 Nineteen years ago, this morning, I was at work listening to WDEV when a report came over the radio that a plane had hit one of the twin towers in New York City. I stopped what I was doing and turned on the TV to get an update. I watched as another plane flew into the second tower, and it soon became clear that our nation was under attack. There were then reports from Virginia that a third plane had hit the Pentagon, and then a fourth went down in Pennsylvania. I watched as the towers came down and sat in disbelief, seeing the images of smoke rising from New York City. We all watched in real time, as the world was changed forever. Like every American who lived through September 11, 2001, I remember everything about that day, the shock of what was unfolding right before our eyes. We remember the pain we felt for those who lost, those who were missing, and those they left behind. We remember the bravery of first responders who ran towards danger in order to help others, and the valor of service members, like our own Vermont National Guard F-16 pilots and team members who stood ready to protect American citizens from future attacks. But today, in the face of a once-in-a-century crisis that has taken the lives of almost 200,000 Americans, it's also important to remember the determination and resolve we found in those days, weeks, and months following September 11. Because our country desperately needs to find that unity again, we need to harness the same care and compassion that allowed us to move forward then in order to get us through the deadly emergency we face today. Nineteen years ago, again, we saw firsthand that when we worked towards a common purpose that as Americans, we can do almost anything. As we seek the answers to how we get through those unprecedented times, we need to look no further into the humanity and courage that got us through those events we're remembering today. And it's so important for us to be united, because the fact is, this is going to be with us until there's a safe vaccine in place and it's been widely distributed. At that point, we should be able to manage this just like we do the flu, rather than with a drastic test we've had to take over the last six months. We know this is going to take some time. And while our numbers have been low in Vermont, the measures in place have helped keep it that way. So again, it probably comes as no surprise that I'll be extending the state of emergency to October 15th. As I've said, this is the vehicle that allows us to manage and continue to suppress this virus and make sure supports for workers and families remain available, things like unemployment benefits and the eviction moratorium. It's important to realize just how fortunate we are here in Vermont. Because of the work and sacrifice of all of you, we've been able to methodically open up the economy since late April, with most sectors open today in some capacity. And more importantly, we've kept them open to date. While many child care centers remained open throughout the pandemic, we open the rest in June. And this week, we were able to see excited kids get on buses so they could physically go to school, see their friends, and learn from the teacher they desperately missed seeing in person last spring. Our ability to continuously move forward and not have to take steps back has been incredible, especially when you look around the country because many states cannot say the same thing. Vermonters should be proud. You've stepped up, put on a mask, been smart about keeping your distance and limited the number of people you connect with. You've found ways to work from home. You've stay cationed instead of vacationed. And importantly, you've pulled in the same direction to protect our neighbors and show how much you care about each other. I know this hasn't been easy. I know the thought of doing this for another month and likely a few more is disappointing. But if we continue down this path, if our numbers remain good once we get through school reopening and college return, we'll continue to open that spicket a bit more. But as we've done from the very start, it will be based on the data and science. Rest assured, we'll get through this. I know we will. And with Vermont ingenuity and perseverance, I believe we'll be stronger as a result. This pandemic has meant doing things differently. And to me, it's been a pathway to innovate and improve. We're seeing entrepreneurs find new opportunities and businesses finding creative ways to serve customers that will be used long after the pandemic. And we're seeing leaders in communities across the state think about how we do can do things better, so we can do more with less. I truly believe we'll be able to harness this creativity for a stronger, more versatile economy, a better, more equitable education for our kids from cradle to career, better systems to serve our neighbors in need, and stronger communities that are already attracting more people to the state, which we know we desperately need here in Vermont. This won't be easy. And like our response on the health side, it will take hard work, creativity, some difficult decisions, and most importantly, all of us pulling in the same direction, united around a shared goal to see Vermont through this once-in-a-century crisis. Thank you all for what you're doing to help each other through this pandemic. And with that, I'll now turn it over to Mr. P. Chek for this week's modeling update. Thank you, Governor. And good morning, everyone. This morning, we will talk at first about some national and Vermont-based trends that we're seeing in the data, and then turn specifically to Vermont data, an updated forecast, then our updated restart metrics. We'll turn then to an higher education update, then close with a regional and travel map update as well. And for those viewing at home, just a reminder that our presentation is available at dfr.vermont.gov for anyone who would like to follow along. So turning to our first slide, we see a map of the U.S. and new cases over the past 14 days. Certainly a few trends stand out here. First, there are still quite a few cases in the United States. We've been averaging about 36,000 cases a day over the past week. But that is an improvement from just a month to two months ago. So marked improvement on cases, but still cases popping up around the country. You see maybe a little less cases in the South than the West, but certainly more cases in the Dakotas in Iowa and parts of the Midwest as well. But most importantly, for us here in Vermont, you see that Vermont and the Northeast continue to have very low disease prevalence just in the past 14 days. Vermont, for those 14 days, continues to have the lowest prevalence of the virus in the country. We continue to have the lowest positivity rate for the last seven days. And we have the lowest prevalence rate from the start of the pandemic as well. So certainly it's always good to have low cases, but particularly good to be hitting this low case period when K-12 is restarting and higher education is restarting. For this week, you see that we had 30 new cases. So that is an improvement from the 45 that were revised down from 42 last week. So both of those factors, the fact that a few cases ended up not being cases and removed from the list, and the fact that cases have been improved this week, we see on the next slide that our forecast does trend more favorably than it did last week. So this forecast includes everything that we talked about last week. It includes our higher education cases, the cases that we've seen over the last three weeks. It includes a forecast and a projection about mobility when K-12 reopens, so parents being more mobile, returning to work potentially, running more errands and things of that nature. And then it includes our most recent case trends as well. And like I said, the forecast for the next six weeks is rather mild, pretty slight increase in cases. We frequently beat our forecasts and projections, however, and we'll continue to watch this closely. But certainly those forecasted cases are nothing that the health department cannot handle in terms of their contact tracing capacity and testing. So that gives us continued hope as we reopen K-12. Turning to our four restart metrics, again, these are all trending very favorably. Just with syndromic surveillance, we can see from the chart that those reporting to the emergency room with COVID-like illness remains very low. We'll continue to watch this metric and those reporting flu-like illness as the flu becomes more prevalent in the country in the Northeast. But for now, these numbers remain very low and well below our guardrail. Similarly, on the growth metric, you can see that we had really low sustained growth for the last three or four months. And nothing that gives us any pause for concern there. Next is the positivity rate. Again, lowest positivity rate in the country the last seven days. We've had extraordinarily low positivity rate through the entire restart. And as the governor said, that's quite impressive when you consider all of the different parts of our society and our economy that we have opened up over the last four or five months and have remained open during that period of time as well. According to our ICU capacity, we continue to be below our buffer. But even if we were close to or above our buffer because our other indicators are trending so favorably, not a concern at this time. Only a single individual is in the hospital at this moment and no one is in the ICU for COVID related illness. So again, very favorable when considering hospital resource usage as well. Turning to the higher education update, more good news came in this week from our higher ed institutions. You can see that we did another 15,000 tests here in Vermont. And out of those 15,000 tests, another five positives were reported. So a really, really slight positivity rate. Good to see that these numbers here would indicate, you know, continued ongoing testing and then those that were getting their day seven tests as well. So we're now really through that restart period and onto that monitoring period. Really good to see these results as we continue on through the semester. When you look at the total numbers, that's over 42,000 tests that have been administered since the college restart and 38 positives for a very low 0.09% positivity rate. So again, trending very favorably there. When we look at the other northern England states, we look at New Hampshire and Maine and their college higher ed restarts. You can see that they also have been having success in the reopening. This data that we have here is from those colleges and universities that have provided their COVID data publicly. So it's not exhaustive for New Hampshire and for Maine. But you can see for New Hampshire and Maine, it's a good representation. 70,000 tests in New Hampshire, 110 positives. Just under 40,000 tests in Maine with 42 positives. So positivity rates a little higher than Vermont, but all extremely low. And really reinforces that message that when you have individuals coming from a low prevalence community and you have good policies in place that you can successfully reopen these institutions and we'll have to continue to keep a close eye on them as the semester unfolds, certainly. Turning to our regional data, we did see a smoothing out of cases week over week. Cases declined just over 2% this week, which was certainly good to see. The first time cases have slowed in the last three weeks as well. So we'll keep a close eye on these regional trends as college restart continues in many places across the region as reactions from Labor Day will come in over the next few weeks as well. Turning now to the updated travel map, you'll see that we have some improvement in parts of the region. In total, 5.5 million individuals can now come to Vermont without quarantine that's up from 5.2 million last week. So an additional 300,000 individuals. And when you look at the map, you can see that there was improvement in New England and parts of Maine, the Cape turned back to green and other parts of New York kind of swapped back and forth from green to yellow. But generally, some good signs here in New England. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Rich Snyder who is gonna join us by video for some more information about the higher education restart. Well, good morning everyone and good morning, Governor. Let me just check to make sure that the people in the conference room and the auditorium can hear me. We can hear you just fine. Thank you very much for coming on, Rich. Hi, Governor. Welcome to you from left back, Vermont today, and it's beautiful here every day. So good morning, everyone, and I'm delighted to brief you on where we stand for higher education, and this is the whole report, our private office, our state college system, and UBM. So we're all standing together on this and the Governor tasked us to be accepted that challenge to have the safest place in America to go to college. And that is our goal, and that is our mission. And we have written the plan for executing that plan. Now, every leader, whether it's the CEO or military general or admiral knows that the best part of planning is doing actual planning. When you make first contact with the enemy, who's gonna change? Cuz the enemy's not quite like you thought it was gonna be, or the enemy changes over time, or the changes over time. And certainly, the tires are gonna change over time as well, and it is really our enemy. I want to credit Susan Steeley, the AVIC Executive Director, who for a great March and April, read every plan that she could find about opening schools and colleges and state plans. To Dr. Levine and his team who told us what we had to do to make sure we could get them here and keep them here safely and not infected. And then to Ted Brady, who is with our agency of commerce and economic development, for taking all the writings that Susan and I had done and made sense out of those writings and published the guidelines that we are still following today. It's been a team effort from the beginning, but we are really through phase one of the plan and into phase two. And to speak on the ground now, the college presidents and the student leaders and the faculty and staff that are making this a huge success. For your listeners, there are three major phases or themes to this plan. The first one was to get them here uninfected. The second phase is to keep them uninfected. And the third phase is when they do get infected, which is going to happen. Can we identify them and help them get better, but also reduce the risk to infection on our team? We are through phase one, and Governor, I'm delighted to report, and as you heard, Mike just reported. We are doing your mission. That is, we are the safest college place to go to school in America. And also the safest place for our communities that are hosting colleges in America. And that is a great thing that we're through that first phase. All the schools have really started now. They've been up and running. Everybody's got day seven passed in. We had some that were ill, that were infected. We identified them. We took care of them. Unbelievable contact tracing, that is Dr. Levine did. In fact, I got a great note from Pat Moulton at VTC the other day who said they were unbelievable professional calming influence on her campus because they had one positive. And the dean just wrote me and said, boy, when they first found out, they freaked out, but they executed the plan. And by the time the day was over, they knew they could do this. And they did do it. And by the way, there is no student at college that's still in quarantine or isolation. They all have been healed. They are all not infectious. And they are acting and back with their friends. Okay, so one is done. And part of phase three, which was okay, I hope you guys get sick, can we take care of them? We have a couple campuses now who have actually exercised that part of the plan and have been very successful at it. And so we know that we can do that. The real challenge now for all of us is phase two, to keep them uninfected. And that is everyone's frequent job. So I do wanna let all your listeners know and all of you, that all of our campuses have done a huge lift since March when we sent all of our students home. But over the summer, there was great creativity among our faculty staff and students about messaging the students that were returning and the new ones that were coming about what the new college experience was gonna be like. We have changed all of our dining. And by the way, all these changes are expensive. We have changed all of our dining. There is no travel for a university employees or staff, university money. And if you do have a central travel and you do have to travel, you're gonna be following the quarantine rules. So if you go up except needs quarantine, you will come back to Vermont and you will quarantine. There is no large gatherings. And by the way, this is gonna hurt, unfortunately, if our economy is going up, but there's no parents weekends anywhere. There are full homecomings. By the way, homecomings is when most of our colleges raise a lot of their funds, give funds from their alumni to come back. It's gonna be very full and it's gonna hurt our lodging industry in places like that. There's no large symposiums. We're doing a lot of this online. And of course, sports, we're not gonna be playing a routine. We are gonna be active in our community, but we're not gonna be having athletic competition. We've reduced the size of our classes. We've reduced the number of people in our commentaries and we've had everyone sign a health contract. We've had a lot of, I think, success because of the health contract. I gotta know from a student at Bennington that I just wanna read a portion of. It says, I'm talking about health and safety guidelines because I wanna make it full. I don't have another place to go. And that's the case for so many of us students who are international or who are first generation low income and working class. Being in school is so much for us than just being in school. It's security, it's about having a safe place, having a room and having food. It's a privilege to be here and to be in person and that's not something I or my friends wanna risk in any way. They really wanna be here. The freshmen that we have today know what it's like to lose their senior year of high school. Their proms, their graduation, they don't want that to happen. There's a saying at Norwich right now and I was the old president at Norwich, like, wear your mask so I can wear my uniform. And by the way, there are a lot of college students once they go home. They wanna be with their friends, they wanna be with their faculty members, they wanna have a college experience. So the freshmen are very careful right now. They don't wanna relive their senior year and the other person that we have back in our campuses, they don't wanna go home again like they had to in March. So they've lived it, they know what it's like. So they're generally following the rules, are we gonna be perfect? Absolutely not. Will every kid be perfect? No, you guys don't send us perfect students, right? And many of you that are listening have raised seniors. So you know what I'm talking about. But in the main, they are unbelievably compliant and actually much better than I had to hold for. Everyone is committed to keeping our policy safe and our community safe. I gotta know from Lori Patton who was out in the town walking around visiting students that were not living on campus or were living on campus, came across some that were on the porch and she talked to them and they said, yeah, we love being at school, we're not compatible with stuff. The next day she gets a note from them and a bunch of cookies on a plate, I guess, saying, thanks for coming to my school today. And we're not gonna let you down. So those are the kind of things that are happening on our campus. We are entering this phase, though, of keeping the food healthy, keeping their health contracts honored. That's why Mr. Pichak gave you the data earlier and we are gonna be reporting data about how many COVID cases that we might have, what is the number of students that are being disciplined and how many are actually gonna be leaving our campus because they can't live by our standards. And so far, we've had nine students on our campus that's across Vermont. I'm not prepared and I'm not gonna speak about individual cases, but that's just an indication. We have over 40 campuses on our campuses right now and I am very proud of them. I'm proud of their creations and faculty and staff work that have happened. And Governor, so far so good on your mission, I'm not gonna declare a mission because of Thanksgiving and they all go home, but we do have victory on phase one of getting them here safely. A part of victory on three, of how do we take care of them that they get infected to do that now? And I wanna commend this team for helping us. So Governor, that concludes my report for now. Well, thank you very much. Great news, Rich. And I appreciate your leadership in this endeavor. Hopefully you'll be able to stay on the line in case there's any questions for you later on. But this, thank you. At this point, I'd like to ask Dr. Levine to come up and give us a health update. Thank you, and Rich spent a lot of his time in his own entertaining way, thanking a lot of us, but we must thank him as well for all of the hard work that he put into this project and his undying and unflagging commitment to making the college restarts successful. Don't have a lot to add to what Commissioner Pitchek has presented already in terms of the health update. You've heard about the quite low numbers of new cases that we've been experiencing in the last week or so. We are obviously gonna be looking with great attention at the impact of Labor Day, college restart and school restart over the next seven to 10 day period. I'm happy to report that we have probably closed out and resolved more outbreaks than we have taken on. There are only literally a handful of outbreaks that we're following. And I remind you that an outbreak may only be two cases or three cases. It's not 100 cases, and these are all very small. I'd like to pick up on something that's in the news a lot lately, though, which is vaccination. While we all look forward to hopefully enjoying the benefits of a safe and effective vaccine, we clearly hear the fears that are expressed by many that political pressure is being applied to rush approval of a vaccine before it's been properly tested. I want to make it quite clear that the Vermont Health Department is keeping a close watch on the vaccine development process to be sure that we can trust that politics do not trump science. And that when a safe and effective vaccine is available, we'll be ready to deliver it to Vermonters quickly and equitably. Even though we don't yet know when that exact day will come, we're doing everything in our power to plan ahead. As I've said at previous press conferences, we've convened a COVID-19 vaccine planning group and work is well underway to make sure that all the systems and processes are in place to do so. This unprecedented global pandemic has all eyes focused on finding a vaccine as quickly as possible. But the tremendous pressure to rapidly develop a vaccine must not outweigh the importance of its efficacy and safety. We stand together with other health departments across the country, as well as the National Association of Immunization Managers in our assistance that any vaccine made available to the public must meet all of the Food and Drug Administration safety standards and be recommended by ASAP, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which is an independent National Advisory Committee that sets policy on lots of vaccines that we use routinely. Recent developments involve a letter that was publicized by nine pharmaceutical companies. It was really a pledge to make sure that they adhere to all of the usual kinds of standards that they would be adhering to in any environment. A phone call that members of our department engaged in yesterday with FDA, CDC, and the Surgeon General reaffirming their commitment to a process that respected science integrity and will be trustworthy. In addition, there was an opinion column published in USA Today where eight top regulators at the FDA promised to uphold the scientific integrity of their work and defend the agency's independence. All good news. All newly developed vaccines must be continually monitored for safety and efficacy. Our comprehensive system is in place and it must be fully utilized to ensure the safety of any COVID-19 vaccine. And as we mentioned the other day, AstraZeneca has temporarily paused work on its vaccine development due to an adverse event in one of the volunteers enrolled in that study. Just to determine if that event is in any way related to the vaccine or not, that is business as usual in the way these trials are conducted and we should applaud that. Until the vaccine's available, we'll be working to make sure Vermont is ready. I, along with our immunization and infectious disease experts, will continue to watch closely as things develop and will share important new updates as we get new information. We stand with science. And as we wait for the vaccine, we must keep up our preventive practices, especially so we come into the fall and the winter and flu season. Keep those masks on. Keep a six foot distance. Avoid crowded spaces. Wash your hands a lot and stay home and away from others when you're ill. These basic infection control practices that help prevent the spread of the coronavirus may also help us with regard to the flu season. If Australia's experience during their recently completed flu season can be instructive to us in the Northern Hemisphere, simple measures such as these might well diminish the amount of morbidity and mortality we might see from the flu this fall and winter in our state and in our country. And of course, I must always say that for anyone age six months or older, get your flu shot. The flu vaccine is beginning to be available now in your doctor's office, in pharmacies across the state, and soon in other locales that we're working with the healthcare system on. Getting the flu and COVID-19 at the same time or in succession could be devastating. Certainly won't be fun. And before I close, feeling like a proud father, I must humbly share with all Vermonters the news that yesterday, once again, the CDC acknowledged Vermont's contact tracing efforts are the best in the nation. I'll turn it back to the governor. Thank you, Dr. Levine. And with that, we'll open up to questions. Thank you, governor. So I just had a clarifying question. So no students in quarantine right now, is that just at UVM or statewide? Dr. Levine? I think Rich is still on the phone, but I believe that is statewide across all campuses. Rich, did you hear the question? I did, sir. And I agree with Dr. Levine. We have no one in quarantine right now. Everyone has to recover them back with their classes. And what percentage, do you know, we're maybe all part of, what percentage of students are coming from hot spot areas? And then I guess kind of a follow up to that. Why, I guess, are we seeing such a low positivity rate among students all throughout the week? And even as, you know, bigger schools, people are coming from the South, from the West, from all over. All against your part of that, I believe that the majority of the students are coming from the Northeast. But there are some coming from other areas. And I think some of the measures that were put into place by the restart team for the colleges and universities made sure they were tested either before they came here or quarantine before they came here or once they got here were tested to be sure that we kept it that way. So I give a lot of credit to that team that put forth the guidance and protected Vermont in the way that they did. Rich, did you hear that question? Yes, sir, I did. And your answer is exactly right. And we credit Dr. Levine and his team for making sure we started correctly. For Al also, by the way, I'll add that we could only bring in the same number of students that we could test on day zero. And so many of them have faded in the start of their operation. So Norwich brought in 500 students from hotspots, normally they bring in a total of about 850. And those were all quarantineable students. So they all came together. We tested them on day zero, but we had very low rates of infection because we required the students to quarantine from 14 days before they came. And we can thank Dr. Levine and his team for requiring that in the guidelines. And Governor, you also mentioned that we're about two weeks in since some of the students have come back. When, if we continue to see this data below, when will we see the next hospitality spigot time? Yeah, again, you don't want to give it a couple weeks. I think if things continue the way they are, we'll be announcing some opening of the spigot, possibly next week, the end of next week. But again, it all is reliant on the data and the science, making sure that it's safe to do so. And then last question, students going home, it was kind of a ways away, but for Thanksgiving break, coming back when I have to do the same song again. I mean, how do you see that going or? Again, I'll rely on Dr. Schneider to talk about that, but we'll have to start it all over again. We'll have to be just as vigilant as we were this go around when they come back, giving that long time period. Not having them come back and forth was part of the plan, which I think was masterfully done, because without that, they'd be coming back and forth and possibly infecting more Vermonters or transmitting the disease back and forth, which is what we don't want them to do. But I would believe when they come back in January that they would have to take the same steps, the same proper guidelines to be sure that it's as safely effective as it was in this first phase. Rich, anything to offer on that? No, sir, you're right on target. We are planning to do the same thing again. Now, a lot of this will depend on the status of America. Let's hope we're better by then, but we're gonna evaluate it based on the science and then take a minimum, I think we're gonna be in exactly the same place. Thank you. Steve? I don't like her. Governor or Dr. Levine, are you folks concerned about, naturally our politicians are sort of firing over the bow, so to speak, on COVID and the response and what's happened in the past and the vaccine, et cetera, et cetera? Are you worried that this is really gonna undermine the confidence that folks are gonna have in thinking that this thing's actually being won? You know, I'll let Dr. Levine answer part of that because some of its political answer as well. Always concerned about what's happening across the nation, but as you've seen from the very start, here in Vermont, we have done what we think is right. We've relied on the science and the data and that has driven every decision we've made relying on Dr. Levine and Dr. Calso and the health experts in everything that we do. And so we weren't sure whether that was going to be the right approach, but it's proven to be effective and that's why we continue to do what we're doing, regardless of what's happening across the nation. And again, we'll take any advice, we'll watch what's going on, but at the end of the day, our team, this administration is doing what we think is most effective and the safest plan forward for Monters. And we'll continue to do so. Are you worried about your race? Well, I can only do what I think is right. And again, I will make decisions regardless of the repercussions and an election. You know, my first priority, my first job, my first responsibility is as governor and I'll continue to do what I've done from the very start. Anything to offer? Yeah, I don't have a lot more to offer. I want people to realize much of this is a natural experiment. And the data that was shown today for Mont New Hampshire main and the percent positivity of the college students, that's very instructive. These are states that are doing pretty well right now as you saw by the map. When we look at that same kind of data at colleges that have closed, at states that have not closed, but reported large numbers of students or staff being positive, they're generally states that have not achieved a state of virus suppression that would make you expect that the colleges will do well. And we need to all learn from each other. So as we go through this fall semester, we hope we can stay where we are now and that things will continue to go smoothly. And at the same time, we hope that other parts of the country can improve and things will go smoothly for them. But this whole business about restarting anything, really, as I think people have said nationwide, the virus runs the show. And it's the way we are actually managing our interaction with the virus. So if we get the virus to a level where it's quite manageable and very low prevalence, we should be able to continue to restart things the way we have. And if other states actually have higher levels of virus, but they're restarting successfully, we need to learn from that too. But it'll all be a very important comparison to make over the next few months, at least with the college enterprise, to see if things hold the way they are now. Any more from here in Vermont today? Yeah, I think, you know, it's literally four days. So, and since we're not testing everybody there, we don't have any data. And so we'll have to wait a little bit longer for that to see what ensues. But it's all going really well. I believe we have Stuart Ledbunner, WPTZ on the phone. Good morning. Strange to be on the other end. Question for Dr. Levine. I assume you've seen the new UVM study out this week that suggests, among other things, that the number of confirmed cases in Chippin County may be only a fifth of the actual number of infections in the county, conveniently. Do you buy that? And how would that affect your thinking on testing asymptomatic people? You know, this is one of the rare times I come to the microphone and I'm not familiar with the study that you're reporting about. So I can't comment so much without having seen it. But I think that there is general agreement that no matter where you are in the country, what number of cases you're talking about, that that is not the full number of cases. So whether it's the percentage you describe or not, I have no idea. I do subscribe quite heavily to the concept that the rate of people walking around asymptomatically with virus is higher than we realize, and that many people who would test positive but are asymptomatic, that could account for 25 to 40% of all the people who would test positive. So it's not a stretch for me to think that we're not measuring everyone by any means. I'm not sure if that answers everything you wanted out of there, but I do believe pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic transmission of disease are real, and that the number of people who don't realize they have the virus because they feel well is substantial out there, for sure. Yeah, this is part of the UVM mask study that showed in some cases it provides, masks provide some false sense of security. Oh, okay, no, that study I'm quite familiar with because I'm a co-author on that. So, but I don't think we went as far as to, I know where you're coming from. Part of that study did actually talk about the fact that the seroprevalence rate was in the 2% range. So keep that in mind. It more or less confirmed the fact that we do believe there is a very low level of prevalence and acquaintance with the virus on the part of our population in general. Right now, a question for the governor if I could follow up on the, US Senate was unable to pass anything yesterday in terms of the fourth coronavirus relief package. Would you rather something, as you know the Democrats felt what the majority leader was advancing was really insufficient? Yeah, I mean my preference would be for them to come to agreement. It seems they are a long ways apart but there's always the middle, right? There's always a way for everyone to give a little bit to come to some conclusions. So it's unfortunate that they didn't move forward with anything at this point. I'm still confident that they will come to some agreement but time, I just don't know when and it becomes the closer we get to the election the more politically it gets and which is unfortunate for the rest of us who are just looking and seeking relief. I, while we're talking about politics, you've expressed reservations about the climate change bill. It's on its way to your desk. Is that to say you're gonna veto it? Yeah, I, as you know, I sent a letter to legislative leaders weeks ago laying out my concerns, a number of concerns putting the state at financial risk, financial peril, I believe, with some of the lawsuits that are coming forward. But there's some other things within the bill that I have concerns about as well. It's interesting when you see, I mean, the title is Global Warming Solutions Act but when I really look at the bill, I don't see any solutions in there. All I see is mandates and then I see a board being put in an unelected board being put into place of 23, by the way, to give guidance about where we go from here. And then in about four years, there's a 26% reduction in carbon emissions that is expected and if you don't meet that target you could be sued. So I, you know, we're waiting for the bill. I hadn't seen it yet, but again, they didn't address any of the concerns I had nor did they provide any funding of any sort even for the administration of it. So it's problematic in a number of different ways. I just don't think it's good government. I think there's a better way to do it. And I think we just have to look at the Lake Champlain cleanup, the water quality board that we have and what we did in that respect as an example of how we get to a better result for reducing carbon emissions and addressing climate change. Thank you. Peter Hirschfeld, VPR. Yeah, Secretary French, I'm hoping you can give us a little debrief on your conversation with Superintendent from Thursday. We specifically talked about some of the challenges that they've relayed to you as it relates to reopening during this first week back to school. Thanks for the question. Yeah, you know, just to recap, I have a conversation with superintendents every week that we started as part of the emergency response. So we stay closely attached on a variety of issues. My general impression and what I heard from them yesterday is that things are going as well as expected. Certainly, you know, so much of our planning has been focused on the logistical aspect of reopening schools, and that's where they've been putting a lot of their attention. So I think, you know, so far, so good in that regard. I would also say that districts, many of which as you know, have opened up private learning dispositions are starting to contemplate in-person instruction and there is some tension around labor and the ability to do that. And districts are still working on an active protocol that are required into the health guidance. So I think, you know, the general observation is going to make things are going well. Certainly a lot of work still remains and each school is open, but I'm really proud of the work they're doing, and I think we all should be at risk for monitor. If it's your understanding that there are districts that would be moving to a more robust in-person program right now, but for their inability to get the staff they would need to do that in the buildings themselves? I don't know if I characterize it quite that way. I know districts, all along, many of them who started in hybrid as planned were anticipated moving to more in-person and that requires addressing a number of issues and incurrents, including putting in the necessary protection so that the ability is certainly one of those factors, but they have several to consider. Thank you. Are you in the Islander? Good morning. Rebecca, I was wondering if I could do correctly and I thought on a couple of minutes late, but there were 38 positive cases among the college students. I know a couple of weeks ago, you gave an actual breakdown by UDF and BTC and everything. Did I miss what the breakdown of where those 38 cases were? I know Middlebury College is reporting they had some, and I was just wondering. Yeah, I'm not sure. Who is that person, possibly? Commissioner Petschek or Dr. Schneider. Do either of you have the information? Governor, this is Rich Schneider. I don't have it by individual campus, or I'm sorry, but I will tell you that anyone that was infected is no longer infected and is out of quarantine. Commissioner. I understand that, but I'm interested in where there were 30 and the 38 at the UDF, or are they spread all across Vermont, or where were they, and who has those numbers, and I realize that this may not be the answer. Let me, yeah. Dr. Schneider, somebody would have the breakdown. Commissioner Petschek may be able to answer some of this. Hi, Mike, thanks for your question. So the only breakdown that we provided previously was to talk about colleges in the Burlington area since there's a high concentration of students there. So we included in that UVM, Champlain, and St. Michael's. We've been keeping them in the aggregate just to not call out any specific institution, particularly if there's only a single case of a small institution. But I can tell you from the data that there are no colleges that stand out as having a lot of cases compared to how many students they have returning. There's some that have no cases. There's some that have just a very small handful, but there are no colleges that stand out in terms of having more cases than you would anticipate based on their student enrollment. Two weeks ago, there was a breakdown that included Vermont Tech and Randolph, and that's a council building one college. Obviously, the administration has provided those numbers in the past, looking for them today. So we can provide those to you, Mike, by email, but we do have all of the individual institutions. We've just been providing them in the aggregate. I understand you've been providing them in the aggregate, but you did provide them individually two weeks ago. Would like to continue that tradition of transparency? No, we certainly want to be transparent as well, Mike, but maybe we've provided information about a single college, so we certainly didn't provide information about every college to date, but certainly we want to be transparent. That's why we're trying to make sure we provide those numbers throughout the restart and on an ongoing basis throughout the semester. So we'll certainly work to get you that. Well, I appreciate that. There were three colleges that were mentioned, I think it was UVM, I think it was Catholic, it might have been the third one, but Vermont Tech was one of them. So, Catholic and being a lone institution also. And we did mention- I appreciate brilliant. And we did mention Northern Vermont University, if you remember, two weeks ago, because they had zero cases, so it was easy to talk about them. So we did call out Northern Vermont University to give a comparison a couple of weeks ago. All right, Mike, we can- Let's hear who had, it'd be great to have zero, just other institutions that had zero, but to hear the positives of those institutions, too, you know? All right, we can look into this further for Mike. Great, thank you very much, I appreciate that. Greg, the County Courier. Hi, Governor, happy Friday. I guess I'm gonna ask for a follow-up from Secretary Shilling. Last, earlier in the week, you mentioned that State Police has for quite a while had trouble with recruitment and retention. I'm wondering what you've done with our high unemployment numbers to reach out to potential projects, to lead them towards a relatively recession-proof career in law enforcement. Yeah, I think what I mentioned, just to be clear, what I mentioned was, pre-pandemic, we had a labor shortage across every sector. I don't want to just single out one sector. I mean, every single sector had challenges in terms of recruitment. So, in fact, we had more jobs open than we had unemployed people. Obviously, that's not the case today, but of the 40,000, or a few less than 40,000 at this point in time who are unemployed, and I'm not sure that, I mean, I think I believe most of them are looking forward to going back to their normal professions. And we continue to recruit. I think we have a fairly robust recruiting mechanism and had been making some strides in trying to recruit more for law enforcement. So, Commissioner Scherling, is there anything you want to add to that? I mean, we're looking past the pandemic and obviously we want to get the best and we thought we had a good program established to do just that. I think that's right, Governor. The Office of Professional Development at the State Police has a robust recruitment set of strategies that's in the last year or so deployed, much wider array of social media strategy and outreach and we're casting the net as far and wide as possible, not just for monitors, but beyond that. Also, this is part and parcel of our efforts to diversify the workforce and get people from as many varied backgrounds, races, cultures, et cetera, as possible. So it's an ongoing effort and if you want specific details, happy to connect you with our Public Information Officer and the Office of Professional Development. Thank you, thanks for that update. Moving on to my question for today and again, I think this might be for you Secretary Schilling. A reader reached out after reading about Lieutenant Governor David Beckerman's fundraiser where he was rattling off ice cream for anyone who donated to his campaign. The reader believes that this was a violation of the state's gambling law as rattles are only legal for bona fide non-profits that are tax exempt. Would you be able to shift some weight on if this is really a violation to the state's gambling law? And to your knowledge, does anyone else express concerns that this may be a violation of the state's statutes? That's the first I've heard of it and I am certainly unqualified to speak on the state's gambling laws. I have not read them in probably two decades. It's just not a common thing. Probably a question best suited for the attorney general's office, I would think. Okay, we can certainly go there. Governor, do you have anything you want to say to that or maybe Secretary Young? I don't know if she has anything to say. I think her agency operates the gambling sector a lot. Yeah, I don't think we have anything at this point. First, I've heard of this as well. So maybe Secretary of State even might have some thoughts on this, but nothing from our end. Thank you, have a good weekend. Thank you. Cat, WCAX? Hi, this question is looking for Dr. Levine. I'm looking at a message from a superintendent in Stowe that warned parents about a low-risk COVID situation at Stowe's school. And I wanted to know on the broader scale, how are you reassuring parents when these incidents are inevitable, we're going to crop up that it's safe to keep schools open? Yeah, that's a great question, Cat. And we should distill it down a little to the fact that every situation is going to be unique. One message we tried to give very clearly early on in this is that a case in a school is not the end of the world. In fact, we have told everyone in the state that every sector we reopen means more opportunities for more people to be closer together than they have been, so they anticipate increases in numbers of cases. So first thing I would say is, one case in a school does not mean the entire school goes home to remote learning never to return. It's a very individualized situation, but there are many opportunities to, once you go through the interviewing and contact tracing process, and depending on the nature of the situation, it could be one person goes home because they are the case and no one else. It could mean a classroom, it could mean a school, but it's very, very unique to the situation and most often than not the rigor that we apply with our contact tracing efforts tells us very quickly. And I think people are generally surprised by that, not just in the school setting, but if they encounter somebody who was positive and they end up going into the same store or they end up going to the same restaurant or what have you, I think there's some myths to dispel, we are always talking about having a substantial amount of contact within a closed space with an individual and often people don't make that grade, if you will, so that their risk is actually quite low even though their perception of their risk was quite high. So we do a lot more reassuring, but not false reassuring, reassuring based on what we know about the transmission of the virus and what we know about that individual's particular circumstances with regard to a positive case. So that's what I would do with the superintendent and the school as well. We encourage, not only encourage, we will always do the contact tracing for every case in Vermont and we want to make sure that people rely on the expertise of trained professionals to do that so that they aren't falsely reassuring somebody or perhaps falsely getting them very, very concerned about a situation that actually can go quite well. So I hope I've answered your question. Yeah, and as a follow-up to that, have you done contact tracing at any cases stemming from a school thus far? No, I'm not aware of any school that we have done that and we talk about our cases literally every day. So maybe I will learn about one today, but that's not been on our radar at this point. Aside from the colleges where any of the cases at the colleges, we're quite aware of what's gone on there. And even at the colleges I might add. I'm talking about K-12. What's that? I said I'm definitely talking about K-12 at the moment. I heard all of college from stuff earlier on. Yeah, so I'm not aware of a K-12 yet, but certainly be able to report on that if one has come up. Sure, and last question I have on this vein is clarify how you will let the public know about cases that crop up in school. Yeah, I'm gonna ask for Secretary French's input on that one, because we've been having a lot of discussions internally and meetings about that. With our teams. Yeah, thank you, Secretary. Yeah, exactly, a couple of approaches. One is certainly the reporting that'll occur on the website. We're in the process of finalizing how we're going to do the data suppression for that. We're gonna meet on that early next week. I think the other approach is consistent materials that we prepared from a communications perspective with the Department of Health. Statistics will have the ability to present that material to parents and so forth, without the issue of heart. Thank you. Lisa, the Associated Press. Thank you. Governor, you mentioned earlier in the call when answering your questions about turning bigot a little bit more in if the viral cases remain low in Vermont. What, maybe I missed something, but will you report into a certain vector in the economy or what would the next step be? Yeah, I didn't mention it today, but I did on Tuesday, I believe, we'd be focusing on the hospitality sector. It's the one that has been the greatest effected, greatly effected in terms of the entire pandemic and most at risk at this point in time. So we'd be focusing on that area. Would it be like standing, watching some happening or anything like that? Yeah, exactly. Right, I can't ask you. Anything we can do to help with hospitality, as long as it's safe and the numbers warrant that. So again, we'll be taking a look this week. And if everything continues to improve, those are the areas that we'd be looking at. Is that something you're hoping to do before the COVID season? Yes. Okay, thank you. Being great, the Valley Reporter. Hello, Governor, KQ Trust schools are on, you're operating very differently now. The changes are all very different districts, but some are consistent like mandatory masks and hybrid learning. Is there research being conducted at the same level about the effects of these changes could have on students? Yeah, that would be a Secretary French question. Again, just want to be clear, we put forth guidance for a common set of principles operating principles for schools. And then at that point, they were able to do what they thought was right for their communities and for the parents and the teachers and students as well in terms of whether it would be hybrid or in-person instruction or total remote. So they had choices in that regard, but we put forth the guidance in terms of mask and so forth. Secretary French, can you answer that? Yeah, thank you, Governor. Yeah, I wouldn't say research per se, but we are going to be initiating a monthly data collection that'll allow us to identify the patterns of learning opportunities that are occurring in our schools. And I think we'll use that at a couple of levels. One is to contemplate perhaps further regulation that might be necessary or further guidance that might be necessary to ensure the quality of the standard that's being achieved. I think just more importantly, this issue is beginning to assess the impact of the emergency on student learning and that's going to be an ongoing task for many months, but we need to be in that sort of initial work of figuring out the impact. And that's one of the key goals of getting school reopened so we can begin to do some of that assessment. I wouldn't qualify that necessarily as research, but it's certainly a practical level designed to address the specific learning needs in terms of results for the emergency. And again, I might add as well, as we've heard from our health experts, pediatricians and others, we know that in-person instruction is best for our kids. So that's our mission, that's our goal. And the more information we can share, the more we can prove in terms of the safety aspect, the better off we'll be, so we'll want to share the results. And then both, again, both positive and negative so that we learn from it and with safety in mind, but also what's best for our kids. Thank you. Jolie, Local 22. I know you touched on this briefly, but I'm wondering how exactly will determine when it's safe or appropriate to bring a COVID vaccine to Vermont and then what will that process look like and look forward to that in a few years? Yeah, Commissioner Levine, I know there's been a, he'll be coming up to answer that in a minute, but we've had a task force that's been meeting for weeks to contemplate this very area. And as well, the CDC and FDA and others will be providing guidance as well. So we feel as though we're in a good position, we've contemplated how we might be able to roll this out. And they've been meeting again on this for weeks. Dr. Levine. Thank you, Governor. Yeah, we've been meeting on this for weeks. There are a bunch of aspects of this that need to be ironed out in terms of simple logistical aspects, like managing a whole supply stockpile of vaccine, administering it with the appropriate syringes and needles, having the appropriate IT system set up, having the appropriate communication system set up so that the public can access this vaccine, having the healthcare system set up in a way that expeditiously can deliver this. But I have to go back a step here and let you know that it won't be a state of romance decision to negotiate with a certain drug company and get the vaccine when we want to get it. This is going to be a much more of a national strategy. And vaccine will then be distributed across the states. And there will have to be mechanisms at that level that really make this an equitable process. Get it to the people who need it the most first, no matter what state they happen to live in. And then scale up the operation of manufacture to the point where large populations can get it. So as my epidemiologist colleague has told me numerous times based on experience with H1N1 and other public health issues, the vaccine will come to us in ways that may not always make sense right away, but they'll be part of a national strategy. We may not get hundreds of thousands of doses of vaccine on a given day. We may get hundreds of doses of vaccines on a given day, hopefully thousands. Some of that will be predictable, some of that will be unpredictable and we'll have to realize that there are minimum of nine trials going on right now of vaccines. How many of those will be successful? How will the right ones be chosen? How will you know that you're getting the one that actually has the best safety profile and the best efficacy profile, et cetera? We're going to be reliant on the scientists and we're gonna be reliant on the manufacturers and the studies and the way those studies are critically appraised and then the government's ability to distribute it to the population. So I don't wanna make it sound rocket science complex, but it is going to be complex. It's not gonna be a very simple thing of oh, we got a vaccine. Let's just give it to everybody tomorrow. Okay, thank you. Hey, Andrew, how are doing your record? Yes, good afternoon, Governor. I'm wondering, can you share your thoughts on the house budget that's passed, presumably passing out today, specifically if you support the 23.8 million in bridge funding for the state college system? Sure, Andrew, and I might, this may be a bit of a longer answer than normal, but I just think that there are some folks when they hear, they see the headlines that the house has passed, the budget, that all of a sudden it's automatically heading to my desk for signature. And I just wanna just go through the process just a little bit for those who just aren't aware. The budget framework is something that we present our version to the house. It always originates in the house of representatives. The Appropriations Committee does their work and makes some changes and alterations and so forth over weeks, which they've done. They bring it to the house floor for a vote of the entire 150 member house of representatives and then they take a vote, which they did. There's two readings of that, first reading and a second reading. So they took their first reading and it passed the house, their version passed the house yesterday. They'll take a second, there'll be a third reading today. So they'll have to vote again today. At that point that their version of the bill gets sent to the Senate and it starts over again. So the Senate Appropriations Committee will do their work, make any alterations and then go through the Senate process before the 30 members of the Senate and take two votes on a subsequent days on that. So then at that point, they send it back to the house and see if they agree and if they do, it gets sent to me. If they don't, they have either a conference committee or all kinds of things. So the bottom line is it's got a ways to go. So it's not as though it's ready to come here. The version that I've seen from the house thus far is fairly close to ours. So I'm grateful for that and their work. There's some things that we didn't get that I wanted but there are things that they went along with that I wanted as well. So that's the way the budget process works. In terms of the bridge funding for the state colleges, as you might recall, I put in a provision in our budget for $30 million for the use of federal funds from the relief funds to be utilized for that purpose if we were able to get flexibility from Congress. The house actually did the same thing. They utilized that relief funding that I suggested but because they didn't meet the guidelines of Congress, they went at it a bit of a different way and they leveraged money out of public safety. They spent money in public safety with Corona relief funds which freed up dollars to use for bridge funding. So it's the same pot of money in the end. We just went about it in different ways. They were creative and I'm a tip of the hat to them. I think that worked out just fine because in the guidance that were given from Congress, this was appropriate. So we can use that money for some of the wages and so forth salaries within public safety to free up that general fund dollar that we need to give to the state colleges. So again, I give them great credit for being creative. That's what we all need to do but it's the same pot of money in the end because they utilize that Corona relief fund money for this purpose in a long about way. Thank you for that. And if I may have talked to Levine quickly is there anything of note in the Orleans County? I see in the UK account there were a single day with four cases and a total of seven in the last week which isn't a big number all told but as far as the Northeast Kingdom goes, it's significant. No, very, very astute observation. Question has been asked and at the moment through the contact tracing team, we know of no specific relationships or events of concern but we're asking the same questions ourselves and we'll be discussing it later this afternoon at our daily meeting. But nothing really, nothing I'm hiding but nothing that we're aware of at this point in time. Okay, thank you. And if you'll allow me for Secretary Fringe, you mentioned the task force report that I thought was to be released this week. Has that come out yet? Yeah, you mentioned it on Tuesday. Yeah, thank you for asking. It's coming up this afternoon actually. Okay, thank you. That's it for me. Have a good day. Thank you. Erin, BT Digger. Hey, Annie. We can. That's the staff. Yeah, we've heard from a couple of families that wanted to enroll in all online learning that they could hold their more room for their children. Secretary Fringe, are you confident that districts that said they would offer fully remote schooling and families will be able to meet in advance? Hi. Thanks for the question. I believe it pertains to access to the Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative. And yes, we've had a bit of a long gym there, largely due to a lot of class men and requests for slot in the system and we're working through those as quickly as we can. So I think in terms of that system, I am confident that we'll be able to meet the needs that we are dealing with sort of a lot of last minute enrollments. Districts also have other opportunities than other systems they can do. So I think districts will be in a pretty good place in terms of resources. And how are you planning to specifically deal with the staff thoughts? Like, are there plans to place such like a plan, the number of slots somehow? Yes, we have the ability to do that. Once again, there's a large number of requests that came at the very last minute right before the start of school. So we're dealing with sort of a backlog there. But we have the ability to scale system with the Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative. So it's kind of like a question of how many automatically are in the system and you just need to up that number? Yeah, we also have the provision of staff and so forth. What happened is we had a large number of requests come in at the last minute. We also, that entity contracts with school districts for a certain number of slots and we had districts exceeding their contracted numbers. Simple admin as well, so it would create a bit of a long gem, but we are working through it. Okay. Thank you. I also have a quick, hopefully a quick follow-up question for what you've seen about that UVM study. Well, more of it's pre-printed at the specifically study. I noticed that, you know, the sample size based on a self-response rate from, you know, people being mailed to such a request or something and then returning it. And then, you know, about 600 people were interviewed and maybe 2% of them had the serum come back positive. That seems like a pretty small sample size to me. You know, 2% of 600 is like 10 people. Do you think that that's like a fairly accurate number of actual percentage of people who have and my body's across chicken and county or is it more just kind of like a rough estimate for the purpose of the study? Well, we can't use the word rough estimate because it is the actual number that came out of the study. But in terms of, is that a good approximation of what's really going on in the county, the discussion part of the paper does get into the fact that these are a little bit more selected people because they're people who've had contact with the UVM health network as opposed to people who haven't. But it is in the county, you're right. It does make sense if you give it the common sense test. You know, we've always felt, we've been saying this for months now that there's probably just a few percent of people in Vermont that have had some kind of experience with the virus and certainly nothing that would approximate herd immunity, but nothing that gets as large as parts of New York City that might be 20% because they had such a major problem with the virus and select parts of the city, but more consistent with a lot of other places in the Northeast where we just don't see such high rates. So I think it is a good approximation of what is probably really going on with all the caveats that go with using serology testing in a low prevalence population. All right, thank you. Hi, Governor, I wanted to go back to the detail of the economic recovery fund. It looked like they followed what you were asking. They're putting about 175 million as I read it to the ATCC and the TAC department for economic relief and the giving, it looks like giving the administration pretty broad parameters. Now, obviously the Senate could put some stricter requirements on that, but I just wanted to get your opinion on that basis of the economic recovery fund. Yeah, in terms of the economic recovery portion of the bill, I believe, and I can get you the facts as we know them. It appears in this version, the House version, that they actually shorted economic relief by about 33 million, I believe, somewhere between 33 and 50 million. Oh, I'm sorry. Wait, maybe I have... Oh, they have the same, yeah. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt, thank you, Governor, thank you, Tim. The governor is right. Our review of the bill shows that the governor had asked for 133 million in economic recovery grants for ATCCD, and what is in the bill is about 100 million of that. So, you know, we can compare notes later, but that's how we're reading the bill. Just, would you know where that aesthetic for 30 million or so went? Oh, there's the next appropriations that we did not request in our budget, and maybe you're reading in there some of the upstairs appropriations to UVM, to the independent colleges, you know, a number of appropriations that went to other ATCCDs, not ATCCDs. If you're counting those as economic recovery grants, I'm not sure. No, Tim. Yeah, there was quite a bit to higher education and K-12 as well, I believe. So that could be the largest portion of that. Okay, so, let's go with, Susanna, if you have an email, you can send me the details I've been creating. Yeah, I think we can send you a comparison of the request from the governor and what the House did in the bill. All right, great, thank you. But again, Tim, I just want to make sure everyone understands that it still has a long ways to go. Still has to go to the, it still has to be passed by the House. I think they're planning to try and do that today, then get sent to the Senate for their work so it could change drastically by the time it gets back and then they have to agree before it gets sent to me. So, it's weeks away. But they do have to hurry a little bit and have to be prepared for this. I agree, I agree. April, WCAX? My question is for Secretary French. We're hearing a wide variety of stories from schools. Some are offering AP classes, some aren't offering them, some are offering. Some of them, has the state released the guidelines for AP offerings and are students getting shortchanged for their education if they aren't getting the class of these classes at all? Yeah, I haven't heard that specific concern. I've had some concerns up forward about scheduling the AP exams and then something I'm working on on the other concern. We do have very close relationships with the College Board and the APT company as well. So we're able to sort of figure these things out to a certain extent, but right now I think what I've heard is the bigger concern is trying to figure out the scheduling of the exams. Then after I can follow up on the other concern I can follow up with the companies. If one school isn't offering an AP class, is there an option for a student to potentially get that class somewhere else? Yeah, certainly, as I mentioned, we're in the same press conference, our VPVLC is among virtual learning cooperatives. We have that capacity there as well, and there's a number of ways students can access the materials that have worked with remote learning online. Thank you. Joe Barton Chronicle? I believe this is Dr. Levine. I'd like to get back to Orleans County, and I just wanted to be clear in my own mind. The tracking and tracing people have completed their work, speaking with the people who are testing positive for COVID in Orleans County, is that true? That should be true. We have a mid 90s percent rate of connecting with people who are positive within 24 hours. I should... Yeah. No, no, please, finish. No, I should emphasize that it is not... Though this seems unusual with the number of cases in Orleans County, it's not unusual for us from time to time to see phenomena like this that we really can't explain. And it's just almost serendipitous when that happens. But obviously it pikes our interest, and that's why we're making sure that when we talk about it later today, everybody's covered all the bases, and there's no common theme. Sir, at this point, it doesn't appear to be a common theme, and given prior experience in other places, it may work out that you never know why this happened. It's just one of those things that can happen. Exactly, and now we have a lot of experience with that because this is not the only county where this has happened, where we thought maybe we were onto something, but then we weren't, and then it fizzled out, and that was the end of it. So this has happened a number of times over the months we've been involved in this pandemic with a variety of counties in Vermont. Is there to have any more information or more certainty about it being just a one-off event by Tuesday? Oh, absolutely. We'll also have three more testing days, four more testing days, so we can actually see if there are continuing to be cases from there. But yeah, for sure. Hi, Paige. This is a question for Secretary French. My second one will be for, I believe, Secretary Perley. News reports show that school racial equity and caste courses have been calling racist books from school libraries. Is there a record of these removed books? And if so, is it available to the public, or will it be? Yeah, I'm unaware of that activity, and I'm unaware of such books that are being maintained. We certainly don't have those books at the state level. Okay, perhaps a good question for Mrs. Anadayas. Thank you. Governor Scott or Secretary Perley, Vermont has the second lowest housing occupancy rate in the nation, I'm sorry, housing vacancy rate in the nation. And we also have a substantial number of so-called zombie homes that are stuck in poor closure and therefore cannot be occupied and for lengthy periods. Can you tell us more or less how many zombie homes Vermont has and is there any state strategy for reducing this number of zombie homes and the average length of time that they remain vacant? I'm not aware of how many zombies we have in the state or their homes, but we can certainly get that information for you. I think Commissioner Hanford probably would be able to provide that information. I'm not sure he's on. Secretary Perley, do you know off hand? He, Commissioner Hanford is not on the line, but I don't see where, because I'm sure he could probably get into this right off the top of his head, but I am unfamiliar with how many zombie homes I do refer to are in poor closure and the length of time that they are in that state. So we are happy to get back to you on that. I will connect you with Commissioner Hanford. Thank you. Thank you. Mike, the Essex report, Mike, the Essex reporter. Star six. Hi, thanks, everyone. We hear you. Hello. Go ahead, Mike. Governor, sorry if I missed something reasoned out of your office about this, but we have a good amount of readers who have been asking about Antrack Service and the Vermonter. Are you able to share what criteria you're using to select a restart date for Vermont Antrack Services? And do you offer a post for target of return of those services? Yeah, you know, we're continuing to talk with with Amtrak. Obviously, we want to get that going just as quick as we can when it's safe. As we've seen throughout the state, public transportation is down by at least 50% at this point in time. The ridership of Amtrak, I believe, is way down as well. But I've heard that there's some news. They want to start to coming back to Rotland first, maybe in the coming weeks. And we're engaged with them to do whatever we can to provide for the service into Vermont when it's safe. But we'll be working with the Agency of Transportation as well as with the Department of Health to make sure that we have provisions in place when we do have Amtrak running again. But I would say in the next, at least in the next two or three months, we'll see Amtrak running again in the state. Great, thank you. Seven days? I'd like this for Secretary Smith. Hopefully we can just get an update on the childcare hubs and what you're hearing about those. Are you hearing any issues or has the rollout been moved? Thanks Colin. I was hoping I was going to get with the press conference without a question. The childcare hubs, there's been a remarkable job here. I just want to congratulate both of Vermont After School and DCF as they continue their work and what they've done. Just to give you an update on the report, there are 18 school-aged childcare hubs have been confirmed and will provide childcare at 64 different locations. In the aggregate, the hubs can serve approximately 3,780 children. With many of those children attending more than one day a week, we're starting to get the number now of children. If you remember, I've been talking about slots, but slots are what we have made available. Now we're starting to get those slots filled and we'll be able to sort of transition to the number of children we're serving. And just remember, a slot can be occupied by one child multiple days or multiple children on multiple days. So we're starting to get that interested. As we look into the next few weeks, we've identified 30 hubs with 85 different locations. Of the total identified that I've mentioned, so far today, 41 locations are currently up and running and accepting children. The remainder, like I said, will be coming on in next week or the week after. And that's because of the school schedule, that's because of getting these hubs up and running. If you think about this, all said and done, we should be close to when we sort of get this together, about 6,000 children that we will be serving over the next few weeks. And that's a remarkable effort. We will be sort of now changing our strategy of strategically looking out through the state to see where there are gaps and waiting, not waiting, but reaching out to those areas where there may be gaps. And we may see strategically these numbers start to be a little bit smaller in terms of moving forward because the hubs may be smaller. And again, just to mention, when I say hubs, we've sort of evolved in our thinking here. When we used to say hubs, we met one location, now when we say hubs, it's a hub probably with multiple locations. For example, in Essex, over 10 locations. I can't remember specifically. So that's where we are right now. The work on the project continues. And again, thank you for asking about this question because we're paying particular attention to those areas of the state where there, we need additional childcare services, particularly in sort of the southern Bennington, Wyndham County area that we had mentioned last week. And certainly a couple in Central Vermont as well. But a lot of progress has been made. I wanna thank Vermont After School in DCF for all the efforts, including working through the Labor Day weekend to get up, to get this temporary program up and running. If the, just so that everybody knows, if the schools start to transition to five days a week throughout this day, we will start demobilizing these childcare hub programs. But we'll see that in the next few weeks of where we're going and the need and where we're going. Hey, have you heard, have you heard any issues with the ones that are up and running or are there any assembling blocks that you're working through right now? Or how would you see the rollout thing? I think today, for what we've done in a very, very short amount of time, I'm pretty happy with the rollout. As we move forward, we've had some, we're always looking for staffing as we move forward. And when I talk about staffing, I just wanna be clear, we could have a hub that's looking for staffing, but they're looking for staffing at a particular location. All the rest of the locations could have the appropriate staffing in and up and running. So I think, if I'm looking at it overall, this has been a remarkable effort that I just, I can't stress enough how much people have worked tremendously to bring this system up and running. Thanks. And then one other thing, Governor, I was just here on Tuesday that I believe you were asked about the cost that's been brought regarding Secretary Condo's plan to mail Alice to voters. And I just wanted to give you another chance to read this out now that you've had a few days to digest it. Did you agree with the lawsuit? Do you have any, do you share it? Any of the concerns that are brought by members of your party? Yeah, no, thank you very much. I don't think it was brought by the party. I think they just happen to be Republicans, but I just wanna say, first of all, I believe the mail-in ballots is a safe provision in Vermont. I think we've proved that. But there are some elements of their lawsuit that will be interesting to see the results of. I've had concerns about the third party who was able to recover ballots and bring them in. And that's been, I think that's a problematic area. So we'll see what happens. But again, from my standpoint, I thought they did a tremendous job with the primary, the record number of ballots that were mailed. And it appeared without too many issues. So I believe that during this pandemic, we wanna make sure that people have the ability, the opportunity to vote, and this will provide for it. But we'll see how the lawsuit progresses. But we'll be watching. Are you in every comfortable moving forward to the plan? Any ballots you're expected to start going out within the next 10 days or so? Well, I don't have a voice in that. As you might recall, the legislature took me out of the equation. So this is all in the hands of Secretary Kondos. Thank you very much. April, we're on your free press. Hi, I'm not sure to whom to direct this question, but it is about trick or treating. And I'm just wondering, can we expect any guidance from the state as to whether trick or treating will be permissible or recommended or will towns make that determination? We heard this week that the city of Los Angeles has canceled trick or treating and Halloween events. I'm just curious if there's been any discussion on that regard. Yeah, no, it's appropriate to have the conversation now. Commissioner Levine. I must have been reading my mind because we brought this conversation up earlier this week because we do need to take it seriously. And again, I would compare the state of Vermont to Los Angeles on just the one metric that's important, which is the percent positivity rate and the amount of new cases. So there should in appropriate locations be some public health guidance or even public health recommendations regarding having or not having Halloween. I don't see that as a problem in Vermont now, but I do see it as an opportunity for everybody to be creative and to think about how to do things correctly. Obviously, one thing Los Angeles said was, not having big parties and big gatherings of people for Halloween like so often happens, and it can be very convenient to have a whole bunch of kids together in a location and celebrate Halloween without even having them have to go to house to house. So obviously we need to abide by all of the mass gathering guidance that we've provided thus far in Vermont. We need to think creatively. Often there's a congregation of kids on a doorstop, doorstep or in a porch or whatever. That's probably not the way it should go this year. There are obviously gonna be people who are homeowners who feel like they don't want to be in close contact with kids coming up to their house and handing them a piece of candy or handing them a basket and saying, take out the candy you want, what have you. And they want to be protected. We have to abide by the six foot rule. We have to abide by the masking rule, but there are creative ways to do this, whether it be setting out the candy on a table and letting people know how much they can take and what have you, still being able to see them all be dressed up as they come. Having parents make sure that if they're accompanying their kids or guiding their kids that they are not gonna be in groups of 25 kids together, but it'll be much different experience this year. So I think without giving you every detail of how I envision Halloween, I try to drive home the message that within the usual guidance we give about everything, there should be room for Halloween and people can still enjoy the holiday to a degree and still be festive and see everybody dressed up as they always are. And I don't want to create too much of a joke here, but everyone must wear a mask. Thank you. As well, April, I just, I believe the parade that's been, the Halloween parade in Rutland, I think has been postponed as well or canceled for this year, which is the largest parade for those who haven't seen it should at some point, but it's the biggest parade I've ever been in and I've been to it multiple years, but so it's unfortunate, but necessary for them to take that action. We might also be able to collect some data on the zombie homes if we have Halloween. Sounds good. Thank you. Okay, now that ends the questions I might add. If you can take a moment to reflect on those we lost as a result of the actions taken 19 years ago today and those family members they left behind, but also about how proud it was, a time for us in the aftermath, how proud we were as Americans and if we could just get a little bit of that back at this point in time, we'd all be better off. On Tuesday, I just want to also mention for those of you who are still tuned in, we're going to have a special guest on Tuesday. I'm excited about the guests. We're not ready to release the name yet, just in case something happens over the next couple of days, but we should have a, we'll be able to talk about that maybe Monday, Monday night. So stay tuned, but it should be an interesting program. Thank you very much.