ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Maryland Governor Larry Hogan called on hospitals to immediately make changes to prepare for a surge in COVID cases, “Hospitals should begin making adjustments on an emergency basis adding or redeploying staff.”
Speaking at press conference on Tuesday, he said hospitals should also reduce non-critical elective procedures and transfer patients to other facilities.
Governor Hogan began the press conference with some grim statistics:
- Maryland has surpassed 201,135 confirmed COVID cases
- 2,765 new cases in the past 24 hours
- 27 straight days with more than 1,000 new cases per day
- A 7-day positivity rate of 7.33 %
- COVID hospitalizations have increased by 51%
- 21 hospitals are at more than 91% of capacity
Hogan choked on tears as he said, “Sadly, we have lost our youngest victim, a 1- year-old boy to this deadly virus.”
The governor then announced several actions designed to handle the expected influx of patients. “We are laser focused on taking actions to prevent the over-burdening of our healthcare system.”
He called on hospitals to immediately begin making changes. “We currently have 6,816 Marylanders in our state hospitals, when we reach the 8,000 total hospitalizations statewide, all hospitals will be required to expand their staff to bed capacity by 10% within 7 days of that trigger.”
Hogan called on hospitals and nursing homes to allow unlicensed employees to take over some non-critical tasks in order to free up nursing staff. He also asked counties to tap all non-deployed school nurses and health staff for testing centers and future vaccination centers.
He asked universities and colleges to award credit to students who serve as healthcare workers and to expedite testing and licensing for healthcare students nearing graduation.
Hospitals are required to submit a COVID surge plan by December 8.
Anyone with a medical background who is interested in working at Maryland hospitals can go to https://www.smartrecruiters.com/lab/marylandmednow/
