 Good morning, everyone. We have a lot to get through this morning with our modeling update, details on new long-term care guidance, and some updates from Dr. Levine, so I'll be brief. As you'll hear from Commissioner Petschak, many of our neighboring states continue to see an increasing number of cases, which is not unexpected and something most states have been predicting as we headed into fall. And as we presented each week, our own modeling predicted an increase in cases here in Vermont as well. But thankfully, we do not expect a large increase, and it's very much in our hands to keep our numbers down and continue to lead the nation in this regard. So again, I want to encourage all Vermonters to think carefully about the number of activities you're involved in, the number of people you come in contact with, and ask you to try and limit those to as few as possible. So if you find yourself in a situation where that's not possible, it's important to follow our simple guidance. Wear a mask, keep six feet apart, and try to keep those gatherings outdoors as much as possible. And as we've been saying, get a flu shot. I think it's important to lead by example, so Dr. Levine, Secretary Smith, and I did in fact get our flu shots this morning. And I would encourage everyone who can to have one. Even if you've never gotten one before, this is the year to do it. It's an important part of keeping the capacity of our healthcare system open in order to care for COVID patients if needed, as well as protect our healthcare workers. As you all know, protecting the vulnerable in our long-term care and other similar facilities has been a top priority for us during the pandemic. And unfortunately, this has required a lot of sacrifice from our seniors and their families. The Agency of Human Services and Department of Health teams have been working on new guidance for these facilities, which Secretary Smith will detail shortly. I know this remains difficult for all of us, but especially for those who've not seen family members for months. But we have an obligation to protect them and the staff, and we take this very seriously. So we're going to continue to proceed with caution. With that, an update from Secretary Smith. Thank you, Governor. I wanna talk a little bit about changes to long-term care guidance. A few weeks ago, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, what is commonly called CMS, issued new regulatory guidance to our CMS certified nursing homes related to both testing requirements and indoor visitation. In response, Dale, VDH, and an industry subgroup worked together to develop new guidance documents which supersedes the restart guidance issued to our long-term care facilities in July. If you remember, in July, we had various phases that you would go through in order to obtain different visitation policies. This new guidance document, which is based on the requirements set forth by CMS, will be effective as of yesterday. This includes testing requirements. Staff testing requirements are linked to county-level positivity rates. So even at the lowest level imagined by CMS, below 5% within a county, staff must still be tested at least monthly. And we are doing that here in Vermont. Should there be increasing rates of positivity levels in counties, the frequency of staff testing would increase. For example, if it's over 5%, then it is weekly. If it is over 10%, it is twice a week. Additionally, this new guidance addresses indoor visitation. For nursing homes with zero to 10% county positivity rates, indoor visitation will be allowed with strict parameters. Now remember, Vermont is within under 5% positivity rate. So these guidelines would pertain to long-term care facilities or skilled nursing facilities in Vermont. Should county positivity rates increase beyond 10%, only outdoor visitation or compassionate care visits will be allowed. And should there be a positive case in a facility, visitation will be suspended except for compassionate care. It is important to remember that increasing visitors to a facility will increase the risk of potential virus transmission. Our guidance takes the requirement to allow indoor visitation and create strict and specific guardrails to define how to conduct indoor visitation as safely as possible. Facilities will be held to high standards and visitors will be held to the same high standards. We know that an inability to see family and loved ones has had an impact on our long-term care residents. We want to ensure that we address that impact while still keeping our long-term care residents safe. CMS defines core principles for infection prevention, which must be adhered to throughout any visit. Those include visitor screening, physical distancing, mass wearing, hand hygiene, cleaning and disinfecting practices, and use of PPE. Additionally, this guidance sets guardrails for those that visit. They include limits on the number of visitors at any given time. That would be two, scheduled visit times, collection of contact information for all visitors, appropriate quarantining for any visitor prior to a visit. If you're coming from out of state and you're not in a green zone, the same sort of quarantining has to take place before you visit a facility and other strategies to create the safest possible environment for all residents and facility staff. This will be a huge change for our long-term care facilities and we encourage all that are anxious family members to be patient as they work to adopt these new expectations and continue to prioritize the health and safety of your loved ones. I also want to just sort of update you. I've done it a little bit on prior press conferences on adult day, working with the health department and adult day programs. At the end of September, we did publish guidance, Dale did publish guidance for how adult day programs can open safely. We agreed to a soft launch and not make any big announcement to avoid them feeling all sorts of pressure. Each will decide when and how they will reopen and when they're ready to reopen and to begin to serve their participants. The most vulnerable of these participants might not be coming back immediately as they would present too big of a risk. Also, most will continue some form of telehealth as they reopen physically. Each program within the guidance needs to create their own reopening plan, addressing their own facility and program. Those need to be submitted to Dale for review. In the guidance itself, we address physical space, water, climate control, number of participants per square feet, face coverings, where and how to use them, how to handle drop off and pickups of participants, daily health screenings, cleaning and disinfection, strategies for physical distancing in a congregate setting, how to handle personal care for participants, food preparation and service, transportation, and we make no available resources as well in the guidance. I'll be happy later on to answer any questions on long-term care facility guidelines. Next up is Commissioner Pichek on the weekly update. Thank you, Secretary Smith, and good morning, everyone. This morning, we'll start with an overview of some of the national updates, then turn to our regional update, Vermont-specific data and modeling, and then close with an update on our travel map. Again, for those who are watching at home, you can always find our presentations at dfr.vermont.gov. Today's presentation as well as past presentations are available there. Turning now to our first slide, this is a 14-day overview of the entire country, areas where cases are continuing to increase and those where they are performing better. The story is pretty similar here. They're parts of the Great Plains and the Midwest that are continuing to see large amount of cases. While the Northeast is performing well comparatively to those parts of the country. However, as we'll get into in a minute, cases are still going up in the Northeast and maybe just as alarming, so are hospitalizations across the country but also in the Northeast as well. We've also, as a country, surpassed 50,000 cases per day on a seven-day moving average and that last time we have done that was in the middle of August. So cases are going up nationally. We are seeing that regionally as well but as I said the hospitalizations are also a concern. If you go to that census region slide, we'll see that in the past the story had been that particular parts of the country were seeing increases, particularly the South and the West over the summertime. Right now you can see almost each census region is going up although slightly. We are seeing increases across the board, across the country to some degree. That is a little bit different than what we saw over the summertime. Going ahead to the regional data, you'll see here that last week, if you remember, we had almost a 50% jump in cases from about 16,000 to 24,000. This week the case numbers have gone up although very mildly compared to last week, up about 3%. I will note that testing across the region was down about 10% this week compared to last week, which might be a factor as well. And also the state of Rhode Island has not updated its data since last Friday so there is some missing data that's normally in here. However, all of that still being the case, cases are still rising week over week in the region and something that we're going to continue to keep a close eye on and something that has impacted our travel map as well. You'll see here the overview since the beginning of the pandemic over week case growth. Certainly still as was the case last week, the growth is much more mild than it was back at the beginning of the pandemic, particularly this week just being up over 3%. It has slowed down, but it has gone up from an even higher base. So again, something that we need to continue to keep a close eye on around the region and how that will impact Vermont. Turning to the regional heat map, I think this will be illustrative to put these cases on the map so that they're not just accounted for as a state, but it shows you in those states where the cases are really cropping up. You'll see on a per capita basis, just like in March and April, the cases are primarily located in that New York City metro area along the coastline in Connecticut, up to Rhode Island in Boston, and then some as well in southern New Hampshire. So they're not necessarily right on the Vermont border, but we are seeing increases in upstate New York and western New York as well. And that data that we're going to have to keep a really close eye on over the ensuing weeks. Turning now to our Vermont data, similarly we did see an increase relative to our low summer case counts, but we did see a decrease compared to last week, 58 cases compared to 72 last week. But if you do add up those two weeks, it was the highest total case count that we've had since the early part of June. So again, we're seeing some movement in cases, as the governor mentioned, our modeling was predicting that with more mobility, with people being able to go back to work because their children are in school, that that was a probable outcome. And we are seeing it show up to some degree in our case counts. All of that being said, we are still the lowest state per capita for a seven-day infection rate. We just beat out Maine, so we continue to have the lowest infection rate in the country on a seven-day average the lowest since the beginning of the pandemic. And if you look at the number of PCR positive cases that have come back, we also rank number one in that regard as well. So our numbers, again, trending very favorably to the region and the country, but they're just higher compared to what we've experienced in Vermont recently. On the restart metrics, these are all trending well. We don't need to spend too much time on them since they are all trending in a favorable direction. The positivity rate, as I said, is still very low. The growth rate is not sustained. It's not a concern. Syndromeic surveillance remains relatively low. And in terms of hospitalization, we fortunately don't have anyone in the hospital today with COVID-19 across the entire state. So positive news on all fronts there. Turning to the next slide, this is just an overview of testing per capita that is going on in the country. This is from the beginning of the pandemic and this is based on a PCR test that are conducted and the data comes from the CDC. And it really shows how much Vermont has increased its testing from the beginning of the pandemic and now ranks number six in the country on a per capita basis, but really stands out both in terms of that increase you see around college reopening, but then that sustained increase that has maintained over the last month or so. So again, this is really positive news in terms of where our cases are and how much testing is going on. Both of those things are important for us to keep in mind. Getting to our most recent modeling forecast, you will see as we mentioned that cases are expected to slightly go up over the rest of the month and into November. This had been anticipated for a number of weeks, although our case counts had stayed relatively low. Again, nothing that is a cause for concern, but certainly is a good reminder for us to continue to adhere to all the public health guidelines to keep the case counts as low as possible. An example of four states that we have referred to on a number of occasions during these updates is a good example of what can happen if you don't keep your case counts low or people start to get a little lax on the health guidelines. These are four states that we've compared in the past. Vermont, Hawaii, Alaska, and Montana. You can see from the beginning part of the pandemic we had very similar trajectories from March to June. We all had a mild peak and then had really, really low case counts for weeks and weeks if not months. But as we go to the next slide, you can see that that has played out much differently in August, in September, and into October. All of the states other than Vermont have seen dramatic increases in their cases over that period of time. Some have started to come down, but you can see most recently Montana, which really has skyrocketed in the last few weeks. These are three rural states other than Vermont, which is rural as well. But it shows you how small rural states that are doing a good job containing the pandemic, when things do loosen up a bit or people start to loosen up a bit, you can see cases grow quite substantially. It's a good reminder, I think, for us in Vermont to be vigilant and continue to adhere to the guidance as best we can. A quick update on the flu vaccine and on education. You'll see that on the next slide, we continue to beat last year's flu vaccination rate compared to the same period in time. We're up about five or 6,000 cases of people getting the flu vaccine. That's about 9.5%, 9.6% increase compared to last year. So that is good news. We'd like to see, as Dr. Levine will mention, even more people getting their flu shot. If we go to the next slide, you'll see that certain age groups are continuing to do a really good job with getting their flu shot, particularly younger and middle age and older individuals. But that cohort between 20 years old and early 30s is down compared to last year. It's important for everyone to get vaccinated. So just another reminder to do so. Turning to the education data, looking across the northern New England region, cases in Vermont continue to stay really low. In New Hampshire, cases in schools are up over 100, impacting 68 schools. In Maine, similarly, seeing a number of cases, recently 71 cases across their state. So considerably more cases in the other northern New England states than we're seeing currently in Vermont. In the higher education data, we remain very stable. We've had 15,000 tests performed in the last week from higher education institutions, only four new cases, so 55 cases total, compares, again, favorably to northern New England as well. Finally, updating on the travel map, as I mentioned, our regional cases have gone up again for another week. And the fact that we've had high case counselor across the region for two straight weeks factors into our methodology and what counties are eligible for non-quarantine travel. As you can see from the map, much more red and yellow across the board than even reported last week. This results in about 1.87 million people able to come to Vermont without a quarantine. It's down from about a million visitors from last week. Last week we're about 2.8 million. You'll see also that the average cases per million across the entire travel region is now 1,987. That's up from about 480 at the beginning part of June. So across the travel region, we're seeing cases go up. Finally, on the last slide, you'll see those places that have switched from last week. Not very many have flipped to green, but we have seen quite a few counties that have flipped to either yellow or red. And again, just to mention that a number of them are across the Vermont border, either in New Hampshire or New York to be vigilant about that for any cross-county or cross-state travel. So with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Levine. Just a quick follow-up on flu vaccine since that is a topic of concern this morning as it will continue to be. I want to talk to those who may be ambivalent, who may be sitting on the fence, especially in that cohort that Commissioner Pichac talked about, 20s and 30s. Just have a few comments. Because flu season is occurring this year, of course, during a pandemic, it really does mean it's more important than ever to get a flu shot. Flu shots can prevent medical visits. They can prevent hospitalizations. Even if you get your flu shot and you still get the flu, the vaccine can reduce the severity of the illness you will have and the symptoms you will have, and perhaps the number of days of symptoms as well. During the 2018 to 2019 flu season, Vermonters were hospitalized due to flu more than 1,800 times. The statistic many of you may not be familiar with. So this year it's important to limit any strain on our hospitals and our healthcare providers, who of course are continuing to play a critical role in our COVID-19 response. By keeping flu out of the picture, we can avoid what I've termed this twindemic that we don't want to see. And we certainly don't want to see further PPE shortages and other resources being competed for by the flu in addition to COVID-19. Things like ventilators, oxygen, ICU rooms. These are really critical to treating those who have severe cases of COVID. Moving to a couple other topics now. The Health Department is currently investigating several cases associated with four schools. South Burlington High School, Williston Central, Windsor School and Manchester Elementary. All of whom have put out communications to their communities. You can find the number of cases for schools at our COVID-19 website. But remember that weekly updates are posted on Monday mornings, reflecting reports received by the previous Friday. This means some of the current investigations won't be reflected in the data until next week's presentation. We've not made any public health recommendations to close these schools or move to remote learning at this time. But as always, if the school makes such decisions based on state guidance and their own operational considerations, we support their decisions. Leaders at the schools have been helpful and we appreciate their communications to keep students, staff, teachers and communities informed. I want to emphasize that even this far into the school year, there have been no known instances of transmission of the virus in the schools. School-associated cases are among people who have been exposed to the virus in the community outside of school. In addition, we are investigating 12 new cases among people associated with hockey, both Youth League and adult team members, all in the Montpelier Central Vermont area. Contact tracing is underway and we do not yet know the connection between the youth and the adult players. The number of cases should be considered preliminary at this point and subject to change. Now, while we know that both the youth and adults practice at Central Vermont Memorial Civic Center in Montpelier, the exact mode of transmission is not yet clear. Whether it's even due to playing or practicing hockey or to activities incidental to the sport, such as carpooling to practices, travel to a game, team gatherings, group meals or the like. Team rosters and schedules are being collected and a timeline is being developed and along with interviews and contact tracing will guide further recommendations. We are recommending testing for adult team members who participated in recent games and the Youth Recreational Hockey League sent out a communication to all eight teams associated with this club to encourage players to get tested. We are not yet recommending testing for the community at large. A few of the youth players are included among cases in some of the schools I mentioned earlier. These schools use a pod structure which has greatly facilitated contact tracing, quarantining and local decision making. The last topic has to do with the fact that you may have heard that the University of Vermont had a special guest visit over the weekend. Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force came to UVM wearing a scarf as part of a national tour to gather information on best practices in higher education in the COVID-19 response. I think she told me she'd been to something like 37 states already and wanted to see what constituted Vermont's response and its reasons for success. Secretary Smith and I also were fortunate to have the chance to speak with Dr. Birx and impressed with the college restart efforts, including comprehensive testing protocols and the positivity rate here in Vermont. She appreciated our surveillance testing of vulnerable populations and even suggested we find one or two other groups to test periodically. But she also shared some of her own thoughts with us about other areas of the country that are seeing increases in cases, specifically some of the states Commissioner Pichek talked about. One of the main concerns is travel. She noted the bumper-to-bumper traffic leaving Boston for Northern New England and the full hotel rooms where she was staying. We managed to do well through the summer travel season, but we need to be even more careful about travel now with more activities moving indoors and with schools open. Dr. Birx noted the experience of states like Wyoming and Montana which used to have rates like ours. She attributes much of their increases to tourism and specifically to residents leaving the state for hotter zones and then returning back home with infection. She noted similar to our Vermont data that much COVID transmission occurs within households and close friends where trust is high. It's important that we do not fall into the trap of thinking that just because people are our close relatives or friends and we know them well that we can know with certainty whether or not they've been exposed to the virus especially if they live in an area where incidence of COVID is higher than here. The likelihood of a transmission from asymptomatic individuals may also be high. That is why we have strict guidance for travel. So I remind you, please, please think about any travel pins carefully and check the travel map. If you have visitors, make sure they check it too. Unfortunately, as we just saw, there are a lot of yellow and red counties right now and that does require that you quarantine either for 14 days or with a negative PCR day on or after day seven of quarantine. This also goes for college students returning from other states to Vermont for the holidays. And remember what it means to quarantine. Staying home and away from other people. Get someone else to do your errands for you and no social gatherings. We know it isn't easy, but unless we want this to go on and on, this is how we can limit possible spread of the virus together. I'll turn it back to the Governor. Thank you, Dr. Levine. We'll now open it up to questions. Calvin? Thanks, so this might be a question for Commissioner, can you mention that North Dakota, for example, they have one of the highest testing for catheter rates in the country. Yet they are one of the biggest toxins right now. I'm wondering if you could just gather your thoughts on how that's possible and where that relationship is. Yeah, so certainly testing in cases have to play a role with each other. If you have really high cases and really low testing that could indicate that maybe there's even more cases in your region than you're testing for. So the fact that North Dakota is doing a lot of testing, I mean, they are turning up a lot of cases. So that does definitely interplay with each other. So maybe their cases per capita are a little higher because they're doing so much testing. But it's clear that it's quite significant the situation that's happening in North Dakota and South Dakota, even with the amount of testing that they're doing. Then I guess maybe this is more of a question for the government, but so we're, if not the state, at our lowest point, some 1 in 8 million people a lot of them come into the state right now get the peak of our portfolio season maybe we're a little passive. But I'm wondering, I guess if you just have a sense of how this is going to impact our offers, how it's going to impact our economy, especially, you know, yeah, there's no doubt that the pandemic itself has affected our tourism sector hospitality in particular with our restaurants and lodging facilities. I would say that the peak of the season this past weekend was probably it. We will see a gentle, I think, decline in the number of visitors naturally over the next month or so and then I would imagine it would resume around Thanksgiving into December. So hopefully other states will get their own numbers under control at that point and we can open up more travel into the state but I think we're just going to miss that. I think the timing was actually appropriate for us and we should miss the full brunt of that. So again, I think we're doing better than we thought we would from a tourism standpoint but certainly the numbers are off dramatically from a year ago. And then I guess I'll just follow up. If we continue to see this trend of our number continuing to fall, what would that mean for this season? Well, again, hopefully if this wave that's coming at us from into the Northeast with a higher number of cases hopefully that declines over the next month or two and we'll be able to get back to some sort of normalcy that we'll be able to welcome people into ski. It'll look much different. I know we are having conversations right now with some of the mountains and the ski areas and so forth to determine what provisions will be put into place and I know they're taking a lot of those on themselves learning from neighbors and some of the other facilities around the country. But I'm confident we'll have a ski season but it may not look the same as it did a year ago. Ross? Governor, thank you. First a quick question about the schools with some cases now popping up at both elementary and high schools and people are going to connect to youth recreational sports. Where's the line for you with taking some more state level action instituting some more guidance or rolling back when schools are out there a lot to operate? Again, I think what we've done so far has precluded the maybe shutting down or revision of some of the guidance. I think we're in pretty good shape in some respects when you look at what we're experiencing versus maybe other states we've done very well. So being able to actually switch from remote to in-person and so forth and a hybrid approach has taught us how to do that and so it may not be necessary to impose any more guidance than we have today. It's a slightly different topic now curious if you've got a chance to fill out the NAACP's candidate report card? I don't know. I don't know. I actually don't have the answer to that. Thank you. Alright, we're going to move the phones out. Aaron Patanko, VT Digger. Aaron, VT Digger. I've heard Dr. Levine tight. Go ahead, Aaron. Can you hear me? We can. Okay. Sorry about that. I've heard Dr. Levine mention water schools with case investigations going on. I also heard that Essex-Blesford School District announced a case at Essex Elementary School. Would that bring the total number of schools with cases of nerve investigation up to five? Yes. Dr. Levine. Yes, you are correct. Okay. And that hasn't yet been added to the total announced on the website or anything like that? That's a very, very, very recent news. Okay. We're also hearing from some teachers that expressing concern that teachers are not considered or just anyone who's in the room with a student would not necessarily be considered a close contact for the purposes of contract tracing these positive cases. Could you give some clarification about what makes someone a close contact in this circumstance? Absolutely. So the traditional definition of close contact has to do with the distance and the duration of contact. So we talk about the six feet as you're quite aware and we talk about 15 minutes of close contact. We, as part of contact tracing interview lots of people and we get a sense in terms of the facility for how long students and teachers are together for periods of time. There are situations where a teacher and a class may be together for much of the day which certainly would be concerning in terms of a close contact. There are other situations where there may be a short duration class or two and the students are shuffling in and out of a different room and that may not be. Every instance is an individual instance so we have to really look at it case by case to know if we should tell a teacher to be quarantining or not and alert them to their level of risk. I would want to be reassuring to teachers because we look at schools obviously very, very seriously in the case whether it's a teacher, a staff, or a student and we do our best to make sure that we understand who's really in the closest contact with the index case and who may have had more peripheral contact that wouldn't warrant any alarm or a quarantine situation. Thank you. I have another question for the governor. The auditor release for today is to consider the affordability of healthcare. Have you had a chance to look at the report and do you have a response to it? No, if he released it today I was busy getting a flu shot and preparing for the press conference so I have not seen that. Okay. Do you have any concerns about the affordability of healthcare in Vermont? Yes. Is that something that you're considering pursuing or, you know, campaigning on in terms of, you know, every day? Yes. Every day we are concerned about the affordability of healthcare and the affordability of Vermont and we are taking steps every day to try and make it more affordable. I would ask Secretary Smith if he might be able to answer that. Maybe he's seen the report. Thanks Erin. I had heard the report has come out. I haven't seen it and I think it actually came out yesterday morning but I'm not sure yet when it came out. Affordability, we talked about reboot of the all payer model. Certainly affordability is a huge part of that aspect. You have sort of three-legged stool with healthcare. You have affordability which you have to make sure that you focus on. You have access which you have to focus on and you have quality that you have to focus on. So affordability is a major part of what we're looking at as we look forward in what I would say is the reboot of the all payer model. Okay Erin, I think we need to move on. And Barbara? Yes, good morning. Good morning. My question this week is the economy still partly shut down with tremendous loss we've had in tax revenues, rooms and meals and sales tax. Are there any projections that you're working with right now to see what's going to happen for next year's budget and are there things you're looking at to try to mitigate the impact it would have on our policy taxes this year this next year? Yeah, both good questions and we are concerned obviously about those revenues and I'm sure that in your region in particular with the border being shut down you haven't seen as much cross maybe not at all cross border revenue of those coming from Quebec in particular. We have made projections for this this budget that we're in right now that will end the end of end of June and we have we're working with our economists with the legislature on projections for the following year to the next fiscal year. So again too early to tell a lot will depend on Congress and what will happen with the next stimulus package I believe the president announced that he was willing to move forward with stimulus package the house has passed one the senate hopefully will take one up and we'll have something that we can rely on because we're going to need some help with stimulating the economy over the next few months so again a lot of there's a lot of potential but we'll continue to work move forward we'll build a budget that I'll present in January that will be balanced and we'll live with our means but hopefully we'll receive some help from Congress in order to accomplish that. Do you know from the last with the money that they were able to directly target the federal fund to help off the property tax burden? No. That's right. We're hoping for more flexibility that still could happen to be honest but at this point it has not happened Congress has not taken any action on giving the states more flexibility in some of the CARES money so we have presented options for the CARES money but if they were to come back in the next couple of weeks we might be able to shuffle money around to try and help in other sectors so time will tell we have to be nimble but at this point in time we've appropriated all the CARES money but I believe there may be some left over or if they give us more flexibility and guidance we'll go back to work and see if we can find some room in areas of need Thank you very much Wilson Ring Good morning everybody What you make of the growing red and orange they seem to be moving in on Vermont and obviously you've seen the number of people who can come here go down and continue to go down but might at some point you need to do something to be a little more strict on I don't know how this would attempt to do it but whether people who come into the team seems to be pretty much an honor system and I wonder how well you think that is working and if anything or might have to be done about Wilson it's not I've talked about this a number of times we don't have a perfect system nor do I know what the perfect system is to be perfectly blunt we can't shut down our borders we can't check papers as they come across the border so we have to rely on some sort on our system and we've incorporated a lot the lodging industry has been a great partner in trying to prevent some of the travel so we'll see where we go from here I'm hoping that we've hit the peak that travel does seem to be part of the problem so possibly we've hit the peak and then the wave will move on and not prevent so many of these opportunities for us here in Vermont thus far have not seen what other states have and we hope that to be the case if we continue to follow the guidance and continue to prevent some of the spread ourselves I think that's really important okay great thank you very much Kat WCAX questions for Dr. Levine first one is why are you not recommending community testing yet for the central Vermont community I know when past case clusters are popped up that's led to pretty quick community pop-up testing sites are you finding those immediate pop-ups after a cluster of cases not really effective in catching new cases or is it just something specific to this instance it has nothing to do with the value of the pop-ups it's just we're very early in the investigation and we want to get an adequate handle on it to understand the value of the community pop-up in this particular instance doesn't mean we won't be recommending it I just wanted people to know that as of this early juncture in time we hadn't been pushing for that immediately you know that part of it has to do with the likelihood of community spread from the initial cases that are discovered and so once we've decided that that will help a lot I guess probably the better clarifying question for me at this point then is when did you first become aware of these the cluster connected to hockey Saturday and Sunday broader question here are there similarities in the ways that people seem to be getting this virus I'm kind of thinking big picture here like we see cases pop-up here or there in Vermont are there any similarities that you can draw to in specific behaviors that people had or specific ways they might have contracted the virus yeah no those are great questions so in our weekly updates you know we try to look at that now and then to be getting a handle on it one of the most numerous ways people seem to get the virus is by being a household contact so having somebody in the household who's a case and then one of the contacts who usually is quarantining becomes another case that doesn't happen with high high frequency if you're a contact of a case but it happens to a large proportion to account for a large proportion of people who become cases we also continue to recognize that people who have traveled and come back to the state are a significant source of that as well because as Wilson just showed in his questioning and a map showed this morning even if you're traveling regionally there are a lot less places that you can go that aren't yellow or red if you're leaving Vermont and then coming back so it has nothing to do with whether people are appropriately quarantining when they come back it just has to do with the fact that they've put themselves at some risk I'll put that in quotes by going to an area that has more prevalence of virus than we do those are really main ways that we're looking at right now obviously we have occasional clusters or situations in various kinds of work sites or long-term care facilities what have you but when we see those they still generally represent people who in the community have either acquired the virus through a contact or through a travel situation Lisa Loomis the Dallas Reporter Good morning Dr. Levine mentioned that Dr. Berkley just made to see the traffic that we tell I should travel to UVM I'm wondering if the State or the Trans or Commissioner P-Check has any detailed data on increases in out-of-state travelers over the last weekend and is there any data that quantifies state by state out-of-state visitors Lisa I know that we have a public-facing dashboard from the Agency of Transportation that shows the number of people traveling in and out of the state through some of the ports but it doesn't distinguish who's out-of-state who's not just kind of a relationship as to where we were a year ago I believe Commissioner P-Check might have information on the mobility as well Yes Lisa the mobility data is generally a week to 10 days behind the current date so we don't have information yet for this past weekend I will say that it was generally the mobility was going up but consistent with how mobility went up in previous years so still down compared to 2019 so it was going up but still consistently down compared to the previous time point 2019 and we can provide a further update once we get more up-to-up real-time data Thank you Commissioner P-Check and to follow up Governor he says that with foliage tourism winding down helps you to see the flow of epidemic in people's cases How will winter tourism be different with foliage tourism? You mentioned you've been in conversations with the ski areas Can you share any more about those plans? I can't share any more about the plans because they haven't been fully vetted at this point I know they're working on this in terms of what my hope is that the other states that we rely on I mean most of the skiers we have in the state come from the driving public from the surrounding states whether it be New Jersey or Connecticut or Rhode Island and Massachusetts and New York so if they're we're all one big community if their case numbers drop they go back to green and they can travel into the state again I think we'll be better protected obviously because the virus won't be spreading so that was my only point that at that point my hope is that other states surrounding us will have a better experience in terms of the transmission of the virus Got it, thank you very much thank you for your time Greg, the county courier Good morning I think this question is either for Secretary Smith or Dr. Levine or maybe even a combination I'm hoping that someone can give an update on the recent COVID test I'm a staff member at Northwestern Medical Center and curious what the state's guidance is to the hospital and how the state's been involved Maybe Dr. Levine I'm not sure we have that information but Dr. Levine Greg, you're going to have to illuminate a little more and help us understand exactly what you're talking about Well I understand that there was a positive test in the last few days at Northwestern Medical Center by a staff member possibly someone in the emergency department I'm wondering what your knowledge is of this and guidance has been to the hospital in responding to having somebody who's worked with patients and other staff members test positive Okay, so I really am not aware of what you're talking about and if the team is and have dealt with it, that would be great so we can get back to you on that but let me broaden the discussion a little bit since you've given me the opportunity This would not be the first healthcare worker in any institution in the state that we've seen have a positive test so we actually have a lot of experience with it at this point in time and because of the level of attention every healthcare worker has given to the appropriate health guidance and because of the PPE and masking issues that they've all complied with we don't really have instances of the public either entering a hospital for admission or being there for other reasons and having an infection result because they entered a healthcare setting like a hospital so the chance again of that happening is real but it just has not been an issue in Vermont when we looked at our total numbers of cases a few weeks ago on our weekly update in Vermont it turned out that one in six cases were with healthcare workers so that's like you'd expect a higher risk profession putting your own health and security on the line every day by interacting with the public, some of whom may have the virus the good news is though that we're aware of that hospitals deal with it effectively and we're not aware of any major transmission going on within the facilities because of that as I will continue to say and have said previously the work setting you would want to go to in every education setting you would want to go to is but a microcosm of the community you live in so if there are cases in the community that the healthcare workers live in and they don't spend 24-7 at the hospital and never leave they're going to have the opportunity like the rest of us to potentially come in contact with the virus and that's what this often is revealing it's very unusual actually for them to be getting their positive test because they interacted with a patient who was hospitalized for COVID it's much more that they've come to work unwittingly not having symptoms and tested positive does that help? yeah I guess anything to help do you have any sense of how many doctors in Vermont have tested positive since we think we got this pandemic? yeah I don't we've kind of lumped them into a healthcare worker category and I wouldn't want to off the top of my head guess that doctors versus nurses versus orderlies or what have you so I couldn't give you that exact number I'm not sure we even have it but if we do we will send it to you it's going to be a small number I can tell you that and typically what sort of response does the state have to hospitals when there is a positive test it's my understanding that they kind of ramp up their PPE a little bit to kind of more of a precautious level than they were at before is that standard is that guidance from the state? are you saying to contend with the fact that there was a positive test? well it's my understanding that as they're trying to rule out any spread to other coworkers that they've increased the level of precautions they're taking at the hospital I'm wondering if the state has given guidance to other hospitals like that in the past? yeah the reality is I don't think a hospital can up its game much more than it is from baseline a positive case in a department in the hospital wouldn't necessarily precipitate a change in their approach to PPE because I bet you their approach is actually fine and again you will find quite often if not the majority of the time that the hospital worker became positive because of something else going on in their life and someone else that they were exposed to and then when they found they were positive they immediately were removed from the healthcare setting but it doesn't necessarily mean there was a breakdown in PPE protocol that enabled them to become a positive case I think for the second time I'll call that good if you can follow up with the other questions that I had as far as the numbers and whether the state's been involved with no question on this case I'd appreciate it thanks Gary John Dillon John Dillon BPR Hello yes thank you a question perhaps also for Dr. Levin about the Vermont Air Guard I didn't hear that those cases included in your wrap up do you have any concerns about the time lag in reporting those cases I read that the first was October first and now we have eight people there who have tested positive any concern about that I'm also curious about how you think this may have been transmitted thinking about your comment about travel some of these pilots obviously are traveling and bringing planes to Vermont and wondering if that was potentially a transmission route yeah let me try to handle all of those that I can remember you just asked the very first case was reported on the first of October actually two cases and then a large number of close contacts were tested on the following day and just so you know we think the exposure was probably a week before so that was a good day to be testing them and that's when we found several additional cases within a day of their test so again there really was no lag if there was a lag at all it was in knowledge about the first case but you can't know about a case till that he comes symptomatic and get themselves tested and that's when this went and then over the ensuing several days several more cases were reported the guard as you know plays a big role in testing in the state and they take testing really seriously and if anything they went above and beyond in terms of testing their members once they knew about the positive cases you're right to assume that there may have been some out of state work and exposure if you will because these are pilots often who travel from state to state but that doesn't mean that was the cause it's just a hypothesis at this point in time the cases that we're aware of tend to work in very close quarters with one another due to the nature of their jobs and often in the same buildings so there would be opportunity to infect one another if you will while they were asymptomatic and unaware that they were harboring the virus I will say that the number of tests we've done is in the hundreds and we're not finding hundreds of cases in that national guard group just a small number so that's kind of where things stand we're not concerned about any lag times I think actually once this first case was evident the pace was rather rapid in terms of testing contacts having other contacts be tested once new people became cases and within a week actually getting a good handle on who was infected who wasn't and just to clarify are those cases counted in Chittenden County numbers or where the guard members live calculated? so the place of residence is usually the way we record the case not the place of testing okay we record both but in terms of what you'll find on the website Joseph Bresser Department Chronicle I'm not sure if this question would be for that when the CARES Act was passed a lot of Vermont businesses received help through the error protection plan and the idea of this was that money that was provided would start out as a loan but if certain conditions were met would be converted to a grant and obviously the difference between the two states makes a lot of difference in a business's bottom line what I'm curious about is whether the requirements for conversion have been made clear and if anyone has any sense of how many Vermont businesses now know that what might have been a loan now would be converted into a grant great questions Joe I know a number of Vermont businesses took advantage of the PPP and I know that there was a little bit of confusion on the federal side as to what was a grant or what was a loan in the aftermath but I don't know if Commissioner Goldstein or Secretary Curley are on the line and might be able to answer that more directly or at least get you the information very soon but I just don't have that off the top of my head yes Governor this is Secretary Curley I believe the question was there was confusion around the original federal grant about what would be loans or what would be grants and companies are there actually grants at this point is that the question? I think the question go ahead Joe go ahead I'm sorry the question from my was whether people have been informed if their grants their loans have been converted to grants because you know figuring out your bottom line at the end of the year would be harder if that were in the air yes that's a great point so yes I'll have to get that information for you since they are federal grants I would check with the SBA on that and find out what kind of communications have occurred between employers who have obtained those federal loans slash grants but happy to take it offline and try to find that answer for you I appreciate that thank you very much Tim McQuiston from On Business Magazine Hi I had a question from Dr. Levine about the Boston University Mortality Study that came out last week but just to be clear I don't learn long term care home visitation both people coming into the state and those visiting out of state from Vermont they still have to follow the same travel guidelines that everyone else would have to that's correct Tim okay for the Mortality Study it seems like there's the second study which is indicating a much higher in this case over 30% higher incidence of mortality related to COVID even though it's not it might not show up on the death certificate gets would push the national total number of deaths to about 300,000 I was wondering Dr. what your take on those studies and what that data and if it makes even really any difference to what you're doing thanks for the both parts of the question so you know I do think we should look at studies like that and take them seriously not because the higher number supports more of what we do and takes away some of the people who say that this is not real and we're not really in a pandemic I mean it is more impressive but I think the bigger issue it raises it's two issues really one is is COVID actually causing more deaths and the second is are we actually seeing more deaths in our society in the setting of COVID not necessarily all connected with COVID but somehow related to the fact that people are in a pandemic for instance during that huge period of time when people were not leaving their homes and perhaps neglecting serious medical issues or serious symptoms that took a toll on them as time went on and they end up as a death statistic eventually that's where the studies like the ones you described are a little harder to pin down because the data is the data but you have to have some hypotheses about why the data looks the way it is and sometimes it's because they're under counting COVID other times it's because being alive during COVID made somebody behave differently and impacted their overall health and lifespan so that's a real challenge the good news for Vermont and why it doesn't impact me too much in what we designed in Vermont and what we're following through with in Vermont is we're really really aware of deaths in Vermont and I think take great pains to make sure that if there was even a potential relationship to COVID that we've explored that the chief medical examiner has been following protocols all throughout this where they'll even obtain additional testing or recommend when they hear about a case that may have occurred at a nursing home or whatever to just get a COVID test before the death certificate is finalized that if COVID could have played a role that we're aware of that and it's really important for the rest of the facility to know as well so I don't see it having as huge an impact on our behavior in Vermont necessarily because we're pretty confident about our numbers and we've actually taken great pains to cast a wide net and make sure that even if COVID wasn't the one moment cause of death but it was involved in what built up to that death that we consider it and include it in the statistics alright great but that was really thorough thank you very much Mike Donahue the Islander thank you Ethan Dr. Levine um Governor Scott mentioned the daily concern by him and his administration for the affordability of healthcare for the modern doctor I'm wondering what your health department is doing to help for moderns that do not have health insurance or are not working without paying for the flu shots that you're asking for people to get obviously one of our readers could send me a note saying a hundred dollars or so is a considerable expense and you multiply it by family members and they have to make a decision about buying food, paying rent, eating bills so what can you do in your health department to make flu shots affordable for the modern yeah let me say from the outset if that person really feels they were unjustly built for something that shouldn't have happened or um somehow didn't have any insurance they have accessed for the shot that they should connect with us and we can direct that to the appropriate part of the agency of human services about getting to your broader question specifically dealing with someone uninsured the number one thing our health department has done and it's tradition and it continues to do is that you can show up at our district health office preferably you call and make an appointment and you can get a flu vaccine at the district health office with full knowledge that you are uninsured and would have had to pay for it if you went to another setting and how many district offices do you have and where are they we have 12 and there's one in every district of the state so I would ask the listener who's concerned to just go to our website and they'll be readily evident great thanks very much and one quick question for Errington one of our readers in Burlington reported that after being laid off and getting on appointment apparently to like last week maybe when answering the regular questions a new one popped up they apparently were asked did you look for work as directed and the person said apparently that the obligation to the job fund had been rescinded during the pandemic has that requirement that reinstated the person that they called and emailed but couldn't get an answer in their office what's the status on needing to look for work sure Mike thanks for the question so it's interesting I've heard this only twice probably over the past eight or ten months that two different cases where people thought it was a new question I circle back with our team and we actually did not take the question down because it's a required question to ask although we certainly know that people are you know we're considering them able and available to work but for the pandemic I'll circle back with the team to see whether that had come off one of the applications and was inadvertently added back on but or had been on all along just to get some clarity around that but the last time I checked on it it had not been removed due to it being a required question and but it was not stopping someone's claim from going through so I will double check on that to see whether it got added back to our claim and portal there is to your overall question about people looking for work you know there is no formal directive for called work search that people have to conduct each week as they did prior to the pandemic certainly I'll put a plug in that you know if there's nothing preventing you from searching for work that you're doing so because we know there are businesses who are looking to hire and there are jobs out there we certainly understand that there are more people right now who are unemployed than there are jobs and that has been one of the key determining factors and whether we turn the work search back on but I would certainly say if someone is able and available to return to work it would be that they're reaching out and looking for possible employment opportunities because we do have businesses that are looking to reopen or staff up and there is a shortage of workers right now looking great thank you very much I always appreciate it yes thank you Guy Page my first question I think for Commissioner Levy you mentioned the eight months 2018-2019 flu season saw 1800 hospitalizations your website's annual report doesn't have mortality figures for that season can you tell us those and also by comparison how many promoters have been hospitalized during the first seven months of the COVID-19 pandemic for numbers that I know we have but I don't have at the top of my head so the mortality rate for that flu season and then the number of hospitalizations we actually have updated on a website every day so that's in the box where we list the number of cases and the number of deaths etc I just don't have the number at the top of my head I can tell you that we've been at zero to two for a number of weeks now per day I'm looking to pull up until for the first seven months I just missed it if you don't find it there it would be on our weekly update alright also Governor to prevent police shootings of mentally ill people in crisis the legislature expanded the number of crisis response workers embedded in state police barracks and gave most of the oversight to the state police members of the psychiatric survivor community say that Vermont state police oversight may actually inhibit the law enforcement culture change they see as necessary they would prefer that they work under the Department of Mental Health do you share any of this concern and will your people be watching how well it works and is that policy possibly subject to change well I want to give credit where credit's due this was actually our initiative that we put forth we had a pilot project for a year or two up in the Franklin County area the state police barracks in St. Albans and it went very very well in fact well enough that we thought we should expand it to all barracks across the state so our experience with that in Franklin County let us again to replicate that so what we're doing there is what we replicated across the state so we feel it's been important to have to have that that counselor embedded in the state police barracks under our oversight so we will continue to monitor that obviously but again it was a successful program so okay so the psychiatric survivors they're obviously the people with the most state care and they're sort of concerned that it might inhibit the culture change necessary to happen has that been looked at evaluated I'm going to let Dr. Levine wants to, is this on this subject or the hospitalization again so maybe you can repeat the question for me Guy sure so just wondering if any particular attention has been paid to the Vermont State Police oversight of these embedded workers and the possible negative effects of a culture change within law enforcement because of that well again we will continue to monitor the situation we had a great experience in the pilot project that's why we wanted to move forward with it and we think it's beneficial Secretary Smith has something to add to this as well Guy, just so you know the Department of Mental Health was fully supportive of this move they thought with the coordination that would be required the integration into the Public Service Department would be of value so the Department of Mental Health even though there are some that said it should be in the Department of Mental Health the Department of Mental Health thought this would be the best organizational structure in order to be effective in meeting the needs of with this pilot expanded pilot program now Avery Powell, WCAX Dr. Levine travel is one of the sources of infection here does that indicate that travelers aren't following the protocols and did the travelers who got infected follow the quarantine or is there really any way to know that so obviously it's possible that that's true we don't have firm data to really help us with that I am aware that a reporter for a national newspaper was wondering the same and did an informal survey and that will probably be reported I don't know what the results of the survey that's why I'm not giving you any more information whether that sort of attempt is going to give us accurate data but it will give us an idea just of interviews of people who visited here over the foliage season that's all I can tell you if we listen to Dr. Birx she was most concerned about people traveling for family occasions things of that sort who would either be going from your state to another state to be with their family or going having family come to the state and thinking because they were trusted and so familiar that they would be safe with regard to COVID and her information was that that is not true and that was a major cause of some of the surges in other states another question for Governor Scott can you please interrupt you for one second Avery oh absolutely I just wanted to follow up on Guy Page's numbers since I'm sure people have been waiting with bated breath to hear that and we looked at our website on the weekly update ending October 7th and there were 142 hospitalizations recorded since the beginning of the pandemic sorry to interrupt and please ask your next question Governor Scott as I'm sure you heard yesterday there was a shooting area Berlin police officer shot and killed a woman and then unfortunately himself does this raise awareness for you about the mental health of police officers and the protocols that they have as being reported he was also on duty during this time yeah obviously a tragic situation for all involved and I live in Berlin as well and I'm from this area so my thoughts go out to the victim but I don't have any more information than you probably do at this point in time this is part of the investigation to find out what happened I might refer to Commissioner Scherling if he's on I know that they're going to have some sort of briefing sometime today to bring everyone up to speed but if there's anything he might be able to offer in this regard at this point I've been from the Center for many years now with member assistant teams and contracted psychologists to ensure that all of our first responders whether they're in policing emergency medical services the fire service or emergency management have ongoing and robust access to those services as they face the pressures of their jobs it is too early to tell what if any impact those kinds of programs could have had in this particular case as the Governor said very early on and we do anticipate a briefing later on today by the State Police with additional details that may become available Julie Sherman, Local 22 Local 44 Hi, it was mentioned that transmissions in to date there has been no transmission in school I wanted to know how we know that and my second question I just as UBM students are tested every week I wanted to know if that's something that the primary middle and high schools can adopt or are considering to adopt yes Thanks for those questions so the way we know is that obviously when we know of a case we do all of our interviewing and then we contact trace and when appropriate tell whatever element of the faculty staff and students might need to see so the way we would know if there was ongoing transmission within the school is if other cases showed up that would have potentially been exposed to the index case a number of our index cases actually weren't in school when they were infectious so that's easy others may have been in school for a day or two when they were infectious but we know through anti tracing process who we need to be concerned about and who not and the schools pretty uniformly have been able to operate I think early on they were much more conservative as they should be because most schools had never seen a case and didn't know exactly how their protocols would play out so they may have stayed closed for a day or two while they were sorting things out or longer depending on if there were too many teachers that were quarantined and couldn't possibly do their jobs effectively in the school setting but the majority of the schools especially with these recent cases we've been discussing have all been able to continue operations per usual and so far we have not seen transmission within the school and when it comes to quickly is that something that's qualified so with the colleges that was if you will a prerequisite to their being able to come back and reopen and have in person instruction occur and as you know with the colleges except for some of the smaller Vermont sites there are many schools in Vermont that have many students who come from out of state and zones that are hotter than Vermont is what we thought about with the elementary and high school populations is again that they are all Vermonters they're not coming from Boston to attend our schools in Vermont predominantly so most of them being Vermonters they looked like the rest of Vermont their prevalence or their amount of COVID that they would actually harbor so we did not feel that there was a necessity for an extensive testing protocol but again what we said and we continue to say is everybody who attends those schools at every level from student on through staff and faculty are parts of communities in Vermont so as long as those communities remain with such a low prevalence of virus as you saw on our update this week again did not seem that a testing protocol was going to be necessary obviously if the state changed dramatically that would be a very very different story but for this point in time there was no need to make testing a prerequisite to the opening of schools and now we've been through how many weeks many weeks certainly over a month now and I guess it provides some evidence that if we had done testing it wouldn't have made a difference because we've had so few cases especially when you looked at what Commissioner Pichak showed compared to even adjoining states so we'll see how that goes over time that's why we watch all of these metrics very closely literally daily well thank you if I can I just wanted to clarify something Dr. Burke said over the weekend she mentioned stopping the violence spread and said that much of what we saw in the spring is likely to happen as we enter the fall and winter months what did we do in April and in the spring that might have caused spikes in cases and how might we exhibit those behaviors going forward so the date of our stay home stay safe was approximately March 24 I believe and it lasted a month so it went through April so we certainly didn't see a spike in cases then the spike preceded that and then it receded since that time and as we came out of that and as the governor started opening the spigot we were at a place of viral suppression that was pretty profound there were very very few cases and Commissioner Pichak again showed his curve today showing the modest increase we've had in weeks compared to some time in June but then when you compare that to that initial part in March and April it looks like nothing because it was such a high peak at that point in time so we did not see any spikes in the numbers of cases once we were in and coming out of the stay home stay safe posture that we were we were in back in the spring the fear that I'm sure he's discussing Deborah Birx and that we've discussed every week is just the need to go indoors when the weather changes and it gets colder and will that just have people together too much in too restrictive a setting to allow people who have virus but don't know they have it to transmit it more widely and we didn't actually go through a full winter for you know the virus arrived here in March our first case was March 7 I believe and we didn't have November December January February times when it does get colder in Vermont and people are less likely to be doing the things outdoors that they do now so we'll have to see how that plays out thank you so much Dr. Lee Angie McGregor the Caledonian record yes thank you good afternoon I see on the travel map that Commissioner PCX presented a little earlier, Gaffin County just turned to yellow and a number of our border communities are intertwined with the towns right across the river just curious I know most of this is online but you know for the benefit of listeners and their readers what are the expectations for people who routinely recreate the family when counties turn yellow and in instances when this has happened in the past do you find that vermonters comply with the sudden shift in the expectation we would ask that they be more vigilant be more careful and we're not limiting when they're on the borders like that as was previous to the order we allowed for shopping in these counties across the border and if you work either in Vermont or New Hampshire or New York for that matter back and forth you can continue to work so again it's about adhering to the guidance and if you can remain where you are we would advise to do so to prevent the spread of transmission back and forth aren't necessarily essential like work and shopping for food and whatnot about family visits recreation and things like that again we would ask that you not do that you know not visit back and forth anything that can be prevented we would ask you to adhere to the guidelines and if I may Commissioner Levine curious a little bit about the outbreak within the hockey community do you know at this point the breakdown of cases among adults versus youth how many teams might have been impacted on the youth organization and do you see this having an impact on winter sports guidance that's being developed right now so right now there's about twice as many adults as youth I'm not sure about the breakdown of teams at this point and I would hate on this day of the week to say that this has a major impact on our discussions about winter sports guidance we need to probe a little further into this and understand it better I want to remind everyone that the youth hockey recreational leagues started way back in the summer they've been going on a long time the track record has been really good now we have some cases so we have to understand them better but it certainly isn't a reason to say we draw the line here winter sports seasons are canceled that would not be the appropriate response so you need to give us a little more time to understand that and all of the groups of us that are talking about winter sports continue to have the same exact conversations not overshadowed by this by any means because basically deciding the kinds of guidance that need to be appropriately put out is a process that should continue to go on and is based in sound public health and other rationales so we'll just have to learn more about what's gone on this time around Steve Merrill can you hear me hello can you hear me thank you governor the quick one for the governor and maybe a couple for the doctor if I may governor on the state's largest daily paper we saw this all over the net on the weekend it looks like the WHO has done a complete about face regarding lockdown is this have you thought about this will this effect the way we do anything here I'm going to refer that one to Dr. Levine as well you know I haven't actually read the WHO's statement I keep hearing about it all the time so I'd like to look at it in more detail all I can say is what we did worked and we didn't have to maintain that posture for a tremendously long period of time so can just base it on our local data I would hate to think we would have to engage in lockdowns ever again so I understand where they're coming from they're very disruptive to everyone they're very disruptive to the economy they're very disruptive to people's emotional and mental well-being so there's certainly plenty of concerns we can have but I have to really read more from what their rationale was to really help answer your question more effectively sure maybe by Friday Dr. Levine were you health commissioner during the prior administration? No I was appointed to health commissioner by Governor Scott I had a question from a viewer who saw you on WCAX said that you supported the BHS closure due to PCBs and they were wondering why we're not testing all the other schools in Vermont that were built around the same time and a quick follow-up after that sure so back in 2013 in 2014 there was a pilot done of several schools in Vermont not a very large number and actually the PCB levels came back within the limits we would want them to they were not concerning so the first time we've had an experience with this is Burlington High School where in one of the buildings the numbers were extraordinarily high much more than all of the other buildings but the buildings were all higher than our value that we act on so needless to say that's generated a tremendous amount of discussion amongst lots of parties people in various sectors in state government parents of children students themselves community members you name it everyone's now at least got this on their radar screen so we are actively discussing what our posture should be and how we should approach the future with regard to the other schools and so that just it's happened so quickly in the midst of a pandemic we certainly didn't want to make a rash decision and we want to approach it like we do anything else from a health point of view and from an education point of view which is to have all our facts and really make sure we've covered all bases as we think about this so does it mean from a sure from a health point of view and this really bothered a lot of people at the time the state had a allowable E. coli level of beach closures river closures for swimming and stuff at 77 parts per thousand and the state just turned around and just instead of using our standard they went to the federal standard of 235 per thousand I hope that's not something we're considering or is it when it comes to PCBs with PCBs our standard is far stricter yeah as it once was with E. coli but they changed that can't comment on the process that went through with E. coli but certainly for this our stance is much stricter much more similar to what we did with lead in the drinking water in schools where we had a much stricter posture and now we find many other states are actually adopting our posture as they look at that problem in their own settings yeah it would be nice if we could go back to the standard with regard to E. coli but that's neither here nor there alright thank you both very much Joel Baird Burlington Free Press Joel the Burlington Free Press Star 6 to unmute that's everyone that's it alright thank you all for tuning in and we'll see you again on Friday for the education update thank you