Gov. Hogan To Reveal Details Of His State Recovery Plan Friday

Gov. Larry Hogan will unveil his recovery plan "Maryland Strong: Roadmap To Recovery" on Friday, which details the necessary steps the state must reach before he can ease restrictions put in place amid the coronavirus crisis.

Hogan is set to announce his plan 3 p.m. Friday.

Before the state can begin it's recovery process, Hogan said there are four building blocks that must be met:

1. Expanded testing capacity.

2. Increasing hospital surge capacity.

3. Increased supply of personal protective equipment.

4. Robust contact tracing operation.

“Our entire team has been working hard and making incredible progress on all four of these necessary building blocks so that, as our numbers start to look better, we will be in a position to safely reopen our state and get people back to work,” Hogan said in a statement.

He will also look at the state's number of hospitalizations, deaths and intensive care patients, all of which must be going down for 14 days before enacting his plan.

Hogan is already making strides to meet the four building blocks of his plan.

With the help of his wife, Yumi Hogan, Hogan acquired 500,000 coronavirus tests through a weeks-long and confidential deal with a South Korean firm to increase Maryland's testing capacity.

In total, the state paid $9 million for the tests from LabGenomics in Seoul, officials said.

To increase hospital surge capacity, Hogan announced the reopening of the shuttered University of Maryland Laurel Medical Center earlier this week.

Reopening the hospital adds 135 beds, including 35 intensive care beds, to the state's capacity amid the current outbreak.

Other sites include a 250-bed field hospital at the Baltimore Convention Center, beds at the Adventist Ft. Washington Medical Center in Prince George’s County, additional intensive care beds at the UM Prince George’s Hospital Center and 22 "surge response tents" are being set up at hospital across the state, according to Hogan's website.

A multi-agency task force has been established to build the state's supply of personal protective equipment. Hogan said the state has received many recent shipments of crucial equipment.

Shipments include:

5.9 million surgical masks, including 1 million masks from the Republic of Korea

1.5 million KN95 masks, including 1 million from the Republic of Korea

705,000 N95 masks

2.3 million surgical gowns

1,000 additional ICU beds

1.1 million face shields

Officials said the shipments have been arriving at the state's warehouses daily.

Hogan authorized a contract with the National Opinion Research Center to "quadruple the state’s present disease investigation capability" with efforts to contact up to 1,000 new coronavirus cases a day, according to a news release.

Additionally, Hogan announced a platform called "COVID Link," which is a state-of-the-art contact tracing system that assists in gathering information from positive coronavirus patients and any people they may have come in contact with.

On Thursday, Maryland exceeded 15,000 positive coronavirus cases.

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