Maryland obtains 500,000 coronavirus tests from South Korea

Maryland has obtained 500,000 tests from South Korea following weeks of negotiations, Larry Hogan, the state’s Republican governor, said on Monday, in an announcement that raised questions about governors circumventing the federal government to obtain medical equipment.

Hogan confirmed on Monday that the state has obtained the tests from LabGenomics. Speaking in Annapolis alongside Yumi Hogan, Maryland’s first lady, the governor said a Korean Air passenger plane arrived at BWI airport on Saturday carrying the tests.

Hogan said insufficient testing remained “the most serious obstacle to safely reopening our states” and celebrated the “exponential, game-changing step forward” that Maryland is taking.

Maryland has already conducted more than 71,000 tests, so this acquisition represents a substantial increase in its capacity to identify new cases of coronavirus.

Called “Operation Enduring Friendship,” the effort was launched on 28 March. First lady Hogan, who is originally from South Korea, apparently played an integral role in negotiations.

Hogan specifically thanked his wife for helping to ensure the acquisition. “She truly is a champion of this operation,” Hogan said. “It’s why we have, and we’re so proud to have, such a special bond with South Korea.”

Hogan noted his wife is not only Maryland’s first Asian-American first lady but also the first Korean-American first lady of any state.

Hogan said: “When I asked my wife, Yumi, to join me on a call with Korea’s ambassador to the United States, we spoke of the special relationship between Maryland and the Republic of Korea, and we made a personal plea, in Korean, asking for their assistance.”

Hogan added the call was followed by “22 straight days of vetting, testing, negotiations and protocols” before a Korean Airlines jet flew the supplies to Baltimore-Washington international airport on Saturday.

The governor added that he would be releasing his plan to reopen the state later this week, and he emphasized these additional tests will play a vital role in safely restarting the economy.

The operation was done in secret, a stark go-around of Trump, who has contradicted his own remarks on states’ dependency on the federal government to improve national testing deficits.

“The administration is trying to ramp up testing,” the governor said in an earlier CNN interview. “But to try to push this off, to say the governors have plenty of testing and they should just get to work on testing, somehow we aren’t doing our jobs, is just absolutely false.”

Hogan called the deal a “game-changing step forward” in combating the state’s outbreak. Maryland had nearly 13,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus as of Monday, resulting in 486 deaths.

According to state officials, 500,000 new tests is more than the total amount of tests completed by four of the top five states with confirmed cases in the country.

At the White House’s daily coronavirus task force briefing, reporters asked about the state having to order the tests from South Korea due to shortages. Brett Giroir, with the US Department of Health and Human Services, said there was “excess capacity” for testing and claimed he wasn’t sure why the governor made that deal. Mike Pence similarly said he has been in communication with Hogan, but also wasn’t sure why he did that.

Trump then attacked Hogan for securing tests, saying, “He could’ve saved a lot of money … He needed to get a little knowledge, that would’ve been helpful.”

At the briefing, the president defended the administration against complaints from some state governors, from both parties, that the federal government is not helping them get the type of testing for the spread of the virus that will help states plan for careful reopening of their economies.

Trump singled out the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, a Democrat, as well as Hogan, saying that the federal government had sent to each state a list of the testing facilities in their state, but claimed that Pritzker and Hogan didn’t understand what they had been told even though it was “very simple”.

But Hogan, speaking to CNN on Monday evening, said that he was well aware of the testing facilities in his state.

“We already know where the lab facilities are,” Hogan said. He added: “More than half [of those listed by the federal government] in Maryland were federal facilities that we have desperately been trying to get help from, or military facilities.”

The governor later tweeted: “I’m grateful to President Trump for sending us a list of federal labs and generously offering Maryland use of them for #COVID19 testing. Accessing these federal labs will be critical for utilizing the 500,000 tests we have acquired from South Korea.”