 I want to start by acknowledging that 80 years ago today the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, an event that would change the course of history and bring the United States into World War II. There are very few left today who were there that day, and sadly we're losing more and more World War II heroes every day, like Bob Dole. That's why it's so important to take every opportunity to thank members of the greatest generation, and the world will always be in their debt. I just got off the phone with other governors and White House officials, and here's what we heard. The CDC is closely watching the Omicron variant. Dr. Fauci said it appears cases aren't as severe, but we still have much more to learn. CDC Director Dr. Walensky urged for Americans to stay focused on what we know works, get vaccinated and boosted and wear masks indoors around others. She also said, and I quote, we're in a much better position now than we were at this time last year. Everyone on the call, Dr. Walensky, Dr. Fauci, and White House officials reiterated that vaccines remain our most important tool. It was reassuring to see President Biden last week lay out a national plan to address COVID over the next couple of months, and it looks a lot like what we're doing here in Vermont. As the President said, we have the tools to keep moving forward, most importantly vaccines and boosters. He discussed test-to-stay, which Vermont and just a handful of other states have piloted as a model for the nation to follow. He also discussed the importance of making testing widely available, which we're focused on here in Vermont. For context, over the previous 30 days, Vermont has led the nation, testing at a rate of over 44,000 per 100,000 residents. That's 12 percent higher than the next highest state, which is Massachusetts. To give you a better picture of the wide range in testing among states, the 10th highest testing state has tested a rate of about 15,000 per 100,000. That's three times less than Vermont, and there are 40 states behind them. Nevada, for instance, which some have held up as a model for mass mandates, tests at a rate of about 8,000 per 100,000, meaning Vermont is doing nearly six times the number of tests. We're committed to making sure testing is accessible because it helps us contain transmission. That's why when looking at other states, we have to look at the full picture, because Vermonters have stepped up to get vaccinated and boosted. And because they're testing and using common sense measures like masking indoors, Vermont continues to lead in many metrics, including the handful of states who have mass mandates. But we know we have much more work to do, and that starts with getting vaccinated and then boosted. If you get your booster this week, you'll have full protection before the new year. As we talked about last week, we've been working to secure thousands of rapid at-home tests. My team has been working with suppliers in the federal government to make sure we have a steady supply, because we want to have tens of thousands of these available at no charge to Vermonters. And this is in addition to the President's efforts at the federal level. We'll have more on that in the coming days. But in the meantime, you might have seen that President Biden is working to allow Americans to be reimbursed for at-home tests in the new year. Mr. Pichek and his team at DFR have already been working on this, so we'll launch this in Vermont within the next couple of weeks. Mr. Pichek will go into more details in a few minutes, but in summary, DFR will issue an emergency rule today requiring commercial insurers to cover the costs of rapid COVID-19 take-home tests. It will be retroactive to December 1. Once the emergency rule is in place, those with commercial insurance will be able to get take-home COVID rapid tests at a pharmacy without out-of-pocket costs. We believe this will cover about 140,000 people. And we're working to extend it beyond commercial insurance in hopes of covering most Vermonters. And again, we think this is an important step to take right now during the holiday season. And we encourage people to get to use these tests before and after holiday gatherings. Lastly, before I turn it over to Mr. Pichek to go into more detail, yesterday I announced some unfortunate news, at least for me, that Secretary Smith will be retiring again at the end of the year. It was late in 2019 when I asked him if he'd consider coming out of retirement to take on one of his old jobs. I don't think he knew what he was getting himself into, because within a month, the pandemic began. I think back on how fortunate we were that his wife, Mary, allowed him to come back because without him, I'm not sure we would have led the nation in so many categories at this point in time, from testing to vaccination and beyond. Every step of the way, Mike has proven to be exactly what we needed. His counsel and his loyalty to Vermont have been invaluable. Mike is a true public servant, working all hours of the night and seven days a week. He's one of the few I can text at 4.30 a.m. and get an instant response. In addition to the second time in this role, he served in the House of Representatives and as Deputy State Treasurer. Under Governor Douglas, he also served as Secretary of Administration. And before all that, after graduating from Woodstock High School, Mike served in the military as a Navy SEAL. He's devoted his life to service to others, and we're so grateful for all he's done. And I, for one, am certainly going to miss him. With that, I'll turn it over to Commissioner Pichett. Thank you very much, Governor, and good afternoon, everybody. I just wanted to make just a couple of points on the commercial insurance for at-home COVID tests that the Governor mentioned. So the Pharmacy Benefit Program will take some time to fully implement, so we do ask for patience on that. But those at-home tests that you have purchased, as of December 1st, are due purchase going forward. For those 140,000 Vermonters who are covered, those are reimbursable and you can seek that reimbursement through your insurance company. But the goal is to make it as easy as possible for Vermonters so that you can go to the pharmacy and have that paid for with no upfront costs. Again, just some patience as that is fully implemented. And then patience on the supply chain as well, which obviously is outside of the control of the pharmacies and the other establishments that sell these tests. But hopefully that will be ramped up as well as we get further into the holiday season. So with that, I did want to turn to the presentation today. You'll see from our first slide that Vermont's cases have increased. We did see an increase following the Thanksgiving holiday after a somewhat artificial decrease in cases with lower testing last week. Cases in Vermont are up 54% over the last seven days and up 31% over the last 14 days. And you'll see that Vermont is not alone with this increase following Thanksgiving. Cases across New England are up 63% and cases are also up across the rest of the country as well following the Thanksgiving holiday. You'll see here on our slide that compares this fall and this holiday season to last holiday season. And the patterns were very similar up until this Thanksgiving period following the holiday. You'll see that cases have risen and that is different from last year following Thanksgiving where basically cases got back to where they were and then started a slight decline before Christmas and New Year's. This year you can see there was an elevated amount of cases following Thanksgiving, indicating of course that there was a surge following that holiday. Also though it is important to point out that with the increase in cases, we did see an increase in testing this week. So 54% increase in cases that we mentioned, but there was also a 53% increase in testing this week compared to last. So the positivity rate did increase 1% over the last seven days. But it did come down from that height that it was at following Thanksgiving when more people were going to get tested who were likely symptomatic or had known exposures. So that has come down a bit. But again, when you look at everything in total, it does look like there is a surge from the Thanksgiving holiday. And that surge as you can see from the next slide is really being driven by those who are not fully vaccinated. You'll see that that rate increased 95% over the last seven days. And that was a 95% increase on a already really high number. So that was a pretty significant number in terms of the aggregate as well. The fully vaccinated rate did increase to 52%, but again, that was a much lower number in terms of where it was increasing from. So you can now see that rate is a difference of about five times, so five times greater case rate in the not fully vaccinated population compared to the fully vaccinated population. And again, you can just see how those cases have spiked up right around the Thanksgiving holiday and the ensuing day and week following the holiday. When you look geographically across Vermont, you'll see generally that cases are elevated up 13 out of 14 counties this week. But a couple of points of emphasis here, particularly in Bennington County, where cases are continuing to be very elevated. Also in Rutland County, cases continue to be elevated. But as we said, more elevated across the entire state also at this point compared to the last few weeks. Again, a continued area that is a bright spot is a breakdown of the cases that were seen by age. So it continues to be that our most vulnerable Vermonters, those 65 and older, have the lowest case rates in the state. That is followed by those 50 to 64. And then the younger age groups you see move pretty similar with each other and are considerably higher than those older, more vulnerable age groups. But at the same time, we do want to look at this closely because that 50 to 64-year-old age group, although lower than the younger population, did increase this week. And that 65-plus population is a little bit elevated from where it's been over the last four or five weeks as well. So as we know, as those rates go up, there's greater potential for hospitalization as they will likely have more severe illness relative to younger Vermonters. And then, of course, the most important thing that those that are over 65 or really those that are over 18 and six months out from their last dose of the vaccine is to get boosted. And you can see Vermonters continue to go and get their booster shot at a high rate up now to 67.4 percent for those 65 and older. But across the entire 18 and older population, Vermonters now at 42 percent of those fully vaccinated. So making good progress there, that will certainly help keep the most vulnerable out of the hospital, which is critical with the hospital levels where they are at the moment. Looking at the state hospitalization numbers, you can see the seven-day average is up 18 percent overall in the hospital numbers. But again, something critical to point out, 74 percent, just like we've seen week over week, 74 percent of those hospitalizations are among those who are not fully vaccinated. So that has been a rate that's been steady, even increasing a little bit over last week. And on the ICU side, a very similar story. You can see the 24 percent increase in the seven-day average on the ICU. And again, 81 percent of those in the hospital not fully vaccinated. So both on the ICU and the general hospital side of things, the numbers are higher than they have been during the pandemic. It's critical that you look at those numbers and see that those who are unvaccinated are much more likely to end up in the hospital. And as we've said before, they're more likely to spend a longer period of time in the hospital, so they do consume more hospital resources. So it's really critical for those Vermonters who know people who are not vaccinated to try to encourage them to do so. We certainly need your help in trying to get those that have not yet gotten the protection of the vaccine to do so. And as you look at the next slide, you can see how significant the difference is in terms of risk. Those who are fully vaccinated and boosted are way over there on the right. Those who are not fully vaccinated are off to the left. And you can see that there's a 15 times difference in those two rates. So if you're not fully vaccinated, you're 15 times more likely to require hospital care than someone who's fully vaccinated and boosted. So this is actually grown from the analysis that we did last week, which is about 13.5 times. So again, just continues to show the strength of both the first two doses. That difference is quite substantial too. But the particular strength of getting the two doses and getting your booster shot as well. And then looking at the ICU metrics that we've been keeping an eye on the last number of weeks, you'll see that there's a little bit of an increase in the availability of the ICU. That's certainly good news. So even though the ICU numbers have gone up, non-ICU cases have gone down a bit. And additional beds have been online. So that has provided a little more availability this week when we look over the last seven days. Quickly going over to the higher education slide, you'll see that the numbers are relatively steady. 63 cases this week. That's out of over 8,000 tests that were conducted on campus. A lot of campuses did surveillance testing as students came back from the Thanksgiving holiday. So good to see that even with that significant number of tests, 8,000, that only 63 positives came back on college campuses. Also good news on the outbreaks in long-term care facilities. You'll see that the active outbreaks has gone down dramatically compared to last week. Now just 38 active cases associated with an outbreak down from over 200 last week with some of our more significant outbreaks also being closed, which is certainly good news. So looking at the case forecast, we see that there is not too much of a change from last week. It's a very similar story where cases are anticipated to stay elevated over the next four weeks. You do see on the forecast out toward the later part, the last part of the forecast there, that it does bend down a bit. We would anticipate, assuming that the new variant does not change the calculus significantly, that with more people getting boosted, that more 5 to 11-year-olds getting vaccinated and fully vaccinated, and following the holiday period, that we would start to see some relief in the cases like we did similar to last year. But again, we still have to get through the next three or four weeks. So everyone can play a part in that by getting vaccinated and getting boosted. Looking at the fatality numbers for Vermont, we had 38 fatalities in November as of today, and then five fatalities reported so far for the month of December. And as you can see, we reported this last week, but over the last few months, the number of fatalities has crept down slowly, even though the number of cases has gone up. And in November, this case gone up quite dramatically. So again, more evidence of Vermonters, the most vulnerable Vermonters, protecting themselves with the vaccination and with the booster. And speaking of vaccination, you'll see that the vaccine scorecard here has Vermont, again, continuing to be at the top or near the top on all of these major vaccination categories, including the percent of the 65 and older population fully vaccinated. And then finally, looking at the five to 11-year-olds, we mentioned how important it is for them to get vaccinated. They continue to be the highest demographic of cases in Vermont. But you will see they continue to make good progress. Just over 47 percent of those five to 11 in Vermont have gotten their first shot of the vaccine. Just about 10 percent are now fully vaccinated. So both of those numbers are good. They're golfed to a good start. We certainly want to see both of them go up quite a bit from where they are now. But we do see that the pace continues to be strong with about 14 percent more kids vaccinated this week compared to last week. So certainly some good news there. And with that, I'll now turn it over to Secretary French. Thank you, Commissioner Pichek. Good afternoon. The elevated case counts we're seeing as a result of the Thanksgiving holiday continue to create a challenging operating environment for our schools. But this is largely at the elementary school level, where vaccination rates are significantly lower than high school level. Last week, I had a bi-monthly, had my bi-monthly meeting with the School Nurses Association leadership. They conveyed a strong perspective to me that their workload in this moment of high case counts is largely unsustainable from their perspective. And I think that ties back directly to we have a large number of elementary schools in the state, and the case counts at the elementary level are very high. And in terms of school operations, it's not just a function of case counts. It's also a function of the related contact tracing and testing. Since the administration of management of contact tracing and testing largely falls to school nurses. I wanted to just mention that parents can greatly assist in these efforts by filing one of our most important recommendations for schools. That is please keep your children home if they are sick. This can be challenging as we get into the winter months, especially with the cold season upon us, but it's critically important that you do so so our schools can stay open. Vaccination for students aged to five to 11 will ultimately improve the operations of our elementary schools, but we won't start to see the impact of that vaccination effort on the school operations until about mid-January. To date, about half to five through 11 population has received the first dose of the vaccine, which is great news, and as Commissioner Pichek showed, we're a national leader in that regard. But we will and continue to be diligent in this, and we have a lot more work to do, particularly in those communities with the lower rates of student vaccination. Secretary Smith will also provide some more information on vaccination in his report. In addition to vaccination, our schools have been making steady progress with implementing our response testing programs, including test-to-stay. Response testing, deploys testing at the school level and provides rapid results to schools and families. It is challenging for school districts to implement test-to-stay at a time of heightened case counts, since the staff that are involved in organizing test-to-stay are also the same staff that are involved in managing cases and contact tracing. But despite these challenges, we are seeing schools make very good progress on a weekly basis to implementing test-to-stay. Last Tuesday at the press conference, I reported that 112 schools had conducted antigen tests under test-to-stay. By the end of the week last week, we had 147 schools, so that's a 30 percent increase. So it just demonstrates how schools are building momentum to implement test-to-stay. And to date, we've had 11,213 antigen tests performed under test-to-stay. Which translates into saving approximately 11,000 in-person school days for kids. Maple Run School District in St. Albans has been particularly successful in test-to-stay. I just want to call them out a bit. They've conducted over 600 antigen tests since October, averaging 100 tests a week. They've been very successful in that regard. We're increasingly confident in the supply chain for antigen tests, so we continue to work on plans to expand test-to-stay into other areas such as pre-K. Like so many of our other logistical challenges, the main concern for us comes down to staffing. To that end, I organized a task force to examine education workforce issues, and that task force is comprised of all the representatives of the Major Education Associations, and we met for the first time last week. We did acknowledge, all of us acknowledge that there are no easy answers to these challenges, but we do intend to examine the near-term and long-term strategies on a more immediate level. However, we started to focus our conversation on what we could do now to inform how schools are operating to ensure sustained operations in the coming months. The work of our schools is organized around educational processes, and it's important to acknowledge they've taken on new responsibilities to ensure the health and safety during the pandemic, and those responsibilities are unlikely to change for the foreseeable future. I expect the work of this task force will take the form of some recommendations for schools that we'll probably try to publish shortly after the first of the year. A general theme will likely be how we can work more effectively at the state level, the district level, the local level, based on our understanding of both the health requirements of our operating environment and also our limited resources. As I mentioned, I expect our efforts in 5 through 11 vaccination will start to make a real difference in the operation of our schools, particularly elementary schools, by mid-January, but that will play out unevenly around the state based on the varying patterns of local vaccination. We will no doubt need to start to create targeted supports for those schools that have relatively lower student vaccination rates, but I also think we need to start working on implementing a focused effort at the state and regional efforts to support the educational recovery needs of our students, particularly in academic learning and social emotional supports. In our earlier education recovery planning, we had envisioned leveraging what we call educational support teams or ESTs at the district level to do two things for us in terms of education and recovery. One was to start to understand the patterns of student need as a result of the pandemic. The other was to have the ESTs function as an interface between state, regional, and local resources. Keeping schools open will be the central aspect of this work, but there's more we can do at the state and the local and regional levels to support educational recovery needs for our students, and I expect we'll have that opportunity to launch a more focused effort in that regard in more mid-January. That concludes my report. I'll now turn it over to Secretary Smith. Thank you. Thank you, Secretary French, and before we get started, and good afternoon everyone, before we get started at the outset, I'd really like to thank the Governor for his very kind words. I've said this before, but I'll say it again, as a former Navy SEAL, the height of complement in leadership is when you say that you would go into battle with someone, and I would go into battle any day with the Governor. So let's get started. Thank you, Governor, by the way. I'll start with an update on boosters for adults, as well as vaccines for children ages 5 to 11. Then I'll provide an update on hospital capacity. Finally, I'll provide the latest on how our COVID testing strategy is evolving. You've noticed over the last couple of weeks I've been mentioning this, but it is starting to evolve, and I want Vermonters to understand how it is evolving. In terms of booster doses, approximately 179,101 people have received a booster. That is about 42% of the state's population that is 18 or over. We continue to lead the nation in this category. Remember, everyone 18 years and older is eligible for a booster. Please get your booster. As of today, 21,118 children ages 5 to 11 have received their first dose of COVID vaccine, or they have an appointment to get their shot. As Commissioner Pichek pointed out, that's just over 47% of all Vermont children ages 5 to 11 years old. So as we prepare for the winter holiday season, please get vaccinated or get a booster if you're ready for one. If your child is five years of age or older, please get them vaccinated. You can easily schedule an appointment for any of these doses at healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine. You can also call 855-722-7878. Now, moving on to hospital capacity, our strategy to manage hospital capacity involves three main components. I had talked about it last week, but I just want to repeat those. Prevent hospitalization, decompress patient load at hospitals, and expand capacity. As for preventing hospitalizations, we want to continue to increase the uptake of vaccines for anyone above the age of five, as well as boosters for adults age 18 plus. As you know, we continue to have one of the most robust vaccination programs in the country. Please take advantage of it. We're also increasing the use of monoclonal antibodies against COVID-19 by boosting capacity to use them at our hospitals, in our communities, and at long-term care facilities. That has already begun. And the second leg is to decompress patients loads at at hospitals. In this area, we're reducing the number of patients waiting for discharge who don't need hospital care but still need care in what are called subacute beds, usually located in long-term care or rehab facilities. So far, working with the long-term care facilities, we have identified subacute beds that can be opened with additional staff, as well as other beds that are potentially available. The first phase of this effort involved the opening of 80 beds across three facilities in October. Those 80 beds were online as of October 30th. 80 patients had been admitted to those beds as of November 11th. Since that time, we have enacted three more agreements for a total of 39 additional beds. So far, 18 of the 39 beds have come online. The remaining 21 will come online upon arrival of additional staff. We have also identified vacant beds in other facilities as well and will continue to expand the use of subacute beds as needed. The third leg of the strategy is to expand capacity at hospitals. In terms of ICU beds, one additional bed is now available at Southwest Vermont Medical Center with one more slated to be in operation soon. The University of Vermont Medical Center and Northwestern Medical Center are slated to add five additional ICU beds each. UVMMC is bringing two of their beds online today. We continue to work with Central Vermont Medical Center to bring two or three additional beds online soon. In addition, it is our hope to add paramedics and EMT capacity at three hospitals. UVMMC, RRMC, SVMC, those are University of Vermont Medical Center, Rutland Regional Medical Center, and Southern Vermont Medical Center, which will be these additional EMTs and paramedics will be available through FEMA with a staffing contract. It is still not certain that Vermont will get these personnel since other states are seeing much more severe strain on their hospital systems, but we are still working with FEMA in order to try to accomplish this. So again, this request to use FEMA contracted staff is not certain because of the severity of other hospital capacity in other states. Now moving on to COVID for testing, let me start over again. Now moving on to testing for COVID-19, the federal government recently announced that they have put a new emphasis on rapid testing as the governor had mentioned. As you know, Vermont leads the way on testing and is working to evolve to rapid testing methods. That includes encouraging the use of take-home testing options and rapid results tests. Fortunately over the Thanksgiving holiday, we had good use of take-home tests by Vermonters, and we gained even more experience with rapid results tests at our testing sites. You are going to see this type of testing continue and ultimately be our main testing strategy in the future. Rapid results and take-home tests. As I mentioned last week, this evolution in the testing strategy includes educating people on how to respond if they get a positive test at home. If you do get a positive test result, isolate yourself immediately. Contact your healthcare provider to get advice on how to care for yourself and to see if monoclonal antibodies are an option for you. If you've taken a rapid at-home test and have a positive result, report that to the Department of Health. Their website has an easy to use tool to report positive at-home test results. Lastly, but just as important as the other steps, reach out to your close contacts yourself rather than waiting for the Department of Health to contact them. This is a good strategy whether you have a self-take-home self-test or an antigen test or you get a positive results in any tests that you take. All the information about what you do if you test positive for COVID-19, including reporting to the Health Department, is on their website. So go to healthvermont.gov.covid-19-positive. You can also call 855-722-7878. As always, we thank you for doing your part. Now, I'll turn it over to Dr. Levine for a health update. Good afternoon. I've got some very specific medical advice regarding gatherings, regarding boosters, amicron, and monoclonals, especially for the unvaccinated. So as Commissioner Pichek discussed, and as you've seen in our data, we're seeing perhaps more, but we're seeing the expected increase in cases we thought we would see after Thanksgiving. Make no mistake about it, this is a true post-Thanksgiving surge. Now, the virus was already spreading at high levels in our communities and we know that traveling and gathering gives the virus plenty more chances to find its way from person to person. So why are case counts so much higher now? Well, we're dealing with a much more infectious virus due to the Delta variant, which is still predominant in Vermont, 100% of all of our genome sequencing. Each person who tests positive with the original strain of the virus may have infected only one or a couple people. Now that same person is infecting three, four, or five people. Add to this, we were starting out with a larger number of cases and you see these numbers then increase exponentially. And when there are more cases in our communities, they show up in our schools, our workplaces, healthcare settings, places where people gather are always potential places for spread. They drive our hospitalization numbers and stress our healthcare system. There's no question this is concerning. It's why preventing those cases is still so important for all of us. Now, most of us have a vulnerable person in our lives. Someone who's older, someone too young to be vaccinated, someone with a medical condition. We need to think about that person and how we put them at risk as we make decisions in our lives right now. So every time you make plans that involve getting together with others, I want you to think of the more susceptible people in your life. That means we all need to get vaccinated, as you've heard over and over again, including kids age five and older, and including getting your booster shot. Of course, stay home when sick, get tested, wear a mask indoors regardless of your vaccination status, and keep gatherings small and safe. Now that we're in the season of home and workplace holiday celebrations, I ask you once again to consider my Thanksgiving guidance. Know the vaccination status of every person who will be there before you go. Keep the numbers of people or households small and have a testing strategy. Speaking of booster shots, we are now at a place where boosters are widely available and the federal government agrees everyone age 18 or older should get one as long as it's been two months since your J&J shot or six months since your Pfizer or Moderna. I'm going to take this one step further and say this, if you haven't gotten a booster and it's time for a booster, you are not fully protected. I say this as a doctor and a representative of all health care professionals. A booster shot gives you the most protection possible against COVID-19 and we all need the most protection we can get right now. Getting your booster will continue to guard against severe illness and hospitalization, especially if you're at higher risk. And if you do become infected, having had a booster will limit the severity of your symptoms. You also protect those around you, including your family, community, and those who are more vulnerable to COVID. So during the current Delta Surge, you must not consider yourself fully protected until you've gotten your booster. Period. Visit healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine to find booster opportunities near you. Omicron, all these layers of protection are especially important as we monitor for this new variant. It's not yet been detected here in Vermont, but it has been found in at least 17 states now, including New York and Massachusetts. We continue to obtain genome sequencing information on SARS-CoV-2 specimens in Vermont, and we will report any detection when we find the Omicron variant. We are actually leaders in the nation with the high percentage of our positive tests that are sequenced. And our public health lab assay identifies the special S gene target failure that tells us that that specimen is one we should prioritize for sequencing. But as I've said, we've not discovered one yet. In the meantime, scientists continue to gather data on Omicron's transmissibility and whether it affects the severity of illness or effectiveness of vaccines. There's some very intriguing and somewhat reassuring information regarding the severity coming out of Africa, and some even more fascinating information on Omicron sharing characteristics with older common cold causing coronaviruses. But we mustn't draw conclusions until the scientific investigations are more definitive. Again, vaccination is our strongest line of defense against the virus and its variants. Fortunately, the vast majority of Vermonters who are eligible are vaccinated, but I do have a message today for the unvaccinated besides the usual message of get vaccinated. Now our frontline and emergency and hospital workforce are seeing and telling me very consistently and with increasing frequency that unvaccinated Vermonters with COVID are routinely showing up at the emergency room quite seriously ill and without having been previously tested. They are essentially first learning of their COVID-19 diagnosis as they are wheeled up to the ICU or general hospital bed, even if they've been ill for some time. So what is the lesson here? If you're choosing and continue to choose to not get vaccinated I ask you to at least prioritize getting tested for COVID-19 if you are ill or have been a close contact. If you're unvaccinated you can easily become sick enough to need hospitalization and indeed the data you've seen today indicates you quite possibly will. But if you get tested early on when you are ill you still have time to take advantage of monoclonal antibody treatment which prevents hospitalization and death about 70 percent efficacy. If you are eligible because you're older because you may have a medical condition you can do this by reaching out to your healthcare provider as soon as you get a positive test. Don't wait until you're so sick you show up at the door of the emergency room. By getting tested you improve your chances of staying out of the hospital and recovering safely from COVID-19. Governor thank you Dr. Levine will now open it up to questions. We'll start in the room and open it up. Governor you as you usually do in these briefings you know you give the highlights of how well Vermont is doing and how at the near the top of so many categories. But now Vermont is finding itself near the top of the case count categories which is unusual and you don't mention that at least not directly. You know how frustrating is that to be there and is there anything more that can be done about that? Well obviously it's not where we want to be. We're seeing this across the northeast with the Hampshire and Maine as well and we believe that it may start traveling to other states. So it is frustrating but from our standpoint the case counts aren't what we're watching. We need to continue to watch the hospitalizations which are elevated as well but we're still in pretty good shape when compared to other states that have been impacted. So we're watching our healthcare system making sure that we're protecting them and again as we've said 70 to 75 percent of the cases we're seeing reported are amongst the unvaccinated. 70 to 75 percent of those hospitalized are unvaccinated. Today for instance 90 percent of those in the ICU are unvaccinated. So our message is pretty clear give vaccinated. You know get boosted if you're not vaccinated because this is really a pandemic of the unvaccinated at this point in time. It's just concentrated in different areas of our state which is extremely frustrating. hadn't you said that though your point of worry about hospitalizations was 80? No I mean we were watching the numbers but that's we didn't say that that was the benchmark and that was when we were going to hit the panic button. When you look at their overall health system or hospital capacity it's over I think it's over 1200. So really when you look at the number of people hospitalized with COVID it's a relatively small number. I mean it's probably 8 percent at this point but it does impact everything else and everything is stressed at this point in time. So we're not we've increased capacity as Secretary Smith has outlined and Dr. Levine has mentioned. When you look at the sub-acute patients that were somewhat it was like a ripple effect because you had the sub-acute patients that were not sick enough to be in the hospital but not well enough to go home. So we were able to free up beds in another area to allow for them to to get better before they went home but get them out of the hospital. So that's freed up capacity as well. So everything that we've done from the beginning is to try and focus on the hospitalizations trying to increase the capacity to make sure our healthcare system is protected and we feel we've done that. Probably a question for Dr. Levine out of the 31 people in the ICU today. I know this question has come up before but what are the demographics of some of these people that we're seeing in the ICU? I mean we mentioned that they're unvaccinated many of them but do they have underlying conditions? What are their ages and demographics? I'll let Dr. Levine answer but again just a reminder 90 percent today 90 percent of those in the in the ICU are unvaccinated. Most of the data we have is of all the people in the hospital not isolating out the ones in the ICU from the general medical beds but having said that we do know the vaccination status as the governor just stated is even worse in the ICU if you happen to be unvaccinated. The age range in the hospital about 50 percent are 60 and above and the other 50 percent are obviously below. There's only two pediatric cases in the hospital at this point in time generally there's zero to one and that means there are still a lot of people in their middle ages who are in the hospital and I firmly believe they are mostly unvaccinated people and the reality there is that as our boosters are going into more and more arms and that high rate 60s to 70 percent in the 65 and older they are making up 10 or 11 percent of our cases on a given day of the week. That's a very small percentage of the cases which gives less opportunity for them to end up having more serious complications. To clarify those two pediatric cases that in the ICU or just general hospitalization? I believe those are general hospital but I I don't have my finger on the pulse of those two. For Secretary Smith you know you mentioned that we're shifting resources bringing people to rehab facilities to free up ICU beds and others. I know you talked about staffing some of these beds through FEMA that does yet to come through but in general how are we staffing these ICU beds as we bring them online? Well in general what we're doing is either using existing personnel and paying them a bonus to do some extra shifts within the facility that's a southern Vermont medical center sort of model or we're bringing in travelers to help in that instance so or they're using existing staff and and being creative in how they're using existing staff. There's three sort of ways that they're doing it Kelvin. For you perhaps does do the hospitals throughout the state have the capacity to handle another potential surge in cases? Are there more beds on the back burner that you're looking at that you know if need be we could use those and then how would that impact other care that could be provided? Yeah there's still more beds that are going to come online. I mean we'll continue to draw down the subacute beds as much as possible. We'll continue to open up ICU capacity as much as possible. Like I said there's only two at UVM that have opened up out of five that are planned to open up you know one out of two out of southern Vermont as well. But the other thing with extra personnel that we're looking at they'll be able to sort of redeploy staffing as well to help out with those with those beds. So there are opportunities here. We're looking long term not just today but what could be you know we keep planning to look at different scenarios as we move forward. But all in all you know the strategy is as I said reduce the people that are going into the hospital through either vaccine or monoclonal antibodies you know increase capacity by moving those patients that don't that don't need hospital care but need care into subacute beds and then lastly expand the capacity of ICU and if available use some additional personnel that FEMA may have to reconfigure our staffing models. And a personal question for you. First off thank you for your service to the state especially through the pandemic. Will you actually be 100% retiring this time? You never say never but I think this is pretty certain this time. Not really I think we said it all yesterday. Both the governor's gracious words and and myself it's it's time it's time for me you know I'm 68 years old there's I can't believe that but but at the same time you know there there's a time when you sort of have to think that you've got to do other things in life so. Thank you. I was just wondering you had mentioned the at-home testing and that will become the most popular way of testing. When do you expect that? I think you're going to start seeing the shift gradually over the next couple months to hopefully in March in March-April time period we'll have you know available take-home tests and rapid tests available. I mean the backbone will always have a PCR sort of backbone but at the same time we are shifting that that way of testing to be more convenient for the person that's that's taking the test and secondly more rapid results. I think you know one of the things that we've learned in this pandemic especially with something like delta the more rapid we can get results and the more we can jump on those results the faster we can sort of contain this this virus. When does fully vaccinated mean boosted? Because it seems counterintuitive that fully vaccinated doesn't mean fully protected. Yeah I mean there there are different categories when you think about that and I'll have Dr. Levine go into that further but you think about what we used to think was fully vaccinated and that was just getting both doses or one single dose of J&J but now that we've seen the efficacy of the vaccine Wayne we now know that getting a booster is is just as as important. You still have a level of protection but not as as much as we had once hoped because we didn't have the data to back and back that up or support it. So I I don't know what the CDC is going to do. Eventually they're probably going to take a look at how you keep track of that as well but there there really is different categories of protection at this point in time. So in the spirit of terminology that's why I created my new term fully protected. That's the only one that should count to an individual person. You either are protected or you're not. Now vaccine does protect you no matter how many doses you've gotten but we know one dose isn't as good as two and now we know two doses isn't as good as three for the messenger RNA vaccines. It's just the fact of life it's scientifically proven there's data to support it so we need to go with it but we need to not regret it because you know regretting it would say well those vaccines weren't so good when they came out they touted them as wonderful then they're only okay. Well that's not true because we have numerous vaccines throughout the history of man that require three doses to get you up to a certain level of immunity and that being deemed the satisfactory level to be at. So we're seeing that play out with this novel virus with this novel vaccination and so we just have to understand that and go with the science every step. This might be a question for Secretary Smith. ICU capacity I've heard Rutland Regional brought up as a hospital that's dealing with that. I haven't heard about any additional beds being brought online there. Are there any issues with that hospital why no additional beds yet? We've been working with them to move their subacute patients out to subacute so they could move people. Last time I talked with the head of Rutland Regional what they were talking about subacute so they could move people out of the ICU into other beds med surge beds and sort of a step down arrangement. So that's what we've been concentrating with Rutland Regional is getting them capacity in that area and actually Rutland Health and Rehab is one of the places that I just talked about that are bringing beds online. Reporter and just a reminder please keep to two questions. Thank you. Thanks Rebecca. We're hearing from readers who have had critical surgeries rescheduled from October and then to December and then simply postpone indefinitely. We understand that the state has asked the federal government for help with FEMA contractors. If those workers come through would the state consider putting up field hospitals for COVID patients? That's the federal workers so the hospital beds can open back up for critical surgeries? I think again Dr. Liener maybe Secretary Smith first but as was mentioned before many states are in much worse position than we are and so I don't see a scenario where we're going to get the level of help that that some people would would see necessary in order to to have those surgical procedures but Secretary Smith. At least the setting up the facilities is easy staffing the facilities is a little bit more difficult and I doubt that FEMA has those sort of capabilities as the governor just talked about I doubt that FEMA has those capabilities actually they're telling us they don't have those capabilities for Vermont at this time they're they're really stretched thin in other other states right now and so as I said last week I think you know we're looking at how are we going to handle this ourselves and and and taking any sort of resources that we can from FEMA through their through their contract with EMS and paramedics but I don't expect a huge inflow of people from from from FEMA at this point. Thank you Secretary Smith and don't go away my next question is for you as well. You talked about the evolving testing strategies and the home tests as well as the rapid antigen tests and you talked about the state working on a plan to make those available to the Monters once test supplies are secured. Will that plan include distributing those tests throughout the state? I noticed today that Boston is just distributing 20,000 free rapid antigen tests areas in the city with the highest COVID rate. Will Vermont do something similar and will those tests be free for those who have private insurance as well as those who don't? Yeah the answer is yes and yes we would be distributing them to some sort of location some central point where people could get the tests come and get the tests and they would be free. Thank you very much and thank you to your office and to the Department of Health for getting us testing in the Mad River Valley it starts on Saturday. Oh that's that's great to know thank you Lisa. Thank you. Just a couple questions. It's from a systemic point it's difficult to get a handle on what's going on with the hospitals. Vermont has 14 really 15 hospitals that include Dartmouth Hitchcock which you should do because they take care of so much tertiary care in the in the Connecticut River Valley. I'm curious do we have a number is it possible to know how many hospitals in our overall system have ICUs with ventilators? In other words it sounds like that most of the heavy pressure is on bigger hospitals is that right and can do we do we know how it's this what do we know about how the load is distributed across the entire hospital system? Yeah I think that the answer is it depends Ham because it depends on where we're seeing the surge at that particular moment like today for instance we're seeing it in and we have over the last week or two in the Rutland, Bennington area that's where our problem really exists when you look at the other hospitals throughout the state they're okay and we do know where what we have in the in the ICUs and who's vented and who's not and we have all that data as well but but again it could be we remember at one point in time I think we talked about this because we went up and had our boosters up in the northern part of the state the northeast kingdom and they were impacted at that point inundated with cases so that's subsided and it's moved now it's migrating towards Rutland and Bennington so it really depends on the point in time snapshot in time so to speak because every hospital has been impacted in at different times of this pandemic. Let me just add to that this is Mike Smith Ham. We have you know you were talking about vented patients and ventilators we have about 276 ventilators here in the state 65 in our reserve in the state in state custody we have 33 total in use today 13 of those are COVID patients and if you want a distribution it's Rutland regional southwest Vermont and UVM where we're seeing the vented patients I understand your question you know these are hospitals that are you know do have ICUs and they are they are vending patients but nonetheless the other hospitals as well are doing incredible things like monoclonal antibody administration testing and vaccination as well so I don't want to diminish the other any other hospital that doesn't necessarily have an ICU or a vented patient in it they are doing incredible work as well. So obviously Scott you Scott and Levine have talked about your recommendation to wear masks indoors you know particularly in public spaces I was wondering how that recommend recommendation might extend or not extend to indoor dining which is obviously a thing that is still going on and kind of can be both a site of long-term going without a mask as well as you know people gathering in public spaces in very crowded or not crowded spaces what what recommendations do specifically recommend for Monter's take should they be avoiding indoor dining and in what circumstances? I think I pointed out at a previous press conference sometimes I'm worried more about the indoor dining within the home than in the restaurant depending on who's around the table so keep that in mind and that's why knowing vaccination status and testing is important when you have multiple households gathering but one of my observations about restaurants is that there was a time when people would be masked except when they were eating or drinking and now I've noticed people more or less are unmasked after they've sat down at their table and that continues until they leave where they put their mask on again so I would certainly as a public health official recommend that they go back to only masking or masking at all times except when you're actually being served your food I'd also recommend that more for the staff of the restaurants as well not that we're seeing widespread numbers of cases and situations in restaurants everywhere in the state but we do see them and this is potentially avoidable. What about high risk for Monter's would you tell them you know to be more cautious about indoor dining or is it again like at home dining that seems to be more of a risk? No I would tell them in general you know they are probably more cautious anyways because they know their high risk so that they have to be very thoughtful about the settings that they put themselves into and equally importantly the people around them need to be very thoughtful if they're inviting them to a indoor meal where they may be gathered with either unvaccinated people or children who are too young to be vaccinated they'll need to be very considerate and thoughtful about needs for masking and distancing etc. Good afternoon Governor. The Burlington YMCA announced the day after the Burlington map ordinance passed that it would require proof of vaccination from anyone who wishes to enter. Do you think that this violates the spirit or even the letter of the law passed during the special session and what I'd just like to know your thoughts about it? Yeah well I look at the the why like I do other businesses and other entities and they have the right to put forth any stipulations regulations that they wish. I saw global foundries for instance today is requiring all their employees to be fully vaccinated by I think it's January 4th or they won't be able to work there anymore. That's their prerogative and I look at the why is in the same position. Thank you. Last night six municipalities declined to require a mask mandate in public places three did. What's your sense of the municipal response so far? Not surprising at this point in time I had thought that there would be some who would take advantage of this and they have and others would determine that they they didn't think it would be effective for their communities so I think it's been a balance and it's not unexpected. Thank you. Thank you. Governor looking at the high number of cases in Bennington County perhaps this is all might also be a question for Dr. Lavigne of Commissioner Ficek. I wonder if you can point to potential reasons why Bennington is now in the lead in a category nobody where nobody wants to lead and whether that correlates with our vaccination rate. You know I don't believe that it correlates exactly with our vaccination rate but it does you know it's it's confounding in some respects but when you think about the number of cases as I said before 70 to 75 percent of those hospitalized are amongst the unvaccinated. Today 90 percent of those in the ICU are unvaccinated so from my standpoint it seems as though and there's no widespread outbreaks that I'm seeing in one sector so it would tell me that those who are unvaccinated their families are unvaccinated their friends are unvaccinated they gather and then they infect one another so that would be just my I guess observation and but I have nothing to back that up with it's just that that would make the most sense because again when you're you are unvaccinated you you tend your family tends to follow the lead. Dr. Levine and the only thing to add to that would be that like in most parts of the state we probably lack a good reason for a case in terms of their susceptibility they're having gathered in one way or another for about 70 percent of cases and that's usually what you see when there's community transmission we are seeing this across that region so it's not like only in the cities versus the rural areas it's both and for extra context I actually was on the phone yesterday with my counterpart my my new counterpart from New York state and we were commenting on the fact that some of the upstate northern upstate New York counties were having some of the worst time and those include the ones adjoining Vermont obviously so it's a mixed bag but hard to really say why particularly now I have pointed out in the past and I'll do it again that Bennington and Rutland counties are not our lowest vaccination uptake parts of the state but they're not the highest either they're kind of in the middle so they could do a little better which might have improved their performance here but can't directly correlate it with being very low in terms of vaccine uptake thank you one second question and as for secretary French I was wondering we have a district here in in southern Vermont that is hasn't let folks know that they're going to in the information about outbreaks or cases positive cases in classrooms that's in school communities are going to be made directly to close contacts instead of at broad announcements to entire school communities I'm wondering if there's a directive or that that's a something that's coming down from from the agency of education with regards to the level of transparency that I believe is sufficient and safe for for Vermonters or whether that's something that that's that's free for each school to school supervisory unit is just determined for themselves hi Greg that's not coming from the agency of education I think that's probably a local decision you know managing communications is a better part of the emergency response for schools so I can't speak directly as to why they made the decision but I can say it didn't didn't come from us thank you very much good afternoon governor I'm not sure who the first question is for but I was watching a national broadcast over the weekend and some of the some of your counterparts nationally were saying that a key factor to making sure that we don't have too many variants is testing for variants and last time I knew Vermont was not testing very many of the of the COVID positive test for specific variants I'm wondering where we are at on testing variants like what percentage how many per week per day kind of thing I think we're doing as much as anyone else is from percentage standpoint Dr. Levine could answer that yeah Greg just to correct you a little it's not testing for variants it's just testing positive results to see if there's a variant strain there so we have several lines of data first line is CDC's own random sampling that they do across the entire country every state their results continue to show 99.9 percent of infections in Vermont are Delta second is through the state testing facilities sending their samples to Broad in Boston Broad is doing an incredibly high percentage of the positive tests being sequenced thereafter thirdly I mentioned in my opening comments this S gene target failure which is something you can only find on one of the assays that we do in our public health lab so in our public health lab should that ever show up on a positive test result we would immediately sequence that specimen as a high priority one because that would almost certainly show Omicron that has not happened yet to date but we still sequence a high percentage of those specimens coming through our public health lab anyways I've been told by the CDC that we are one of the states with the highest percentage of its positive tests sequenced I can't give you the number but we are standing out in that way you said you can't give the number of the percentage can you give a rough idea I mean are we talking 3 percent 30 percent 90 percent no I would say it's it's it's in the double digits 30 to 30 to 70 percent probably well I'll try to I'll try to get that so you can have a precise number because I don't want you to report on such a broad range thank you appreciate that governor you on a regular basis refer to this now as a pandemic of the unvaccinated at the same time you also have made it very clear that until hospitals are overwhelmed you would not even consider a state of emergency and without a state of emergency you can't have mandates so seeing as hospitals are now having to do search vets and we're we're asking FEMA for hospital workers and medical workers isn't that an indicator that we're starting to get to a point where hospitals are overwhelmed and you could do some sort of mandate that to maybe mandate vaccines for certain types of activities well again I think that what we've done as a state as an employer asking state employees to be vaccinated or a test that they've been vaccinated or have regular testing is the strategy I think having global foundries require their employees to be vaccinated I think that's the right approach we just in again 20 percent of the cases we're seeing when we talk about unvaccinated it's not always amongst the those in the older populations who have been able to get vaccinated since day one the the youth the five to 11 and others have not been able to from the beginning so they're counted the the zero to 11 population is is about 20 percent of those unvaccinated at this point in time so the further we move forward with vaccinations there the more boosters we get in the arms of those who took advantage of getting vaccinated in the very early days the better off we're going to be so I'm still hopeful I think we are still hopeful that that we will see this the benefits of that and that the number of cases the number of hospitalizations and so forth will subside over time getting through the holidays is going to be probably our most difficult time we forecasted that a couple of weeks ago two three weeks ago before thanksgiving we still believe that over the the Christmas holiday with the gatherings the small gatherings family gatherings are going to impact the rate of transmission so at this point we believe that we'll have to manage this throughout the holidays and then we'll see our regression at that point my first question is do we have any sense of as of today how many open or available ICU beds we have around the state I believe Secretary Smith may have that hold on Dr. Levine has that 11 ICU beds that are open okay yeah I have a second question sorry I wasn't sure Dr. Levine was finished there so almost exactly a month ago I think it was Governor Scott who had said that we did not anticipate that our ICUs would reach their capacity and obviously they haven't but it sounds like some of that is due to us bringing some more online I'm just wondering if a month later seeing that we've doubled our number of COVID patients and ICUs is there anything that's happened that we didn't expect over the last few weeks or in and is there any reason or is there any cause for concern that that number might just keep going up particularly as the case counts reach levels we haven't seen before yeah well one one important point is that we have so many patients in ICUs now that don't have COVID as well we can't lose track of that that the degree of medical illness across the state often thought to be due to delays in care lack of preventive health maintenance reluctance of people to utilize the health care system at a time where they thought it was potentially more dangerous for them to go seek care all of those things have contributed to chronic disease becoming very significant in Vermont and across the country in the world for that matter and people presenting much more ill because of the delays that they've had with not recognizing important symptoms early enough on so there's that for sure and then there's the fact that though Delta probably doesn't seem like a more severe variant it is a more contagious variant so if it's more contagious it creates more cases and even if the percentage of cases that is more severe with Delta is no different than it was from the previous variants in the beginning of the pandemic there'll be more of them and that's what we're seeing here and now the big unknown of course is Omicron and our hope is that some of the early data is accurate and it won't be more severe even if it is more contagious but we'll have to see what that might do we don't foresee Delta being overtaken by anything for the coming weeks so we're still going to be in the midst of a Delta surge that we're in and we just need to pay attention to that and realize that's here no matter what happens with Omicron over the ensuing weeks thanks I guess what I was trying to get at is how confident are we of the next months that our number of ICU beds in capacity will be enough seeing as we've already seen a doubling of the number of COVID patients over just the last month case counts are higher than they've ever been we're heading into Christmas I think there is a lot of concern out there that our hospital capacity is a little worse than the picture that we might be hearing at the moment I mean this has been a pretty optimistic view heading into the holidays at a time when our hospitalizations are higher than they've ever been can you speak to that a little bit sure if it sounds rosy and optimistic I don't think that's the intent Secretary Smith gave a very lengthy list of a number of initiatives that we've actually been doing for several weeks and will continue to be doing through the rest of the month of December all with that in mind the fact that we want to make sure hospital beds aren't an issue ICU beds aren't an issue clearly ventilators are not an issue which is great but all these things I've been in the planning and execution stage for quite some time now because we really are looking at worst case scenarios and making sure we're prepared for them if you look across New England when it comes to the hospitalization data and the ICU data Vermont is with the lower end of the pack at worst in the middle for both of those Maine and New Hampshire stand out having had again this northern New England trend of increased cases with much more severe impact on their health care systems we've managed to be consistently in the lower part along with the southern New England states so we continue to watch all of that very very closely and our planning continues if I if I could just add one one more tidbit to that first of all again to put things in relationship here we have about 1200 hospital beds in Vermont of that we have about 8 percent of them are COVID related according to our census we have about 105 110 maybe maybe that's grown a little bit about 100 ICU beds at this point so less than maybe 25 to 30 percent of them are typically COVID related so the problem isn't all with COVID it's as Dr. Levine said it's the other health care needs that are impacting our hospitals but if you want a maybe my perspective in terms of concerns I from a long-term perspective I'm much more concerned about our workforce crisis than I am COVID crisis that is going to impact us for years to come it's already impacting us now it's having a an effect on our hospital capacity just because of the workforce shortage that we face in every sector across Vermont so and this is affecting our entire country but it's impacting Vermont it was impacting us before the pandemic and it's certainly not getting any better and in fact getting worse so that's what our focus will be in the upcoming session to and it has been again since I came into office but it is getting worse and that that keeps me up at night. Thank you. Hi, Governor. I saw in New England yesterday released its winter energy report and on the face of it it looks pretty good but they're very very worried because of what happened in Texas last year now different circumstances here but what their concern is in backup surplus backup supply of of electric we don't have very much and they realize that there's a an acute event here in Vermont a severe cold snap that we could run into the similar problem where there wasn't enough electricity in the grid any and and they talk about offshore wind and hydrogen are way far off in the in the future. What's your response to our electricity electricity needs right now? I believe that you know I can this might be a better question for Commissioner Tierney from public service but I believe we're in pretty good shape here in Vermont because we receive so much of our electricity from Hydro-Quebec and and I believe that there there isn't an issue there but I can understand other states that don't have that that capacity that we do and with some of what we've done over the last number of years in terms of of solar powered energy supplies and so forth I think that that has helped and I also saw I think this morning I saw that natural gas has actually gone down in price so the southwest section of our state who has the benefit of having natural gas is actually is costing a little bit less than maybe a year ago so at this point in time I haven't heard that we have anything to worry about but it's always something that we keep an eye on. All right I have a question for Secretary Smith also. First of all Mike thank you for all your years of service I really appreciate your work with you all this time and second if you're giving away any parting gifts can I please have your head of hair? There I saw a picture I think it was on channel five or somebody told me about a picture on channel five that showed me with dark hair and I want that back actually so thanks Tim. All right thanks Mike. Good afternoon and first of all I want to echo what he just said which is thank you for your service to Secretary Mike Smith. What I do have here is a question about the infection rate at the Northern State Correctional Facility. Since the pandemic started there's been 247 positive tests among the inmates there. There's 190 positive cases in the other five correctional facilities in Vermont. What kind of extra steps can be taken to ensure that the population in the state correctional facility they're going to be protected and protected? I'd say more vaccine and more boosters but I'll let Secretary Smith answer that. Thanks Ed for the question that is that is a really good question and today we are actually up in that facility providing boosters to that facility we've already done Chittenden northeast which is St. Johnsbury Marble Valley which is Rutland and Springfield. We've we've provided boosters there we're now providing boosters in Newport today. The other thing we have a fairly as you I think I gave you some information the other day we have a fairly good vaccine rate among incarcerated there. We have less people vaccinated in our staff up there and we need to do a better job in terms of what encouraging people to get vaccinated. You know one of the things that we are doing is that a letter from the commissioner sent to advocacy groups and DOC partners it urges sort of wraparound messaging to encourage incarcerated population to get their boosters. There's materials on their tablets a message from the commissioner booster vaccine information sheet from VDH. Booster vaccine frequently asked questions from VDH. It's also in different languages as well and also we're doing we're bringing in the big guns the stars of the show. We're bringing in Dr. Levine to record a video as well to answer questions in these facilities so we are trying to get the facilities boosted and vaccinated as much as possible to help out. Obviously we there have been lower vaccination rates in that area both in staff and in inmates and excuse me yeah inmates and I wanted to make sure that we increase the vaccination level there. So I think that that answers your question why I think we just need to keep on getting people vaccinated in that area. I believe the staff less than 60 percent of the staff have been vaccinated. Is there a concern if you try to force it on them that you'll end up having people leave and get a job elsewhere which we're obviously you gotta have you know the ripple effect of our pressure facilities being unsafe. Is there a concern if you push too hard they'll walk away? I think I think the policy that we have we just got to do a better job I think of encouraging people to get vaccinated. I don't think it's less than 60 I think it's in the 60s. I don't have the precise number but it's in the 60s in terms of staff that's vaccinated there. I would just urge them to get vaccinated there. We have a very frequent and sophisticated testing program in that facility as well as other facilities in in the Department of Corrections as well. What we're trying to do is make sure we we detect it as quick as possible. It's a statewide sort of policy. It's a little bit more stringent in corrections if I'm in terms of schedule but basically it's testing every week and if you're not vaccinated if you're vaccinated you don't have to be tested every week. I would just hope that that region in northern correctional facility would have will start increasing its vaccination status. I'm actually fairly confident that they will at some point here. Thank you very much. I appreciate that the answer and thank you Governor. Yeah thanks good afternoon. With the push toward greater use of at-home tests how concerned are you that relying on self-reporting of results will leave you and your team with limited data to accurately understand the prevalence of the virus across the state and that could be to the detriment of of the response. Yeah that is something that we have considered. Secretary Smith can expand upon that but I do want to remind everyone that we are even during this time we're still looking to merge a transition from pandemic to endemic where we're going to not have all the reporting data that that we normally have because I think testing of this nature this rapid testing is going to be more common because this virus this this isn't going away we'll have more variants but but testing is going to be part of the future and along with vaccinations and boosters and so forth but the testing will become more sophisticated more easily available and and much quicker so that when you're going to events or you can you can get a test and know the results almost instantaneously and then make your determination whether you should or shouldn't go. So I just think it's the future Secretary Smith. I think the governor pointed out realism here as we move and as we shift the responsibility of basically reporting is going to have to move and shift as well and that's going to rely on the individuals taking these tests home that are doing these rapid test home kits and and then reporting and that's why we put the website up in order to report. Vermonters have been very very good at at reporting and doing things especially in the early phase of the pandemic when nobody knew what to expect. They've been very good at helping us out whether it's in vaccines whether it's in testing. So I'm I'm hoping that we will have a good database of self-reporting on these take home tests as we move forward. Now as I said this is a transition it's not going to happen overnight it's not going to be all at once but it is going to be a transition because sooner or later we are going to be in the endemic phase of this and this is going to be how we're probably going to be testing in the future. When did you want to get that? When did the when did the reporting tool go online and how many reports have been made through it thus far? Yeah I'm not certain I'll if Dr Levine do you know that. Yeah it's been online for a while we'll get you the information on that but I don't have that. I guess the only other related question I have is do you have any sense of how many at home tests Vermonters are taking right now and what what the ratio between at home versus lab tests is I've seen some reports that suggest states at home test succeed the number of tests that the state has administered. I can assure you that's probably not the case in Vermont right now just looking at the numbers that we do in terms of laboratory tests I mean you know we're up in the 50 to 60 thousand in terms of a week but sooner or later that's that is going to happen down the road and so I don't have the precise numbers but Dr Levine do you want to say something? I just wanted to continue on the previous question you know public health officials all around the country are grappling with the fact that we will lose a lot of insight based on people doing their own testing. That's fine as long as they're reacting to the results of the tests and taking the personal responsibility to do the test and then react to the result but keep in mind there will be some degree of surveillance testing going on so it may be special vulnerable populations whether it's people who work in a certain industry people who are in education people living in long-term care facilities you name it there'll be opportunities to still have good window into the status of the SARS-CoV-2 virus within a state so we won't lose complete visibility on that and our goal is to make it as easy to report as possible so that people will be at least incentivized to report and not reluctant to. And that reporting tool would that be asking for negative results as well so you get a sense of positivity rate for just positive? Yeah it's mostly going to focus on positives. The fact is the concept of positivity percent positivity is going to vanish as a metric for us to follow once we do this it's just the way it works so you'll see that not being reported on the national level even it just won't it won't happen anymore but for now it still is important. Okay thank you. Andrew not to complicate this further but anecdotally I believe that those who are using rapid tests that might purchase this now if they receive a positive a result might have a PCR test to confirm that so we may have some duplication as well so we just don't I don't think we know but that but I would suspect that I know that might be what I would do because I know the PCR test is maybe a little bit more accurate. Can you hear me? We can. Hi Governor just speaking with the at-home testing and this self-reporting system is there a public health risk in having a less centralized and perhaps less comprehensive understanding of the spread of the virus as we move towards at-home tests and away from the state run PCR tests? Again I think part of the answer is that we are going to have to transition to a way of life that is going to be different because this virus is not going away and it will we'll see more variants in the future. We'll see positive cases along the way but we are going to it's going to be just much more commonplace and we're going to have to have a way a strategy to mitigate as well as to take care of ourselves and protect ourselves and in other ways so I just think it's just the way of the future and I think that the whole country and probably the world will be moving in that direction but I understand your point but with the surveillance testing as well it will just become more like the flu and we don't we don't get reports on all the flus or any of the other viruses the cold viruses and so forth. We just have that through physicians and so forth and the data collected there and I think that's what's going to be in the future. And on a separate topic we've heard a lot today about the high hospitalization numbers the highest we've seen so far in the pandemic. Hospital workers are nearing two full years of treating COVID patients in highly stressful situations and many hospitals are under greater pressure than ever right now and so I'm wondering if there are specific measures your administration plans to take to support hospital workers at this time as they work through this largest surge yet of the pandemic in Vermont. I'll ask Dr. Levine or Secretary Smith to answer that. We are supplementing the workforce in in different ways in order to make sure that we do have enough workforce into the state and one of the ways that I've talked about is depopulating the hospital from those that don't need hospital care but still need care. We've helped in terms of finding staff in order to to do that and and move on. In terms of you know you know I can I can sort of react personally to this my wife's a nurse but the the one thing that I know it's been stressful for the last a couple of years it's been stressful on everybody for the last couple of years and I really do appreciate everything that they do and there there is this surge that is going on right now that we will handle but the the way that we will handle it is to increase capacity by the ICU by bringing in different people like I talked about and helping the hospitals bring in different people on a financial basis helping them staff increase capacity so we don't put stress on the current system helping to relieve the population within the hospitals so that we don't put stress on the current situation and also making sure that people don't get in the hospital in the first place that relieves the stress so everything that we're doing right now is really focused on relieving the stress in hospitals including the stress on nurses. Is there any consideration of a financial incentive though or anything that could you know benefit sort of an appreciation of those who are currently working in hospitals and currently dealing with the surge? I think the appreciation from from nurses at least from a personal experience is the fact that we express you know our gratitude to what they're doing and how they're doing it you know we we have tried to relieve pressure for them in all sorts of ways but the fact is you know they have been under enormous stress for the last two years and we are just grateful in what they do. Each institution can help in terms of what's what's going on. Remember that we provided over a hundred million dollars and I don't have the precise number but it's over a hundred million dollars in stabilization relief to hospitals to help them go through this pandemic. I think also you know the fact that they they have to make sure that their their help is is is doing well is one of the main functions that they have to turn to that hospitals have to do as well. So I think from our standpoint and I want to make it clear today you know the doctors and nurses in these hospitals are doing incredible work and we we sort of appreciate it and by the way I want to extend it to everybody in Vermont that is out there on the front lines doing you know from from the police officer to the EMT to everyone that's out there they're doing enormous amounts of work and we should be all grateful that they're doing this for us. Thank you Governor if you wouldn't mind keeping it short given the time but would you mind sharing a favorite anecdote of Secretary Smith and you working together over this period of time and that's my only question. Well there there are many I think I did share and I meant that he's the only person that I can text at 4 30 a.m. in the morning and have him answer sometimes he'll he'll bring me up to speed on things at that hour and it could be any hour of the night but he's always been someone you can count on he's just from from the very beginning I've had back when he was in the Douglas Administration I knew him I was in the legislature at the time and fiery at times and and not unwilling to to go toe-to-toe with anyone if he thought it was necessary but he has just been solid for our administration and and I can't think of anything in particular but there are many we he has a great sense of humor and it's helped us get through this trying and challenging time as well our whole team appreciates him it's a it's a team atmosphere right I mean it's just he's just he's one part of that but but it's all the chemistry that works together and we've had had a great team thus far and we'll continue to build upon that much appreciated and thank you Secretary Smith. Leora, BT Digger. I have just one question I wanted to know if you guys know how many electric procedures have been delayed or canceled lately and how do you have a sense of how that might affect our future ICU and hospital bed needs. Secretary Smith. Leora we have not we have not issued any proclamations or anything to to delay surgeries we're leaving that up on a hospital by hospital basis as we move forward so we we haven't been tracking that number I would suggest that you call the hospitals in particular and ask them Dr. Levine unless you have any other information but we have not been tracking that information that is a decision made at the hospital level. Yeah I just wanted to respond to that Wilson and it kind of has come up in a couple of different ways when talking about surveillance testing broadly as well so you know when you look at we have in the full deck as you know and as those watching may know you know a comparison of every single state on testing on cases on hospitalizations and on deaths and when you look at the case slides really it's been dramatic for quite a while but when you look at that it's really quite dramatic now that some states you know have just a fraction of the amount of testing that we're doing so they're already you know having a pretty limited surveillance of what's going on in their state relative to what Vermont's doing where even a state that's just a couple behind us we're doing about double the amount of testing so that's pretty significant so even if our testing does scale back you know we still have quite a bit of PCR testing that we're doing but the point you know more to the point you know when we put all of those metrics into into a comparison and try to look at them you know it's important to note obviously Vermont's done well on testing throughout the pandemic so we have a good sense at various points in time how we're doing relative to how we were doing previously but many of these other states have really fallen off on testing so you know for example Minnesota has the highest case rate right now but they have a positivity rate about 16 percent so our case rate was a second based on the CDC data but as you know our case positivity rate is about 4.7 percent so those numbers become more challenging to look at as a comparable hospitalizations and fatalities obviously much more comparable and on those metrics we continue to be you know certainly in the lower half if not in the top 10 in terms of hospitalizations and fatalities most often so doing more testing is finding yeah no most certainly yeah most certainly when you and and you know that because you know you look at how much testing we're doing relative to other states but you also know that when we compare hospitalization and fatality numbers that on those metrics we continue to be on the on the right side of the of the rankings all right thank you very much and we'll see you again next Tuesday