Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland stated Sunday that the subsequent few weeks may very well be one of many worst intervals of the coronavirus epidemic but, and that the state was working in opposition to staffing shortages in “overflowing” hospitals.
“We consider that the subsequent 4 to 6 weeks are actually going to be a horrible level on this disaster, and it’s probably going to be the worst a part of the entire two-year battle,” Mr. Hogan stated on the CNN program “State of the Union.”
Regardless of having one of many highest vaccination charges within the nation, hospitals have been stuffed with unvaccinated sufferers, he stated.
“We’re going to take and proceed to take each motion we presumably can to assist our hospitals, our nursing houses and to maintain folks secure,” he stated.
One of many challenges for the weeks forward can be sustaining staffing in medical amenities. Many medical doctors and nurses have been coming down with Covid, he stated, and have been additionally exhausted.
“You may’t actually manufacture medical doctors and nurses that don’t exist, and admittedly, these heroes on the entrance line which were working so laborious for 2 years, there’s fatigue,” Mr. Hogan stated. To mitigate the disaster, the state put emergency funding into hospitals and nursing houses and sped up the graduations of nursing college students, amid different measures.
Maryland’s hospitals, like these in lots of different states, are reaching capability. The state reported a rolling common of greater than 8,800 new instances a day on Jan. 1, a rise of greater than 560 % over the past two weeks, in response to a New York Instances database. Hospitalizations are up by greater than 60 % to a mean of almost 2,400.
It’s unclear what number of hospitalizations are sufferers contaminated with Omicron versus the Delta variant, which is regarded as considerably extra virulent. Based on the C.D.C., about 58 % of instances in Maryland and close by states are at present Omicron.
The Maryland Hospital Affiliation stated that the variety of hospital sufferers surpassed the state’s Covid peak from final winter.
The chief medical officer on the Anne Arundel Medical Middle in Annapolis informed MSNBC that the state was “at a tipping level,” and that there have been no beds left open.
Mr. Hogan additionally talked about his current breakthrough case of the coronavirus.
“As a result of I had that safety,” Mr. Hogan stated of the vaccine, “I had kind of a nasty chilly. What we’re confronted with now — sadly, this new omicron variant is impacting nearly everybody, together with many people who find themselves totally protected, nevertheless it’s preserving them out of the hospital and that’s the factor we’ve to bear in mind.”