HOWARD COUNTY, Md. — More than a quarter million Howard County residents have filled out the online application for the COVID vaccine and about 21 percent have received their first or second dose.
County Executive Calvin Ball says the vaccines have been dropping since the program started. Many counties have received less vaccines because of the supply chain and weather recently.
"4,500 vaccines were provided the starting week, January 24th. The following weeks we receive 2000 doses and now we're down to 1700."
About 3/4 of the teaching staff in Howard County will return to work starting Wednesday in preparation for the 4,000 students that will return to in person learning March 1.
"Approximately 60 percent or 6,000 of the total workforce for the Howard County public school system has received either the first dose or are scheduled to receive the first dose and those are very, very encouraging numbers."
During this pandemic one of the biggest concerns are hospitals being overwhelmed, that's a concern they have here in Howard County as well.
"When we looked at the start of the second wave we were probably about half of those numbers of COVID patients that we had at the beginning," said Dr. Shafeeq Ahmed. "So that's a lot better for that and that means we can accommodate all regular patients, so we are as a state seeing less and less COVID conditions so we're at a much better place than we were back in November."
The rest of the staff and students are planning in-person hybrid learning starting March 15th. The county is currently in phase 1B.
