With significant progress on the four building blocks that are necessary to begin the recovery process for the State of Maryland, Governor Hogan introduced the ‘Maryland Strong: Roadmap to Recovery’ in a briefing on April 22, 2020. Read below for an overview of the briefing.
Update from Governor Hogan:
- Maryland has 14,775 confirmed cases of Covid-19.
- There are 3,875 cases of Covid-19 in Prince George’s county.
- The highest number of cases is in Prince George’s county.
- In the past 35 days, 631 Marylander’s have passed away due to the virus.
- 3,325 patients have been hospitalized, and 1,432 are currently hospitalized.
- 905 acute care patients
- 527 intensive care patients
- We have surpassed 27,000 cases in the national capitol region, 1,159 have died in MD, DC, and VA.
- Hospital Capacity:
- On track to not only reach, but to exceed our goal of 6,000 additional beds by reaching a surge capacity of more than 6,700 beds in the coming weeks.
- Reopening the Laurel Hospital, providing an additional 135 beds, including 35 intensive care beds. It is being staffed by almost 400 contractual medical professionals and managed by the UMMS.
- Testing:
- Maryland has expanded our testing capabilities by over 5000% over the past month.
- Completed more than 76,000 tests to date.
Maryland Strong Roadmap to Recovery
The plan has four essential building blocks that must happen to reopen the state:
- Expanded testing
- Increased hospital surge capacity
- Increased supply of PPE
- Robust contact-tracing operation
- We have established drive through testing centers all across the state.
- Last week we secured 40,000 additional tests.
- 500,000 tests acquired from South Korea, which amounts to the total testing completed by four of the top five states altogether. A second plane landed Wednesday morning at BWI with more payload.
- Earlier this week, we received an offer from the president and vice president to allow Maryland access to federal labs.
- Increasing Hospital Surge Capacity
- 250-bed field hospital at the Baltimore Convention Center is completed and staffed, and will be admitting patients who no longer require hospitalization but need a location to complete their care and fully recover.
- Prince George’s County, first beds were made available at Adventist Fort Washington Medical Center and additional beds were being added to the University of Maryland Prince George’s Hospital Center in Cheverly.
- 22 surge response tents being built across the state with 100 additional beds at Jessup and Hagerstown to address the needs of corrections and detention centers.
- Increasing Supply of PPE
- Acquired 5.9 million surgical masks, 1.5 million KN95 masks, 705 N95 masks, 2.3 million surgical gowns and 1.1 million face shields and an additional 1,000 ICU beds.
- Authorized a contract Wednesday with the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) to quadruple the state’s disease investigation capability in order to contact up to 1,000 new cases per day.
- Robust Contact Tracing Operation
- Launching state-of-the-art contact-tracing platform called COVID Link, which will assist in monitoring and collecting information about people who test positive.
- COVID Link will use medical data from the Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP). Maryland’s 1,000 contact tracers will be trained to make sure all information is collected in accordance with regulations for the security and privacy of medical data.
- UMMS CEO Mohan Suntha said Laurel received the first 35 ventilators from the state’s distribution. Laurel went from zero to open in less than 35 days.
Read more about Maryland’s Roadmap to Recovery plan here, or reach out to us with questions or concerns directly here.
