covid-19 vaccine

Gov. Larry Hogan is ordering local school systems to give all students the option to return in-person to their classrooms by March 1.

Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson is criticizing the state health department for a slow vaccine rollout and blaming the governor’s pick to run the department, Acting Health Secretary Dennis Schrader. 

Ferguson told reporters Tuesday that the Senate is unlikely to confirm Schrader as health secretary unless vaccine distribution improves.

Maryland officials plan to accelerate the state’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout, making 1.5 million residents eligible for the vaccine by the end of the month.

Nursing home residents and staff are among the first in line for the COVID-19 vaccine. But in Maryland, many nursing homes have not used a majority of their allocated doses. 

Joseph DeMattos Jr., the CEO of the Health Facilities Association of Maryland, said that distributing the vaccine is a huge logistical undertaking. 

Gov. Larry Hogan announced new steps Tuesday designed to speed up the state’s rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The latest state data show that just under 77,000 Marylanders have received the vaccine, correlating with about 28% of the doses Hogan said have been distributed to health care providers. 

All hospitals and nursing homes in Maryland will have initial doses of the new COVID-19 vaccine in the next two weeks, Gov. Larry Hogan announced Tuesday.

The new COVID-19 vaccine could begin arriving in Maryland as soon as next week. Gov. Larry Hogan and the state’s top public health official said Tuesday, they expect an initial 155,000 doses, up to a total of 300,000 doses by the end of the month.

Reporter Rachel Baye speaks with Nathan Sterner about what Marylanders should expect in the coming weeks and months.

Just over a week after Thanksgiving, Maryland surpassed 3,000 new daily COVID-19 cases two days in a row.

Maryland broke its daily case record Friday when it reported 3,792 new cases. The previous record was 2,910. On Saturday the state reported 3,193 new cases.

Dr. Lisa Maragakis, the senior director for infection prevention for the Johns Hopkins Health System, said Thanksgiving indoor gatherings likely contributed to the surge.

Nearly half of Marylanders planned to gather indoors for Thanksgiving, despite warnings from public health experts that those gatherings may exacerbate the latest surge in COVID-19 cases, according to a University of Maryland Medical System survey last week.

Now, Dr. Chris Thompson, an immunologist and Associate Professor of Biology at Loyola University Maryland, said we’re about to see whether there will be consequences to those decisions.

State leaders are grappling with how they would obtain and distribute a future COVID-19 vaccine. During a meeting with state lawmakers Wednesday, health officials and medical and pharmaceutical experts described a lack of national coordination and logistical challenges to distributing vaccines, while legislators questioned who will be able to get the vaccine first. 

An immunologist from Loyola University Maryland says the draft plan for distributing a potential COVID-19 vaccine that Gov. Larry Hogan released Tuesday needs some work. 

“It's still a bit vague. It's still a bit broad, “ Dr. Chris Thompson, the immunologist, said in an interview. “But I think it's as good as it can be with the information that we have now.”

Under Hogan’s plan, the state would prioritize those vulnerable to developing complications related to COVID-19, as well as frontline first responders, health care workers and essential workers. 

If an FDA-approved vaccine to prevent COVID-19 were available today at no cost, less than half of registered voters in Maryland say they would get it, according to the latest Goucher College poll.

A slim majority of Democrats say they would get the vaccine, while slim majorities of Republicans and unaffiliated voters say they would not.