Donna Jacobs of University of Maryland Medical System joins the Baltimore County Executive to discuss how the three vaccines are making their way to Timonium and other mass vaccination centers in Maryland.
An emergency measure, already approved in the Senate, to allow each of Maryland’s 86 school-based health centers to offer telehealth was voted out of a House education subcommittee Tuesday. The vote sends it to the House Ways and Means Committee which is scheduled to vote on it Friday. School-based health centers, traditionally located in schools with high concentrations of poverty, are required by regulation to receive approval from the Maryland State Department of Education before they can offer services remotely.
A raft of policing legislation that Maryland Senate leaders hail as “transformative” and the most far-reaching reform in four decades could pass in the chamber as soon as next week, after long hours of grinding committee debate and oft-contentious haggling over amendments. The nine-bill package would overhaul the police disciplinary process in Maryland, fast-tracking punishment for officers convicted of crimes and giving civilians a voice in judging allegations of misconduct. It would also set a statewide use-of-force standard, including penalties of up to 10 years in prison for serious violations, and obligate officers to step in to stop instances of brutality and report misconduct by colleagues.
Maryland lawmakers are trying to strengthen the State Board of Education in preparation for the sweeping education reform plan that is poised to become law next month. Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) presented an emergency bill Thursday that would tighten the qualifications for state school board members so that as a whole, the board must have expertise in: antiracism and equity frameworks to make systemic change possible; students with disabilities; multilingual instruction; programs that enhance socioeconomic and demographic diversity in public schools; and implementing innovative education reform.
A number of state senators and their staff have tested positive for COVID-19, Senate President Bill Ferguson said Tuesday. At the start of Tuesday morning’s session, Ferguson said there is an undetermined number of positive rapid tests. Nine of 47 senators were off the floor at the start of the session, though it is not clear how many of those nine had texted positive.
Appointments at Maryland’s COVID-19 mass-vaccination sites will be managed by a new web portal beginning in March, the state’s acting health secretary announced on Monday. Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) and his health chief, Dennis R. Schrader have resisted calls for a state-run sign-up system, but Schrader told lawmakers that “the new pre-registration system will improve the user experience, and better prepare for the day when supplies are very abundant.”
In a city battered by the coronavirus, one biomedical plant is churning out enough vaccine doses to inoculate every resident hundreds of times over. The lifesaving medicine is brewed in stainless steel vats and bottled at subfreezing temperatures — then loaded into trucks that carry the vaccines hundreds of miles away. Most will never return. At the eastern edge of Baltimore, Emergent BioSolutions is manufacturing almost all of the yet-to-be approved Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines for the U.S. population — an anticipated hundreds of millions of doses in the coming months.
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