All nursing home and hospital employees in Maryland will be required to get vaccinated or submit to regular testing for the coronavirus, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced Wednesday, the latest move to increase vaccinations in a state that is seeing a rising number of covid-19 cases.

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       The order will affect the 227 nursing homes that operate in the state and all the hospital systems that have not already imposed a vaccine mandate. Workers will be required to receive their first dose of a vaccine by Sept.？1 or undergo regular screening and testing for the virus, Hogan said.

       Nursing homes that don’t comply with the new vaccination protocols or report their vaccination data will face increased fines, civil penalties and enforcement actions.

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       Many of the state’s largest hospital systems — including the University of Maryland Medical System, Johns Hopkins Medicine, MedStar and GBMC HealthCare — have already mandated vaccines for their staff.

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       The action comes about two weeks after Hogan announced that state employees who work at prisons, hospitals and other congregate settings would be required to get vaccinated or get tested regularly. That order, which affects about 13,000 employees at about four dozen facilities, also goes into effect Sept.？1.

       This week, members of the Senate Vaccine Oversight panel called on the Hogan administration to reissue a statewide mask mandate and to require 12-to-17-year-olds to get inoculated before school starts.

       Health Secretary Dennis R. Schrader told the panel that the state’s focus is on vaccinations, not reimposing mask mandates. Instead, he said local jurisdictions have the authority to require indoor face coverings.

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       He said that he would check with lawyers but that his understanding was that he does not have the authority to require schoolchildren to be vaccinated for the coronavirus. The senators disagreed, arguing that the state attorney general has issued advice that the administration could require children to be vaccinated.

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       The discussion comes as cases rise in Maryland. On Wednesday, the state recorded 1,012 new coronavirus cases, with the seven-day average for new cases per 100,000 people rising to 15.38, a rate last seen in April.

       Tonya Webb, a covid-19 data analyst, told the oversight panel Tuesday that the current rate of increase in cases is steeper than what the state saw between March and April of this year and between September 2020 and January 2021.

       “I think we’re going to end up getting there anyway,” Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) said of a statewide mask mandate. “So it’s a matter of now or later, and the sooner we do it, the faster we’re through it.”

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       Seven out of 10 people in this Maryland Zip code are unvaccinated. Local leaders are trying to change that.

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