Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan said Sunday he fears the next few weeks could prove the worst in the nation's long fight against COVID-19.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Hogan said the goal is to prevent hospitalizations and death from the omicron variant surge.
“We believe that the next four to six weeks are really going to be a terrible point in this crisis, and it's potentially going to be the worst part of the whole two-year fight,” he said. “We’re going to take and continue to take every action we possibly can to help our hospitals, our nursing homes and to keep people safe. Our focus is what it's always been since two years ago and that's trying to prevent hospitalizations and deaths.”
According to Hogan, the state has poured over $100 million of emergency funding into hospitals and nursing homes in Maryland, waived requirements for out-of-state doctors and healthcare workers and sped up the graduation of nursing students so they can get out early to help.
“We called up the Maryland National Guard and are continuing to take actions nearly every day, nearly everything that anyone can think of to help us get through this,” he said.
Hogan, who has recovered from a bout with the omicron variant, hailed the vaccinations and booster shot for keeping his infection more like “a bad cold.”
“What we're faced with now unfortunately, this new omicron variant is impacting just about everyone, including many people who are fully protected, but it's keeping them out of the hospital, and that's the thing we have to keep in mind,” he said.
“These vaccines were designed to help stop serious illness and death, and they're working beautifully that way, because right now, we have 92% of our state vaccinated here in Maryland, one of the most vaccinated in the country, but we have overflowing hospitals, and so that 8% of the population who has not been vaccinated is responsible for 75% of all the people that are filling up our COVID beds in the hospital.”
“Here we are nearly two years later and it's like deja vu, we're faced with this emerging variant you know, very similar problems to what we had at the beginning,” he lamented.
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Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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