Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced expansions to statewide preparedness efforts to combat an increase in the respiratory virus RSV on Friday, as well as an expected surge of COVID-19 and flu.
Among the steps, Hogan directed hospitals to use $25 million in new funding to prioritize pediatric ICU staffing.
“After meeting with our multi-agency public health task force yesterday and reviewing all of the data, I am announcing these steps to give our hospitals more tools to expand bed capacity for pediatric patients,” Hogan said in a statement.
The $25 million comes from a total pool of $80 million that the Maryland Department of Health announced Oct. 14 would be made available to health care providers, as federal support is expected to decrease with the end of the public health emergency.
“This year, as we’re seeing an increase in both flu, RSV, and again COVID is still circulating, it’s really impacting the hospitals right now,” said Dr. Jinlene Chan, the deputy secretary for Public Health Services with the Maryland Department of Health. “We wanted to provide funding so that staffing can be supported because that’s really one of the challenges we heard from our hospital partners.”
The governor’s office also said the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems will also expand its Critical Care Coordination Center capability, to further increase statewide capacity of pediatric ICU beds, and facilitate the transfer of pediatric patients to Maryland hospitals and Children’s National in D.C.
Chan said the expansion of this was in response to the increased number of calls from around the state.
“For kids, it’s pediatric emergency room, physicians, or critical care doctors, who actually take calls from hospitals that are seeing a really sick child who says, ‘We have a sick child, and we need to get this child into a hospital somewhere.’ So they then have visibility on where there may be beds available to get that child to care as quickly as possible,” Chan said.
A news release from the governor’s office said hospitalizations related to RSV “are increasing earlier and more rapidly than in previous years” and that young children 2 and under now comprise more than half of hospitalizations.
Since Oct. 1, Chan said there has been 500 RSV-related hospitalizations. This time last year, there were less than 400.
“Now last year, I will say it was an unusual year and the COVID pandemic really changed how some of these common viruses circulated. So we had a very strange RSV season in 2021 because we saw a lot more cases in the summer, which is really, really rare,” Chan said.
In addition, the flu has come back this year, much higher than it has been the last several years.
“We already have seen 141 people hospitalized with flu since Oct. 1 compared to only 14 people at the same time last year,” Chan said.
State health officials also continue to encourage residents to get their COVID and flu shots simultaneously.
The COVIDReady plan, announced in June of this year, is the state’s long-term plan of preparedness against COVID-19. The plan emphasizes infrastructure and the need to maximize tools to keep residents out of the hospital with vaccination efforts.
The state has surpassed 710,000 administered bivalent boosters, after recently announcing the addition of the bivalent booster shot for residents 5 and older.
The Maryland Department of Health announced it will be launching a statewide COVID and flu public service announcement, called the “Flooster” campaign, next week.
Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich also emphasized the need for residents to get the bivalent booster shot to help mitigate the amount of people entering hospitals as flu season begins with a combination of RSV and recent variants of COVID.
“Get the [bivalent] boosters, get the flu shots. And consider whether or not to wear masks voluntarily when you’re going into more crowded places, because now you have three things to try to avoid,” Elrich said at a media briefing earlier this week.
And as for advice for parents on how to differentiate between a sniffle or something more serious.
The most important thing is to know your child,” Chan said. “You have to know how your child behaves, but watching for any signs of respiratory distress. So if they’re having any trouble breathing, if they’re breathing faster than normal, if they have a fever that’s not coming down, it’s important to call your pediatrician and ask for some guidance there.”
