Gov. Hogan Hopes Ocean City, Maryland Visitors Do A 'Better Job' Social Distancing This Weekend
OCEAN CITY, Md. (WJZ) -- As more restrictions are set to be lifted at 5 p.m. Friday, including the reopening of restaurants with outdoor dining, Gov. Larry Hogan hopes people continue to social distance and avoid large crowds.
Photos and videos from last Saturday showed crowds gathered on parts of Ocean City, Maryland's boardwalk, many without masks.
Hogan, who saw the images and videos, said it was concerning.
"It does concern me," Hogan said on TODAY. "But we did not have any bars and restaurants open for outdoor dining, so a lot of people were just jammed in there walking on the boardwalk."
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Now that officials are reopening some outdoor activities, he's hoping it'll be better this weekend.
"With some of the outdoor activity openings, we're hoping to spread some of those folks out, and the local leaders are also taking great steps to try to enforce and to message out that this s important that masks are suggested. And I think they're gonna do a better job this weekend than they did that first opening weekend hopefully."
Hogan also responded to questions about why he's taken this phased approach to reopening Maryland.
"We've been doing everything kind of based on the science and based on the facts -- we've had a really smart Coronavirus Recovery Team made up of some of the smartest scientists and doctors in our state and in the world, who've been advising us -- we have great numbers that are coming down," he said. "Our positivity rate in the state is down 54% over its peak."
"We've been consistently going down on hospitalizations on the high seas and on infection rates. We've been ramping up our testing capability and our surge capacity and our contact tracing, and so everyone felt we were in a position to slowly, gradually and safely open some of the low-risk things like outdoor activity," he added. "We're going a little more slowly than some states, but we needed to get some parts of our economy get some of the more safe activities back on track and it's going pretty well so far."
