Prince George’s County’s Health Department is adding more coronavirus vaccination sites as cases of the virus continue to soar in the county, officials announced on Tuesday.

The county’s Sports and Learning Complex in Landover will be inoculating 1,000 people per day starting Thursday, County Executive Angela Alsobrooks said. The health department will also be opening another vaccination clinic at the Southern Regional Technology and Recreation Complex in Fort Washington by the end of next week. A third mass vaccination clinic is in the works, Alsobrooks said.

“None of us has ever been in this situation before with a mass vaccination need like this one,” Alsobrooks said at a press conference announcing the extra sites. “But what I can tell you is that the county has truly ramped up [vaccinations].”

So far the county has distributed more than 13,800 vaccines, according to state health data.

“We’re asking all of our residents to please be patient as we move through the monumental task of vaccinating Prince Georgians,” Alsobrooks said.

Cases are at an all-time high in the county, as hospitalizations in December and January increased to levels not seen since the early months of the pandemic, according to county health data.

Prince George’s County is also working with private health care providers to offer vaccines to staff, the elderly, and those on dialysis. Alsobrooks said the county hopes to begin phase 1C of its vaccine distribution plan next week, and will partner with Kaiser Permanente to vaccinate school teachers, people 65 years or older, public transit employees and grocery store workers. The county and state are also looking for volunteers to help at vaccination sites.

Dr. Ernest Carter, the county’s health director, said vaccine distribution has been slow because the federal government is overseeing the process, not the state.

“All of that’s getting ready to change,” Carter said. “Everybody is excited about the new [presidential] administration and the way they’re going to approach [vaccine distribution].”

Maryland has administered a little less than half of the roughly 563,000 first and second doses of the vaccine it received from the federal government, according to data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state health department. Thousands of residents are set to receive second doses in the coming weeks.

But Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) told reporters Tuesday that be believes state is “ineffectively administering the vaccine” given to it by the federal government.

During a briefing last week by the state’s department of health, Ferguson said lawmakers were told Maryland would be distributing 12,000 vaccines per day. But the state health department reported that less than 8,500 vaccines were administered over the entire weekend.

“In order for Marylanders to recover from COVID-19 physically, economically, and socially we must get this right,” Ferguson said.

Ferguson announced that the legislature will begin a vaccination oversight group to hold state officials accountable and make sure the vaccine is being distributed equitably. More than 146,000 white state residents received the first dose of the vaccine, compared to less than 40,000 Black Marylanders, according to the state’s vaccine distribution database.

“We’ve got to be intentional in ensuring there is equity in vaccine administration,” Ferguson said.