WASHINGTON — It’s Monday, January 11, and today Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced his proposal for a $1 billion coronavirus relief package in his state.
The legislative package, called the RELIEF Act of 2021, would include $450 direct stimulus payments to individuals and up to $750 for families. You can read more about what Hogan is proposing here.
On the vaccine front, more than 340,000 people in D.C., Maryland and Virginia have now received at least the first dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Maryland has now administered enough doses to account for about 46% of all health care workers in the state – although with the perpetual caveat here that we don’t know all of those doses went to health care workers.
That’s better than Virginia is doing – it’s administered enough doses for a little more than 1/3 of its health care workforce – although the commonwealth is doing better on getting the second required dose into people. Nearly 9% of those vaccinated in the commonwealth have now received both shots.
D.C. isn’t yet reporting how many people have received the second dose, but its weekly vaccine update does show the city has administered nearly 60% of the doses it’s received, which is better than the vast majority of states (although, of course, D.C. is not a state).
Two other things to highlight up top:
If you’re just here for the numbers, here’s how things look today.
- D.C. reported 202 new cases of the coronavirus and 4 new deaths on Monday. More than 26,000 people in the city have now been vaccinated with the first dose.
- Maryland reported 3,012 new cases and 29 new deaths from the coronavirus on Monday. Just under 140,000 people have received the first dose of the vaccine. Of those, only about 5% have received both doses.
- Virginia reported 4,530 new cases of the coronavirus and 10 new deaths on Monday. The commonwealth has administered at least one dose to just under 175,000 people, and more than 15,000 people (about 8.7%) have received both doses.
How are things in the DMV?
Like I said last week, we won’t know how the majority-maskless pro-Trump crowds in the District on January 6 will effect case numbers in the city for a few more days. However at least one member of Congress, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), has tested positive for the virus following the lockdown caused by the Capitol breach.
Coleman, a 75-year-old lung cancer survivor, made clear in her statement Monday that she believed she was exposed by other members of Congress who refused to wear masks while they were in protective isolation.
In the meantime, even without a potential superspreader event to bump their numbers up, Maryland and Virginia both continue setting new COVID-19 hospitalization records. As of Monday, 1,957 people in Maryland hospitals were positive for the coronavirus – nearly 450 of whom were in the ICU. In Virginia, more than 3,100 hospital patients now have the coronavirus, and 352 of those were on ventilators.