Maryland is not ready to begin reopening its economy, according to its governor.
Appearing on the TODAY show on Thursday, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan said his state and the surrounding Washington, D.C., area are still trending upward in coronavirus cases.
“Here in the Washington-Baltimore corridor, we’re still heading up that curve … It would really be the worst possible time to put our people out there and endanger them,” Hogan said.
“What we’re all going to need before we get people back to work is more testing, more ability to do contact tracing, we’re going to need to make sure we have the hospital capabilities and all the [personal protective equipment],” he added.
The comments come the same day that President Trump released federal guidelines for some states to begin reopening. Calling it a “beautiful puzzle,” Trump said that the governors of the 50 states will take the lead on when they think their state should open back up. The guidelines are broken down into three phases, with benchmarks to reach for moving to the next phase.
Maryland has had more than 11,500 cases of COVID-19 and almost 350 deaths since the pandemic began.
