 Before I get into our updates, I want to remind everyone, today is Giving Tuesday, a day where those of us who can, are asked to support our neighbors and communities. So in a year when so many are hurting, please consider donating to a local charity, food bank, rescue shelter or non-profit to help those in need. Today along with our weekly modeling, we'll be updating you on our work to increase testing and build up our contact tracing team. And Dr. Levine will share more about what we're seeing on the ground. You'll also talk about an issue with over 200 tests from the Bay Area that couldn't be processed, which is an error we're looking into, so we can make sure it doesn't happen again. Moving to today's update, Commissioner Pchec's data, which includes how mobility has changed over the last few weeks, is promising news. As you can see, or as you will see, it looks as though there have been changes in behavior that will hopefully lead to fewer cases than projected. And while cases are still rising, the growth rate is slowing a bit. It's too early, however, to know exactly how many people kept their Thanksgiving get-togethers small. And what impact holiday travel will have, but with this initial data and the lower and daily cases we're seeing, I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. I want to thank all those who made sacrifices over the last few weeks, but with that thanks comes another ask to keep it up until we have a little more data on the impact of Thanksgiving. As I've said, it's my hope that if the majority of Vermonters follow the latest guidance, we'll be able to ease some of the restrictions in the not-too-distant future. I also want you to know part of our strategy to help slow the spread is to go on offense. We're continuing to stand up new testing sites, giving people more ways to get a test, including more areas of the state and more convenient hours for those who are working. This is on top of our expanded surveillance, where we tested over 9,000 teachers and school staff last week, and we'll now begin testing about 25% of school employees each week on a rotating basis. And we continue to add to our contact tracing capacity as well. To be clear, we're not just taking these actions because of our rising case counts. We've been building up these systems over time, so we can go on offense against this virus. As we've said, since we started reopening the economy, these are the tools that help us do this safely while we await a vaccine. And we continue to have good news on that front as well. Our teams are ready for their first shipment of vaccine whenever those are distributed by the federal government. I share all of this because even when we face some of the toughest challenges since March, there is reason to be optimistic. And there is reason to see light at the end of the tunnel. I was asked last Friday if I was giving false hope, so I want to be clear. We have tough days and months ahead, and we're not out of the woods yet. But we are at a point where we can see that light more clearly than we have throughout the pandemic, and we have to keep focused on it so we can get through this dark tunnel as strong as possible. We can't give up when we're finally seeing a way out. So I want to, again, thank for monitors for their perseverance and their commitment to each other. We can and will get through this together. And with that, I'll turn it over to Secretary Smith for an update on our testing and tracing programs. Secretary Smith. Thank you very much, Governor. I want to begin my remarks today by addressing an incident that was reported in the Times Argus last night and began last Friday when 246 COVID tests that were collected at the Berry Auditorium did not arrive at the lab in Massachusetts in a timely manner, and therefore could not be processed because of the time that had a lapse between collection and lab processing. In addition, a letter went out last night informing individuals who were waiting on these COVID results of this incident and asked them to be retested. The following the problem was the letter informing them of the incident listed all the available email addresses of everyone who had been tested. This was followed up by another letter apologizing for the error. First off, let me apologize personally for this incident. None of this should have happened. It is not the fault of the individuals who took the test. They were doing the right thing getting a COVID test. There was an issue with the delivery, and while the state of Vermont uses an outside company for shipping testing specimens, we must take responsibility for not having a better process in place to confirm when the labs arrive and when they are being processed. The agency of human services and its health department must make sure this never happens again. As secretary of this agency, I take responsibility and my office needs to act. After literally administering tens of thousands of tests to Vermonters, this is the first time that there was a slip up on this important of this magnitude. During the era was a letter that went out with email addresses improperly attached to it. I have asked the health department to immediately get additional testing sites in the area if needed, and those tests of the individuals impacted to be expedited. In addition, I have asked my general counsel at the agency level to investigate what happened with the UPS delivery to the Broad Institute in Massachusetts. Samples arrived at the UPS facility in Somerville, Mass, processing on 11.28 at 6.23 a.m. And sat there, not going out for delivery to Broad until 50 hours later, on 11.30 at 8.41 a.m. As a result, the samples were spoiled and could not be tested. In addition, I have asked my general counsel to see what, if any, federal privacy violations may have occurred and what the state must do to rectify any of those violations. Lastly, I have asked the health department to review all testing and reporting procedures and report to my general counsel any changes that need to be placed, need to be put in place to quickly inform us of a delay, of a delivery to the lab. Additionally, we will be reviewing all our notification processes to ensure that in the future we avoid sending out letters with information that could identify an individual. We cannot let this mistake happen again. We have done a lot of testing in Vermont. If you remember, in the spring we had limited testing supplies and therefore we were limited in our ability to test Vermonters. Today the state has a robust testing system with plenty of supplies on hand. I will discuss our increased capacity momentarily. But most important thing is for testing needs and testing to be trusted by Vermonters. This incident can erode trust, but in addition to an apology which I again give, actions need to happen to ensure that this incident isn't repeated. My office will oversee the review of our processes and reforms and breakdowns of anything that we find. As I mentioned just a moment ago, testing has quickly evolved in the state from the days at the outset of the pandemic when there was limited testing to today when we have very robust testing capabilities. As our capabilities grew last spring, Vermonters became aware of our pop-up sites that were placed strategically for a day or two, often in areas where there was an outbreak, where there was a lack of testing, or more surveillance testing was needed. Recently, we not only are keeping the flexibility of pop-ups to respond to specific outbreaks and other needs, but we are also adding to that capacity with permanent on-demand sites located throughout Vermon with day, evening, and weekend hours that are open and available to anyone seven days a week. We had initially set a goal to have 14 of these new on-demand testing sites by the end of November, and we have hit that mark. In addition, we will have other sites coming online in the coming weeks. These sites are in addition to the pop-up capability, hospital and pharmacy testing locations that already exist. Just to give you an idea of where these 14 location sites are, they're in Bennington, Strattleboro, Stratton Mountain, Newport, Rutland, Berlin, Burlington, Northfield, St. Johnsbury, Fairleigh, Waterbury, Springfield, Middlebury, and Waitsfield. Providing local, easy accessible testing to Vermonters is crucial to our success in keeping Vermonters healthy and safe, and we will be adding on to that list in the weeks to come in places like Hardwick and Springfield and Morrisville and Nile and Pond and coming up even later in Wells River and Richford. It's important that we meet the needs of Vermonters in the area of testing and increase our testing capacity. I would encourage anyone interested in getting tested to visit healthvermont.gov forward slash covid-19 forward slash testing for more information. There is also space, limited space for walk-ins at the location, but the most important thing and the most efficient way is to get a test is to register online at the website at the health department. Over the last seven days, we've conducted 34,225 tests. This is down from the previous seven-day reporting period that had us conducting 48,158 tests. The 48,000 number included college testing, which has ended since students are home for an extended period. We anticipate that these new on-demand sites, coupled with outbreak testing and continued surveillance testing in schools, long-term care facilities and enhanced testing at hospitals, which I'll discuss in a minute, and other locations, we will see approximately 30,000 plus tests a week with everything that comes online. In addition, we are enhancing testing in other ways. We continue our conversations with the Vermont Hospital Association, and we'll be working with hospitals in this state to increase testing significantly of their employees on a monthly basis. We should be announcing that next week. Also we are issuing Binex Now cards rapid antigen tests to those long-term care facilities who have not had access to rapid antigen tests through the direct distribution from the federal government. In addition, we will soon begin offering twice a week PCR testing for employees to any skilled nursing facility that requests it. Since long-term care facilities have been increasing in activity lately, we will begin reporting VDH outbreak data twice a week in long-term care facilities. In addition, we will begin presenting the number of probable cases, symptomatic or exposed people with those antigen tests that aren't PCR confirmed, or where EPI has decided that based on interview information, sometimes when people refuse testing, it presumes they are positive. This is being done for two reasons. One, for transparency, especially as the use of antigen tests become more widely used, and two, to be in line with other states. We will begin to report this starting tomorrow, and we will add 120 presumptive positives that are from the period September 6 until now on the dates in the time period that they were reported. In areas of contact tracing, as we have discussed at previous press conferences, contact tracing is a critical tool to mitigating and containing the spread of COVID-19. We have worked hard to ensure we are prepared to meet the rise of cases across Vermont, and as we see case counts continue to increase across the country and the state, we are beginning to add more staff to assist in this effort. We're currently on track to have a total of 100 FTEs or 72 staff per day on the contact tracing team by December 7. This would mean that the team could contact 216 individuals per day. Additionally, we are looking at opportunities to expand our call center and implementing a text notification to reach Vermonters with initial information. Having a quick conversation or text message to Vermonters or learning them to the fact that they have been identified as a close contact will help us get the word out to impacted individuals as quickly as possible. This is not equivalent to our current contact tracing efforts, but it is the first step in reaching out to individuals and alerting them to having been possibly exposed. So a lot going on in contact tracing, a lot going on in testing, and with that update, I'll turn it over to Dr. Levine for further updates. Thank you, Secretary. As you all know, today is the first day of December, the final month of what has been a long year for many of us. You sacrifice so much in the spring, and many of you continue to adapt and adjust your lives to help keep each other safe. I know it's especially hard to do during the holidays when we're used to being together. So to those of you who avoided those traditional gatherings on Thanksgiving and throughout the weekend, I want to personally thank you. Today we're reporting 63 cases and 20 Vermonters hospitalized with COVID. We can't be absolutely certain of that number due to some of the UVM reporting issues that they're having. Our numbers have been trending a bit lower than they were in mid-November. But we still have yet to see the potential impact of cases from Thanksgiving gatherings. Again to happen, we'll start today and for the next week and a half. Unfortunately, we've also seen three more deaths in the past three days, bringing our total to 72. Two of these were women in their 90s, and one was a man in his 70s. Our sympathies go out to their families. As of last evening, our EPI teams were following 39 outbreaks in 185 situations. One of these is our first situation related to a Thanksgiving dinner party that was celebrated early, but I can only hope this single event will not be a sign of more to come. As we wait and see if our efforts have made a difference, please remember that the governor's order prohibiting multi-household gatherings is still in place. If we can keep doing our part to prevent further spread of COVID-19, we can weather the current surge in cases. If you did gather, you should quarantine and get tested. It's best to get tested right away and again on day seven or later. As I've said here before, as cases increase, opportunities for transmission increase, sometimes causing situations and facilities we need to investigate, and sometimes leading to outbreaks. Our contact tracers are doing incredibly hard work right now tracking down these cases and even longer lists of close contacts. They are dedicated to making sure everyone has the information and recommendations they need for their own health, including for testing, quarantine, and isolation. But we are counting on you all to help, to answer the call and provide complete information. It is so critical to keep the logs of all employees, customers, members, and guests and their contact information required by the Agency of Commerce and Community Development's WorkSafe Guidance. And even in your own life to keep a really good list of who you've been around. Because there may be situations when we can't reach everyone we need to, whether directly or through an organization or facility point of contact. And we may need to notify the larger community that they may have been exposed, such as through a news release or other means to take the public health action quickly. Like we did this past weekend, when sufficient information or cooperation was not forthcoming from a case or from an event that person attended that could have put others at potential risk. That either did not keep the appropriate list of guests or did not care to share our public information with their attendees. Communications that we had even drafted for their use. In such cases, we put the public's health and safety first and the need to protect the people they may be in contact with. And who deserve to have the information and recommendations for their own health and to have this in a timely fashion. You can help simply by being intentional about what you do. Think about where you're going, who you'll see, and how you're feeling every time you leave the house. I also want to reiterate what the secretary was saying and preview a change coming to our data reporting. The number of cases of COVID-19 we report currently only includes cases confirmed by PCR testing. Starting Wednesday, our case numbers will include probable cases on the dashboard of our website and in other publicly reported data. A case is considered probable if the person has symptoms of COVID-19 and tested positive on an antigen test and has symptoms of COVID-19 or epidemiologic evidence. Or if the case has symptoms of COVID-19 and is epidemiologically linked to a confirmed case of COVID-19. For all such probable cases, Health Department teams take the same public health actions as if a case were confirmed by PCR. This means that contact tracers conduct interviews with probable cases, provide isolation guidance, and their close contacts are notified to quarantine. Reporting probable cases as part of our total cases will more fully capture COVID-19 activity in Vermont at a time when antigen testing is increasing, particularly in places like nursing homes. The impact right now, as you heard, is minimal, about 120 cases that are considered probable will be included in our total cases. In speaking about nursing homes, I did talk Friday about my increasing concerns related to long-term care facilities. My concerns have only become more magnified in the ensuing days. As of yesterday, not only were the three deaths I noted related to such facilities, although one individual passed away in the hospital. But we had seen a total of 165 cases in eight facilities, ranging from skilled nursing facilities to assisted living. Our healthcare facility outbreak prevention and response team shares my view that the virus is entering these facilities as a silent traveler, the majority of the time, present in the nasal passages of staff who have yet to develop symptoms in our unknowing vectors. The fact that they are infected at all is testimony to the fact that more virus is present in our communities. Hence our continuing guidance to Vermonters regarding the key ways to prevent the transmission, which of course includes avoiding multiple household gatherings no matter how small they may be. In addition, we're expanding our work with long-term care facilities throughout the state, most of which do not have a lot of new infections. To increase the amount of surveillance testing with staff in order to find and isolate these cases early on while they are without symptoms and before infection can spread. Our goal will be to test twice weekly in skilled nursing facilities with PCR testing and to continue to make antigen testing available so that facilities can utilize it as a primary testing strategy when an outbreak has already occurred or when the virus prevalence in a region is high. And we will of course ensure that PPE supplies are sufficient to meet needs and protocols for PPE use are being adhered to. I'll now turn it over to Commissioner Pichek. Good morning everybody. So while the country continues to face considerable challenges with COVID-19, today here in Vermont, there is some reason for cautious optimism as the governor alluded to. First, although weekly regional cases have increased for the 14th week in a row, the rate of new case growth has again slowed. Second, over the past two weeks, our mobility data indicates that Vermonters have decreased their movement, spending more time at home and commuting less often to workplaces, thereby reducing opportunities for the virus to spread. These sacrifices have resulted in not only a slowing of cases here in Vermont, but in fact decreasing from a seven day high of 105 to 70 cases today, a nearly or an over 30% decrease. While these are certainly encouraging signs, we of course must remain vigilant because the risk continues to be significant in communities all across Vermont with more active cases in Vermont now that at any point during the pandemic. Focusing first on our regional data, cases did increase week over week with over 92,000 cases reported. However, that rate of growth did slow to under 4%. From October 26th to November 16th, you can see that the week over week growth has continued to slow. It was growing for three or four weeks at a pretty rapid pace, but it has slowed down more recently, which is of course an encouraging sign. However, we must also remember that the availability and willingness to be tested over the Thanksgiving holiday is likely depressing the confirmed case number, at least to some degree. The updated regional model indicates that we can expect to see the slow down continue with new cases expected to rise 29% over the next three weeks, which is a decrease from the 45% expected last week. Again, the next few weeks are less certain as we wait to see the impacts of holiday gatherings. Vermont's mobility data is also reasoned to be optimistic. Over the 10 days following the implementation of the new mandates, there was a 20% reduction in travel to the workplace and a 27% increase in the amount of time that Vermonters are spending at home. Further, Vermont's overall mobility has decreased to where we are now the second least mobile state in the country. For comparison purposes, yesterday, Vermont maintained the lowest per capita growth rate in the country while North Dakota had the highest, a rate that was about 16 times greater than our own. I mentioned Vermont being the second least mobile state while North Dakota depicted here on the red dotted line on the chart is one of the most mobile states and has been for some time. This drives home the point and the importance of limiting our travel and our interactions during the pandemic. Turning to our Vermont numbers, we reported 475 cases this week, a decrease of over 200 from the week before. Things have also seemed to calm down recently in Washington County. It's no longer one of the counties with the highest active case count in the region. Further, during the 10 to 14 days following the new mitigation measures, we have seen a clear slowdown and decrease in our case counts. As mentioned by approximately 30% since the seven day high. This is, of course, really good news, but with the impacts of holiday travel and holiday gatherings yet to be seen, we need more time over the next week to determine exactly what trajectory we are currently on. Regarding Thanksgiving, we do have two early data points that give us some insight as to what we might expect over the coming weeks. First, regarding overall travel into Vermont, we see that travel was down 52% on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving compared to 2019 and down 55% on Thanksgiving Day. Similarly, Vermonters traveling out of state was a reduction of about 58% this year over the three day period, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, compared to 2019. Further, air travel is down both nationally and locally. Nationally, 60% fewer passengers travel through airports during Thanksgiving week. While here in Burlington, the airport saw a reduction of 77% compared to a year ago. There is still a lot of uncertainty around the Thanksgiving holiday, but it does appear that travel was reduced significantly in Vermont. And to keep our momentum, we have to continue to follow the guidelines and continue to be vigilant and careful. Reasons to be vigilant and careful just to emphasize the point will show on the next couple of slides. In Vermont, over 46% of our cases were reported during the month of November, more than the months of March through September combined. This means that we currently have more active cases in our state than pretty much any time previous during the pandemic. This chart estimates the active number of cases in Vermont. And as you can see, there are considerably more cases today than there were back in the spring. This means we still have an elevated risk of coming into contact with someone who is infectious, and we must be careful and continue to follow the guidance. Finally, turning to our weekly updates on K through 12, higher education and long term care facilities. Looking at the K through 12 chart, you'll notice that New Hampshire added over 100 new cases this week. While Maine added 25, and here in Vermont, we added 18. Turning to the higher education slide, this will be the last update we provide on higher education this year since their in person portion of the fall semester is now complete. Vermont's colleges and universities certainly did a remarkable job keeping their students, their staff and their communities safe during this very unusual and challenging semester. In total for the fall semester, over 220,000 COVID-19 tests were administered with 238 positives. Meaning about 1% of the 21,000 students enrolled in in person instruction contracted the virus this fall. Congratulations are certainly in order to everyone who made Vermont one of the safest places in the country to attend college this semester. Finally, a brief update regarding cases and long term care facilities. Since the last update last week, there are two active outbreaks that were added to the chart, bringing the total active number of outbreaks to eight. And there were 65 additional cases reported through these outbreaks, bringing the total of active cases in outbreaks to 166. At this time, I would like to turn it back over to the governor. Thank you, Commissioner Pichek. We'll now open up to questions. Thank you. I just want to make note that Dr. Levine does have to leave for about an hour and about five minutes. So we'll do our best to answer questions as well as out. I will start in a room with Calvin. Probably a couple of questions for Dr. Levine. So previously this summer, you'd expressed concern about using antigen tests because of the false positivity rate. I'm wondering why we're choosing to use them now. I'm so glad you asked that question, Calvin. The direction we're going in with antigen tests at the long term care facilities is number one, when an outbreak has already occurred at a long term care facility, by definition, it has a higher prevalence of virus than it's ever had before. And you want to be able to make rapid decisions regarding triage of patients and staff and cohorting of them so that, infections don't spread. So a positive test on an antigen test, which is available very quickly, would be looked at as a way to immediately implement a change. Second thing is, as you saw on the slide of how active the disease is in Vermont now in general, many of our long term care facilities will be in regions of the state where the prevalence of virus is much higher than it's ever been. And the likelihood of a positive antigen test being a true positive is much higher in those settings if the person is still symptomatic, that it would be at a time of low prevalence when the false positivity rate could approach 50%. So we find that there is a definite role for that at this point in time. And then I guess in terms of beginning to report presumptive positive cases, I'm wondering why we haven't done that as of yet, like why we haven't been including that in our data. And then also, we're going to see more cases included. I'm wondering maybe this is more of a question for the governor, but what sort of perception the public might take from that or what kind of impact that might have on the public's perception of our case count? Sure, so the term we're using is not presumptive as much as probable cases as opposed to confirmed with PCR. And the amount of antigen testing in the state is fairly low at this point in time. Number of cases that are clinically determined without testing is very low. So we're now well over 4,000 cases that we've recorded in the state and we'll only be adding 120 cases in the manner we just described. Now, going forward, there will be more, but there won't be leaps and bounds more. So we really haven't been, we're not uncovering a treasure trove of cases that we didn't show anybody before because it's such a very tiny percentage of the total. But we do feel based on the fact that many states like us that we fell into a category with had not reported these cases before that we've all kind of in unison decided that this would be an appropriate move over now when the disease is so much more active. And we wanna make sure that all tests are looked at equally well and not just require one to have had a PCR or nothing else. Thank you. This may also be for Dr. Amit or perhaps Secretary Smith. I know that in the spring, there were some instances in long-term care facilities where folks who were not for a fire positive were moved out of those facilities. I know that happened in Brooklyn rehab where some folks were taken to a nearby hospital to be away from that ongoing outbreak. Is that something that's being considered in any of these eight facilities that currently have case counts? Is that something that's being considered moving forward? We only did that once and it was Burlington Health and Rehab and it didn't really work. We tried to move them to a different facility. I think it was a hotel at the time and it really didn't work because we found out that sooner or later they became positive and it just wasn't a good strategy at the time. What we have done now is move people directly to the hospital if there is a need to either lighten up the staff load or to take care of this individual is move them to the hospital. So we have been moving patients to the hospital, particularly in some of these outbreaks that have happened. And with the growing number of cases in these long-term care facilities, I know that there's been sort of about the impact that I can have on staffing there. Is the Health Department coordinating with say the UVM Health Network or the other health care providers in the state to be ready to assist them? Should they need help to keep moving staff? Yeah, it's actually Dale, the Department of Aging and Independent Living Commissioner Hutt has been on Thanksgiving night, was on the phone dealing with a facility what we have found is within 24 hours to 48, eight hours after an outbreak happens, you may lose staff at that point. And so you're a little bit not as stable as you'd like to be. So getting staff in that time period is where the critical time period is. And UVM's been very helpful in terms of moving patients and helping us locate various things. And the National Guard's been very helpful in various occasions, as well as the medical reserve corps and other areas that we've had. But where we've found the critical time period is the 24 to 48 hour period. After that, the facility seems to be able to stabilize itself in terms of staffing. I just want to go back to Kelvin's question for just a minute on a couple of different levels. One, we want to know about positive cases. I mean, I know it's not a great reflection on Vermont if we have more positive cases, but the sooner we know about it, the better we can mitigate and prevent the spread. So that's the goal really is to identify all the cases we possibly can in whatever manner we can. So I think Dr. Levine and he's gone now so he can't clean this up. But I think what he had said earlier with antigen tests that because we didn't have the number of positive cases, the positive rate wasn't immense here in Vermont, that it wasn't as accurate. Now, unfortunately, our cases are up, so it is more accurate. As well, I think the Commissioner Pichek might be able to reinforce this, but I believe what we need to watch is the positivity rate because that includes the gross number. So we do more testing, the more testing we have, the more cases we might find, but the positivity rate, as long as it stays the same, all is good from my standpoint. Is that correct? You wanna clean that up at all? Okay, all right. All right, and as the Governor mentioned, Dr. Levine did leave, he should be back in about an hour. And do you have other folks who can help try to answer the health related questions? And I might add, I'm not trying to complicate things, but if you have a specific question for Dr. Levine, you might wanna take a pass and see if we can get back to you after the fact, if that works for you, Rebecca. We can have a do that. All right, we'll start with Ed from the Newport Daily Express. He spelled out the different testing sites that the one place he mentioned was Newport, Vermont, Orleans County, that's his county recently showed a tremendous fight and with Orleans County being a very rural area of the state and with people who were crossing back and forth to put from his answer for work, what methodology do you use to not put at the county as a higher priority to set up one of these tests? I know you're gonna set up a site company out in the future, but it seems as if that's where the accident is, you would put it right up there. I do believe we have a site set up in Island Pond at the FQEC, but I'm gonna let Secretary Smith answer that. Okay, thank you. Yeah, Ed, thank you very much for that. Some sites come up faster than the other ones, but at this week, we hope to have the Island Pond site up this week. So we are concentrating on Orleans and Essex. We understand the case counts that are up there. That's why we do have one in Newport and we do have one in Island Pond. We also will be looking at other facilities as we move forward. So you are correct. We're concerned about the case count in those counties and we're responding by putting permanent seven days a week testing there. I just wanted to clarify that this is gonna be happening sooner than not in a few weeks. No, it's gonna be happening soon. Yeah, it's gonna be happening soon. Okay, Dave, and I wanted to have an application question that came up that I was asked about where is actually Snowmobiles even standing up? People who are out of the states who have a secondary home in Vermont could they take the total intact, come up and stay in their secondary home in those snowmobiles? And have that considered to be self-quarantining for the appropriate time period? Or is it not allowed to come up until they've gone through the test and the seven-day wait? Once they get into Vermont, they have to quarantine 14 days or seven days with the test, regardless of whether they have a second home. Okay, that's been figured out. I want to clarify. Thank you. Joe, the Barton Chronicle. Joe, Barton Chronicle. Move to Mike, Donahue, the Islander. Thank you, Rebecca. I may want to look back around. I do have some questions for Dr. Levine, but maybe Secretary Smith has been clarified. In the letter that's made Dr. Levine sent to the 224 medical patients, there was no indication of when Vermont specifically learned about the problem. I know you gave her the timetable. Maybe I can just exactly when Vermont learned about it. And I get some of the people who were impacted are wondering why you explained some of the 72-hour delay in notify list, but wondering when did Vermont learn about it and why the delay by Secretary Levine and how to find the patient. I'll let Secretary Smith, I think we're still looking into that, but from my standpoint, I don't believe we knew about it until yesterday because the package was sitting in a warehouse in Somerville, Mass until yesterday morning. So we didn't have any knowledge of that. We thought that it was going through the process and being tested and we were going to get results yesterday, but Secretary Smith. Yeah, I know I've looked over the time. I feel the 50 hours was a big chunk of that 72 hours delay. Yeah, the governor's right, Mike. The package sat in a warehouse for 50 hours or so. Whatever I had mentioned previously, it had set in that warehouse in Somerville, Mass 50 hours until 50 hours later when it was delivered. I became aware of this at eight o'clock last night. And so we're still, that's why I have my general counsel going through and doing the investigation to find out the timeline and find out what happened here to make sure that it doesn't happen again. So they never, the health department never told you until two hours after there are new emails to the patients that there was a problem? I knew at eight o'clock last night by an email that we had an issue. Okay, they sent it out to the patients at six o'clock. Yeah. Two hours, I didn't know what was going on. And the other question maybe you can answer is, who, and I don't know what you can't play. At least one Martin County resident told that it was a pantherious article last night that he was never tested on Friday but still perceived Dr. Levine's new email. How accurate is your record? I mean, how do you know? You've actually briefed everybody that was tested on Friday. And the other thing that's somewhat related is, you talked about taking responsibility and appreciate you accepting, apologizing and everything, but it does sound like it was you that had the problem. Are you planning to cancel the contract with UTS? What discipline does the health department believe in sending out the emails incorrectly to the individual patients? What is he or she facing? Yeah, Mike, I think it's too early to, I think obviously UPS is upsetting here to me at least and the fact that email addresses went out is upsetting to me. But I think it's too early. Let's give the general counsel time to dig into this. He's starting to dig into it this morning and we'll continue to dig into it today to find out. And if there is, if UPS was not paying attention here, we need to know and if something else, if somebody else wasn't paying attention, we need to know. So I think it's just too early for us. I met with the general counsel this morning before I came into this press conference and gave him his task, what he needs to do. And is looking at the state employee who sends that email out with all the private emails? Is they looking at possible discipline for that employee? Yeah, I think it's too early but I think what we need to do is look at the whole situation, the timeline, figure out what happened here and dissect it and make sure it never happens again. And if there's things that need to be done, we'll do them. Is that employee suspended or still on the job? Yeah, I don't know. I don't even know who the employee is yet, Mike. I, you know, literally we're trying, we tried to work through this late into the night and started again early this morning. Thank you very much. I'll go away for a minute or two. Eric, the time's erguous. Yes, thank you. This probably is gonna be in the same vein as it's too early to tell but the state had mentioned in the email where the state was where everyone was told without their emails where that there were failures in the system. Have those been identified yet? Any changes that have come in as simple as someone was and didn't put a blind card to copy on the email? Yeah, I don't have the answer to that. And again, we're just trying to assess the situation. So I think Eric, it does fall onto the category of we're still looking into it to find out what went wrong so we can prevent it from happening in the future. I mean, I wanna offer again, my apology as governor to those who had their personal information sent out in that manner and they didn't do anything wrong and they were just trying to get a test done. And I might also offer that we wanna make sure that you do get tested. And if you can get to a testing site today identify who you are. And I make a commitment, we haven't said this yet but if you have a test today, we'll let you know the results within 24 hours. Just make sure that you identify you're one of the ones who is on that list and we'll make sure it happens so you get a call. Even if I have to drive all the samples myself from Barry to the health lab in Cold Shester, we'll get it done in the next 24 hours. That's kind of in the vein of what I was gonna ask next is somebody who went to this testing site on Friday, they went through all this depth and then this kind of thing happens and their email gets exposed. What would you say to them to try to convince them that the process is still something to be trusted? Yeah, this was like adding insult to injury and I can't justify it. But what I can say is we need to figure out how to get you a test. Let us know how we can make that happen because it's just as important today, probably more important today than it was on Friday. So let us know what we can do to assist you in getting that test done and we'll do everything within, I'll do everything within my power, we'll do everything in our power. I know Secretary Smith, Dr. Levine share the same concerns but we wanna get you tested because we wanna know whether you should be protecting yourself and your family and others. So this is important. Okay, thank you. Cat, WCAS. Hi, talking about testing times here, I'm hearing that some locations including a hospital are telling patients that the turnaround time for getting their test results back is four to five days. What can be done how these locations turn the tests around faster and what is our average turnaround time right now? Yeah, we've been working on this for quite some time. There was a slowdown with some of the commercial operations particularly with I think it was Quest and maybe Brode and maybe another one but we're trying to rectify that. I'll let Secretary Smith answer that. Thanks, Cat. We met with the hospitals the other day. One of the things that we talked about was trying to move away from those particularly Midwest labs that are really under the gun in terms of turnaround times. Sometimes in the area that you are talking four to five days and getting the results moving away from those and moving more towards other labs that are quicker and faster. Brode, for example, is one of those. We really do pay attention to the average turnaround time given the fact that some of these Midwest labs are four to five days. The average turnaround time is 2.4 but it ranges a lot between the quickest which is the Department of Health's lab which is one day. Brode is two days, Dartmouth is two days and Rutland is one day. Rutland Medical Regional Center is one day. So we keep tabs on these but I will say that we've had been encouraging the hospitals to move away from the labs in the Midwest. What's the test rate because I got an email from someone who sent us a picture of their bill for $300 for a test they got at Northwestern Medical Center for COVID-19. Should be free. If you ask that person to send it to Mike Pichek we'll investigate that. And then last testing question. I spent about 15 minutes on the phone this morning with someone who was really frustrated because he said it took him three hours to get a test booked. The hospital wouldn't do it because he was asymptomatic. The health department told him because he has an Android phone and no computer access he wasn't able to sign up on health department's registration for any of their tests. Finally got one at an urgent care and his question was how do you expect people to get tested if for some people it's very difficult to sign up and it takes three hours to finally get your test. Call 2-1-1. If this individual's having problems going online call 2-1-1 they will assist or call the health department. They will assist in making sure that this person gets registered. We don't want anybody having difficulty getting registered. Okay. Could he have said he called the health department and they told him that because he had an Android phone they couldn't register or help him. So I just kind of want to clarify that people have access to these tests and these testing sites you're opening up. Yeah they do and what you know I'm a little bit perplexed I can help this individual if you'd like and just give me a call but we have set up multiple ways that you can register obviously online is probably the easiest for most people but in this case it sounds like this individual was having a tough time so we do have other ways that you can register 2-1-1 you can call the call center at the health department. I'm a little perplexed why it was said that way but I'll check on that. Thank you. Yep. Kim we're not business faculty. Hi Governor. The Vermont State College is vital to the economy in many different ways and as you well know Northern Providence where you get a 3.5 million extraordinary gift that was announced yesterday is I know they're not out of the woods in their budget but from your perspective does that change the map at all and whether you know having to further validate or cut back on the state colleges? No I mean because that's a one time gift and they have serious challenges in terms of this being ongoing in terms of their budget so one time money doesn't fix it I think they're going to have to look for other ways to increase either increase revenue on a consistent basis and that usually means bringing more students in because that's what they're losing out on the number of students, the income, the customers so to speak into their portfolio or you have to reduce costs and that's the only way you're going to get back in the black because they're obviously in the red. Would you support further consolidation? I am supportive of any idea they might have and we will consider this to get them back in the black because they can't go on like this and Vermont just doesn't have the resources to continue to provide bridge funding. John, BPR, John, John Dillon, BPR, right? We'll go to, is that you John? We'll go to Lisa, the Valley reporter. Hello, thanks for taking my call. I had a question from a parent this week about whether it would be possible for pop-up testers like to be created in schools where clusters of cases are found and what they're doing most of the contact tracing. She suggested there's less stigma and go to your local school and it might make it more efficient. Secretary Smith. Lisa, thank you for the question. We try to keep testing outside of the schools primarily because we do not want to introduce any COVID cases within the schools. So we try to keep them outside the schools. And in fact, we try to keep our testing capabilities outside sort of traveled areas that would have a lot of foot traffic that wouldn't normally be there. So that's the reason for, that's the answer to your question. Thank you for that. And then a quick follow-up. I've also had readers in the community reach out and want to know if they can volunteer to help with contact tracing. Yes, there is a course that you have to go through but we, you can reach out. I will have somebody contact you, Lisa, because I would appreciate that, frankly. Great. And one final quick follow-up. It's Secretary Burns is on the line. Is there supposed to be a school sports update today? A winter sports update? Lisa, I can probably answer that. We talked about this on Friday and they said we would give a weekly update. So we'll be giving an update on Friday in terms of winter sports. Great, thank you very much. Yeah. For NBC Five. There was a report out last night about the majority of states miscalculating unemployment benefits and federal government was going to require that states move out on Earth to retroactively catch up. Is there money impacted by this? Yeah, I don't believe so but I'm going to ask Commissioner Harrington to weigh in. Thanks, Governor, and thank you for the question. There were two parts in the article that I saw that probably will pose a part of question. One was the PUA benefits and people or different states underpaying benefits. A lot of that, what we're hearing from states is that individuals were getting the minimum amount just going to the PUA program. When you initially filed, you could get the minimum amount when you were able to validate through your tax filing for 2019, what your earned income was, your benefit amount could then be adjusted upwards from the minimum if you qualified for a different amount. Vermont didn't run into the issue because from the beginning of the program, we built in the functionality so if someone uploads their tax information, the system will recalculate the benefit based on the earnings. And so some states, because of the backlog and delay in processing of some planes, have it sounded like it had not caught up and made all those adjustments but our system was designed that way to make that adjustment. Someone when they come in the system based on what they record on their own is the earnings, it calculates what their weekly benefit amount is. However, it will only pay them the minimum amount until they upload the documentation. So once they've done that, it'll pay out the full weekly benefit amount. The other part of the article, which is probably worth mentioning, was around PUA data recording and at least for some time now, we've been recording consistently our PUA filing data to the federal government but all states found themselves in this issue of a delayed reporting because the program started but the recording mechanisms were not all in place and it sounds like based on the article, some states are having trouble reporting PUA filing data on a consistent basis to the federal government but we've been recording that for some time now. Okay, and a question please for Commissioner Pijak. Regarding mobility, and I think you've talked about this some weeks back but it's pretty interesting how you know that travel in and out was down by specific percentages. Can you, is this through cell phone tracking or how can you, how do you know that? Yeah, so good question, Stuart. So again, the information is provided by third party providers. It's available through Google and others. We happen to have a contract with an outfit called SafeGraph which is providing this information free to governments and academic institutions during the pandemic. So it's very useful information for us. You have to have the power to be able to analyze it and understand what's in there but it's a very valuable use for us. So the information is aggregated so it's not any individual information is aggregated at the census block region. It's anonymized so we don't know who it is. We don't know where they're coming from in terms of their street or their house or even their town. It's again at the census level and then it's user consented. So people agree to have their location followed on whatever apps they might have on their phone. So from that we can look at the amount of travel, the amount of cell phone variation that occurred whether someone spent a lot of time at the office in one week and then that cell phone doesn't show up in the office the next week. It gives you that amount of variation in terms of where people are spending their time and how the mobility is moving. But again, it's anonymized, it's aggregated and it's user consented. And can you ballpark how many phones you're tracking to come up with the numbers you gave us earlier? Yeah, so just to clarify like, it's certainly not tracking, it's just it's sort of data that's provided by this third party provider in many ways available, not just to us but to the public at large. But the amount of somewhere between 20 to 30% of people agree to have their location tracked or have the apps downloaded on their phone to have their location tracked. So if you aggregate that out across the country it's a pretty large percentage of cell phones. And then you can do some statistical analysis and make a determination about how many people that represents. Thank you, thank you both. Erin, BT Digger? Erin, BT Digger? I understand that the lowering case numbers are a little preliminary, especially during the long weekend. But what level or what degree of fall in cases would make you consider reopening this big date in terms of some of these restrictions, like the full-time household gathering rule for a single? Yeah, tough to put a number on that, Erin. A lot of factors go into that. But certainly what we're seeing now leveling out, we'd like to see a decrease. But really, we need to see that decrease over the next two weeks because that's how long it's going to take for us to see that ripple effect of Thanksgiving and then make a determination from there. So we'll continue to analyze the data, again, good news at this point in time, but time will tell whether that holds. And we certainly don't want to, even if we, let's just say, we leveled out. And we were leveled out at 80 cases a day or something and it wasn't increasing. That's not a good place to start out on in anticipation of the next holiday. So again, we weigh a lot of factors in making these decisions. And I think it seems as though Vermonters understood why this was important and followed suit. And I hope we continue to see a drop so that we can change some of the restrictions so that we can go back to some sort of normal. But again, I'm reluctant to say at this point what we do until we get there. So Steve, evidence or outcome of Thanksgiving at all affects your decision, whether or not to keep that gathering restriction in place for Christmas? Absolutely. Chris, thank you. Guy Page, Chronicles of Vermont Statehouse. Governor, the dashboard shows right now that 59 of Vermont's 72 deaths were from individuals 70 or older. Once the over 70 population is sufficiently vaccinated, will you continue your work, social gathering, educational and travel restrictions? And if so, why if the risk to the most threatened demographic has been greatly mitigated? Yeah, no, I think you bring up a good point. And what we're hoping, Guy, is that we can start to reduce the restrictions as time goes on, as more people get vaccinated. But we'd have to see, first of all, we'd have to, first of all, we have to have a vaccine that hasn't been okayed by the FDA at this point in time. And then we're going to have to have a quantity of vaccines that we can distribute wide enough so it would have some effect. So there's a lot of gifts there, but at the same time, we would look at that and hopefully if we were able to, and again, Dr. Levine is probably much more appropriate to answer this question, but if we could get to the population that are the most vulnerable, then maybe some of the restrictions on visitation and long-term care facilities could be relaxed in some way, and that nothing could make me happier than that to try and give some relief to those who are in those facilities. Question for either you or Commissioner Shirley, the post-modernization of policing seems as much concentration as I agreed then, as much concentration of policing authority as it is on modernization of policing methods. For example, new hiring and promotion systems in all law enforcement agencies statewide, statewide police, dispatching data, computer systems, standard and mandatory for all agencies. Why does policing modernization also need concentration of authority and systems at the state level? That's definitely a Commissioner Shirley question. Good afternoon. Thanks for the question and for highlighting the important work. The number of the things that you've noted are areas where we've been in ongoing conversation with the legislature and if you read the nuanced details of that plan, much of the foundation for these conversations actually goes back as far as in 2021, it'll be 51 years of studies and reports that talk about the best way to deliver safety services, but as important as those historic studies, we've reached a point, not only in Vermont, but nationally where disparity of operation, whether it's in data reporting and gathering or in certain kinds of really high-profile policies like use of force, body-worn cameras, things like that, that having disparity across agencies is just not the way the public expects things to function. So whether that's the roughly 80 agencies in Vermont or the roughly 18,000 across the country, the expectation is that there's going to be more uniformity and approach with the key areas of operation and that's one of the reasons that the modernization strategy is in part framed with those components. You see the general public is actually requesting this. Do you have any data on that? Again, we have literally 50 years of studies. There are 23 of them that talk about the regionalizing services and combining efforts, and they all essentially say the same thing, that duplicating and having that kind of variation is not the way to run these kinds of operations. Thank you. I may want to go back. Dr. Kelso, was there anything that you wanted to add to the previous question? No, Governor, I think you did an excellent job. I'll expand a little bit. I think as you said, there's not one measure, but certainly our goal is to get enough of the population vaccinated that we can start to pull back on some of the restrictions. It's also going to depend on what else is happening among the monitors who are not yet vaccinated and whether we're seeing high rates of disease or hospitalizations among the unvaccinated folks. But certainly, as we vaccinate more, we get closer and closer to easing out. Thank you very much. Next up, we have Steve from N-E-K-A-T-V. Hello, can you hear me? Again. Thanks. I guess I had one for Mike's visit, one for the governor. Concerning the testing, you inferred that the tests were somehow connected to people's emails. Is there no privacy involved? I thought that folks were given a number so that their DNA wouldn't be taken without warrant. Steve, there was supposed to be privacy. I don't know what happened in this case. Like I said, we're still trying to figure out what went wrong in this particular case. So I don't have an answer for you, but obviously something went wrong in this case and we need to fix it. So for the majority of tests, so you can guarantee anonymity? Yeah, for the majority of tests I feel very comfortable. I mean, we've done tens of thousands of tests and never had a problem. And this is a, I'm hoping this is an outlier. Matter of fact, this is an outlier, Steve. Yeah, yeah, okay. Thank you. Governor, the folks that died last week I guess their ages were 76, 81, and 94. And when all this is said and done and maybe over hopefully next spring or whatever we'll be planning on having like memorial services for those lives who were tragically cut short at age 94 or 81. Yeah, you know, we don't want to forget that. I know we talked about this at one of the previous press conferences where Mary Kate Brown lost her life and her family reached out and said we wanted to make sure that everyone understood that their mom wasn't just a number, she was a person that had a full life and gave back to her community. So we on the 19th, as you know, we have every month we do lower the flags to have staff to memorialize those we have lost and we'll continue to do that until this is over. And then I think you're right. I want to make sure that we reflect on those who we lost and then focus again on those we've saved with some of the measures we've taken. So, but I don't want to forget about those who were impacted greatly. So, can't that be the same we said about every life governor for every death? Well, I think this, in this instance, with a pandemic, a worldwide pandemic, when you have a quarter million lives lost over a quarter million lives lost across the country, I think this again, every life is important. But this one is a pandemic where once in a century, hopefully once in a century pandemic we're living through right now. We've been in a state of emergency since March. And hopefully we see light at the end of the tunnel. But at the same time, I think this, you know, rises up to a certain level with every crisis that we face. So I'm not sure what you're getting at Steve, but I think this is a different case. I mean, I don't know how many pandemics you've been through, but this is the first for me. I know it's about the third in my lifetime, but I mean, would you support in order for something like this to not happen again? And we were warned by the bioethicists when they started, you know, doing these gain of function research. There's something like this would get loose. Something like this might happen. With SARS and MERS, we already knew where the stuff came from, you know, within a relatively short timeframe. But with this one, we still don't seem to know. We don't, they haven't proven that it's zoonotic or anything, and Dr. Levine should be for this one. But would you support a letter, you know, to bioethicists so that they, we don't support this gain of function research that it could lead to stuff like this happening in the future again? I think Dr. Levine has talked about this a lot. And I think it is important for us to pay attention to science, you know, as we move forward, fund some of these science-based organizations so that we don't get in the same position that we're in today, but I think he is a better one to answer this. But obviously, we will have to reflect on this as a country, as the world, and make sure that we don't have to go through this again. I mean, it's crippled our economy, it's crippled our health, and we need to do better. All right, we're gonna move on. Yeah, sometimes the biggest wounds are self-inflicted. Thank you. Yeah. Andrew, how's it going in record? Yes, good afternoon, thank you. My questions are about the Irisburg Church Alert. So I'm not sure if I should wait for Dr. Levine to return or if, perhaps, Secretary Smith or Dr. Kelso want to take a swing at him. Maybe you give us a try. If not, we'll defer to Dr. Levine and wait for him to come back. Maybe he won't come back if you ask the question, though. Yeah, I'll just say it. Well, I'm assuming that you folks have heard the pastor's concerns that the alert may have been based on inaccurate information. So I guess I'm looking for some of the details. Can you confirm that the alert was and is accurate and provide any details about the individual that was tested in terms of when the test was conducted, when the results came in, when they were contacted, things of that nature? I think that probably is a better question for Dr. Levine, but we feel confident in the approach we took in our reaction in the contact tracing. Well, I'll certainly await his return. I do have, though, a question about the expectations for a church's operation and the guidance that they need to follow. Does anyone know whether the Irisburg Church was abiding by those expectations? And if it's found, in this case or in any other case, that the church especially isn't following the guidance of their consequences. Yeah, I think religious services are exempt from a lot of some of the restrictions we put in the place, but I'll ask maybe either Secretary Curley or Dr. Kelso, if maybe you can give us a little more information. I'll just ask Dr. Kelso maybe knowing more about the situation in particular, but if the district got in on the governor to write, we do have some limitations on the occupancy, the capacity currently, but no maximum cap on that. But again, that guidance is on our website, if anybody wants to check it out. But I would defer to Dr. Kelso in terms of specific to that particular, that's sort of the service thing and the guidance. I honestly don't have any information myself about what this church's practices were, but I tend to reiterate what the governor said in that we are confident in the information obtained by the contact tracing and every team that prompted the alert at least now. Okay, well, I will reserve, I guess, some opportunity to chat with Dr. Babin, would you return? Thanks. Thank you. A-free? W-C-A-X? So I have a question from a viewer that was sent to us. They, obviously, it's the holiday season and Caroling is a big thing, and they were wondering about going to Caroling, people who may be inside their homes, the elderly, and whether it would be safe to do so. They travel in standard ties and stay more than six feet apart while doing that. That would, from my standpoint, and again, I might refer to others, but that would be mixing different families together in congregating, and that wouldn't be a good idea. But I'm not sure if there was a family who was seeing outside the home from a distance away and they were all part of one family, I'm not sure that that wouldn't be okay. But I might refer, I don't know, Secretary Smith, you wanna try this? And I'll maybe rely on others to bail me out if I'm wrong on this, but I think the governor's absolutely right. If it's a multi-family going around Caroling, and remember, singing is without a mask, singing is not the best way to protect oneself. We saw a church in the state of Washington have a high infection rate from a choir practice that happened, but if you're a single, if you're a family, if you're a household, I don't see an issue with it. As long as you're outside, I would caution because of people being so vulnerable at an age over 65 to this virus, to be very, very cautious approaching someone that is in that age group in terms of Caroling. So single household, mask, all the requirements that you have outside and at a great distance, I think you should be okay. But remember who's in the house as well. And just a quick question that's not related with Caroling and still COVID. There is a report that came out that says that some states are considering allowing optometrists and dentists to also give out the vaccine when it becomes available. Obviously there's a lot of unknowns with the vaccine right now, but that's something for modules discussed. Not that I'm aware of, but we do have a vaccine team and we can get you that answer, but not that I know of at this point in time. Thank you. Pam Davis of Vermont Journal. Pam, I know you want to talk to Dr. Levine, but. Davis, come back to you at the end just in case you're waiting for Dr. Levine. Joel Burlington Free Press. Joel Burlington Free Press. I think Joel had a sticky button last time. Yeah, we've had a few sticky buttons today. We'll run back through some folks at the end. Tom, the Vermont Standard, right? We'll try Jolie, Local 22. I'm wondering if we have a problem. Yes, we kind of had some issues today with teams. Let's see. I think I will go back to Joe from the Barton Chronicle. John Dylan, VPR. Maybe I'll just ask anyone who can get through to jump in with their follow up question. Go ahead. Hi, Rebecca. This is Greg from the County Courier. Hey, Greg. I was waiting because Dr. Levine is not back and I don't have your questions, I heard them. Ah, potentially this one may be for Secretary Smith. Obviously with the loss of tests and very many people have experienced some financial loss, whether it be the state with their testing materials, people with their time off from work. Was this UPS package ensured and if so would the state be trying to recover some of their expenses for the testing? Yeah, I'll let Secretary Smith answer, but again, we're just assessing the situation in real time now and we'll be contemplating all of those questions you might have in regards to who, what, where, when and how and then come to some determination as to what we do from there. But Secretary Smith. Greg, the governor said it right. I don't have an answer to that question right at the moment. I expect that I will get an answer to that question, but I don't have it right now. Okay, and the other one I haven't related to very much. People that were getting a test because they traveled there, you waited seven days to get a test on Friday. People rescheduling today, there's going to be a site to get in tomorrow. I believe you said two and a half days is average to get their results. So they're getting it on Friday. What's the motivating factor for people who don't get retested? Well, the motivating factor is we're going to expedite their tests. The governor had made it clear that we're going to expedite their tests. So we will expedite the test of those people, those 200 plus people that took their test on Friday. Yeah, and we don't know in terms of why they're taking a test at this point. Clarifying questions for the governor. A question earlier about people that wanted to travel to the state, I think it was specifically about snowmobiles. But did I understand you correctly that if somebody wants to travel to the state, they should not quarantine for 14 days and then come to Vermont. They must do their quarantine in the state of Vermont. That's my understanding, yes. Because if you quarantine in another state, you still have to get here. So we want to get you inside the bubble. So if someone were to be in a top search for instance, quarantined in their house for 14 days, got in their car and traveled here, they're, I know they're not in their bubble here for that 14 days, but they're still within a bubble where they shouldn't be getting it. Well, let's just say, I mean, if we start opening it up like that, someone flying in from Fort Lauderdale into Vermont, they're quarantined at home. That doesn't give us a lot of comfort. And if they quarantine in Boston and drive up and stop in Manchester to get gas, that doesn't give us much comfort either. So from my standpoint, getting them here in the bubble and then quarantining is the best policy. Feel free, maybe Secretary Curley or others want to weigh in, Ken, if I've got that wrong. Secretary Curley, we actually do permit people to quarantine in their home for 14 days or quarantine in their home for seven days to get a negative test. We'll wait, you know, wait it out in their home even when they go out to get the test. They get a negative test. In both cases, if they drive directly to Vermont, we do allow that. So I would support you, Governor, that, you know, right now, in the light of the situation, the way things are, it's probably the best policy would be for people to come to Vermont to carry out their quarantine. But we do permit folks to quarantine at home in another state as long as they're making a direct trip and a private vehicle. So no from or so, how it ends. Okay, news to me, but that makes sense. Does that help, Greg? Okay, yes, that's what I thought it was. And I was a little confused when it sounds like it was something different. I did have a couple other follow-up questions but I don't know if other people are able to get back on. Yeah, there are a few other centers. Let me know if they're still waiting for their, can it be re-asked, Greg? Okay, but let me ask one more and I hope this isn't for Dr. Dean, if there's questions, if there's time after I might get one more. But there seems to be at least a general common denominator with many of the elderly care facilities being that they're operated by the Genesis. Is the state looking into any operational policies and making sure that there isn't a problem there? Secretary Smith? As you know, Greg, those facilities, whether they're Genesis or other facilities, those skilled nursing facilities are governed under the rules of CMS, which is the Center for Medicare and Medicaid or Medicaid and Medicare Services. Those are inspected on a regular basis. I don't know the specific facility that you're talking about, but certainly we can find out what the latest inspection results were of any facility that you may like and I can have Connor get back to you on that one. Okay, well, I was just noticing that the initial outbreak in the first nursing home in Burlington than the one in Redmond, that was in all those, I think at least three are operated by Genesis. They seem to have a fairly large outbreak, so I didn't know if there was anything at the state level that people were looking at that maybe there's some bigger issue here. Yeah, not to my knowledge at this time. Okay, thank you, Secretary, I'll hold that for a minute. All right, Jolie, Local 22. Hi, can you hear me okay? We can. Okay, great. I have a question from a viewer who's been to Contact the Health Department related to the results of the Burlington Miller Center, a pop-up testing site a couple weeks ago. The testing was used to see if there was a correlation between COVID-19 and wastewater at North Avenue Treatment Plant and it's a positive test from the new North and residents related to that and they wanted to know where they could find the results. They weren't seeing it on the Department of Health website. I think those are being done locally unless someone can correct me. I know when Burlington did theirs, it was done on the local level and I'm wondering if Essex is doing the same on the local level. So you might want to call your local administrator or town manager to get the results from that. And then my second question, just with the uncertainty that we're seeing in the coming weeks, do you think that Thanksgiving guidance could or should have gone into effect earlier on? No, I think it was the appropriate time, obviously. I mean, we're seeing the results of Halloween two weeks after, three weeks after, after towards Thanksgiving. So Thanksgiving wasn't a problem. Halloween was the problem and we tried to give everyone fair warning and to give guidelines as to what we should be doing and not doing. And then we had to take further action and after we saw the outbreaks there. So I don't think that that would have done a lot of good unless we could have, I mean, could have what it should have maybe putting those restrictions in place before Halloween, but this really took us by surprise in some respects in the trajectory that we found ourselves on as a result of Halloween. Anything, Commissioner Pichec, want to add to that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we talked about Thanksgiving for weeks before. In fact, Commissioner Pichec's data showing that Canadian Thanksgiving, I think gave us fair warning as to what might happen. Thank you so much. Just go through those folks that have been having trouble one more time. Joe, the Barton Chronicle, John Dillon, BPR, Joel, the Burlington Free Press, everybody and I think the other folks who are remaining are waiting on Dr. Levine who's not. So perhaps we'll first- Is there anyone on the line at this point who might have a question that isn't for Dr. Levine that might want to ask? Okay, I'm here, this is Greg from the County Carrier. I do have two follow-up questions that are not for them. Go ahead. I believe this one's for Secretary French with more and more cases popping up related to schools. We're hearing that some schools are not asking about social gatherings in their daily questionnaire. Other schools are essentially outsourcing the questions to parents and just asking that the parents ask their students every day about their safety questions. How much oversight does this Department of Education actually have to ensure that these screening questions are being asked every day and being answered honestly and properly? Secretary French? Do you have to hit star six? Well, we do have the doctor back in the house, so. Hello? Go ahead. Thanks. Did you hear me, Governor? Yeah, go ahead, Dan. Yeah, that's just the beginning of the question. I'm not quite sure the cases are increasing in schools per se. I think we've seen a pretty consistent number. In terms of implementing the guidance and the questions, yesterday was our, especially our first day of operationalizing that, so I think it's a little more early to tell, but we have not been really checking in with districts to how the daily questionnaire piece has been filled in. Our question has just been going fairly well. I do have greater contact with the superintendents than once again it is a, it's just one aspect of the multiple layers of our mitigation strategy that we employ in schools that are all together, I think we can say they're working well because we haven't really seen any spread of the virus inside schools. So I think it's a little early to assess the impact of the group gathering question on schools and how they're doing with it, since yesterday was the first day essentially that they operate in the last week. How about the districts that are essentially outsourcing the questionnaires to parents and hoping that the parents are actually doing it on a daily basis? Yeah, that is sort of the fault anyway, particularly for the younger students. Parents are asked to think of the questionnaires on behalf of students, so I wouldn't necessarily agree with the outsourcing per se, it's actually how it's designed to do, it's designed and how it's supposed to work. We asked parents to put tests on behalf of their students. Certainly I know there's many districts particularly the older students themselves provide that attestation on a daily basis. But that's, you know, it all comes back to us that once again it's just one aspect of our mitigation strategies and that's why we, you know, we try to develop policy guidance, operationalize that at the local level, because that's where that trust plays out. So, you know, once again the order requires everyone to do their best to comply with that. It's been challenging, you know, but all in all I think we're screening a high degree of compliance on behalf of our parents. Okay, and then my only other follow-up is probably for Commissioner Schilling in a state under the DSP, there's been all of them having that possibly in that region. Yeah, thanks for a follow-up question. We've been a little lucky that we've got one additional positive across all of the tests that were conducted. So a total of two positives and we'll continue to monitor that situation and make sure it doesn't involve further. Thank you, that's it for me and I appreciate the extra time I know with the updated cases. People are really wanting to know one more. Thank you. All right, since we are having issues, I did get a text question from John Dillon from VPR. Wondering when is the earliest we could see vaccines for healthcare workers? Is that you, Dr. Lagoon? Dr. Lagoon is back as well. You were missed. My sense from current information, but this changes literally every day or every other day, is close to the 20th of December, maybe the 19th. I don't want anybody to hang their hat on that date, but preliminarily, that's what we have. And that would be enough doses for a portion of the healthcare workforce. Mike Donahue had one question. I think we need some questions first. I think Mike Donahue had a question for Dr. Lagoon. Mike wants to go. Thank you, Dr. Lagoon. I'm not really, I was just wondering why you were not work-handed with the medical payment when you sent out that email last night, explaining what exactly happened. I mean, Secretary Smith was pretty upfront to tell him what happened, why didn't you tell the people involved in either of your emails what specifically happened? Well, I guess I would disagree with you about the content, but what I can say is the concerns of the staff very originally were to make sure people who had thought they were gonna get a test result in the mail got notification that they actually weren't gonna get a test result and to allow them to avail themselves of other testing opportunities. And the intent of the second email was really because of the concern that we knew people would have regarding confidential medical information being available to others that indeed, yes, email addresses were available, but the contents of anyone's medical information was not available, so it was to be reassured. And if I could just piggyback on the Secretary's earlier comments, he provided appropriately a number of apologies and since he is the secretary of the agency, that could be a overarching apology, but I wanna make sure that from the Department of Health, you also hear that there's a sincere apology for both issues, the issue of the tests never being performed because of the sample issue and because of the way the email went out. Well, your own words that due to circumstances beyond our control with transporting your COVID test taken on November 27th, the laboratory was unable to process your result. And it doesn't really say what Secretary Smith who was pretty candid about what exactly happened. Correct. I've been testing. Well, yes, and not all of the knowledge was present at the time that the first email went out either. The goal of the first email was to let people know they weren't gonna get a result and allow them to know where they could go to get tested again. And maybe you could answer one Secretary Smith, I'd ask him, what about the person who didn't have, was signed up to test on Friday, didn't go, went on Saturday and then still got an email? How's your record keeping? I guess I'm not understanding your question. A person signed up to be tested on Friday did not go, said went on Saturday and then ended up getting an email telling that their test from Friday had been destroyed or was no longer valid or good. And they wouldn't be getting a test from their Friday test when in fact this person never had a test on Friday. But you were sending emails. So are there really 224 tests that that's destroyed or that's just a guess on your part? There are no guesses here. We're dealing with people's results. We know what tests were sent to the lab and what tests were not processed by the lab. So those people have been appropriately notified. But again, one person said she got an email saying her test was destroyed and she never got the test. I'd love for you to forward me that information and we'll look into it and respond back. Okay. And I believe Andrew from the Caledonian records has followed for Dr. Levine for the IRIS-3. Yes, thank you. I'm still here. Dr. Levine, I'm sure you're aware of the IRIS-3 alert that went out and the pastors' concerns about whether that alert was accurate or not. I'm wondering if you can, one, confirmed that all of the details that were provided to the alert are still accurate with us at the Health Department's knowledge. And what kind of assurance do you offer to the community that it is so, and do you have any ongoing concerns about what this confusion may result in? Yeah, so thank you. In my original comments today, I did talk without being specific about Iris-3 about why and when we send out communications to the community at large. We feel very comfortable because we've had multiple people interacting with the church and with the community that we are well aware of who has a positive test. We're well aware of what lists did or did not exist at the House of Worship regarding parishioners on a certain date. And we're well aware of exactly what information was not transmitted to the greater community in a timely fashion. So all of those factors went into our desire to then provide information to the public so that if they happen to be present at a time of risk, they could take care of themselves and their loved ones who might be vulnerable loved ones and do the right thing at the right time. So plus it was an educational effort as well. So we feel that protecting the public's health was very critical here and needed to be done in a timely way. So there's nothing about the compliance of the pastors and making public and sharing with his membership that there was no positive test and the person in question wasn't even present on that Sunday, November 22nd. That is contrary to your understanding of the situation and its entirety. Both of those are contrary to my understanding in its entirety, yes. So your advice then to the membership of the church at this point is the same as what was in the alert. It was to strongly consider getting tested as soon as possible. Or and or to appropriately quarantine if they felt that they had contact on the date that was listed at the time listed because that would be of concern. And when you say contact, I mean, I don't, my knowledge, the positive case identity is not known in the general public at this point. Correct. When you say contact, just being in attendance at that service or if there's something more specific when you say contact. No, just being in attendance at that service. And are there any further considerations going on at this point in terms of should the church still be holding services? Are there operational changes that the health department would like to see made? Yeah, there's no reason for the church to not be holding services based on this public health information. We would like to see the church abide by the ACCD guidance regarding places of worship during the COVID pandemic. Which details of that guidance are you looking for? Making sure there's a list of people to connect with so that one's aware of who's attendance on a certain date so that for contact tracing purposes, people can be connected with as rapidly and efficaciously as possible. Okay, I appreciate the time to circle back with more questions, but for me. It looks like Joel from the Wellington Free Press is currently on muted. So I will try you one last time and then I'm gonna just determine the other technology issues. I'm muted, did you say? Go ahead, Joel. Wow, I had no idea. You know, I don't have any questions at this point. Thanks, I think you've covered all the questions that I have. So thanks very much. Thank you, Joel. Thank you, Joel. I think that's it and we will put the folks that couldn't get through today at the top of the queue on Friday, sorry about this. Okay, well thank you all again for tuning in and we'll see you again on Friday.