Governor Hogan spoke with The Atlantic Ideas Festival yesterday to discuss Maryland’s leadership on the development of widespread rapid testing and vaccines.
As Governor Hogan discussed in the interview, “widespread vaccines and rapid testing” are the key to getting “the economy back on track, kids back in schools, and have people feel a real sense of normalcy.”
Thanks to Governor Hogan’s historic bipartisan interstate compact, Maryland has already acquired 250,000 of these rapid tests, which will be deployed to nursing homes, assisted-living facilities, and correctional and juvenile detention centers across the state. As flu season approaches, Maryland has begun to utilize tests in its state lab that can simultaneously detect the flu and COVID-19.
Maryland is also leading on the development of a vaccine. Yesterday, Governor Hogan toured the headquarters of Novavax, Inc.— one of nearly 40 Maryland companies that are working on developing and manufacturing a COVID-19 vaccine. The same day as Governor Hogan’s visit, Novavax announced that they have begun a final-stage trial for a vaccine.
This progress on vaccine development and rapid testing comes as Maryland is reporting record low COVID-19 metrics.