Work is underway on several fronts as your hospitals prepare to receive and distribute the first batches of a long-awaited vaccine for COVID-19.

Your organizations and your people will be at the forefront of perhaps the largest and most ambitious vaccination effort in our country’s history.

Hospital staff are prioritized in the state’s COVID-19 vaccination plan. And MHA is here to help navigate this massive distribution effort.

The FDA advisory panel will meet Dec. 10 and 17 to review Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines, respectively. Formal approval may come within days. We expect the first shipments to arrive in Maryland—though not at every hospital—sometime in that same period. Additional allotments will arrive in increments thereafter and will go to more sites. We don’t yet have many details as I write this, but things ought to become clearer in coming days.

We do know your teams will meet this challenge. You’re already hard at work preparing to vaccinate to protect your dedicated caregivers and the state’s most vulnerable residents.

It is understandable that with a novel virus and new vaccines there is hesitancy among the public, and even health care workers. Your voices are trusted in your communities. Your continued leadership and unified communication are needed to assure Marylanders the vaccine is safe for them and their families. MHA is working on that front as well.

Widespread vaccination of the U.S. population is months off, but the promise a vaccine and your steadfast resolve to care for Maryland will get us through this challenging time.

Bob Atlas
President & CEO