 Well, good morning, everyone. We have a few important updates that we'll be talking about today. This will be in addition to our regular education and health updates. Commissioner Pichek is here to share more on the expanded Frontline Employee Hazard Pay Program, which will open next week on a first come, first serve basis. And Dr. Levine will be discussing the vaccine preparedness plan we shared with the CDC last week, which outlines the steps we've taken and will take, so we're ready to distribute a COVID vaccine just as soon as it becomes available. As we've said before, we've had a team led by the Health Department working to prepare for a vaccine since July, because we know how important it is to be ready just as soon as the vaccine is available. As part of this process, we had to answer a series of questions from the CDC. And we'll be releasing those responses to you today, which lays out the framework of our plan. It's important to note there are still a lot of unanswered questions from the federal government, which will undoubtedly impact our distribution plan. But we're fully prepared to customize it when we receive those details. The bottom line is this. Vermont will be ready to safely distribute an approved vaccine when one becomes available. And while the federal government hasn't given us the quantity of vaccines we'll receive, please know we'll be prepared to distribute whatever we get, whether it's one or 623,000. With so many unknowns, this is difficult work. But we've got a strong infrastructure in place. And we've been working for months to learn from past experiences and further strengthen our systems. I want to thank all of those who have been involved in this planning process and who will be doing the work as we move forward, including doctors Levine and Kelso and their teams, the Department of Public Safety and Vermont Emergency Management, the agencies of human services, digital services, and the Department of Aging and Independent Living, as well as many other community partners. This has truly been a joint effort. While this is an important milestone, I want Vermonters to know there will still be difficult work ahead. This won't be over immediately, even after we get a vaccine. But this is, there is light at the end of the tunnel. So we need to continue to be vigilant and smart. Dr. Levine will also be sharing an update on new cases, which unfortunately includes 28 reported last night. This is an important reminder of why we can't become complacent. We need all of Vermonters to think about what you're doing each and every day and take the steps needed to keep safe. Wear your mask, keep six feet apart, avoid crowds, and follow the travel guidance. These are simple steps that will help us live our lives while still managing the virus and ensure we come out of this stronger than before. I thank you again for continuing to help us get through this. I realize this is difficult and exhausting, but we can and will get through this. So with that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Levine. Good, I'd like to, as the governor said, discuss the COVID-19 vaccine plan. The health department's been planning for the eventual arrival of a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19 for quite a few months now. This is an enormous undertaking with a number of crucial considerations. As the governor said, Vermont submitted its interim COVID-19 vaccination plan to the CDC one week ago, on October 16th. This past Wednesday, we added an executive summary, which the CDC had requested. The full plan and summary, which amounts to our proposal at this point in time, are now available on our website at healthfermont.gov slash COVID-19 vaccine. I've stressed the word interim as the vaccine in development is a novel vaccine for a novel virus. For this reason, there is still much that is unknown about the vaccines that are in development and the logistics involved with receipt, storage, administration, and distribution. It's quite clear that we can expect many updates in our planning as the national situation evolves. And our vaccination planning team is made up of experts from the health department, Vermont Emergency Management, the Agency of Digital Services, the UVM Medical Center's Vaccine Testing Center, and Pediatrics. The team has been working on this since mid-summer and are especially focused on the information technology, logistics, and communications that will be needed. I'll briefly describe where we stand with our planning in a moment. For this very complex effort, we've also enlisted an advisory committee of health and medical experts, and those serving the highest risk populations to guide us and recommend strategies to ensure equitable access to the vaccine. The goal, of course, is to have enough vaccine for every person in the state, but we don't expect supplies to be enough to vaccinate everyone at the start. Allocation to states will likely be based on population size and infection rates. With that expectation, we will necessarily need to prioritize those groups of people to whom it is most critical to get the first doses of vaccine. National recommendations on these priority groups will be finalized when the advisory committee on immunization practices meets on October 13th. That's a CDC body. Healthcare workers who provide direct patient care, first responders, plus residents and staff of long-term care facilities are likely to be among the first to be vaccinated. To start, when small amounts of vaccine come into the state, possibly before the end of this year, we plan to reach those priority groups through a mix of vaccine clinics that have proven to work in the past. For example, utilizing Vermont's healthcare system and offering community-based clinics. With respect to long-term care facilities, we have just learned this week that the federal government will provide them the opportunity to enroll with CVS or Walgreens pharmacies to vaccinate their residents and any staff who may need it. The health department and the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living are reaching out to those facilities now to encourage their enrollment. Later, as we get into 2021 and as more vaccine comes into the state, we plan to broaden access to the general population through those healthcare providers who routinely vaccinate their patients. To do this, the providers must be enrolled with the health department's immunization program to offer the vaccine. And we want to expand our already robust and significant enrollment to as many providers as possible. For those populations who may not have already accessed through hospitals, pharmacies and other settings, such as people who may be homeless, guest workers or those who lack insurance or a medical home, for instance, we will look at alternative options. Another consideration is that most COVID-19 vaccines now under development will require two doses. Our plan includes the means to schedule and track the required doses to each recipient. Having a safe and effective vaccine is essential to stop the spread of the virus. And I will be the first to encourage everyone who can be vaccinated to step up for the vaccine when it's available to them. We are all ready for this next step toward ending the pandemic. But let me be clear, any vaccine must meet all FDA safety standards and be recommended by the advisory committee on immunization practices. Safety and effectiveness will be the only priorities independent of any external considerations. This is an enormous undertaking with a number of crucial considerations. And I hope I've illustrated them for you well here today. They go well beyond the logistics and the communications and the information systems needs. Most people wanna know, do we have priority groups? How are they selected? How do we make sure that the right people get the right vaccine when it's available and over time and get it as quickly as possible to the larger population? We are confident that the groups we've assembled are up to the task. And to sum up, in Vermont, we'll be ready for the vaccine before the vaccine is ready for us. We'll turn it back to Commissioner Petschak next. Thank you, Dr. Levine and good morning, everyone. This past summer, the Frontline Hazard Pay program was established to recognize those in the healthcare field primarily who continue to show up for work while facing the great uncertainty and risk that the pandemic brought during its most fearsome time here in Vermont. This program was recently expanded for a second round of hazard pay that includes a wider variety of industries that provided essential services to Vermont last spring, including those who kept us fed, those who ensured we had access to our prescription medication, those who cared for our children and so many more. The program has also expanded to include former employees. These are individuals who did this critical work during that relevant period between March 13th and May 15th but are no longer employed with that same employer. This second round of applications will be administered by a competent team at the Department of Financial Regulation in consultation with the Agency of Human Services, and we are truly and fully committed to ensuring that anyone who applies for this program has an efficient and easy process for doing so. It's important to note right off the top that only employers may initiate an application with the department. If you are a current employee or a former employee who thinks they're eligible for this program, I encourage you to contact your employer to make sure that they're aware the program exists and to make sure that they are ready to apply when the application process opens up. There will not be an opportunity for a current or former employee to initiate an application with the department that must be done by the employer themselves. There are two main criteria for the program. One is that you are a covered employer and that essentially means that you're doing business in one of the 26 specifically identified fields that the legislation articulates. There is a full listing on the program's website but generally this includes expanded things like grocery stores, pharmacies, essential childcare services, funeral homes and a number of other categories. So if you are someone that provided essential services to the public during that period, if you're an employer that did that between March 13th and May 15th, I encourage you to visit the program's website to look at the full list of eligible employers to determine if you do qualify. Secondly, you need to be an eligible employee. So even if you work for one of these covered employers, you need to be an employee who was at elevated risk of COVID-19 exposure, who worked a minimum number of hours, 68 hours in this case. And also you have to have had below a certain wage threshold, $25 an hour with some exceptions for certain healthcare industries. So again, that critical period of time that we're talking about is from March 13th to May 15th. That's the period where you had to have worked those at least 68 hours to be eligible for the program. Again, if you are a former employee, we will not be asking you to initiate an application with the department. Rather, your former employer is required to identify you on the application that they submit along with your last known address. The department will then mail you a simple application form that must be completed and returned to our department. So again, if you are a former employer, I encourage you to make sure that your, or if you're a former employee that your employer has your most recent address and that they can contact you in the event they deem you eligible. Now, one really important point I wanna make here on the program, and I wanna emphasize this, the legislation establishing this program was created on a first come, first serve basis. Further, the first round of the program had appropriated $28 million for 14 different employer types. The second round of the program has less appropriated but an expanded number of employer types. So we really do anticipate that there'll be significant interest in this program since there are more employers eligible with less money. We also anticipate that the money will be committed very quickly. So if you are an employer that's interested in this program, we really do encourage you to go to the website to look at the materials. There's a program overview. There are frequently asked questions. There are also spreadsheets for you to identify your former or current employees who are eligible. We encourage you to spend some time over the weekend on Monday and Tuesday to look at the application process, to look at the eligibility, and be prepared for when the application portal opens next Wednesday, October 28th at 9 a.m. Another important key date to keep in mind is that the department will be hosting a webinar for employers on Monday, October 26th at 3 p.m. Anyone that has interest in the program wants to learn more, has looked at the materials and has questions. We encourage you to attend that webinar. You'll have an opportunity to ask questions and learn more at that time. So we look forward to administering this program. Those that have questions can visit our department's website. There's a contact information and an email submission form as well. Thank you very much. Thank you, Commissioner Picek. Good morning. We have seen more cases of COVID-19 in our schools as we expected we would, but our schools continue to operate well. Last night, Montpelier superintendent notified me there was another case in one of her schools at a different grade level and a different instructional pod than a previous case. So that school is going to fully remote today until they have additional information. The ability of our schools to have options to navigate changing health conditions will be very important as we head into the winter months and particularly the flu season. On Wednesday, we had our monthly State Board of Education meeting. The board has two student representatives, Sabina Brochu, who attends Champlain Valley High School and Annalita Pena, who attends Mount Abe High School. Typically the student representatives are asked to give reports at these meetings and their insights add a lot to the board's deliberations. This week, both students commented on how a new normal was settling in in their schools and how they took some comfort in the daily routines in their schools, even though the routines in their schools are not necessarily the same. We've been successful in reopening our schools and continue to operate them safely and one measure of that success is certainly the small number of cases that we're seeing and the ability of our schools to continually to operate when cases do occur. But perhaps a better measure of our success is reflected in the comments of these students. Our ability to provide some stability and routine in the lives of our students while operating our schools in this unprecedented pandemic emergency is an incredible accomplishment. And we certainly appreciate the efforts of all Vermonters in keeping our schools safe. On the front lines of this work are school nurses. School nurses are pragmatic and resourceful professionals who have been critical to the success of our schools during this pandemic. Louise Driscoll, who has been a school nurse at St. Johnsbury School for over 20 years, was recently named Vermont School Nurse of the Year. I wanna congratulate Louise and thank all of her colleagues for their hard work and dedicated service. To support the continued success of our schools, our task force and medical and educational experts has been meeting over the last four weeks to finalize revisions to our health guidance. That work is now complete and will be published shortly. The revised guidance will go into effect in mid-November to give schools time to adjust to the new requirements. I thought I would highlight some of the important changes in the guidance. I think the changes could be described as a general tightening of some of the required precautions in anticipation of the cold weather and moving more activities inside. A key aspect of our mitigation strategies in schools is to require a daily health check for students and staff at the beginning of each school day. In the revised guidance, a new requirement has been added to the daily health check to include screening for travel to ensure students and staff are in compliance with our travel guidance. Another change pertains to distancing requirements. Previously, students in grades pre-K through five were required to be situated no closer than three feet. The grade levels for the standard have now been extended to include grade six. Related to the distancing requirements is new guidance on the use of barriers. Plexiglas barriers were permitted to reduce the minimum distancing standards which are three feet for students in grades pre-K through six and six feet for students in grades seven through 12. Barriers are still permissible as an additional safety precaution, but they can no longer be used as a way to reduce distancing requirements. We made this change because we wanted to ensure a more consistent approach to distancing as we move into winter. We also provided new guidance on distancing in cafeterias. Under step three, which was enacted on September 26th, schools may now use their cafeterias for activities such as serving meals at lunchtime. Our guidance now speaks to distancing requirements that must be utilized in cafeteria settings. Our revised guidance addresses a concern about open windows on school buses during colder weather. School buses will now be required to have at least four windows open, but they are permitted to close some windows based on the weather conditions if necessary for safety reasons. I will say one of the more challenging areas of the task force for the task force is creating guidance for indoor music activities. Each student activity, like music, needs to be evaluated based on its relative risks. This is why, for example, we provided different guidance for football than we did for cross-country running. Music presented a significant challenge because many music activities, such as singing, playing wind instruments, are inherently more risky in indoor spaces because of the potential to generate increased respiratory droplets and aerosols. In our revised guidance, we are permitting some music activities in indoor spaces, but these activities are very restricted. We are permitting individuals to practice when a student is the only occupant of a well-ventilated room and musicians must wear masks and follow other precautions. Our sports planning group, led by Secretary Mora, continues to work to finalize our winter sports guidance. I expect we'll be able to provide an update on this work next week. That concludes my update. I'll now turn it over back to Dr. Levine. Thank you, Secretary French. I can't help but go off script for a second and summarize three key comments that were just made. Number one, we should listen to our students and our kids. They do adapt very well, and they see the bigger picture sometimes when our lives are too busy to. Number two, school nurses are an incredible resource and they're pivotal to our efforts here today and through this pandemic. And number three, and not to minimize any of the other things, but number three, the advice about screening for travel. And I say that to Vermonters in general, who may themselves be attending an event within the state or inviting others to attend an event that they are sponsoring either at a facility or in their own home because we understand the unwitting presence of virus at such events from people who have traveled and feel well. And we must always consider that. But to get to my comments, the health department's continuing its work, investigating situations and outbreaks. This work begins as part of our contact tracing efforts, once we receive new case information. As of last evening, we have several active investigations, some larger, some limited to one or two people covering different types of settings and situations. One of these, as you know, is the outbreak in central Vermont. I'm noting this as an important example of how the COVID-19 virus will find its way into our communities. Because as you know, infectious diseases, whether they be the flu, the measles, or COVID, spread easily from person to person and can do so exponentially. This is what we call downstream impact. We'll talk more about this in the future, but it's important for people to know and think about it. As I mentioned on Tuesday, it's easy to fall into pandemic fatigue, but the virus itself does not tire. Downstream aspects are when initial exposures then spread, for example, to people at home who then go, often when asymptomatic, to school, college, work, or to visit friends, family, or neighbors. We all live in communities and the places we spend time in then reflect the amount of virus we see in our communities. I've noted this many times during our prior press conferences. Just to give you a sense, this outbreak in central Vermont now involves two colleges for six cases, seven schools for a total of 12 cases, seven workplaces for a total of 12 cases, and two hospitals with two cases. And if we think about the number of close contacts, they are now in the range of and exceeding probably 240 for a total of 43 cases. Many of you check our website daily for the current data and nationally, those numbers are very high. I wanna ask that as you do so, please remember that every number is far more than that. These are real people and in the state of our size, many of us know who they are and take this very personally. There are family members, workmates, classmates, friends, neighbors, or people we only see once in a while. So as we discuss these outbreaks and the data, please keep this, the lives behind the numbers in mind. Now to return to our counts, as the governor stated, last night saw the largest number of cases we've seen in many weeks, 28. Needless to say, our epidemiology team is very hard at work today with interviewing and contact tracing, but I have some preliminary information. Fully 50% of these cases are associated with three outbreaks, the Central Vermont Hockey Outbreak, the Social Event in Memorial County, and a new one at St. Michael's College which was discovered through ongoing surveillance testing. The remaining situations are all being investigated. Keep in mind, we have predicted we would see an uptick in cases and the timing is actually as expected. Some of the theories could include foliage season and we do see this in our mobility data, encroachment onto our borders of redder zones, which you've seen in the data presented on Tuesday by Commissioner Pichek, the movement indoors as the weather changes and as we have increasingly opened up the state. We're seeing a general increase in the number of contacts each case has as well, going from two to three in the spring to six or seven or more now. And all this is at a time when we really haven't had a lot of new policy change or further opening of sectors. Finally, I'd also like to call out some great work by the Vermont Health Department scientists whose recent investigation about COVID's mission was published Wednesday in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Our team found that transmission of COVID-19 can occur during multiple brief exposures with someone who was infected. Working with the Department of Correction staff, the investigation team looked into a situation in which a state corrections officer became infected after several brief interactions with incarcerated people who harbored COVID-19. The team determined that none of the individual interactions lasted 15 minutes, but together cumulatively added up to more than 15 minutes over time. These Vermont findings were cited by officials from the CDC, which this week refined its definition of what is considered to be a close contact. And now says a close contact is someone who was within six feet of an infected person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period. This might be especially relevant in certain group and congregate settings where there's potential to have these multiple brief interactions. I'm really proud of our team who worked tirelessly during this pandemic, have helped add to the worldwide body of knowledge about COVID-19. I talk often about our commitment to following the science. Their work is yet another instance of how Vermont uses science and data to lead the way in efforts that make a real difference in people's lives. I wanna emphasize this does not change the nature of the virus, nor the steps we all take to prevent its spread. Identifying close contacts are about more than just the length of time of an exposure. Contact trace is also taken to account how far away a person is, whether they're symptomatic, where their environment is. But we hope that all public health officials can now consider this research when doing contact tracing and interviews. We heard a lot today about the amount of virus circulating in the unfortunate increase in cases. But what I can't emphasize enough, and I implore everyone to hear this, we can follow the science, but we must all lead with our actions. Start by making the often hard but necessary choices. I don't have to talk about physical distancing and masking any longer. Everyone has heard those messages as well. But especially as we start to spend more time indoors, please focus on avoiding crowds and avoiding attending large gatherings. These are situations that more easily lead to outbreaks and spread of the virus. So yes, we can continue to be a national leader. Let's live up to our reputation. I'll turn it back to the governor now. Thank you, Dr. Levine. We'll now open up to questions. Just a note for everyone, we have more people than normal today, so if we can try to speak to one or two, we appreciate it. Calvin. Thank you. So governor, about the vaccine and rolling it out, how much of our state of emergency is tied to a vaccine and what percentage of the population or how much of the population would need to be vaccinated before we start rolling back some of the restrictions? Again, I think that's more of a Dr. Levine question and there's a lot of what ifs involved with that. We don't have all the details, obviously, of what the vaccine is going to be, whether it's just going to be one platform or there's going to be multiple platforms, how widely it is available. So the plan we put together is just anticipating, prioritizing what comes first. So that could change based on whatever comes out and whatever is available in the next few months, but none of us know that at this point in time. Dr. Levine. Just very briefly, it's impossible to answer the question specifically without knowing the effectiveness of the vaccine. How effective it will be at actually preventing the illness we wanted to prevent. But still, we think about herd immunity, of course, of having at least 60 or 70% of the population minimum with antibodies to this virus that we're dealing with. And that's why I continue to talk about us leading a parallel course, the vaccine going on as it will, but during that same time, all of the things that we tell people every day about the mass and this distancing in the crowds, et cetera. On a separate note as well, Politico is reporting that Senator Sanders potentially, if Vice President Biden has elected Senator Sanders would be interested in serving as the labor secretary. The Vermont Constitution says that you would be able or whoever wins I suppose in November would appoint a replacement temporarily until a special election could be had. I'm wondering if you've had any, put any thought into this and maybe who you've elected or who you've had. No, I think there's a lot of this there, Calvin. First of all, I would have to get elected on November 3rd. The former vice president would have to be elected. I would suppose, I guess that the current president if he was reelected might consider Senator Sanders for labor secretary, but I doubt it. And then, you know, Senator Sanders himself would have to have interests. So there's a lot of ifs there. I've answered this question before. I've historically, whenever there's been an opening with the legislative branch appointed a person in the position from that party. And in this case it's complicated with Senator Sanders. He has run as an independent. He has been nominated. He ran as a Democrat for president, but he's turned down the nomination in some of his roles or his races for the Senate and the House. So I would choose someone if we're playing the WhatF game. I would choose someone that is independent that isn't seeking the office. Because again, as you noted, this is a temporary appointment. Up to six months, it could be far less depending on when the election is held. And that's determined, I believe, by the governor as well. So again, a lot of what ifs, but I would want a fair process, fair for everyone. Someone who could represent Vermont in much the same way and could hit the ground running as well, because we only have three members of Congress here in the state, two senators and one House member. And it's vital that we have someone representing Vermont the way they have. So again, I don't take it lightly, but at the same time, there's just a lot to get through before that even comes to be. This question kind of be for you, Governor or Dr. Levine. Who's paying for the vaccine distribution when it comes out to have, is the money from the government? Will the state have to pick up the bill? Are you hoping CARES Act money would help cover these costs? I mean, how are we paying for this? Yeah, I believe that'll be new money. I'll let Secretary Smith answer that question. As Dr. Levine had talked about, there's two paths. Long-term care facilities, that's a federal program. The vaccine is federally supplied, so we're not going to have a cost there. And then with that money, come out of CARES Act money, possibly CARES Act money or just the government. Come out of the government's budget. And another question I'd like to follow up on for Dr. Levine and their Governor Scott is with these recent outbreaks in certain clusters, are you going to reevaluate possibly limiting gathering sizes at all? I think one that comes to mind is the Lemuel County case that was a wedding. Do you want to limit gathering sizes and get into colder months to prevent these outbreaks? Yeah, again, we've been very careful about how we open things back up. And I'm comfortable with what we've done thus far. While these outbreaks are concerning, they aren't to the magnitude other states are facing. As I looked again, I think I used this the other day, but I looked again for yesterday, while we had 28 last night, Wyoming with a population much less than ours or 50 to 50,000 less than we have, had 10 times that number, almost 300. So again, this is about mitigating and managing. And whatever we do in the future, we'll pay attention. We watch these numbers every single day. And what we'll do is maybe alter in a strategic way, surgically, and maybe enforcing some of the guidelines that we've already have in place. Because I believe if we follow the guidelines, that's the safest approach. I think when we let our guard down, we become complacent. We don't mask up. We travel from different areas or go to different areas that we shouldn't be traveling to. We gather in clusters of people that are unsafe. That's when things happen. So if we adhere to the guidelines, I believe we'll be fine. But again, we watch this each and every day. Anything you wanna add to that? Okay, thanks. Steve? Governor, now as the map closes in on us, obviously Clinton County has now gone red on the latest travel map. I'm just curious what your reaction is to this and how uncomfortable should Vermonters be now as far as travel back and forth? And really when you talk Clinton County and some of the counties on the Connecticut River side, how enforceable is it for folks to go over there recreationally and just say the heck with it? Well, again, this is in our hands, literally in our hands. We have control over this. So I would advocate that Vermonters don't become complacent, don't take this lightly. And if you're traveling to another state, make sure it's not to a red area. And if you do travel to the red area, you got a quarantine when you come back. It's as simple as that. And whether it's on our border or 300 miles away, it's the same thing. The virus doesn't know the difference. So again, we have to be vigilant. We have to be smart about this. We have to use common sense because again, it may be familiar to us, maybe just across the border, but that doesn't mean that it's not dangerous to us. So just use your head and be smart about this. Are you concerned that we don't really color code Vermont that much, that at some point we may have to do that with counties in Vermont over the winter here? Well, again, we'll watch that on a daily basis. We are concerned, obviously, of people coming into the state. We still have a low positivity rate in the number of tests we've done over the last week. The percentage of positives is still low. So we're, you know, we put ourselves in a pretty good position, but we have to pay attention. And we'll make changes as needed, but not anticipating any huge changes. And certainly not the changes and put into place guidelines as we did initially. We've learned a lot from this and we can be much more surgical and more exact with what we do. But I would, again, reinforce, underscore, follow the guidelines. It's pretty simple. Thanks. Okay, we're gonna move to the vote now. Peter Herschfeld, DPR. Not sure if this is best addressed to Secretary of the French or Commissioner of the Union, but on Tuesday you reported 13 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in 12 schools with eight cases after investigation. What are those numbers today? Peter, we're working on an answer for you one second. Have you got a secondary question, Peter, while they're trying to get that information? I do, I do. And the first one is for Commissioner of the Union. You said you're preparing for vaccines and arriving in Vermont as soon as the end of this year. And I'm wondering what you've seen out there that has convinced you that we could see a vaccine in such short order. To be clear, I don't have a crystal ball that you should rely on super much on this regard, but I am relying on what I'm hearing from some of the scientific trials and people involved with them, as well as even Dr. Fauci, who ventured to say perhaps one might be available by the end of the year. So again, don't take that and be totally enthused about it because I would suspect if that is true, you know Vermont will probably see hundreds of doses of the vaccine, not thousands. The thing I'm enthusiastic about is that if some of these early, we'll use the word promising, vaccine candidates do come to fruition, the investment that this federal government has made with its warp speed operation is mainly on having those companies enter into production before approval has occurred. So if a vaccine makes it to the finish line, there'll be ample amount to start distributing to states even though any individual state may not get a super large amount of it. That obviously is a double-edged sword because there may be vaccine candidates that don't make it yet they've got hundreds of thousands of doses already invested in and that's gonna go to naught. With regard to the first question, I can't give you an exact number right now, though I can tell you that we're not adding in large numbers of students at any given time. We're talking about a student here, a student or two there but I did wanna mention that starting next week because of the issues we had earlier this week, we are going to be posting the school data on Tuesdays and that will allow all the information from the end of the previous week through the weekend to have been properly assessed and analyzed and posted by the Tuesday press conference. So that should at least clarify things for that part of the week. Thank you. Pierre, the time's our guess. Yes, this is Leslie for Dr. Levine as well. When the state told IceRing to freeze their schedule for two weeks last week, it was mentioned that the outbreak in central Vermont might have been connected to Hampshire's outbreak. Has that been confirmed? Do we know what the origin of that outbreak is? In the beginning of your question you said, when we told who to freeze. Does IceRing to freeze their schedules? Oh, the IceRing. So we don't have 100% confidence about the origin. We do certainly feel that there were congregate activities that may have occurred. There may have been an element of travel that occurred, but unfortunately it's very hard to pin down if that's actually where things began because cases developed kind of in concert with one another. So I don't wanna give you the certainty that you may be looking for because I can't, but we again, as we analyze this, feel that travel may have played a role and that activities in a group setting may have played a role as well. And also potentially one other element being teammates carpooling together. Part of the time that we were expecting to see some cases come up of the school back in session and other things going on. Are we on track for what was expected? Are things going better or worse? I think things have gone extraordinarily well, to be honest. We've had, even when we've had cases, the schools have by and large been able to operate completely and even sometimes the same classes that have been involved have been able to operate completely. And when Commissioner Pchak shows his data on Tuesdays and compares us to states that are doing very well, like Maine and New Hampshire, we compare even more favorably than them. So again, knowing that we, as you said, predicted we would have cases and predicted that there wouldn't be a totally seamless operation where nothing happened at all, I think this has been quite, quite good. And I think it's also quite good on the college front, even though I mentioned another outbreak today. Fortunately, that outbreak has been diagnosed, if you will, by surveillance testing of that population. And though we don't know a lot more yet because obviously the investigation is just unfolding, that's a college that for the next day has announced to its community that things are going to be remote, but while we gather information, they'll see how next week looks. But again, the colleges have done very well too. So I think again, we were fortunate to open schools and open colleges at a time where we had sufficient suppression of the virus to make those activities be more successful. And we hope to see more of the same. As well, Eric, I might want to also look at another indicator, and that's the number of hospitalizations. We received a report this morning. Again, as of yesterday, there was zero cases confirmed in the hospital at this time, nobody on ventilators either. Our death, number of deaths is one of the lowest in the nation. If I believe we're tied right now, per capita for the lowest number of deaths in the nation, and we haven't had a death since early August. So we have a lot of good news still, and those are the indicators we're looking at as well as the number of cases. So we shouldn't be moved off track just because of the elevated number of cases which we expected, and we've been talking about over the last month, month and a half as we open up the economy, as we see more people coming into the state as the school's open, that we should expect more cases. Lisa Raffke, EAP. Hi, thank you. With this outbreak, Lincoln is wedding in Cambridge, was the state reconsidered rules about larger indoor gatherings, considering that the apparently the facilities followed appropriate precautions, which also distancing, feeding, and during the ceremony? Well, again, Lisa, we'll continue to monitor this as we move forward. At this point in time, we're comfortable with what we put into place. I don't expect us to change that in the near future, but again, we'll watch the number of outbreaks, we'll see what happens, and then we'll ask those who participate in these events if you've traveled from another state that is not in a green county, you have to quarantine. Wear your masks, even at these events, keep apart as much as possible. If you're sick, don't go to the event. I mean, there's all kinds of self responsibility that each and every person must take when they participate. So again, we'll be strategic, surgical, if we make any changes at all and trying to make sure that people adhere to the guidelines we have in place at this point in time. Okay, and I also want to add, have you voted yet, Governor? I have not. I still, I'm not sure whether I'll be voting in person on November 3rd or turned it into my town clerk, but I just haven't voted at this point. Okay, and can you tell us if you plan to vote for President? I will let you know after I vote. I haven't determined that yet. I know who, again, I want to, again, reinforce the fact that I am not voting for President Trump. Who I'm going to vote for, who I'm going to write in, or vote for has yet to be determined. Okay, thank you. Mike Donahue. Just to follow up on that, did you watch the debate last night and any thoughts as a political fund that you are? I had my own, a lot of other things going on last night. I didn't get home until after the debate started. So between fixing my own dinner and then sitting down to watch the rest of the debate, I didn't see it all. But I was appreciative that it seemed to be much better than the first one, although that was a fairly low bar. But nothing in the debate changed my perspective of my not going to vote for President Trump. I think that you're free-affirmed why I'm not. But at the same time, I learned a little, but not a lot from the debate. And can we get an update on the Isabelle Stewart case? Maybe you could remind me what that is. That's the case that caused the gag order for the state police. I mean, Attorney General Donovan last night at his office had provided a ruling that acts to report traffic thickets are public. And we had another serious car crash and from on highways with a teenage driver again crossing the center line, injuring an innocent driver. In the Stewart case, obviously, an elderly couple put his retired talent clerk on a truck got killed. When is the state getting back to being transparent? Yeah, I hadn't heard that official ruling from the Attorney General that was released apparently last night. Maybe Commissioner Sherling has more information on that. Certainly, Governor, we haven't received a ruling per se from the Attorney General's office as I indicated my class tonight when we chatted. Additionally, as I indicated, there's no, has never been a dispute that the accident reports held by the Department of Motor Vehicles are a public record. As you know, we are assessing which records that are held by law enforcement agencies which are subject to a different set of laws are public and when. So that assessment remains ongoing and we hope to have an answer shortly. Traffic tickets are in fact part of the judicial system and those are and would be public. Yes, that is likely correct, but traffic tickets, as you know, are part of a civil judicial system, not a criminal judicial system. Correct, because there is a judicial, they are a public record, but we were denied exactly access to two more tickets. Right, again, this is probably a better conversation for offline as we had yesterday evening, but the issue is which copy of these various documents is public and when. As I've indicated, the records held by law enforcement agencies are subject to juvenile law under Title 33 and they have a different level of complexity in that analysis, so we're still going through that. How soon have you had six weeks? As soon as we can get it done, six weeks coupled with the end of a very busy legislative session and a continuing pesty pandemic that occupies 70 or 80% of our time. Not your legal position. Okay, Mike, we're gonna move on. Greg, the county courier. Good morning, governor. I guess sort of picking up where Mike left off by transparency. Yesterday, he met the St. Michael College, self-disclosed, a half dozen students who tested positive. This was done by the college itself and not the health department. Also yesterday, the pre-preps uncovered seven cases at a wedding in Cambridge. Your staff talked about pandemic fatigue, but then you don't immediately release information when there is an outbreak. Is it now up to the Vermont businesses to self-report or have newspapers and reporters uncover these outbreaks to alert the moderates? And when should the moderates really be first alerted to some of these outbreaks and why isn't the state providing that information? Why is it having to come from other sources? Let me, I'm just trying to get the flavor of your question here. So the cases that were brought to light as St. Mike's less than 24 hours ago, you're condemning us for not releasing that data now? Well, it's my understanding that at St. Michael College and especially the wedding in Cambridge that the health department knew about it, maybe as long as 10 days ago and didn't let the moderates know. I'm also under the understanding that there was at least one teacher at that wedding that went on to have contact with possibly several hundred students and wasn't aware of the outbreak initially when the health department was aware of it. And by the time he or she was aware of it and contacted the health department, the general response from the health department was, well, you're pretty close to the end of the 14 day period. So there's no sense in testing now. So I'm wondering why the health department isn't releasing some of these outbreaks earlier with the general public. Well, first of all, I'm not sure that they know that there are outbreaks in the beginning on your timeframe. It takes a while to contact trace and determine that whether it is truly an outbreak or a cluster or whatever it is. So it takes a little time to track these downs as was the case with the hockey facility or the skating facility. There are 200 to 300 contacts that have been made during that point in time. It's not instantaneous. It takes a little time to get through those, to investigate and make sure we know what we're talking about. We don't want to provide for an opportunity for people to be alarmed in some respects. And I understand the fact that people wanna know so that they can prepare themselves. But at the same time, we have a responsibility to go through it in a methodical way to not scare people either. Dr. Levine, maybe you could add a little bit to the contact tracing. Yeah, I'd just like to pick up on what the governor's saying. There's no concerted effort to be non-transparent here at all. You should understand the number of outbreaks and situations that are being dealt with at any one time. Frankly, many of which are very self-limited and don't require us to inform the public. There are things that absolutely the public needs to know about right at the moment because there may have been an exposure to a whole bunch of people and we can't find them any other way but putting out a press release and making sure that everyone is aware. Now with the St. Michael's experience, the results came in yesterday. There's been discussion with the administration at St. Michael's and St. Michael's actually put out its own communication to the greater university community, which we as a health department would think is more than adequate for the illumination of that to everyone around. We, along with the governor's team this morning, just did an entire timeline of the events that occurred with the Central Vermont Memorial Civic Center outbreak. And you would be quite impressed to see that things do not come to light right away. People are exposed on a certain date. They become symptomatic on another date. They decide to test on another date. The test result comes back on yet a further date. And then all of a sudden there's a flurry of activity because it may be the first time anyone is aware that actually anything was going on there. With the wedding you're talking about again, no concerted effort to hide anything, but at the same time no threat to the public based on the interviewing in the concert and the contact tracing that occurs at such an event. So again, we're not trying to hide anything from anyone, but at the same time, with multiple events going on, they might be of some interest to people, but they're not of paramount concern to every individual in terms of their own risk assessment, wondering if they haven't learned something about something and they are at more risk than others. I guess that answers a little bit of that, there were still six or seven cases at that wedding and to have 75 plus people there possibly. And some of those, maybe even many of those who work with the general public get at any given time. Last week we weren't told about a ER doctor and all this until myself remember the news media brought it up in this press conference. So it just seems like we're hearing a lot more from people and businesses about outbreaks in their communities than we are from the health department. Yeah, understood, but again, even with the ER doctor, an assessment made at the time that case turns out to be a positive test, understanding of how they were were not linked with other situations and understanding when they were and were not at work and who was at risk. Believe me, the employer is very concerned about those things as is the health department. So I would submit that it's not necessary every time an isolated case arises in a community for that to be on the front page news. The other thing at the wedding again, I'll impress upon you that there's a tremendous amount of contact tracing that occurs at an event like that when that many people are there so that we can get a clear idea of how might people who were in attendance are at risk and then how they may have put others to risk in our greater communities. So again, I'm looking for letting the professionals do their work and trust in that work because literally if we were in a state that was far more populated, there would be 10 times of many situations we were doing at every one time and people would be bouncing off of walls, learning about one thing or another and wondering what was going on at a time when they actually weren't at any risk at all. I understood and I mean, I think, you know, if a general member of the public was maybe going through one of those areas, they would think differently about maybe being aware of it based on news coverage, but last follow-up and I don't want to take too much time, is there anything in writing that kind of indicates when the state is gonna make something public? You know, does it take 10 cases and one cluster? Does it take, obviously it doesn't take seven because the wedding wasn't alerted to the public. So it's really individualized and it's situational as opposed to numbers. And as you've seen, even when we are trying to do our best to abide by protecting confidentiality, we have been releasing numbers in schools that are literally one case or two cases. So we're quite transparent in the situations where the greater community would want us to be. Okay, thank you. Joseph, the Department of Chronicle. Dr. Levine, you may require to require a lot of public outreach in the sense that is there a problem with people with the vaccine of this sort taking one dose and thinking that's sufficient and having that create problems down the line. Yeah, thanks. So you've accurately characterized it. Almost every one of the vaccine candidates save one or two is actually going to be a two dose vaccine. And then on top of that, we have other considerations like the temperature they need to be stored at. Is normal refrigeration fine? Is ultra cold fine and necessary? And they all vary by that too. But to get directly to your question about the concern about not getting the second dose, that is why there's such an importance to our communication about the vaccines, both upfront and at the time people get their first dose. But it's also important that we have real high caliber information systems in place and high caliber quality improvement standards in place or quality, I should call it quality standards in place because of the fact that you want to make sure that if the person has not come for their second dose, you know about that, not just that it happened and well, that's their tough luck, but actually you know about that and have a way of communicating with them and have a way of facilitating their getting that next dose. So all of that is front and center in terms of our approach to how to make sure this goes smoothly and comprehensively. What are the concerns if someone gets one dose and not a second dose? The major concern is they just won't get the benefit that the vaccine could provide. We have lots of vaccines where one dose is sufficient to get to a certain amount of immunity, but not enough that you would consider yourself fully protected and the certainty of getting full protection from the vaccine comes from getting that second dose. I would also add that we don't know yet and won't know for some time if some of these vaccines will require a booster dose like you do with a tetanus shot, you know. Now, if you're an adult, you're probably getting a booster dose every 10 years or so. Well, where the COVID vaccine would require you to have one a couple years later, five years later, 10 years later, or what? Obviously those questions can't be answered at this point in time, but they are further considerations. In which case that would just get added onto the list of the vaccines that you have to get during your lifetime and you'd know the interval and your healthcare provider would be able to send you reminders when the time was up. At this point, I mean, and there's a lot more known about the coronavirus that there was originally, is there a concern that the virus is going to change sufficiently that it will require in the future? Yeah, so, you know, I think the concept you're thinking of is mutation and things that we encounter on an annual basis with the flu vaccine requiring us to be very careful with the formulation of that vaccine and what flu strains it will cover. The coronavirus family doesn't seem to operate that same way. So the hope is that the vaccine will be more durable if you will and won't have to be reformulated in different ways because the virus has been reformulating itself in different ways. But again, as I said before, this is a novel virus and a novel vaccine. So we will still have a lot of learning to do once we have a vaccine and see how it performs and watch the virus over the next several years. Thank you very much. Kat, WCAX. Hi, I'm Dr. Levine. Are you tracking any COVID-19 clusters in Waterbury? I can double check but I'm not aware of any at this point in time. I still do want to learn more about the other 14 cases from last night though and I might be able to answer that more fully by the end of the day but right now I'm not aware of a specific cluster. And what does the new CDC guidance on closed contact mean for schools? Does it change whether a teacher or a student is a closed contact if they share the same classroom space? Yeah, so that's gonna be individualized as well like every contact tracing situation but there is a possibility that much like the correctional officer if the teacher was within a closer proximity to students intermittently as opposed to all at one time that this could change the guidance. I don't think it's gonna dramatically impact that at this point but at the same time this is the kind of thing that a study like this leads to and will lead to all around the country is people more closely reexamining how they actually assess that duration of contact. We are certainly looking back in time not back in time six months but over the last days to weeks just with that in mind knowing that this study has had some impact and it's changed policy at the federal level so we're keeping that certainly front and center in our minds but I don't have an example for you of a place where that would actually have had an impact at this point in time. Thank you. April Barton, the Burlington Free Press. Lizzie. I'm sorry April, we only caught one word of that. Yeah, oh sorry, thank you. We have heard of a positive COVID-19 case at the Bravo Burrow Retreat and Mental Health and Addiction Care Center. We're wondering if you can confirm that and the details of the center's response. I think everyone wants to answer that, but go ahead. Yeah, this has been a strange case I think is because there have been multiple negatives and a positive but there has been a positive at the Bravo Retreat that positive has been moved to a COVID facility for mental health, COVID facility. The testing has taken place within that facility of that particular floor. I believe the results have been negative so far with any other either patients in the Bravo Retreat or any staff people within the Bravo Retreat. I think testing took place yesterday. I think we got the results this morning. Okay, thank you very much. Tim McQuiston from On Business Magazine. Hi Governor, I was wondering if my old Harrington was on the line to look through whether he was around. I had a question about Zoltan Pride or Zoltan Floyd. Give it a try, I believe he is. Okay, hi Michael. The question is, I've written a few questions which means you must have got hundreds about the concerns from Zoltan Floyd. Zoltan Pride or one was about tax returns that weren't filed in time. Therefore they missed the deadlines and are still waiting for at least some of their benefits and in another couple of cases were Zoltan Pride or two. The peers were put in as regular UI and it seems to be that it should be PUI. I was wondering how it stands but I noticed the complicated bunch of cases involving the Zoltan Floyd or Zoltan Prideers. I was wondering what they can expect going forward and how are those cases being cleaned up and any other information you could have to help them along. Commissioner Harrington, you might have to press star six on here. Okay, can everybody hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. So this is probably part of a much longer or complex conversation but overall we have, even if someone missed the deadline to upload their tax documentation, originally the federal guidance was 21 days to upload your tax documentation. We have adjusted benefit payments to some extent. I'll go back and confirm whether we continue to do that but we were allowing a great period to upload your tax documents to be able to have your PUA weekly benefit amount adjusted upwards. So if someone is still experiencing that, I'll certainly take that back to the team but we were allowing a great period for that. With regards to the other piece, the challenge of without knowing the specific case and looking into a specific case, I do know what has been a challenge and both for our team but also for individuals who are filing is that the federal guidance is clear that if a person is eligible for even $1 of traditional unemployment insurance benefits, they cannot be eligible for pandemic unemployment assistance. They must be paid out of traditional UI even if their primary source of income is through their self-employed business. So what has occurred and does create a challenge is that someone may have a part-time job in which that employer does pay contributions on their employment or they may have had a job in the past before they became an independent contractor or self-employed individual and because of that other employment, they are eligible under traditional UI. And so there have been cases where individuals have asked to be placed in PUA because it's more advantageous in terms of the benefits they are eligible for. However, the department does not have that discretion. The federal guidance is clear that if you are eligible under UI for any amount, you cannot receive pandemic unemployment assistance. And so that does create a challenge both for the department but also obviously for the individual as well. And I know of a couple of cases anyway in which people were paid and so the department is trying to claw back some of the morale of the payment. So what can you tell those people such as? So yeah. What ends up happening is as someone comes through the door, they are placed in a program based on the information they provide at the time or the information we have on hand. So they may have been placed in PUA because they indicated that they were an independent contractor or sole proprietor. However, then we as we learn more about the claim, we are able to identify that maybe they have prior employment somewhere else and need to be moved into a different program. And that has gone both ways. So again, usually what ends up happening is as more information is gained about a claim, again, if you remember early on, we tried to automate this process as much as possible so that there weren't backlogs at the front end of the process. However, what ends up happening is if someone experiences an issue or contact with the department for some other reason and we get turned on to either a discrepancy or additional information as part of that process, our claim takers and specialists have an obligation then to make sure that person gets moved into the right program, the appropriate program for them which will be, we have already begun an audit of this process both internally but we also know that there is heavy oversight from the Office of Inspector General through the US Department of Labor to ensure that people are being paid out of the correct program and are meeting the requirements. So again, this is all part of that quality assurance and quality control process. Can you tell me how many people right now are at DUI and PUA? I can pull that number, if you give me just a second. I think it's under 20,000 at this point, total. And the last number I have for it's the week ending October 17th, there are actually less, it looks about, again, and these are unverified numbers. We will report those on a weekly basis but just as of 10, 17, we had 13,438 people on traditional UI and 8,749 people on PUA. All right, great, thank you very much. Thank you. The next slide, Paige. Governor, both of my questions concerned were monsters being home in record numbers as the weather gets colder. You mentioned opening up the economy and more travel as reasons for the increase in COVID positive cases. Is there any data or informed opinion to show how much of this could be due to people spending more time inside? Well, I think it's obvious, I think Dr. Levine has talked about this a lot, about the Kelso that it's much safer to be outside than inside. We expect some of the uptick in the number of cases to be as a result of being inside in a closed atmosphere. The fresh air is good. Getting air circulating is a positive. And when we get inside, particularly when we gather in larger groups, it becomes more problematic without the proper ventilation. So yeah, I would say that it's fairly conclusive that that could be the case. Okay, thank you. An estimated 1,600 homeowners have red tags on their fuel tanks prohibiting fuel delivery for the 2017 law for as yet uninspected homes with no red tags, only eating oil tanks may be filled. Your administration considering relaxing any of these no delivery regulations? Yeah, we're considering, we're looking at that issue as we speak. We're considering finding a way to for them to be in compliance with some relief. We're looking at coronavirus money that could be available for home ownership, utilities and so forth. And maybe considering that this is part of that package. So yes, it's on our minds, obviously. We wanna help these folks out in any way we can. Without creating a problem, an environmental problem either, because some of these tanks, as you probably seen, I'm sure you've gone out to take a look. Some of these tanks shouldn't be filled because they have rusted legs and so forth and they will collapse and then we'll have a fuel spill. So good intentions, but we wanna help those who are experiencing this. I understand the problem is financial, but it's also that it's just started up workers to get this work done by December. Is there a problem? Well, there are other options and they've been laid out by the Department of Environmental Conservation in trying to help these, there's temporary type tanks and so forth. So yes, we're anticipating trying to help in any way we can where you don't want anybody to be impacted in a negative way from this regulation, but we have an obligation again to follow the law. Okay, thank you. Liz Streppa, NBC Five. Wasn't that me, Ethan? Oh, I'm sorry, is this to work? Yes, yes. Thanks, Governor, just a quick one on the prospective standards replacement. I get the two points in the defendant, but just to be clear, one who caucuses with the Democrats at standards does, right? Yeah, I mean, you know, I want this to be fair, something that I've done again consistently as during my two terms as governor, when there's a opening, I don't have to, but I want to make sure that we do things in a traditional way, and that's to appoint someone from the same party. And also, you know, has the same type of approach as well. So in this case, again, Senator Sanders is caucused with the Democrats. I would anticipate I would look for the same type of, from a more left leaning type of independent that would obviously caucus with the Democrats. All right, thank you. And not to get wonky, but I just wanted, we've gotten the same questions from viewers, the Tim Ray's a minute ago, about the true unemployment rate. And you said on Tuesday that you said 25 or 6,000 for monitors are out of work, and the Labor Department says it's 13,000 or so, and that's the monthly unemployment rate is 4.2, but is that discrepancy? What is the true unemployment rate now? Yeah, well, again, the two numbers that Mike had given were separate, the PUA and the traditional unemployment. So together, it's somewhere between, I don't know if it's around 25,000, I didn't do the math, but so that's been dropping over time. So again, what we need to look at is those who have dropped off the unemployment goal ever after the unemployment role and why they were released from that and whether they're employed or not. You know, the number has always been, from my perspective, how many people employed. So that's what we should be looking at as well. So we don't agree with the methodology that the federal government is using to determine the unemployment rate. We believe that the unemployment rate is higher than that. Commissioner Harrington, anything you can add to that? Do you have a number? I would agree with you, Governor. If we simply just took the numbers at base value again, these are a snapshot in time, but our unemployment rate is likely somewhere between six and eight percent, even though we're reporting 4.2 percent. So that certainly creates a discrepancy and it's not that the data being reported through the Household Survey is incorrect. I think we just disagree fundamentally with the methodology being used to determine the rate, which then determines the benefits for individuals. Great, thank you very much for clarifying. Aaron Poteco, Peachy Digger. Dr. Rubin, you mentioned that the CDC study might have implications for definition of post-time contracts. And Congress said, what about schools, especially state-of-the-art schools? And STD biologists cited and watched in post-bend schools for a specific one-seat setting where this kind of redefinition of post-contact might be particularly worrying or might make them have to reconsider how they plan for reopening. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I gave a version of this answer earlier today, I think. I do think schools will be a renewed focus across the country in terms of contact tracing because teachers can have that kind of intermittent contact with students at perhaps closer distances than we would otherwise guide them to do, even if they're short-duration, they may add up over the course of the day. So we have to look at that very carefully, but at the same time, there are plenty of situations where teachers are actually much more at the head of a class, distanced from their entire class, sometimes even with other types of barriers in place, et cetera, so we don't wanna over-generalize, we just wanna make sure that in every individual situation, we can account for perhaps cumulative time at short distances. So it is a very valid point to make and I think it will influence contact tracing nationwide. Well, in Vermont, are you doing a specific follow-up to the story like reviewing your reopening items for schools or for other settings, like open hours and trying to see if you need to issue any recommendations or if they're going to change how, what guidance to get the contact tracers or what is happening as a result of the study? Yeah, so yesterday, our entire epi-team actually met specifically with this topic as their whole agenda to really operationalize how it will impact their contact tracing efforts from this day forward and frankly, from the last week or two back as well. But in terms of reopening and future stuff, I don't think this will have an impact on any of that because the guidance we give for how one exists and operates in any setting, school, workplace, what have you really isn't gonna be changed because of this study, it's much more a manifestation of asking the right questions in the contact tracing and protecting those who we're talking with. Ultimately, contact tracing is an activity that is there to protect and promote the health of the people we're talking with as presumed contacts so that they can do the right things in their own health. They can quarantine themselves and protect others around them and their greater community. So we take the work very seriously and that's where it will have its major impact. Okay, thank you very much. Lisa Loomis, the Valley Reporter. Doctor, we're being referenced mobility data early so it sounds like the state does have access to it. I'm wondering if that local mobility data could be included in commissioner's P-Check's weekly report. I think we talked about that before and I think he is. It was included Tuesdays. Yeah, it was included Tuesdays and I think he's including that every week now, Lisa. I don't believe it was included Tuesday but we saw it was a graph showing 2020 tourism versus 2019 tourism but that's actually very specific mobility data why it was not included. I'll let commissioner P-Check answer that but I also referenced I think on Tuesday that there is a public facing document from the agency of transportation that does it in different way but that's available as well. This shows consistently lower number of people coming in and out of the state. Commissioner P-Check. Thanks, Lisa. So the mobility data that we presented on Tuesday included that year over year analysis that we mentioned and also a percent change from 2019 to 2020. So when Dr. Levine was mentioning earlier that there were more visitations into Vermont, he meant that the percent that we were down compared to 19 was smaller in the fall than it had been at any other point in the pandemic. I think we were down like 40% over the summer and certain weekends through the fall that got up to only down being about 15 or 20%. So it seems as if we had more visitors back to a more normal state during the fall fully of season than we had previously. It was possible to see to have that slide that you had presented earlier this spring that shows the extent to which Vermont was staying home compared to where there's another state is that still available, is that data available? Yes, for sure. So the internal mobility you're talking about within Vermont? Yeah, yes, we can. We're trying to understand. Yeah, for sure. We can certainly include that, we have that information and it's in preprint print but there was a study just recently that looked at where people congregated in terms of what they considered risky locations, basically areas that are small, dense and have the possibility of transmission. And during the summer and spring, Vermont had the least, were least likely to go to those kind of places compared to the rest of the Northeast. So just another reinforcing metric in terms of Vermont's compliance. Thank you. And Governor, you mentioned earlier that there may be a view that you would consider an increased enforcement of possibility of cold weather and more COVID cases approaching. Can you say more about what increased enforcement would look like? No, I mean, we haven't talked about it in great detail but we put forth guidelines that we expect people to follow, expect establishments to follow. My feeling is based on what I'm seeing in some respects due to the contact tracing that some people are becoming complacent. They're not doing the things they're supposed to do. And so we would just want to, instead of rolling back some of the guidelines which I don't think is necessary at this point in time and not looking to close down businesses again, just looking for people to comply with what we've laid out and what was working beforehand. So again, we haven't, we haven't contemplated what that would look like but from my standpoint, just making sure people continue to do what we've done over the last seven months and we'll have to continue to do over the next few months is going to be key to our success here. And certainly don't want to roll back anything that we put into place thus far. Thank you. Alex, Local 22, Local 44. Hi, this question is also, Dr. Levine, you mentioned before that the numbers that we're seeing right now, the COVID cases is expected, but at what point is this trying to become seriously concerning for you? So I would again draw our attention to the Tuesday reports that we have every week that have the dashboard metrics that we're following in terms of the numbers of new cases, the incidence of the incidence rate of new cases, the syndromic surveillance data, the hospital data and the percent positivity of test data. When those approach what Commissioner Pichac calls our guardrails, that becomes much more concerning. So again, we're looking on a very large stage and over viewing a whole host of indicators. Those aren't even all of them. So it wouldn't just be the raw numbers per night and we would draw the line in the sand at some point. It would be this whole aggregate of data. Do you have a prediction as to if we will see a trend, a continuing trend of seeing the numbers go off or... I do not have a prediction. I would just say that a single day's data does not make a trend, but our recent week's data makes a trend for a lower number than the number 28, but a higher number than we've had previously. That part was fully anticipated and fully expected. So let's just hope that the last evening's experience is not truly a trend. We also have to say that outbreaks appear, they peak and they come down much more slowly and will be a little more comfortable knowing as the largest outbreak that's going on with the central Vermont situation begins to phase out, if you will, because that will change the way the numbers look as well. And lastly, I just have one last question for you. What kind of criteria is in place to possibly warrant a second lockdown, making you consider something like that, even though right now we're still seeing small factors? Again, it's all of the dashboard data. It's completely relying on all of those metrics. And they're most easily understandable in looking at the slope of the curve. So you may recall when we started this in March, we talked about the flattening of the curve, but we had an essential very peaked, highly sloped curve that we wanted to avoid at all costs. And we had a much more gently sloping curve that we knew we couldn't avoid that because the virus is here and it affects us and we're not immune to it, but at the same time that we could coexist with, if you will, like we are now. So that slope of that curve will become evident as rapidly as some of our dashboard metrics begin to reveal concerning numbers. Thank you. Andrew Powell, WCX. My question is also for Dr. Levine about PCV contamination. So the Vermont Health Department has clearly stated that PCVs are dangerous. And that's the case. Why isn't the state urgently checking contamination in other schools and buildings besides rolling from high school that were built between the 50s and 70s? Yeah, so don't think this isn't on our radar and on our agenda by any means. We have a school that has had a problem and we've dealt with it expeditiously. We do have a pilot study that was done six to seven years ago that was very small, but the schools that were involved did not actually reveal data that would make us take the same stance that we've taken with the Burlington High School. There needs to be a grander plan, if you will, but I would say that it does not need to occur with urgency, but it needs to occur in a fairly decent, shorter timeframe. So we across the sectors in government have already been discussing this. Obviously, this is a very big project, if you will, and requires a lot of thoughtfulness, would require some funding and discussions with the legislature as well. So it did not really push us to jump to all of a sudden checking every other school in the state as quickly as you were indicated, but it is something that we are not ignoring by any means. And as we battle the pandemic, we're also still able to chew gum and walk at the same time and look at some of these other public health issues, if you will. I don't want the parents in the state to think that every school is at equal risk. There does seem to be something very special that has gone on in Burlington when talking to scientific authorities across the country and in the EPA. They don't always experience this in this fashion and they certainly don't think that there are abundant schools that they've missed out there and that they certainly support that we've done the right thing, but at the same time, it's really hard to understand it on a larger scale in terms of other states and how much testing they've done and how often they've had to take these kinds of actions. That was kind of a good follow-up with whether to see Burlington High School situation as unique. Yeah, fairly unique, I would say. Not me, myself, but those who are in environmental health and the Environmental Protection Agency. Thank you. Okay, we've got five more people to get through here in the last 10 minutes. Salih MacArthur. Can you hear me? We can. Can you guys hear me? We can. Okay, thank you. Good afternoon. I'm asking this on behalf of some of our viewers. A Vermont business is struggling to stay open. This is the one part of one of the last industries allowed to open and some of the strictest health and safety guidelines. One of the business owners argues the guidelines are a one-size-fits-all approach that doesn't make sense. One person for 200 square feet and one customer for stylus. Because, you know, the industry, they say that doesn't allow for enough revenue to survive and leave employees sitting there operating for a color process. For example, instead of taking another customer. They argue even a slight adjustment in the guidelines to keep them afloat. So my question has a few parts. Have you traced any COVID cases that belong in Vermont? Do you have inspectors who can go out to Vermont businesses who are appealing state guidelines to see what they have in place and determine if exceptions could be made? Because as you said earlier, state leaders could be more surgical than exact with what they do. And this is the final money-making season of 2020, the holiday, where a salon can generate enough revenue to survive the first quarter of 2021. So how long do they have to wait for the state to make a concrete move and what can you commit to doing? I can repeat any as needed. Thank you. Yeah, I think I can sum a lot of that up and I'll ask Dr. Levine to add to it. But, you know, from our standpoint, we recognize that there are a number of businesses who are impacted. One size doesn't fit all. This isn't perfect. This is something that's been catastrophic to a number of businesses, particularly in the hospitality sector and restaurants and lodging and so forth, but also to the salons. We have been taking a look at how we can surgically make some changes in the guidelines to allow for different salons to make adjustments, but it hasn't been the highest priority at this point in time. Again, with the outbreaks we're seeing, with the spread that has been, and with close contact spread in particular in an enclosed environment, we just wanna make sure that we're not adding to the problem. And again, until there's a vaccine in place that's widely distributed and safe, we are going to have to mitigate this in a imperfect way. And we've done the best we can thus far, but we'll continue to look at ways for any business to surgically, strategically, trying to alleviate some of the pressures they may be feeling. But at the end of the day, we have to make sure that we're not adding to the problem that we're seeing today. Dr. Levine. I'm not aware of a specific case. We may need to research this a little further, but I'm certainly not aware of a glaring case that came to mind. So that means either we're too strict and we should be loosening up, or it means we are just as strict as we need to be, and that accounts for the success of not having any cases. So that's my part of the question. The only other person I'd add to the mix for the second part of your question would be Secretary Curley. Since we do have a large restart team that really examines these kinds of questions very closely, every time it involves opening up a sector and giving guidance to that sector. So I'll leave it to her if she's on the phone. Yeah, hi there. Hi, Mr. Secretary Curley. I really don't have a lot to add, and the governor and Mr. Irwin, both articulated very well the challenges that we face, but we do continue to revisit every sector often to make sure that if we can safely open up more broadly, we can do so. So we will continue to look at this sector. And a follow-up, if I may, to Dr. Levine, would it be something that you would be comfortable with? Because in terms of these operators saying it would be a small adjustment, so it wouldn't turn into a situation in which there would be large gatherings. It's different than a restaurant or another business like that. So just looking at it, it's just on the surface right now. Would it be something you'd be willing to look at, just adjusting it slightly? Just enough customers for they can stay open? Again, I'm not sure that we're going to decide this on the program today, but Dr. Levine and his team, they do take a look at every change we make. We do this together. It's not done in a vacuum. So when there is something brought to light, there's something that ACCD would like to change. The restart team wants to advocate for it's brought before Dr. Levine and his team for acceptance. So that will be the case with this situation. It has been the case with every single change we've made. So nothing will change with the structure and the process that we've been utilizing over the last six or seven months. Are we sure, any time frame that I'm... We meet, you know, well again, this isn't on a timeframe in some respects, but just so you know, the restart team meets multiple times a week. Dr. Levine's team with myself and others, we meet multiple times a week. So we take all of these up every week, every, you know, sometimes multiple times during the week, and sometimes it's put forward and it takes three or four weeks for us to get comfortable based on what we're seeing in the data and the science to implement. So it's not instantaneous. I wouldn't want to put it on a timeframe, but again, we take, we consider these all the time and something we might have considered and decided not to do three or four weeks ago will be re-forwarded. And then if the timing is right and we see other states doing something that hasn't added to the issue or the problem, then we might move forward with it. So there's nothing that I can, I can't tell you what timeframe is going to be on, but it's always always on the table and will be considered. Thank you. Governor, it's the Secretary for LA. Can I just take this opportunity to remind viewers that we have grant opportunities available for exactly this reason? And those grant opportunities, there's more information on the website at accd.vermah.gov. Certainly reach out to us because again, businesses have unmet need as a result of the COVID crisis. They may be eligible for these grants and it really can help them survive this difficult time. Thank you. Yeah, we do know how difficult it is for all of these businesses, businesses throughout Vermont. That's why we've been committed to putting as much money forward from the CARES Act as humanly possible. We haven't received all what we've asked for, but what we know that what we've done has helped them survive. But we're going to need more, we're going to need more help from Congress as well to come up with another package, stimulus package of some sort, so that we can help these businesses, like the salons and the lodging facilities and the restaurants survive over the next few months until there's a vaccine in place that is safe and distributed. Andrew McGregor, Palestinian record. Yeah, good afternoon, Governor. You said this week with neighboring counties turning yellow and red, the guidance indicates that people don't have to travel for an essential purpose. They should use common sense and not go. I know Graff and New Hampshire across the threshold is now at 458 cases. But the same travel map also shows Washington County in the 596 cases per million. If one were to consider their actions based solely on the data and from a public and even personal health perspective, should Vermonters consider avoiding non-essential travel to the Washington County or any other counties that cross the threshold? Yeah, I think Vermonters should be aware of what's happening around us now, obviously with all the reports and the outbreaks and so forth that we've seen here in the South Vermont, I think they should be careful. I think they should be wary again and just adhere to the guidelines we have in place. We can't shut down Vermont in some respects, but we can be more careful and more diligent and vigilant as we move forward. So that's why we keep advocating and again, those simple guidelines, if they're put into place, you should be fine. But we can only control things within our own borders and for the most part, Vermont within our own borders, we're safe and healthy and fine and have good numbers and we can be proud of what we've done, but we're not insulated by what's happening in other states and as we've seen with the travel map, there are more red areas cropping up every day. So again, we just want to get through this, get through this next wave and be safe and keep Vermonters safe. So all we can do is be diligent individually. Okay, and on topic for Dr. Levine, a lot of the Washington County cases are connected to the hotkey spread. You noted earlier it impacts two colleges, seven schools, seven workplaces and two hospitals at this point. Is there anything unique about this outbreak and what I'm assuming is a multi-community spread that's more significant than other outbreaks? And do you know how many towns or counties have been impacted by it? So I think what you've just said is what characterizes and has a little more unique than what we've had before. It's not within a single community. People who engaged in those sports weren't just based as their place of residence in one county, they're based in multiple counties across the state, enabling them to travel back to those counties and unwittingly be perhaps vectors for transmission. So I'm not gonna off the top of my head without consulting a map, tell you how many counties just yet because just the number of schools alone are in various counties and at least two for the schools, if not more. So it's again, we've been kind of referring to it as an outbreak that has tentacles in many areas and that's because of the place of origin of those who were congregating together to engage in these sports in one place in the state. So it's the kind of outbreak you don't wanna see. It's what Milanochet, Maine was all about where nobody came from Milanochet, Maine that was originally in that church and they all dispersed two places even further than the state of Maine. That's how this virus behaves and that's why we all have to have our guard up at all times. Jim Terrian. Thank you very much. Jim Terrian. Jim, you press star six on mute. Okay, we're gonna move on to Tom Kearney, B.T. Digger. If the CDC contracts or contact tracing studies expect to increase the number of people asked to test and quarantine in Vermont including in St. Louis, is that likely to occur first? Secondly, since Vermont's been a leader dealing with the virus since this contact tracing study was done in Vermont, why did the state health officials wait for the CDC before evaluating their own protocols? Is this Tom or Jim? Tom. Tom, okay, thank you, Tom. Well, for the first question, it's really unclear how much this will uncover or not uncover but we do believe it will increase the work of contact tracers throughout the country more and it will have a yield. I just don't know the magnitude of that yield and it will protect more people which is really the ultimate goal. Again, contact tracing is an activity that's done by professionals to make sure that everyone stays safe and staying safe may mean knowing your own status and what you need to do but also helps you protect others and keep them safe. So it will enhance that nationwide. With regard to our own data, I mean, you'll always want data to be verified in other settings, scrutinized by the scientific community and obviously published so that it can receive even further critical review. So sometimes it's premature to have an experience and change the world but because of that, you need to be very careful in that endeavor. We've learned that so often during this pandemic where many studies come out about a particular topic and then one further study comes out that all of a sudden people wanna pivot on even though it's not consistent with anything they came on previously. So you have to be very careful in that endeavor. And the CDC was after its critical review impressed enough that they felt it should change policy on a very large scale which certainly gives much more credence to our methodology and our thought process but it would have been premature, I think, to overreact before we had submitted the article for all of the scrutiny that I've just detailed for you. Thank you. Katie Jickling, Mitzi Digger. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Katie. A September Pew report found that 51% of Americans said they will definitely take a COVID vaccine. I wonder if you have estimates of the uptake in Vermont? You know, I think that's going to be very difficult to answer because there isn't a vaccine out yet. It hasn't been distributed, it hasn't been proven. I think people anecdotally, from my own perspective, if people see that it's effective and it's safe, they'll want it and they want to keep themselves safe. They want to keep this from spreading. They want to get back to normal. But at this point in time when we hear so much about or so little about what it's going to do and whether it is safe and whether it's effective, I don't think people want to commit to something they don't understand. So I think the further we go through the process, the further we know and can see and they have all the trials and they release the data, then I think people will want to commit to this. But until then, I'm not sure that anyone would, I mean, blindly, just say I'm going to have a vaccine based on not having the data and the science to back that up. We have not conducted this survey. Yeah, and Dr. Levine has just said we have not conducted a survey at this point. Okay, thanks. Do you have any initial estimates of how much a vaccine might cost and do you know yet whether the stable will be responsible for paying for it? Yeah, I think Secretary Smith covered this a little bit earlier in this, probably like two or three hours ago. I think he said that it wasn't going to cost us anything at this point in time. It's going to be all in the government. It won't come out of CARES money. It'll be a new program and it will not cost us anything at this point that we know of. Okay. And then lastly, will businesses or facilities like a nursing home stay be able to require a vaccine for residents or will it be voluntary in all situations? Yeah, I don't have the answer to that. I don't know if Secretary Smith or Dr. Levine would answer. I'll take a shot at it. All right. Kitty, as I explained earlier, the sort of the skilled nursing facilities, the long-term care facilities are on a sort of separate track for the vaccine. The CVS Walgreens has a direct contract with the federal government to provide vaccine to them. I'm unsure of an answer to your question whether you can require it or not. But let me check into that. That's going to be a legal question that I just need to check into. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you very much. And we'll see you again on Tuesday.