Maryland’s aggressive efforts to combat a second round of swine flu may be undercut by looming budget cuts, Gov. Martin O’Malley said Monday.
“Might affect, might compromise,” O’Malley said following a news conference at Prince George’s Community College. “These are the biggest cuts that we’ve seen in the state budget in modern times.”
O’Malley is set to propose about $470 million worth of cuts to the state budget Wednesday, including $250 million to local governments. The cuts come on the heels of $280 million in fund transfers and cuts the governor announced in July to help bridge a $700 million budget gap.
Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Secretary John Colmers said state officials were hoping that federal grants would offset some of the costs of dealing with swine flu.
O’Malley added that with “good management,” Maryland “should be up to this challenge.”
Health officials expect a second wave of swine flu to hit the U.S. in the fall; a White House report said up to half the country’s population could contract the virus, leading up to 90,000 deaths.
O’Malley also announced the seventh swine-flu-related death in the state. Officials offered few details of the death, saying only that an elderly person from the Washington suburbs who had other health problems had recently died of the disease.
Colmers said that six of the seven swine flu victims in Maryland had underlying medical problems. He said the state hoped to have a swine flu vaccine available for the state’s 2 million most vulnerable residents, including schoolchildren and health workers, by mid-October.
But the White House report said the flu may strike well before mid-October and urged an accelerated production of a vaccine. The report said that up to 1.8 million people could be hospitalized with swine flu nationwide, swelling already full intensive care units.
On Monday, O’Malley highlighted a new computer-based system that collects data of symptoms reported in the state’s hospital emergency rooms to track disease outbreaks or patterns of illnesses that could be an early warning of a chemical or biological terrorism attacks. O’Malley said Maryland was the first state in the country to have 100 percent voluntary participation in the new system.
