Politics

“The problem here is two things: It’s the rollout and it’s the lack of vaccines we have to administer,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott told C4 and Bryan Nehman Tuesday morning.  “We need to allow local health departments to be the lead on this because they know how to reach individuals,” Scott said. “They have the connections, they run clinics for flu vaccines.” Scott said local health departments are getting doses, and being told week by week what they’re getting, but private pharmacies can see up to three weeks out.

It is an online scavenger hunt that often ends in futility, or in some cases, the cold parking lot of a COVID-19 vaccine clinic, turned away without that precious shot in the arm. Almost two months after the first doses of the coronavirus vaccine arrived in Maryland, a sign-up process that involves scrounging through multiple websites for seemingly phantom appointments has everyone from legislators to doctors to a desperate public asking: Isn’t there a way to go on a single site to request and schedule a shot?

There are many ways to skin a cat and, in the General Assembly, there appear to be many ways to confront the climate crisis. On Thursday, the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee held hearings on eight bills designed to address the ravages of climate change and make Maryland communities safer and more resilient.

Following Maryland’s recent reckoning with socio-economic and criminal justice inequities in its communities of color, House Health and Government Operations Committee Vice-Chair Joseline Peña-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s) has presented three bills that seek to identify and eliminate health disparities, too. “It’s really clear: the data consistently shows ongoing and, in some cases, growing health disparities in Maryland, including the impact of COVID-19,” she told members of that committee at a hearing Tuesday.

President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that his administration is working with coronavirus vaccine makers to buy another 200 million doses that would arrive this summer — raising the total to 600 million and ensuring the U.S. will eventually have two shots of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for nearly every American. Biden also said the federal government will be increasing the number of doses shipped to states — from 8.6 million doses a week to 10 million a week for the next three weeks, and will start notifying states how many doses they will receive three weeks in advance.