All Maryland Hospitals, Nursing Homes, Local Health Departments Have Gotten COVID-19 Vaccine Doses, Hogan Says, But Vaccinations Lag
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WJZ) -- Every Maryland hospital, nursing home and local health department has gotten initial doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, Gov. Larry Hogan said Wednesday morning, though the number of people vaccinated lags behind the number of vaccines the state has gotten.
The state's health department reported Wednesday morning that 36,669 Marylanders have gotten vaccinated against the virus. By the end of last week, the state was set to get a total of 191,075 vaccines between the Pfizer and Moderna varieties.
By the end of this week, meanwhile, Hogan's office said the state will have had 273,875 vaccines allotted from the federal government, 140,300 of which will come from Moderna and 133,575 of which will crome from Pfizer.
During an interview on "CBS This Morning," Hogan addressed delays in getting people vaccinated, saying it's not the time to point fingers and instead called on federal, state and local governments and the private sector to work together. None of those groups are performing at top capacity, he said.
"There's no question that we all need to be ramping up if we're going to get this enormous job done across the country," he said.
When asked where any supply chain slowdowns may be, Hogan said he believes it's a little bit across the board.
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"The federal government did not deliver the number that they were originally telling the states that they would get, the private sector companies, the... two companies in (vaccine) production, I think their production has not been as fast as they had hoped or what their projections were," he said, adding hospitals and nursing homes are also having trouble ramping up distribution.
"It's not just sticking needles in arms, there's a lot of moving parts," he continued.
It's a similar story nationwide. Even though Trump administration officials had hoped to have 20 million Americans vaccinated by the end of the year, the number is closer to 2 million, CBS News reported.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown University's School of Public Health blamed the federal government's lack of leadership.
"There really hasn't been much investment from the federal side in helping states... to get the vaccines into people's arms," Jha said. "... States don't have the dollars and they don't have the resources to just figure all of this stuff out on their own."
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