Maryland?s Hogan lifts caps on dining, retail and religious establishments

“Each day brings us closer to seeing a light at the end of this very long tunnel,” Hogan said in announcing the new rules.

Hogan said the new policies follow a weeks-long decline in case rates and the vaccination of more than 1 million residents. As of Tuesday, new daily cases and hospitalizations in Maryland had dropped to the levels they were in early November but were still higher than they were during the state’s summer peak.

“The time is right,” Hogan said.

Infection-control experts have said that given the presence of contagious coronavirus variants in the D.C. region, officials should approach reopening slowly and cautiously.

“The second we see numbers are heading in the wrong direction, we have to be ready to rescind,” Boris Lushniak, dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Health, said last month.

Local governments in Maryland retain authority to keep the stricter rules in place, as they have in the past.

Earlier Tuesday, officials in Montgomery County said they would not be making significant changes to the county’s pandemic restrictions in the near future but are weighing loosening the 10-person cap on indoor gatherings and the 25-person limit for outdoor spaces, as well as relaxing restrictions on child-care operations to match the state’s guidelines.

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) plans to propose an executive order to the council Wednesday, and if approved the changes will take effect next week, Health Officer Travis Gayles told lawmakers at a county council briefing.

Montgomery officials also continued to call on the state to increase the allocation of vaccine doses to the suburb, which is Maryland’s most populous jurisdiction. Some cited the recent study from the Maryland Department of Legislative Services, which found that small, rural counties had received far more doses per capita than more-populous jurisdictions.

Montgomery’s head of emergency management, Earl Stoddard, noted that while the state’s supply of vaccine doses has increased in recent weeks, the county’s weekly allocation of first doses has stayed more or less the same.

“We’ve demonstrated that we’re capable of doing more than we’re doing . . . and that should be evidence enough to them that 4,500 doses a week is well below our threshold and capability,” Stoddard said. The county is working to launch its own mass vaccination site but has yet to receive approval or support from the state, he added.

While coronavirus infections in Maryland and Virginia continued declining at a steady rate Tuesday, D.C. saw a slight uptick, with 331 new cases reported. In a statement, city officials said 135 of the cases are new and 196 are “backlogged cases from February 2021.” A similar reporting lag caused Virginia’s covid-19 death numbers to spike last month, adding more than 900 fatalities to the state’s overall toll in a manner of days.

According to state data, Maryland has administered first doses of vaccine to 17 percent of its population, with Virginia’s number at 18 percent. The District, which does not update its vaccine data as regularly, had vaccinated 11 percent of its population as of Saturday.

Fairfax County and Alexandria officials say they have partnered with Inova Health System to create a large-scale vaccination center in a formerly vacant office building on Eisenhower Avenue. The site, which they hope to launch by the end of the month, will be equipped to vaccinate 6,000 per day and could expand to double that, officials said.

As of this week however, there is nowhere near the number of vaccine doses available to fill that capacity. The center is meant to supplement other health-care providers and an existing mass vaccination site at the Fairfax County Government Center.

The new site has hundreds of parking spots and a bus stop out front and is down the street from the Van Dorn Street Metro station.

“This will be one more location to make it more convenient,” said Jeff C. McKay (D-At Large), chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.

Steve Thompson and Laura Vozzella contributed to this report.