The Maryland Senate confirmed Dennis Schrader as the secretary of health Friday after weeks of questions about the health department’s COVID vaccine distribution plan.

The Senate voted 45 to 2 in favor of Schrader, who has been acting secretary of the state’s department of health since his predecessor, Robert Neall, retired in December. Since the beginning of the legislative session in January, Schrader has been meeting weekly with a Senate committee to review the health department’s COVID response and vaccination distribution plan.

Many Republican senators who voted in favor of Schrader’s confirmation said he was doing his best in the midst of a global pandemic.

“Let’s think about what he and his department have gone through in this last year,” Senator J.B. Jennings (R-Harford and Baltimore counties) told his colleagues on the Senate floor. “There’s a saying of ‘you’re flying the airplane as you build it.’ That’s what this department has done…did they make mistakes? Absolutely. They’re doing their best.”

That sentiment is in line with more than three-fourths of Marylanders who approved of Republican Governor Larry Hogan’s handling of the COVID outbreak, according to a Goucher College Poll released last month.

Hogan applauded the confirmation and Schrader’s commitment to the state.

“Secretary Schrader has served the citizens of Maryland well and faithfully during the biggest public health challenge we have ever faced, and I am very proud of the work he and his entire department are doing to save lives every day,” Hogan said in a statement.

Most Democratic senators voted in favor of Schrader’s nomination with some reservations and concerns about the future of the department’s COVID response and vaccine distribution.

“He shows up. He doesn’t have all the answers. He listens to what we have to say. He doesn’t do everything we want him to do, but he tries to,” Senator Jim Rosapepe (D-Prince George’s County) said.

Prince George’s County Senator Paul Pinsky (D) agreed with Rosapepe and added that he was fearful of the alternative to confirming the appointment:  having to find a new candidate for the job during the Hogan administration’s final 18 months in office.

“I hate to call it the lesser of two evils,” Pinsky said. “I also have to say the first two months were a disaster. The [vaccine rollout] was pathetic.”

But two Senators Clarence Lam (D-Baltimore and Howard counties) and Mary Washington (D-Baltimore City) flat out rejected the nomination. Lam and Washington were also on the panel asking questions about the Schrader’s COVID response each week.

“Particularly during a time of a global pandemic, we need consistency and credibility from the health department, and particularly from the top of the health department,” Lam said.

Lam, the Senate’s only physician, went through a list of what he called “inconsistencies” in Schrader’s response to vaccine distribution including saying there was no need for a statewide pre-registration portal for vaccine appointments or mass vaccination sites, creating a formula to deliver vaccines to counties which gave more vaccines to less populated counties, and initially suggesting that racial disparities in vaccine distribution was due not to access problems, but vaccine hesitancy in communities of color.

“Every week I have asked [Schrader] questions about the lack of a community health approach, a lack of engaging public health professionals that we have in the state of Maryland,” Washington told her colleagues. “It’s not that I don’t think he’s a nice guy….but I believe when we’re talking about a secretary of health there’s a general approach to securing the public health that we found lacking.”

Rosapepe responded to those comments from Lam and Washington by saying that it’s Gov. Hogan who Is to blame for issues during the pandemic, not Schrader.

“The secretary of health doesn’t control the priorities, the governor controls the priorities,” Rosapepe said.

David Abrams, a spokesperson for the governor, told WAMU/DCist that the “numbers clearly show what a great job Schrader is doing…the vote makes it clear that senators agree.”

The state is ramping up the number of vaccination sites, and on one day this week, administered more than 75,000 vaccines, a new high. Hogan announced that all Marylanders 16 years and older can now pre-register online to get vaccinated at a statewide mass vaccination site.