ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Governor Larry Hogan on Friday unveiled his 'Maryland Strong: Roadmap to Recovery.'
The plan is made up of three stages and is based on Maryland increasing personal protective equipment, contact tracing operations, testing, and hospital surge capacity.
Stage one includes lifting the stay at home order, reopening many small businesses, and resuming lower risk community activities. The state could also choose to re-open golf courses, allow recreational boating and fishing, and elective outpatient surgeries as part of stage one. If appropriate safety protocols could be followed, local parks, playgrounds, municipal recreation centers, and libraries could also re-open.
Once stage one is underway without a spike in deaths, a sustained spike in ICU cases, or significant outbreaks of community transmission. Stage two would begin and allow for more businesses to re-open, with nonessential workers unable to telework, to return to work. Indoor religious gatherings with limited capacity, raising limits on social gatherings, normal transit schedules, and the opening of restaurants and some bars with significant safety restrictions, would also likely be part of the second stage.
The third stage would allow higher risk activities to resume including larger social gatherings, opening high-capacity bars and restaurants, less restrictions on nursing home and hospital visits, entertainment venues, and larger religious gatherings.
The re-opening of schools is not listed under any particular stage. Governor Hogan said he would continue consulting with the State Superintendent, as well as local superintendents, to evaluate the safe use of educational/child care facilities.
Hogan says cases are still rising in Maryland, so by federal standards the state cannot not yet lift restrictions. One of the reasons for the rise is increased testing. But key numbers the Governor says he's looking at are the rate of hospitalizations and number of patients in intensive care.
The Governor said he was hopeful that citizens would continue stay at home and practice social distancing, in order to reach a plateau that could allow for the start of an early May recovery.
To carryout the recovery plan, Hogan is combining his response team of doctors and public health experts with economists, labor leaders, and business leaders to create a broader coronavirus recovery team, that he will receive advice from.
The road map can be read in full below.
Maryland Roadmap to recovery by Wmar Web on Scribd
