, as well as with Hopkins. And we will be expanding our capacity from approximately 300 sequences a week to over 700 sequences. So that’s about over 10% of the total number of cases that we are currently averaging every week, and we’ll continue to work on expanding that. With the procurement of this additional equipment, and we are also looking to purchase even more capacity working with our state lab and others is to … well, ultimately bolster our state public health capacity and the overall infrastructure here in the state.

Dr. Chan: (18:17)
Not only to help us with the ongoing response with this pandemic, but also for future response efforts. The increase in sequencing will dramatically increase our chances of identifying these coronavirus variants of concern in all of our communities. So we anticipate that as we do more sequencing, we will identify more cases. So we want to make sure that people understand that. If any of the clinicians out there, I just want to speak to them for a moment to say, if you identify an individual who may test positive for COVID-19, especially after vaccination, or if they are reinfected with COVID-19 after having had it, or have severe immune compromised, an individual immune compromised who may have prolonged COVID-19 illness, we ask that you contact us through the local health department or at the state health department directly so that we can discuss whether or not sequencing may be appropriate in those instances.

Dr. Chan: (19:27)
I want to close by saying that through our focused contact tracing efforts, especially with these variant cases, we have found that the majority of the cases that we have identified with variants of concern have actually not had any known travel history. And even when we do some significant back tracing to identify a potential source, even those individuals have not indicated a history of travel in most cases. And so what that indicates to us is that there is ongoing community transmission already happening here in the state, and-

Dr. Chan: (20:03)
… community transmission already happening here in the state. And so, again, it’s now more important than ever that we wear our mask, that we practice social distancing, and that we avoid large gatherings, to try to prevent the ongoing transmission of the variant cases. So I will close there and I will turn the podium over to Secretary Schrader, who has a few remarks.

Dennis Schrader: (20:36)
Governor, Dr. Chan. Good afternoon everybody. After opening our first mass vaccination site as planned, the state has launched a telephone-based support line. It’s called the COVID-19 Vaccination Support Center and it’s available at 855-MDGOVAX. It’s open 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, seven days a week. And it’s designed to target those who need access to vaccines through the phone. So we are pleased, however, to offer a very robust and customer-friendly platform to assist Marylanders with getting vaccines.

Let me give you a rundown of the center’s capabilities. As callers reached the center, they can find information on Maryland’s vaccination efforts. They can also schedule appointments at our state run mass vaccination centers. We also identify COVID 19 vaccine providers for the callers that are closest to them geographically. In addition, we have English and Spanish call trees, so that can constituents that go through the Spanish side are connected with Spanish speaking call center advocates. Residents can also elect to be served by live agents through text messaging, or by engaging online via chat bot or instant message. And the center is scalable. And as of this week, we will have more than 500 advocates receiving calls in the center.

Last week, we soft launched the support center, last Monday, on the 15th, and the early results were very impressive. We handled nearly 6,000 inbound and outbound calls to segmented groups of seniors from lists that we received from the Maryland Department of Aging. Of those 619 outbound calls, we yielded a very nice connection rate of 37.2%. And that allowed us to book more than 2000 appointments. Of course, many of them were multi-appointment households, which is how we got to 2000. In addition, we previously tested this support center with outbound calls to Prince George’s County residents, working with the Prince George’s County Department of Health. And we received from them about 5,000 names that we called three times and we made a thousand appointments. So we were very excited about that early opportunity.

Let me just talk a little bit about some of the data from the support center. This gives you an early indication of data from the end of the, the call center period on the 19th, last Friday. We received nearly 30, 000 calls. This is primarily however for residents without internet access. And of that 30,000, we spoke with, through our agents, with 7,100, but in addition, another large group of, well over 20,000, we’re able to take advantage of online services.

We’ve scheduled another 800 mass vaccination appointments that day. And now in total, we’ve scheduled 11,828. So the call center is going to continue to have an appointment inventory available on a rolling basis. And in addition to what’s made available online, so that we’re assured that folks who call will have access to appointments. And finally, we’re very pleased that on our busiest day, just recently, Monday the 22nd, the abandoned rate was a very low 0.6%, those abandoning after being on the phone for four minutes. But we’re very, very pleased with that abandonment rates. So I’ll stop there and turn it back to you. Governor.

Happy to take some questions.

Speaker 1: (25:23)
Can you clarify about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine? Knowing about a lot, necessarily [inaudible 00:25:37].

Well, so Jeff Zients the White House Coronavirus Coordinator said that while they don’t know the exact timing of the FDA, EUA, that they anticipated it to happen perhaps I think as early as Friday. And if that as anticipated that they would be able to start shipping to the states as early as next week. They didn’t commit to next week, but they said it could happen as early as next week. We know that Dave said to us that they have about 2 million ready to be shipped to all of the states. And we receive typically about 2% of the nationwide supplies. So roughly whatever that equates to right on the first batch. But they’ve also committed to upping the production to 20 million by the end of March, which is quite a ramp up that would be 400,000 more vaccines for Maryland, likely.

Speaker 1: (26:40)
Governor, you talked about concerning the fraud in the system. What about the concerns with link sharing people having access and spreading around these vaccination appointment links for people who aren’t eligible, technically, to receive it?

Yeah, it’s been a terrible problem. There’s no way, as I understand it from talking with all of the data experts, you can’t prohibit an email from being forwarded. There’s no way to stop that. So when someone gets a notification, they shouldn’t be sharing it, it shouldn’t go to people, but it happens in nearly every single case and every single county. And you can’t give someone an email notification and prohibit them from sharing. It’s been a big problem.

Speaker 1: (27:25)
Governor Hogan on the Johnson & Johnson, on the call to the White House, did they discuss if the current dosage guidance change when you get the Johnson & Johnson, if it’s approved? For example, if someone got Pfizer shot this week and you’re waiting for the second, but all of a sudden you decide, “Oh, that’s not happening.” You get one dose and now you’re going to get Johnson & Johnson? Would that change the course people are already on?

No. They didn’t discuss that at all today. So he the current two vaccines, obviously Pfizer and Moderna are two shot vaccines. The Johnson & Johnson is a one-shot vaccine. And there’s differences in efficacy. I’m sure there’ll be announcing that in the reporting. As Dr. Chan said, the Johnson & Johnson is the only one who actually did full-scale trials in South Africa, and I believe also Brazil. So they know that it has less efficacy on that, but the others don’t have any data on that at all.

You also know in the one vaccine, it’s, I think 86%,, as opposed to 47. 5 on the first dose of the other one. You have to get two of them and you have to wait three or four weeks to get the second one. So I think we’ll get more guidance from the federal government when they approve. And when they tell the states what we’re going to get.

Speaker 2: (28:45)
Governor, I was curious about Montgomery County in terms of possibly a mass vaccination site. There are a million people. Largest county in the state. [inaudible 00:28:56] population. Are they potentially in the pipeline?

At this point we’re only opening sites as we get enough vaccines to do them. Montgomery County has the largest population. It has the most vaccines. It has the most distribution points, and it has the highest percentage of people being vaccinated. So it’s not as big of a problem with some of the other areas, but it’s certainly not something we would rule out if we get enough vaccines.

Speaker 2: (29:21)
Governor, I’m going to touch on the next question, discussing the incident involving Prince George’s County problems. [inaudible 00:29:31] What do you see sir, the state could do more of? [inaudible 00:29:36].

It’s a problem that we’re all working on. Equity’s a critically important component for us. It’s why we started our first mass vaccination site in Prince George’s County. It’s why it’s the first place we sent the National Guard to assist them. It’s why we opened up our first pharmacies there. I’ve been there multiple times with the county executive at opening a Six Flags, a Giant Food. There’s a tremendous reluctance to get the vaccine. They have a huge supply…

There’s a tremendous reluctance to get the vaccine. They have a huge supply. They’ve put a fewer percentage of them into arms. That’s something we’re working on from a public information standpoint.

We appointed the General Gene Burkhead to head up the Equity Task Force. Since 70 some percent of the vaccines are being done by other than the local health department, we’ve asked the local health departments to appoint an equity officer, and to have them focus their efforts on reaching underserved communities and places where they need more help. We’re going into mobile vaccination centers. It’s taken into consideration when we’re opening up pharmacies and other locations. Our second mass vac site was in Baltimore City at the Convention Center. Our third one will be at M&T Bank Stadium.

So this is an issue we’re having all across the country. It was discussed with the White House. They’re having difficulties nationwide. Every governor’s having these issues. And we’re going to continue to focus on it with the federal, state, and local partners. How do we get more needles into black and brown arms?

Speaker 2: (31:07)
Governor, according to surveillance, Dr Chang just gave a call out to doctors asking them to send them potential cases of concern. How are cases being determined for testing now? And how much surveillance would need to be done to get up in arms around the variants that are actually in the community?

On the second half, the goal, I think, would be 10% of the population is what CDC says. The Federal Government does about 3%. So we’re going to be, I think as of immediately, we’re going to be at 10%. We’ll be the first state, I think.

But it’s only a small percentage and it’s the ones that we have the most suspicion on. And maybe Dr. Chang can tell you how they decide which ones we’re looking at.

Dr. Chan: (31:49)
Yes. Thank you. And what I alluded to in my remarks is that earlier this month we did send out a letter to clinicians, just to remind them that there are some cases that we really have a special interest in, those who’ve been vaccinated, and others as I mentioned.

Dr. Chan: (32:07)
Right now, our laboratory, and our state epidemiologist, and local health departments work closely to identify these potential cases. A lot of these actually have been identified at the laboratory level because there are some signals that the laboratory professionals can identify, even during the PCR test, that that might be a clue that the individual has a COVID variant of concern.

Dr. Chan: (32:35)
And so some of these cases have actually been identified because of those signals that they’re seeing at the PCR and the laboratory level. In other cases, if there is an outbreak, if there is an individual who may have died and gone to the medical examiners office, those are some of the other places where we have targeted some of the sequencing work.

Dr. Chan: (32:58)
But again, with our expanded capacity, we’re trying to take a slightly broader look, and trying to gather some other potential cases.

Dr. Chan: (33:08)
Again, this is a limited resource. It’s very, very work intensive and time intensive. But we are dedicating and investing our efforts into making sure that we have sufficient capacity and that it can continue to grow.

Speaker 3: (33:33)
Governor, your ruling out of such a global system for the mass vaccine sites. You talked to [inaudible 00:33:33] counties to opt into that. There’s still, I guess, we’re hearing about frustration from people who are [inaudible 00:33:41] on any various wait lists. And a lot of concerns [inaudible 00:33:45] to vulnerable populations that are less tech savvy, less able to make those calls. Why not do one system that would allow all these people to opt in? Or should it all be on wait list?

Yeah, we’ve addressed this a couple of times. There are only a few very small States that are about the size and population of some of our counties, like smaller than Montgomery County, who have done that.

There was one, I think, state with a larger population, Massachusetts, which just attempted it. It completely crashed. Governor Charlie Baker, a friend of mine, is being criticized for, how did you let this happen? It’s terrible. It’s crashed.

Secretary Schrader has said multiple times, “We don’t want one point of failure. We don’t want millions of people trying to go into one website and crash it.” Our system is working better. It’s why 99.7% of all our vaccines are in arms.

The real frustration is, it doesn’t matter if you have one, or 10, or a hundred sites, there aren’t enough vaccines. So we can not schedule appointments. And rather than telling them that on our website, the local… They’re frustrated because they’re not getting the vaccine. That’s all going to change as we get more supply.

But all of our experts, we’ve had meetings about this for months. And we’ve made the decision. The Federal Government, I think, agrees, most other States agree. I’m on calls every week with governors. Nobody thinks that’s a good idea, but people keep asking us about it.

Speaker 4: (35:07)
Governor, with declining viral metrics and vaccines getting more available, are we soon going to be in a place where you might be able to think about lifting capacity restrictions? Say cars and restrooms?

Well, certainly those are the things that we’re taking a very close look at. We have a hundred percent of our businesses open at this point. But we do still have some capacity restrictions. I don’t see us lifting any masking orders anytime soon because of the worry about the variants.

But as I started the discussion on today, our metrics could not be going any better. And we’re down to the October levels. We got past all of the holiday surge, and this has been consistent now for, in many cases, six, eight weeks of… I don’t know if the charts were shown, but everything’s going down, which is great. We want it to keep going that way.

And it’s helping that we’re getting the vaccines out. It’s helping that all of the mitigation efforts, that we’re number one in America on mask compliance, and the people are following the public health advice.

But what we don’t want to do is have everybody get complacent and have these crazy variants out there that… There’s a few, there’s kindling out there still. There’s embers, and we don’t want it to flame back up again.

Speaker 1: (36:16)
Last question, if I may, can I ask for just some more detail about the single registration site? For perhaps Secretary Schrader, if you could give us some details on when we might see it?

Speaker 1: (36:28)
We’ve heard from a lot of people who thought, at least the M&T Bank Stadium, would be on the same one as the Convention Center. And they thought if they were registered there, they might get an invite. And that’s two different sites. So when can people actually expect to see it?

Yeah, I’ll let the secretary Schrader give you the specifics, but this was always our intention, to build this for the state mass vac sites. We’re currently on a slow opening of those. The first couple of days, we do 250. By next week, we’ll be doing 2000.

We will be able to do, at each of these five mass vac sites, five to 6,000 a day. So at some point, we’re going to be doing more vaccines just at those sites than we’re doing currently in the entire state, out of 2300 locations.

So we need to have the ability to do that. But it’s been a soft launch. 10,000 appointments got scheduled on a site, like in one day. But it’s going to be able to handle a whole lot of volume when we get the capacity. I don’t know if there’s any details of when exactly?

No. We’re examining the design as we speak. It will be sometime in the near future. But we’re working through the details now. And we’ll have more in the not too distant future.

Speaker 1: (37:42)
Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yes, sir.

MD Governor Larry Hogan COVID Press Conference Transcript February 23

Other Related Transcripts

Stay updated.