 Good morning everyone. On Friday, we recognize our mother's loss to COVID-19 and sadly, since then, we've lost at least two more. Today I want to talk to you about one of them, Mary Pat Brown, after an email from her family. Mary Pat was a mother of six children, Elizabeth, Christopher, Michael, Denise, Matthew, and Mary. Who she raised in Bristol with her husband, and I greatly appreciated hearing from her family who clearly loved their mom a great deal. In the email, Mary Pat's family shared their grief, saying, her loss weighs heavy on us, with the worst part being that we couldn't be with her as she struggled to fight this awful virus. Continuing, our family feels that these deaths need to have names attached to them. Maybe, just maybe, it will spark even one person to do better and try harder to follow guidelines for their loved ones and community. This is what would give our family comfort. So I appreciate the Brown's willingness to share their story, and for putting a name, Mary Pat Brown is a very real consequence of this virus. Because these deaths are not just numbers, they're people who love their families, contributed to their communities, and who are no longer with us. My heart goes out to the Brown family, and the families, friends, and caretakers of all those we've lost. This is a tragic reminder of why we're doing what we're doing, and of why we're continuing to ask for monitors to sacrifice, to slow the spread of the virus, protect the vulnerable, and to keep families like Mary Pat's whole. And I know many of you are doing just that. You stepped up from the beginning, and you made the difficult decisions to avoid getting together with family and friends, staying home instead of traveling, and wearing a mask when around others. So I want to thank you for your help, even when it's hard, or feels unfair, or even when you've disagreed with our approach. I also know there are some who want to do the right thing, but don't quite see the risk in having lunch with a friend, going bowling with people you've known for years, or having family over for dinner. Maybe you think it's safe because they're good about masking, and none of them seem sick, or your friend only goes to work and home so they couldn't possibly have COVID. As Dr. Levine said a few weeks ago, for the amount of virus in our communities right now, even your trusted friends and households are at much greater risk, and may not know they have the virus. That's why we place the restriction on gatherings and required quarantine for all non-essential travel. There's also those who just aren't worried about getting the virus. You may be young and healthy. You can work remotely if you need to, or you just don't think it's a big deal. To those folks I say your actions could hurt others. You never know when you're going to be the nominal that leads to a nursing home outbreak, or the one who pushes an entire school to remote learning. And with enough of these dominoes, we put our healthcare facilities at risk. And the fact is, protecting our family and friends is truly in our hands, and we all have a role to play. So I'm asking you to help by avoiding getting together with people outside your households and not travel this week. If we can get through the rest of this year and widely distribute a vaccine, we'll be able to return to some sense of normalcy very soon. Being smart now means we'll come out of this faster and stronger. Unfortunately, we know there will be some who just won't do it, and we'll get together with multiple households this week. Anticipating this, schools have asked for help in how best to deal with this when kids come back to school. So the Agency of Education will be directing schools to ask students or parents if they were part of multifamily gatherings as part of the daily help check. And if the answer is yes, they'll need to transition to remote learning for 14 days or seven days in a test, just like they had traveled out of state. Again, we understand how difficult this is. But since we know these types of gatherings have been the cause of so many outbreaks, we've got to do all we can to slow this down. We also strongly advise businesses they're considered doing the same by asking employees to quarantine if they aren't adhering to our gathering restrictions. To be clear, this is not meant as a way around the gathering day. This shouldn't be used as an excuse to get together with other households. The more we adhere to this policy, the faster we'll be in lowering the number of cases, and the sooner we'll be able to ease up on these restrictions. I also want to let you know, and the VPA is aware, based on our current data, that unfortunately we'll be postponing the start of school sports, which were set to start November 30th. Like recreational sports, these are paused until further notice, and we'll review it again each week. Again, this is an example of why it's so important to be vigilant and avoid small gatherings. And it's my hope that adults will realize the need to sacrifice in order to give our kids this important time in their life. And most importantly, help keep them in school as much as possible. We spent a lot of time today and over the last few weeks talking about those who aren't following the guidance. So I want to be sure we recognize that many, many more were doing the right things. While we've seen record growth in recent weeks, we still lead the nation in the lowest number of cases and deaths, and that's because of all your efforts. So I know asking you to sacrifice yet again is frustrating, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, and we will get there. The fact is the sacrifice we make today and over the next few weeks will make sure we get to the end faster, stronger, and in a better position than any other state. So thank you for all you've done, and we'll do to get us there. And I'll now turn it over to Commissioner Pichek for our latest modeling data. Good morning everyone. I want to start the update again by just putting into perspective some of the recent case growth that we've seen across the country and in Vermont. This week, the country has passed another grim milestone since our last presentation, passing the 12 million case threshold and continuing to do so at a remarkable speed, adding an additional 1 million cases in just six days. To help put this into perspective about just how quickly cases have been growing across the country, all of the reported cases from the pandemic, 26% of them have been in the month of November on a nationwide basis. Considering this another way nationally we have recorded more cases so far in November than the months of March, April, May, and June combined. Similarly here in Vermont, we've reported over 40% of our total cases so far in the month of November. Again, put it a different way, we've recorded more cases in November than we did March all the way through July of the pandemic. So you get a sense of just how quickly cases have been going up both nationally, but also here at home. You can see on the seven day average that cases continue to trend up where just under 170,000 cases per day on average across the United States. And all of this is happening on the doorstep of the holiday season. So this resurgence really could not come at a less inopportune time. Throughout the pandemic a familiar pattern has developed around major holidays. In the weeks following Memorial Day across states in the south and west, cases rose and as did hospitalizations. A similar story played out in the weeks following 4th of July and Labor Day with travel and gatherings fueling increases broadly across the country. While Vermont was generally spared these previous holiday spikes, recently with colder weather moving us back inside, our state did experience a dramatic increase in cases in the weeks following Halloween. And that continues to impact us today. And now Thanksgiving is a mere two days away, a holiday that unfortunately brings together our two greatest concerns at the moment. Travel and indoor gatherings. You can see based on mobility data from 2019 that a considerable amount of travel did occur during the Thanksgiving weekend last year, where we saw a sharp uptick in visitors over that weekend compared to the relatively quiet weeks that followed foliage season. And that travel was quite extensive. Looking at the next map, we can see that in fact during last year's Thanksgiving weekend, Vermont received visitors from every single state in the country. Over 100,000 people are estimated to have visited Vermont during last Thanksgiving weekend, with a number just slightly smaller of Vermonters visiting other places around the region and around the country. This map shows that distribution of visits both into Vermont and out of Vermont. And you can see there's clearly a lot of visit happening in the northeast, in parts that are continuing to see spikes in the Mid-Atlantic, parts of Florida, parts of Southern California. Again, you can see that the travel was broad and quite extensive. And if we have travel similar to this this year, it certainly would be quite alarming. And we can see why it's so critical that Vermonters follow the public health guidelines and the travel policy and quarantine or stay home. We looked also at a Thanksgiving analysis, trying to determine what might happen if Vermonters don't follow the public health guidelines. What might happen if Vermonters decide to continue to travel, have visitors come from other parts of the country, continue to have gatherings of 10 or more people in their households, and the results are quite alarming and quite scary actually. Look at this analysis, we answered three key questions. How many people will come to Thanksgiving with COVID-19? How many people that come to Thanksgiving would likely spread it to others who are gathering with those families? And then last, how many dinners are likely to occur in Vermont in 2020? Now again, we believe Vermonters, like they always have, will respond to the public health guidelines at a rate much higher than the rest of the country. But unfortunately, national surveys indicate that 38% of individuals are still planning to have holiday gatherings with 10 or more people, including people outside of their household. If we saw numbers similar to that, 38% of Vermonters continuing to have household gatherings of 10 or more people, if we continued to see travel occurring, people not adhering to our guidelines, we would see a significant increase in cases in the weeks following Thanksgiving. In fact, we estimate from both detected and undetected cases, we would see a range of 3,200 to 3,800 new cases resulting simply from Thanksgiving gatherings. And this is on top of normal case growth that would already be occurring. Similarly, those new cases would result in somewhere between 40 and 50 hospitalizations on average. These are certainly numbers that are quite stark and quite disturbing. These numbers would also increase the concerns about community spread. It would allow cases to get into our schools to disrupt learning. It would allow cases to get into our workplaces to disrupt our paychecks. And it would allow cases to get into our long-term care facilities, putting our most vulnerable loved ones at significant risk. Now, again, this is not a projection. This is not an estimate. This is really a worst-case scenario, and we really need Vermonters to respond so that we don't experience anything like the numbers we just mentioned, or even a small percentage of the numbers that we just mentioned, because they would have a significant impact on us during the weeks ahead. We see a case distribution on the next slide that would show what that additional case growth would look like. We would see cases spike over the next two to three weeks, leading into the holiday shopping season, leading into next major religious holidays in December. So again, all the more reason for us to really follow the guidance here at Thanksgiving when we have an opportunity to continue to keep our work, keep following the guidance, and keep our cases at a manageable level. Looking at the regional update, I do want to just provide a couple of other items that are less pessimistic and things that I think Vermonters need to be aware of and focused on. You can see that the regional travel map continues to be red, and the heat map that we update every week continues to show areas of our region that have considerable growth in cases. Unfortunately, one of those areas of growth is right here in Vermont. When you look at the top ten counties by active case counts, you'll see that Washington County is in that top ten. It's higher than places in New York City metro area, higher than places outside of Boston and inside of Boston, higher than any county in New Hampshire or Maine. So certainly, this is something for those that live in and travel to Washington County to be very mindful of just how significant the case growth is in that county when compared to the rest of the region. Similarly, when we look at our Vermont map, we can see that really for the first time we see sustained growth in Washington County and in Orange County. Oftentimes when we do these maps, you see cases move around the state and not necessarily in a sustained manner. But here, like the regional map indicated, there is sustained growth week over week in both Washington and Orange counties. Now, there are some reasons to be optimistic about the numbers that we're seeing. For one, if we skip ahead to the regional update, you'll see that although cases did go up across the region, they went up only about 12%. Last week, for example, cases went up nearly 50%. And if we go to the next slide, you'll see what that case increase looked like week over week over the past four or five weeks or so. The trend continued to go up in terms of the percent of cases growing and now for the first time in weeks, we've seen that growth rate slow down. So again, some reason for optimism. When you go ahead to the next slide, you'll see again, we're keeping close tabs on that 10 to 14 day period after the new mitigation measures were put into place. Now it's very early. We're just approaching that period of time where we would expect to see some results from those mitigation measures. But it is encouraging. We see case counts have stabilized. And today, when we're sort of entering that first 10 day period, they're actually lower than they have been in quite some time. Similarly, looking at our Vermont forecast, you can see that even though it's trending up still, it's not growing as quickly as it was last week. Last week, the expectation was that we would see case growth over the next four weeks of about 50% now down to 41%. So again, certainly another positive trend. But again, with these positive trends happening right before Thanksgiving, all the more important to follow the public health guidance and avoid any sort of Thanksgiving surge here in Vermont. Looking at the hospital forecasts very briefly, we talked about this last week. You can see the historic numbers and then the forecast numbers based on our case growth and anticipated case growth. And we've also added to this two different specific analyses looking at general hospital beds and then ICU beds. So the first one looks at general hospital beds. You can see even with the increase in COVID cases expected, and hopefully it's less than what's expected, we still have plenty of capacity between that green line and the rise in COVID cases. Similarly, looking at the ICU forecast, even though we are expected to see ICU's increase in the next few weeks, still well below that green line threshold in terms of capacity as it stands today. So again, another reason for optimism. We have sufficient hospital capacity at the moment, but all the more reason for us to make sure we maintain some of this, what appears to be positive momentum going into the holiday season. Just very briefly on restart, we've talked about a number of these items so far in the presentation, but we continue to watch our growth rate closely. We continue to watch our positivity rate closely as well. Waiting to see signs that both the positivity rate and the growth rates are starting to trend back down. Again, during that 10 to 14 day period, following those intervention measures, so that's something we'll certainly be looking at this week and reporting on next week. And just to go through some quick updates about K through 12, higher ed, and then long-term care facilities as well. You'll see that across the region, cases in K through 12 have continued to go up, although again, Vermont markedly less than the rest of Northern New England, adding 36 cases this week with a total of 110. Compare that to the 71 cases added in New Hampshire, bringing its total to 574, and the 20 cases added in Maine, bringing their total to 313. Similarly with higher ed, we see that Vermont added 54 cases, like Maine with 60 and like New Hampshire with 122. The trends in college campuses have reflected the trends in communities, not just in Vermont, but across the country. As community numbers have gone up, there have been numbers in college campuses, both here at home and across the region. So again, another important reason as many students are traveling home for Thanksgiving for them to quarantine and follow the public health guidelines, so not to spread cases when they return home. And then last, this is a new update that we're providing this week, but this is an update on cases in long-term care facilities. You can see that there are six active outbreaks that we are reporting on, and you can see the case number there, totaling 100 cases in those facilities. So at this time, I'll turn it over to Dr. Levine. Thank you. Just to begin with a few extra numbers. We reported 85 cases of COVID-19 yesterday, and are reporting another 49 today. There are 22 Vermonters hospitalized, five in the ICU, and unfortunately we are now at 64 days. In terms of total numbers of school situations, which means cases of concern, not outbreaks, there are 43 we are currently following. Before I get into my general comments, I wanted to spend a few moments about this kind of data and what's going on with hospitals. You may have noticed that while we've had an increase in hospitalizations, like the rest of the country, we've had very few in the ICU and very rare patients actually on a ventilator. I can help make some sense of this for you. Really, this is testimony to the healthcare profession's increased experience in caring for ICU patients and general patients with COVID-19, as well as advances in our medical knowledge. With one exception, this also relates to non-medication interventions. These kind of interventions include prone positioning, which helps ventilate and expand the lungs more effectively in recognition of the fact that so much of our lung capacity is actually towards our backs. In addition, the use of high-flow, humidified, pressurized oxygen through the nose or by devices like CPAP masks have been critical to success. Turns out, humidity is an enemy to the virus. And finally, the use of the steroid medication dexamethasone for patients with an oxygen saturation below 94% on room air is clearly preventing patients from requiring ventilators and probably saving lives. There are new developments around medications for patients both in the hospital and prior to possible hospitalization. The major antiviral drug that has been in use for hospitalized patients has been remdesivir. Four days ago, the World Health Organization updated its guideline and based upon the absence of better evidence for efficacy of this medication suggested against using it regardless of disease severity. They felt there was no indication or evidence for impact on mortality or need for mechanical ventilation or time to improvement. Practitioners in Vermont are now using this information and reevaluating their use of that drug. And the monoclonal antibody, BAMlanivimab, which just received emergency use authorization from the FDA and is being shipped to states like Vermont by the federal government, unfortunately received unfavorable reviews from both the National Institutes of Health and the Infectious Disease Society of America. The NIH felt that there was insufficient data to recommend for or against the use of this drug, which was thought indicated for preventing outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19 from needing hospitalization and that it should only be used in a research trial. The Infectious Disease Society of America also suggested against routine use of this drug because of the low certainty of evidence at this time. Though left as an option, use in a shared decision making fashion, weighing the uncertain benefits and the risk for adverse events. So we've just heard from Commissioner Pichak that the surgeon cases we're seeing around the country and here in Vermont are probably, but it's certainly not going to end soon. But that does not mean that these rising number of cases are something that we just have to get used to. We don't throw up our hands and let the virus run rampant, overwhelming hospitals, threatening our lives and those of Vermonters who are most vulnerable. We are better than that. And our track record for March until now is proof of that in a health and a healthcare system standpoint. And in the way we've been able to live our lives in the midst of this pandemic. But as Dr. Fauci told us, this is not the time to let our guard down and be complacent. I know that what we are telling Vermonters to do right now to give up spending time with friends and with family members is difficult. And I also know how done we are with this pandemic. But the fact is Thanksgiving could make things a lot worse for us here in Vermont. The virus doesn't operate any differently just because we want to keep up traditions. As soon as we travel, get together with friends, let down our guard, we actually do risk reopening the floodgates even wider at a time when we really need to keep them closed. So if you want to keep working for your kids to stay in school and prevent more people from potentially dying from COVID-19, please follow the governor's orders. Don't get together with anyone outside your household and limit any travel that's not essential. And how do we know the strategy will work? Because our data tells this story well and our prior success tells us we have the tools to suppress this virus across all communities in Vermont. And if you do gather with another household, you should quarantine. This helps prevent the spread of COVID-19 before a person knows they're sick or if they are infected with the virus and don't have any symptoms, which might happen as much as 40% of the time and leads to the insidious spread of infection, sometimes to those who can least afford to have it. Quarantine means staying home and away from other people for 14 days. Do not go to school, do not go to work, do not go out to do errands or recreation, other than perhaps a walk alone in the woods. We advise you to get tested as soon as possible after the gathering and then again on day seven or later. If you continue to have no symptoms, you may end quarantine early This will help give Vermonters greater confidence that they can go to work and send children to school and childcare safely. College students are also returning home to Vermont now, so I remind parents that they too need to quarantine and should also get tested. I've heard people say that Thanksgiving is canceled, but I hope Vermonters don't see it that way. They don't look different like everything else has this year, but I believe we can be creative once again to find the joy in a smaller celebration at home within our own households. We can still make Thanksgiving special, learn to cook a new dish or teach someone else how to do it. One of our friends has decided not to travel out of state and instead will be coaching her friends by zoom in the art of gravy preparation for the Vermont crust recipe. Some may enjoy not having to cook. Think of everyone you would normally look forward to seeing and give them a call or find a way to help someone else in need. And on that note, I'd like to close this portion of my comments on the topic of gratitude. 2020 has been a challenging year for everyone and some may feel less grateful due to job loss and the fact that we can consider this holiday season and consider sharing with others such as via donations to local food shelves which seem to be very active still during the pandemic. But for everyone, be thankful for what you can. Gratitude can help you feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve your health, deal with adversity and build strong relationships. The approach shows a correlation between expressing gratitude and having a more optimistic approach. In the words of the sage philosopher Willie Nelson who does a fantastic rendition of Moon Night in Vermont by the way when I started counting my blessings my whole life turned around and maybe think about next Thanksgiving when we will look back on this year knowing we have done the right thing. I'll turn it back to the governor now. We'll now put it up to questions. 37, we have 26 in the queue. Please remember try to keep it to one or two questions and if you do have questions about data needs you can bring those to me separately after the press conference. We'll start in the room with Calvin. Thanks Governor. Assuming the 3,800 cases were scenario from Thanksgiving happens what other tools you have in your toolbox or anything like that to try to curb some of these cases. Yeah I'm very hopeful the measures we're putting into place will have a positive effect and I think we're possibly seeing a little bit of that as you might recall it was two to three weeks ago when we had Halloween so the number of cases has dropped a little bit we'll see if this is a trend or not so again I'm hopeful but we have a lot of other tools at our disposal we utilize them in the beginning of the pandemic and the crisis we don't want to go there we don't want to close down any more the economy than we have but certainly there are other approaches that we could take if necessary but again we learned a lot since day one and we'll do whatever we can to effectively put a stop to this but some of this as we've seen in the last few weeks it really is about the data and the science is showing us it's about social gatherings it's not about work it's not about school it's not about retail operations it's about getting together within your neighborhoods and with your friends at recreation events and so forth that's what's driving the uptick right now and so if we can prevent that from happening and gathering and also potentially employers doing the same I guess how confident are you that people will tell the truth? Yeah, again I'm just hopeful that they will for the good of everyone because as sooner we can put a stop to this the faster we can get out of it and so I would ask everyone to be truthful and in anticipation of that question I know it's difficult none of us wants to go through what we're going through right now but if we do if we make these sacrifices now we can get through the hump we can get over the hump into the next year when the vaccine will be there we've seen some promising news with the vaccines and now there's a third that is encouraging so I believe after the first of the year we'll start seeing a real ramp up and really countering it and going on offense instead of playing defense we'll be going on offense after the first of the year I'll ask you for Dr. Lee the governor just brought it up but the encouraging news about a new vaccine this week now there are three from three of the largest drug manufacturers in the world curious what your takeaways are this is very encouraging news we have the Pfizer the Moderna and now the AstraZeneca several different variations on the theme of vaccine because they each have their own unique properties it's really challenging to answer your question about preferentially which one for a vermona versus another from the standpoint of the data because frankly the data hasn't been released for us for measures of efficacy and if any adverse events were more frequent than one versus another my understanding to this point is adverse events are fairly very low percentage in them which is very encouraging one thing that raises one above another if they're all on equal footing would be how many shots one has to get because we expect human nature some people will forget the second shot or for some reason won't want to do that so a vaccine that had only one would be nice the other thing is the storage temperature and as we know the first one the Pfizer requires the ultra cold very specialized freezers whereas the last one the AstraZeneca does not so those could be considerations we already have the freezer capacity and as Commissioner Shirling said a couple of press conferences ago we received even more to make sure that that won't be an issue so I'm encouraged starting with Ethan from the Burlington Free Press good morning there was a recent near times article yesterday talking to questions state orders around limiting the site of some national epidemiologists who were claiming that there was a little evidence to substantiate that primary source for the types of outbreaks but I know we just got to see today's model if you're curious if you yourself come to Scott or Dr. Levine or Commissioner to say about the iPhone if you've gotten a chance to read it what were your responses again I will refer to Dr. Levine but from my perspective I did read the article I think in some respects it was unfair because they really weren't on the ground here in Vermont what works in New York City or what works in California doesn't necessarily work here and vice versa we relied heavily on the data I can tell you from the contact tracing we did it all points to social gathering the data was derived from a social gathering the outbreaks we're seeing in Washington County in particular will point to that so in some of the the analogies they were using I remember one in particular they said that it was counterintuitive that you could have nine friends and go to a restaurant for dinner or lunch but you couldn't have them to go to a restaurant first of all we were at 50% capacity in our restaurants secondly you can only gather you can only go to a restaurant within your immediate household you can't have nine year friends and go to a restaurant so I thought it was a bit unfair in many respects and didn't really dig into what we do here in Vermont and I just want to go back to the last part we've done better than most other states and we've been highlighted because of that and I would say what we're doing today I believe will be beneficial for us especially over the next couple of months and again we rely on the data and the science and get together as a group with all the experts and make decisions based on what we're seeing on the ground in Vermont to see what we're going through and why we're doing what we're doing because I think it was based specifically on the science and the data I can only echo what the governor said there may be states where actually the data does not support mass gatherings being a time culprit in their surge in cases but you only have to look to events like the motorcycle rally at Sturgis to know that there was a lot of trouble and then you go to Maine and look at a church gathering and in an unmasked state and know that that can cause a lot of trouble our Vermont data clearly points us to the strategic priorities and moves that we've made specifically looking at travel and looking at not mass gatherings but even small gatherings and as the governor said the county data supports that the most the other part of the article unfortunately was it didn't actually acknowledge the good work Vermonters have done and the vast experience we've had since March to account for our successes and kind of picked on the issue of taking a walk with a friend which as you heard at the last press conference is certainly acceptable in Vermont at this point in time that people gathering together not socially distance not wearing masks and feeling that the comfort of the outdoors makes that all possible in getting together in a large group from multiple households for physical activity outside in that way so I can accept the fact they couldn't nuance everything in the article when they're trying to cover numerous states but I think we've answered my last question towards Secretary French I'm curious is the issue that concerns that that we might hide information what they've been gathering to avoid having to evolve or raise up just what Governor Scott said about the state allowing schools not to rationally that they gather with other households I think it's a concern I'm going to be issued as far as the rest of the issue certainly we're hoping everyone will be forthcoming with their plans and our common goal here is to sustain the virus so hopefully our new guidance will be just for them navigating those issues thank you Mike Donahue, the Islander Thanks Rebecca Governor some people said they were I forgot to hear about the COVID-19 in New York and Rebecca has been asking your reaction to that award but that's a spirit of thanksgiving and maybe time to publicly offer thanks for your personal leadership and we're monitoring COVID-19 yes some of your state orders may have been unpopular and you also understand the reporters service watchdogs not laptop and all questions that's probably about 180 hours as journalists we talk and this is really unprecedented transparency and really appreciate it many of the questions come from readers and listeners across the state with concerns that you answer them all and we want the state to do in part to you so I'm going to pass some questions today you said my wife and I had a wonderful peaceful thanksgiving well thank you Mike and likewise we wish you and all the media and all Vermonters very safe and peaceful Thanksgiving holiday and remember what's really important to each and every one of us but I will go back and it's not me it's us as a state as a team as Vermonters we've done a lot of things right here to the guidance use our common sense our ingenuity and so forth to get us through this we're going to need to dig deep and get a little bit more of that and use a little bit more of that over the next few months but I'm confident confident we'll get through this and I'm so blessed myself to be surrounded by such a competent team such a talented team across the board and the sacrifices many are going to make on Thanksgiving Day because this as Dr. Levine has said the virus doesn't know that we're having a holiday so there are going to be numerous people in the health department the epi team and testers National Guard Public Safety and many many others who are going to be working on that day just like a normal day but think about the sacrifices that they're making for us so again thank you very much Mike for the accolades but it really is a team thanks to Team Vermont at the Caledonian Record Good morning, thank you I presume this is for Dr. Levine eight cases and Patrick County is very notable especially given the decreasing numbers across the rest of the states in today's report are you going on with that? Yes, thanks for that question the facts around those eight cases will all be being determined today so I can't give you the results of that yet because those test results come in overnight and then we connect with them all so I can tell you that a lot of the increased activity in Essex County is along the border and there are schools there are employers that people from New Hampshire come over to Vermont and vice versa we do know that there's a very high concentration of COVID in that part of New Hampshire as well so I can only make some speculation that it's all related to the same process but I don't have any new new information on the eight cases you mentioned you continue though to watch both Orleans and Essex County as places that we didn't traditionally see in our reporting and we're seeing them with more frequency now so that's just my caution to people to realize that you can be very very very rural and it has no protection against the virus and that's not just the Vermont phenomenon that's a nationwide phenomenon you you've been warning about the possibility of ignoring New Hampshire especially cases and the virus infiltrating through cross-border travel are your contact tracers finding examples of people that are ignoring the ignoring the cross-border travel ban or are these helping out as a result of essential travel that's just a natural course of events in that corner of the state? Yeah I think almost all of those initial cases were related to essential travel if you will but again it's a little hard to know if it was essential travel and still use of the guidance with regard to masking and with regard to physical distancing because it really is a package everybody has to abide by all of those pieces of guidance to protect themselves and others Thank you and then one other quick question any initial takeaways from the school surveillance testing that was conducted last week are all the results back at this point and do you or have a total number of positives that were a result of the test? Yeah so I assume by now they weren't actually by yesterday so we were tallying them up I was on the air yesterday and mentioned that we thought that the positivity rate would be well below 0.5% possibly in the 0.25% range so we're talking you know less than a couple dozen cases out of nine plus thousand people but I don't have the precise number of cases and the precise number of tests yet so I can't give you those numbers with certainty at this point but there's going to be a very small number which is reassuring and gratifying and I think speaks if nothing else to the dedication of school staff and teachers who want to keep their schools open and want to keep their kids in as much in person education as possible Okay thank you for your time Craig the County Courier Good morning Governor I share my sentiments but I'm going to pick up this work here and hopefully ask a couple targeting questions for you I'd like to start by trying to get an answer that couldn't really be answered much on Friday what does the state really have for enforcement if somebody reduces to quarantine and is especially positive that question was e-mailed to your staff forwarded to the health department still not returned and Governor now that you've had the weekend to mow that over will you be adding that to your your executive order? Yeah you know the executive order gives a broad reach of powers in some respect Craig so there's a lot of tools in the toolbox that I could use I've chosen I think I've said this a number of times I've chosen not to use those tools except in egregious cases I mean take for example the situation in Rutland with the gym we ended up the Attorney General was involved they ended up going to court they ended up being resolved in some capacity but that was the step we decided to take because someone decided to ignore the executive order but so the powers are immense but again I've chosen to use this wisely and not to impose fines not to impose any other sanctions so to speak at this point in time because I think what we're doing is working I think people are adhering the vast majority of Vermonters are doing the right thing and so we don't want to use a broad brush we don't want to use the public safety to go after people who aren't doing the right thing because I'm not sure that it's going to gain us all that much so again I just understand that these powers are are broad and this is like a law in some respects when impose something like this an emergency executive order but again we think what we're doing is working so my misunderstanding I was under the understatement that the executive order does not have any enforcement power for those who have tested positive and refused to quarantine if I misunderstand you when you said that yeah I think we could impose many many sanctions against those folks that don't choose to follow the executive order because again the powers are immense but we've chosen not to go that route but we could okay and I'll leave you with one more question here I noticed on Interstate 89 there are new mental signs at incremental exits advising them to travel ban you must quarantine etc knowing that these are fairly permanent mental signs not electronic signs but you know as far as time frame that hasn't been shared in general public because your executive order goes much too much so don't take the mental signs as some sort of sign so to speak for the future it's just from a practical standpoint the electronic signs are solar powered during the winter the extent of the power is not as broad as in the summer I don't get as much sunlight and again the cold weather cuts down on the amount of power that's necessary to light up the signs so we just thought it was much more practical to make up these signs so we could do it quickly and put them up so we got them up and running within a week or two period so we could very easily take them down within a week or two period so this is just it was just a practical much more efficient and cost effective than the movable solar operated electronic signs great we're going to move to Wilson thank you governor on the holiday yeah thank you great Wilson at the Associated Press good morning everybody I'm not coming up with the right words to describe it but while I certainly understand the goal of what you're trying to accomplish with that doesn't that put the state and the schools I suppose in the position of getting kids to tattle on their parents and that seems to have to me anyway some pretty negative connotations that go with that and I was wondering if that's what you're trying to come up with yeah again I'm going to refer to Secretary French but from my standpoint this is again fair warning to those of you who are planning to have gatherings where you're having from outside your household at your homes for Thanksgiving and if you don't want your kids to have to transition to remote learning for us and quarantine maybe ought to make other plans and that's the message right now in terms of we're asking people to tell the truth to protect others I don't think it's tattling on anyone and I'm not sure that it's all about the kids the parents play a role in this as well so Secretary French can you add to this yes Governor it is challenging for school districts what we did with our guidance was we were inside the daily health check which is currently something that parents complete so parents will basically be testing to this along with their travel and symptoms of their students and so forth but I think that's a good place to put it and I know Dr. Levita and I were on for Monkfish and her family's well in advance and I give them the before coming so I think she remarked it's all about trust and schools operate on trust with their parents and their students and we're hopeful this guidance will give them some additional tools to help everyone to either write things and keep schools safe okay great thank you very much Sean the Chester Telegraph thank you two very quick questions testing site that we're in on last week and second was the administration was putting together as you take grant program was any thought given to volunteer ambulance rescue fire workers who risk COVID exposure but don't qualify as employees well yes the first one with maybe Secretary Smith are you on the line can you give an update on the testing I sure can Governor as you know we rolled out five sites last week we're rolling out additional sites this week I'll get an update to the Chester newspaper where those sites are I don't have them sitting in front of me and then we're on track to roll out the total 14 sites by the end of the month so we are on track to do that right now and answer to your second question I think I know the answer but I'm going to ask Mr. Pichek to answer that to make sure he was the one that his agency headed that up so Mr. Pichek thank you Governor and I hope we give the same answer but the answer your question Sean is that the program was designed primarily by the legislature we administered the program but we didn't have the legislature it was something we volunteered to do and we were happy to do it and it was provided to us my own mother volunteers at a soup kitchen I know she was quite disappointed that she didn't get any of the Azure pay as well so I think it was just one of these scenarios where not every scenario could be contemplated and it had to be focused on those that were actually employees earning pay and so I think it was a great opportunity I've been thinking about this Thanksgiving period I've been thinking about this Thanksgiving period and we know from the ice rink outbreak and from Halloween parties that those are caused really by people who did not follow the guidelines I was also thinking about President Reagan when you're asking people to do the right thing and then when you find that a case has developed because they did is there something in the middle that the state could do to encourage more strongly that the people do the right thing rather than Governor I appreciate you feeling people's higher angels but there are issues with that yet Tom I'm not naive I understand that there and I said that in my remarks that I understand some people are not going to do the right thing and are going to continue to gather and we gave all kinds of warning and guidance before Halloween and then we saw that there were a number of Halloween parties but we need to you know I don't want to get caught up in trying to look back only to learn from what we experienced and to try and guide in the future so the same will be here because it will be obviously even if we continue to trend downwards which I'm hopeful that we're doing because Halloween was three weeks in the past hopefully we'll be trending downward it will be ten days or two weeks before we are able to see whether we were everyone complied or the most people complied with our request not to gather so we'll see the spike if there is one about a week ten days two weeks from now so again I'm not sure what we do to go backwards to try and write the wrong that already happened but you can only look forward and do the best we can and really reach out and I'm counting on the media to send this message I'm hopeful that people who are listening to this today will send the message I hope that those that heard the message about schools and the questions that are going to be asked of you that may want to keep their kids in school for their own benefit will change plans and that's our message for today I really think about is it worth to have a big household gathering when you may have to keep your kids home for the next week or two or you yourself might stay home or the risk associated with that again I think it's somewhere in between 25 and 50% could be in some areas of Vermont if you had a household gathering in Washington County today or on Thursday the risk of you becoming positive are somewhere between 25 and 50% I believe and that should be enough of it to turn I would think I guess we'll see John, BPR Thank you this is sort of a question about policing personal behavior I've been hearing some pushback from local law enforcement about what they're being asked to do especially with regard to checking on businesses for these health and safety assessments and then secondly they get fed these potent time complaints local agencies funneled these through the state portal and often they're about three or four people getting together or Joe's not wearing a mask and this is coming at a time when local agencies are in fact trying to restrict their interactions with the public due to the pandemic so I'm hoping maybe Commissioner Scherling could clarify what exactly is being asked of local law enforcement to do in terms of enforcing the governor's executive order and these COVID restrictions Commissioner Scherling would you like to try and answer that certainly thanks for the question so two paths here one is relative to the health and safety assessment those have been put out to local agencies as options if they want to participate they're willing to do so if not state assets are working on that we've done just about a thousand of those so far and the numbers of notable compliance still haven't risen above eleven total so again large scale compliance we have a number of local agencies that aren't participating relative to what's coming through the portal and going out the law enforcement agencies those are not the point in time those may be passed along for informational purposes but the only things that are going out for potential again health and safety and educational outreach are the ones that are not those leading moments they're really more business compliance kinds of things and again not large numbers but a few things here and there that are worthy of educational follow up and have there been you know enforcement actions prosecutions, fines, citations as a result of these no again as the governor as spread earlier the primary mechanism remains education and that has worked incredibly well now for nine months there are a few there are a few folks there are a little more involved on non-compliance but again that number is a tiny handful compared to the thousands of business individuals who are doing their best to ensure that they do themselves their friends and family and their customers great thank you Pat WCIS Hi this is Dr. Levine I had a viewer ask a question that I could really find a good answer for so I'll throw it to you as we prepare for the first vaccine to be available any sense of how long it takes between the time the person gets the COVID-19 vaccine is a matter of like hour days or week yeah thanks Kat it's a matter of weeks so it doesn't happen overnight but I think the information we get from the trials themselves where they're obviously these are participants in research so they're probably having assessment of their anybody status done over periods of time that would give us a much better picture of what we're doing so we're going to go through one or two trials before these phase three trials some of that information was available I'm just not aware of it being any faster than a few weeks but to qualify to get to the phase three trials they did have to actually look at antibodies being formed in the subjects who got the vaccine and so then for the two-dose shots based on what we know would they be partially protected with just one of the shots or not protected at all they would probably be partially protected we see that with some of the vaccine experience we've had over you know now decades and decades not optimal to only get one shot not a guarantee you'll have any kind of protection that's meaningful but possibly partial but it's really the ones that are being found that require two shots it's because the earlier trials I think demonstrated that that's what's necessary to get a sustained antibody response great thank you Erin VT Digger go ahead Erin I was wondering if there has been hi hi I was wondering if there have been any updates on state meetings with towns and local officials in terms of like what you've heard that local towns need from state and what if the state is signing any kind of students or programs or additional support for places ever experiencing outbreaks right now we did have some meetings with some local communities in Washington County I know Secretary Smith maybe Commissioner Shirling was involved in that might ask them if there's anything in terms of the question yes Governor we met with local officials both in Washington County and Orange County and talked about how we can communicate a message to both of those counties through local trusted local officials so we really spent some time talking with them asking them what they needed provided them with information to listen to them on some of the steps that they were taking like closing some of their town halls are going remote with some of their town halls and others as you know we at Washington County as Commissioner Pete has talked about is one of the most intense and hardest areas here in Vermont so we spent a lot of time with them in Washington County we certainly would be amenable to meeting with other local officials if they ask you know we have regular meetings with the city of Burlington for example we have regular meetings with various entities on a regular basis whether it's colleges whether it's healthcare organizations and as I said with local and Orange County so we would be amenable to having those same discussions in any county that felt that they needed some sort of assistance in what is going on in the transmittal of information to their citizens Erin we also go ahead Mike sorry about that Governor I would just add there is a weekly call to share information taking requests for any kind of assistance that they may need or information that needs to flow and I was going to add as well we have the league of cities and towns who have an open line of communication with us as well as the mayor's coalition as well as the 180 legislators that are shy about reaching out to us if there's a problem in their community there's all kinds of approaches that were taken as well as this forum today so we hope we're staying in touch with communities across Vermont but if anyone has a question please let us know I mean if there's anything we can do we want to help in any way we can we can't solve all the problems but again we'll give it a try Governor I also was shot out to the Vermont league of cities and towns both commissioner Levy and myself meet with local officials and convey information to local officials in Orange and Washington County okay thank you I also wanted to just say that I appreciate the new nursing home data that I asked for let's be appearing in the following reports so thanks for the person who pulled it together thank you Aaron that's all Stewart NBC 5 thanks Rebecca Governor a brand new U.S. candidate task force has just started work on recommendations for how the northern border will eventually reopen there are a couple of former governors to former premiers or Canadian ministers on it the key question seems to be how to make sure that there's public confidence whether health screening should be incorporated into the usual you know inspection process at the border what would your team like to see and have you had any communication with Quebec we are always speaking with Quebec we try and keep an open line of communication with them obviously being very important to us sharing a border largest trading partner look forward to them coming back into Vermont and us going back into Quebec and Canada but at this point in time from my perspective what we've been planning we use the travel map and the modeling over the last number of months and I think that's been beneficial for us here as a region within the states so I would like for us to look outward and we've started to do that in communities throughout Quebec to be sure that we're using that same approach because it works here in the states as a region and I believe that it would work for us in Canada as well so just you know I think they have an interest obviously in keeping their province protected and we have an interest in keeping our state protected as well and I think it's a common interest with both of us so I think we'll arrive at something but I haven't been part of nor do I know the composition of the group you're speaking to okay speaking of communication have you had any regarding a potential Sanders cabinet appointment no thank you Joe the Barton Chronicle I think this is for Dr. Levy and given the fact that you've been taking part of the phase three trials of the AstraZeneca vaccine would that eventually be approved the fact that you and the Department of Health working with University would have more insight into the qualities of the vaccine and how it might be used in the state than you would for other vaccines I think that's a really good question Joe thank you for that I think the way these vaccine trials work these are tens of thousands of participants who are enrolled into the studies and the UVM component will be about a small part of that the good news is the UVM component is going to probably reflect the Vermont demographic a little better and that will mean it is going to be a little bit better than some of the other sites might be contributing to the study which will give us a little bit of insight but from a statistical standpoint the numbers of patients participants in the study here may not give us as much insight as you'd want because it just won't be a robust enough number it'll be a significant number contributed to the study just not a robust enough number of statistical analysis on it also probably won't mean we have any greater ability to access that vaccine just because we were a site because this is as you know all being done on a federal basis and we won't have any advantage in that one other question this I think for commissioner Harrington looking at the state unemployment whereas it appears to me at least as many as nearly 10,000 people could drop off the unemployment rolls due to the the ending of the CARES Act extensions of unemployment that's about half the people who are currently receiving benefits is there any plan at all additional assistance using state money? I'll answer part of that maybe commissioner Harrington can add to it but we've been as we've spoken about in previous press conferences I'm very concerned about this and we've reached out to the secretary of labor as well as our congressional delegation we're still continuing to do that outreach as you stated this would have a detrimental effect on those who still need unemployment assistance so to answer the second part of the question we don't have the resources we're talking tens of millions of dollars every single week that we don't have we can't dip into the trust fund the unemployment trust fund to use what we have for this purpose and we don't have the resources to do this either the secretary of labor or congress there are many other states who fall in the same situation they're facing the same dilemma that we are so we are working with the other governors as well as our congressional delegation and others in the US congress to do something about this because again this will have a detrimental effect on individuals but governor I think you hit on all the major points that I simply had that unfortunately I think our biggest concern is that number is probably going to be a lot higher it should all the programs that are expected to end in the coming weeks actually do and that could also include a tripping off or an ending of our extended benefits program as well as the other CARES Act program known as PUA or pandemic unemployment assistance so when you add all those factors up and recognize that people are moving through the traditionally wide system they're eventually coming upon those programs should those programs end it will have a much larger impact on this filing population as well as any new filers that come in the door are actively monitoring this situation to give some context if we took the average weekly benefit amount and the number of people who are filing right now we are looking at about $10 million each week in benefits that are being paid out and if you were to subsidize a state-funded extended benefits program they're probably looking at anywhere from $150 to $200 million for a 13 week program so again certainly without outside of our reach at the state and that's why it's so important that members of the federal level act as quickly as possible and Joe it's really important for Congress after they get back from their holiday break to take action make the best deal they can come together and do what's right for the people and it may not be everything they want but just as a stopgap measure there are a number of initiatives they should be working on right now to help us the states and the people in our constituents the people the citizens of our states help them out that's what they're there for so I'm pleading with them to get back to work Governor I would just add to maybe the right opportunity to say that well we haven't formally turned back on that requirement that shouldn't dissuade anybody from actively looking for re-employment opportunities you know UI has always been a finite amount of week it's just a question of how many weeks and really is meant as a bridge or a stopgap between employment opportunities and so people who are on employment right now are physically able to be looking for work and accepting work there can be a research for that a resource for that we're the labor department not the unemployment department so we can help with that so if anyone out there wants to work can work please reach out to us to go to our job link page and see what's there and what's available Lisa the valley reporter Hello we've got some questions from the household guidelines are inkeepers considered a household and thereby prevented from posting any guests and then secondarily if they are allowed to accept guests can they accept multiple individual reservations and still leave being known gathering a household guidance since each individual reservation could represent a separate household in a separate room Yeah secretary Carly Hi there can you hear me Yes Okay great we are not considered we don't have to worry about the needs separate households this is what they do this is what they offer as their employment people that come and stay in there they have their own rooms and their own bathrooms they can rent rooms to different households and those scenarios again they shouldn't be pulling them together to dying close together but set up just like a restaurant seated at different tables properly saved before you for restaurant guidelines I think I might have missed the third question in there Oh there was another Oh sorry each individual reservation represents a separate household and I think you answered Yes I have a question for thank you very much secretary Carly a quick question for secretary Smith will there be increased testing for directors Thanksgiving for returning college students a reader notes that there's very little available on the department of health website for November 30th and afterwards Yeah you'll see thank you for the question you'll see fairly significant increase in the testing capabilities I just want to make sure that people understand what we're talking about with testing we have the new testing that's coming up online and that is these on-demand testing seven days a week with multiple hours including evening hours plus we still have the pop-up testing that's going on when we see hotspots around the state that everybody is used to the pop-up registration will be coming online for those new testing and I want to talk about that a little bit because I had an earlier question and it was a great question last week we opened up what we call on-demand testing for Vermonters to come on on-demand seven days a week in Middlebury, Waterbury, Rutland, Brattleboro and Burlington this week we've opened up additional sites in Berlin, Northfield, Stratton, Newport, St. Johnsbury, Fairleigh and Bennington and then next week we'll be opening up sites in Springfield, Morrisville, White River Junction and Franklin County and we're finalizing the site in Franklin County so there will be there should be sufficient testing as Dr. Levine talked about and as Mike Pichek talked about I mean we tested over 41,000 people last seven days with a rolling average of over 1,000 so there's a lot of testing going on above and beyond what is the normal college testing that will cut away and then we'll have all these additional testing sites I've been running. Thank you very much. And Lisa you were referring to just to make sure everyone's clear referring to college students for Mott kids returning back home yeah. Alright, thanks. Alright, Guy Page Governor Scott or Mr. Pichek last year over Thanksgiving the World Cup in Killington alone to 36,500 attendees many from out of state that won't be happening this year so is it really accurate to use 2019 Thanksgiving visitation numbers to project and spike in 2020 new cases hospitalizations death yeah, thanks for the question Guy so the mobility data about 2019 was simply for illustrative purposes to look at the type the amount of travel that occurred during the Thanksgiving weekend we said it was over 100,000 people we think maybe it was more like 125,000 people so certainly that event could have contributed to a lot but still quite a significant number separate from that for the Thanksgiving analysis we simply looked at continuing to have a holiday dinner with guests of 10 or more and then made some reasonable estimates about the percent of those visitors that would be out of state so there are two different analyses so the 2019 was not the basis for that Thanksgiving analysis Okay, thank you Tim, Vermont Business Magazine Hi, Governor I noticed that several restaurants including Halberd and Burlington have decided to advance operation definitely is the 75 million just not just in New South Carolina just not enough and what do you say to the small especially in the hospitality industry that even with this extra money that you're providing just not going to be enough yeah, it definitely is not enough and I think we've talked about that over the last month or so but it is a stopgap measure of what we had available to inject and to help some of these businesses survive and I think that that's what we're seeing some are making the decision that it's just not worth staying open at this point in time I'm taking from some of their comments that this is just a pause that they are coming they're going to be reopening at some point in time so we'll see some action from Congress to provide more stimulus money so that we can put in the pockets of those who are in desperate need and we're going to see this you know a bit of an uptick I believe over the next couple of months as we get over the hump and so the hospitality sector alone has a need of five or six hundred million dollars and we just don't have the resources to provide them assistance at this point in time but again I'm hopeful that Congress will take action I believe they will but we'll see what the program looks like once they get back into into session and it sounded like there's a little bit of a complaint because of the at least it was mentioned about the single households going to restaurants that wasn't working for them any comment on that part of it we're just going back to you know what's driving the number of cases increasing and it's being different households gathering together so we wanted to be sure that we're doing all we can and providing again for some to utilize the restaurants within their household within their family and going to a restaurant we're not seeing that there's a there's the amount of the spread of the virus to put forward to get us through this it's not ideal obviously the water very roundabout I think my first question is for Secretary French go ahead it's about the the guidance that you give about the questionnaire that the students will be asked when they return after Thanksgiving I was looking on the website I don't see it close again I'm wondering if that will be posted I'm wondering if you ask school districts to communicate that to families before Thanksgiving break I mean most schools the last day the school is in session before Thanksgiving holiday and as a parent of a middle schooler I don't participate at all in the survey that my daughter receives every day when she goes to school the middle school kids answer those questions independently after they've been dropped off etc I'm just wondering like what is that that this is going to be part of the screening when their kids return to school next week yes thanks for the question yes the guy should be up it's not we just send a copy out to you did go out late yesterday afternoon and I have a peer question districts are in the process between the kids and the families right now and you're correct some districts particularly with older students we see the students themselves completing the health check and parents to that particularly with the other students but it is I think you know fair question about the urgency relative to the executive order which came out in front of my communications with the school districts I'm also saying that this is likely the likely disposition will be in through this next several weeks and possibly including the winter holiday in December so to take everyone needs to settle in a bit that soon this will be sort of the standard going forward in several weeks I have a second question for Dr. Levine sure on Friday from a digger had a small story about cases at UVM Medical Center where staff had tested positive they were looking at a recent improvement it noted that to date this March there had been 79 positive cases among staff at UVM Medical Center I know that number as of yesterday there had been 98 cases full disclosure I live with a health care worker the fact right now that the hospital is not testing or having their doctors the attending physicians the resident, the nurses the clinical staff those people who are on the front lines are not getting tested regularly unless they experience symptoms the only people getting tested with any regularity and so I'm wondering to me that seems like a big hole in the system although it would need to have to be a regular thing in order for that to be meaningful do you see it as being a priority where health care staff especially given the service that we're seeing in cases right now start having some testing work at several cases yes so first of all there have been cases in health care workers across the state and they are in the front lines and they truly get exposed in other ways but I do think that if you look at them as a percentage of total health care workers it's a very small number still which is also testimony to how safe they try to keep themselves with the use of personal protective equipment the reality is that every hospital in the state had to submit a plan for testing of their staff and that is surveillance testing just like we're doing with the teachers and this was part of the reopening of the hospital sector and health care sector during the whole time we were reopening one sector at a time so there is a plan that both that medical center and all the other hospitals in the state have presented us with and are supposed to be adhering to I can obviously get a little look into making sure that that's been adhered to to this point in time because it is important I also want to make sure it wasn't impacted in any adverse way by their cybersecurity issues but there are plans in place for all the health care sector to be tested on a regular basis they help care workers who have yet to have a test that concerns me so I will look into that Thank you and best of all for today have a Thanksgiving everyone Thank you Lisa Next we'll go to Greg with the Bennington banner Greetings from Southern Vermont This question might be for Secretary French I was wondering if I could get some clarification on the remote learning Is that the same as a quarantine are we asking these students and their families a quarantine with a negative PCR test or is this really only about remote learning and that gets into the question of 14 days being two full weeks not but nearly three school weeks so I was wondering if you could clarify the language a little bit on that Hi Greg It's more about quarantine individual group A and years those households are still available I think you'll see schools make the decisions about this person or based on their staff and considerations and so forth but the quarantine requirement is there for the multi household social care Okay Well I had you on the line Secretary was there any thought to simply going full remote for two weeks after Thanksgiving or was there any discussion about that and whether that would cause against sort of having a school standard having everyone at home for two weeks That's not academically what you want that's not what you're trying to do you're trying to have students in school I understand that but I just wanted to be taken to that Yeah sure for our perspective our team considered that as an issue but you know our data continues to support us being able to operate schools in person faithfully I think you know where this question came up about a holiday around the concept here of sort of continuous operation points more to staff in issues not necessarily a reflection of the conditions of the virus from the state decision making level I think we make those types of decisions if the conditions in the virus they don't but we'll see individual districts that address staffing issues as they have all along and we think that's that's sort of in terms of decision making whether the local be responsive to their specific staffing considerations keeping an eye on the health Okay and you did say essentially that this might be something that stays in place through the winter holidays but you know with a prospect of other holidays coming soon I think it's certainly weighing on our mind significantly about how to manage that Okay thank you very much That's it Ed Newport Daily Express Ed This is Ed Good afternoon everybody My first question obtained through a request that came from my brothers to work for last night to the elementary school board they historically helped town meetings for generations in the town hall well attended with the pandemic you know still have they're not sure what's going to happen at March to town meeting day but they're pretty sure there's no way they'll be able to use the town hall they'd like to use the elementary school to end with an alternative according to the law because they've never used it just before they're not allowed to move the town meeting up there and they do not want to do remote or Australian balance the governor is there perhaps away because of the timing of this they need to have a decision on a location in January is there something you can do to an executive order not well to be able to have enough space to accommodate everybody yeah thanks for the question and I'm sure we'll have be having a lot of discussions about town meeting in January I'm very concerned obviously I don't believe that the problem the crisis will be solved by March that's why I promoted the fact that we may want to go to mail in type ballots just as we did with the general election the legislature about the possibility of moving town meeting day to a later date I tried that three or four years ago as you might remember I didn't go over so well so we'll see how much like the actually I didn't go over well with the legislature so we'll see how effective that is but we'll do whatever we can to assist I'm not sure what prevents them without getting into the law and what prevents them from having that gathering in another location but we'd be happy to consider that I know the legislature will be taking a look at that as well so please make sure that those in your community that have issues such as this will reach out to their legislative delegation so that they know what the challenges are so that we can address them when the legislature comes back into session yeah the genesis of this came from a while it was passed a few years back I believe it involved school shooting in which they on the limit the public access to other schools and grandfathered other questions for them which is I've heard a lot about Thanksgiving and beer camp I haven't heard much about one of the biggest events that's been taking place this month and that's Black Friday do you have anything that you'd like to share with the realtors to make sure that they're not letting mobs and mobs of people and ignoring a very good point and something we are concerned about and we hope that retailers will adhere to the guidance make sure that we don't have a problem after the holiday after Thanksgiving so you bring up a good point and again for those who are listening if you don't have to it comes down to want and need if you don't have to shop don't don't we're trying to prevent gatherings of this nature for long periods of time so really reflect on that and again to the retailers please adhere to the guidance that we provided and keep your customers safe I might ask Secretary Curley if there's anything she'd like to offer or add to that No Governor I think you nailed it thank you and everything thank you too Ed all right it is 12.50 and there are five folks left in the queue we'll move to Avery WCAS Governor my question goes back to compliance and enforcement of the guidelines we're hearing from officials in Randolph that there's a lot of non-compliance in that community we've even reported a letter to some of those families that the district spoke with the family spoke with contract tracers just didn't care about following the rules have you heard those concerns from them and what do you say is that I have not personally heard and I was saying that they haven't reached out to some of the administration but we'll look into it I might ask Commissioner Sherling if he's heard about that directly in Randolph thanks Governor no not specifically as I indicated earlier we're up around a thousand health and safety assessments that have been done so while the spreadsheet was relatively easy to sort a couple of weeks ago not as easy to sort now with that many lines of data but we'll take a look thank you Steve any KTV can you hear me Mike has held their annual meetings the down meetings in the school gymnasium for years now but I was unsure about any law that prohibited that yeah I don't think it's I don't think it's specific to those situations because in Berlin where I live they have it in the school as well so it's something unique to the law great interesting Secretary Brent I've had another question about the mechanism of the reporting from children about gatherings the compliance rate when you send letters home or questionnaires home what the return rate is on those and do you re-contact the parents who don't return the things and wouldn't that have a lag time which would like to diminish the whole point of this yeah thanks personally the questionnaire we're talking about is what we call the daily health check it's not something that's administered at the state level it's administered on a daily basis at school district level and this really depends in person instructions so on a daily basis in order to enter school facilities the daily health check has to be completed includes a number of questions pertaining to symptoms a temperature check fairly recently an update to the travel and now it may include these questions about multi household gatherings I see so the kids are questioned individually when they daily yeah in most cases parents are completing those questionnaires at home in the morning the temperature check and calling still happens at school by school staff I see thank you one for Dr. Levine if I may is that your German Shepherd in the background Steve no actually it's a Jack Russell puppy they bark for affirmation I'm really glad I had a cat eye go ahead thanks Dr. Levine is using the SARS-CoV-2 confirmed fatality rate of 9% MERS was 10% even TB to this day has a CFR of like 15% and I've watched the the CFR the mortality rate dropped precipitously since the outbreak of this virus could you tell me about now at this point in time what the confirmed fatality rate is for this virus sure the dog sounds extra interested in this piece of information I will have to hedge a little because there is not like a uniform number this is data from the country, the world changing all the time I'm hearing closer to the 2% range possibly in the 2s so between 2 and 3% which is still significantly higher than let's say influenza but at the same time no matter what the number is I regarded as very significant obviously and doesn't it vary very significantly by age groups oh absolutely yes the 2% to 3% is an aggregate number but if you start parsing the data by decades of life etc. it will obviously be much higher in the very oldest and our Vermont data bears that out as well so that's it for me I'll use up my time thanks having thank you incredibly thank you Keith the Rutland Herald go ahead Keith hi I was wondering if we had any greater clarity on why it's so much harm twisting to get several large retailers to sign up for the state hazard pay program and I'm also curious if they're even reluctant for whatever it was will be accounted for in the future when we design these programs or updates hopefully we don't have to have these programs in the future Keith but I'll let Commissioner Peach I can answer hi Keith thanks for the question so you know I think in a lot of the cases it was about informing the large retailer about the program they just weren't aware of it you know obviously their employees on the ground were aware of it but their corporate offices were not in Vermont maybe they were aware of that country and it took some time to get the information to the right decision maker and then once they were aware of the program explaining to them how it worked how it didn't impact their business financially how it really was designed to be solely a benefit for their employees did allow them you know to in almost every instance to make the decision to apply again a lot of these companies are large bureaucratic companies Joe Lee Local 22 if you guys first see any companies throughout Vermont or any sites that will provide free testing and if you're concerned at all that people will avoid getting tested due to a bill coming their way I'll let Secretary Smith answer that but I think we've been there is no no charge for the testing Secretary Smith that's correct governor since the beginning of the that have been throughout the state and our new sites for on-demand testing which are fairly substantial there has been no charge to the individual for showing up and getting tested okay thank you Collins seven days yeah hi I think that you might be for Secretary Smith but I'm curious whether in these cases will render our contact tracing efforts in effect at any point how close are we to that point at what point would that happen yeah yeah we've had a number of conversations about this within our team and we anticipated we first started seeing the rise in cases we previous to that had had a reserve of epi contact tracers available to us and we've ramped that up significantly since then have even reached out to a number of organizations like the National Guard has provided members as well to help us out so we're in pretty good shape and we're getting in better shape as time goes on but we were admittedly stretched to our capacity when we had that big surge in the beginning but we're catching up now and we're adding contact tracers every single day Secretary Smith sure Governor you hit the nail on the head here we expect that we'll be up to 104 FTEs by December 7th just to give you some indication of what FTEs we were before November it was 23 and as we ramped up we expect to to move right up to 104 FTEs by December 7th that's next week by the way so it's pretty well it's a week in a day away so it's pretty substantial and this is Dr. Levine Collin just to add my perspective nothing to add to the numbers part but the whole reason for your question just for you is can we continue to practice containment at the current levels of virus and our answer from our epi-section and public health is definitely yes and I need to put that in perspective for people because yesterday the CDC came out with new guidelines regarding how states should prioritize their containment strategy and their contact tracing and the reality is the country is overrun with virus right now and so there are abundant states including many in New England to be honest that have already started a prioritization scheme to address the contact tracing needs that they have and deficits that they have and as the governor said when that surge hit us it was literally within days and it was very hard to cope with that level of surge and the things have I'll say moderated it's not over by any means and we have all of the FTEs that the secretary just mentioned but the CDC is really telling states how to in a organized way that makes sense for their state not do as much contact tracing as they're doing because they're unable to keep up with it we hope to not have that situation arise here in Vermont all three of you for answering that and then just lastly I mean the question for me comes up when we've seen New Hampshire where I think they decided to scale back their efforts and they had about 200 cases a day which is twice what we were asking for a minute there and we are past the size but I'm just curious as to whether we were nearing what they were at but those numbers that we saw about what could possibly that 3,000 or so cases I mean if that were to happen would we risk overwhelming our contact or is there any concern that we could get that point if people don't follow the guidance yeah I think Commissioner Peachock will agree that that was as worse the case scenario was you could draw and much like much of the projections we've had all year long we have sort of where we expect things to go and then we have best case and worst case scenarios so clearly if it got to the worst case scenario we would be in far more trouble than just our contact tracing workforce in terms of our healthcare system capacity etc. so that would be a very dire place so if we got to the level that New Hampshire was at we could still accommodate that very well opportunity to just recognize our contact tracing workforce and our members of our epi-section this has been an incredible burden on them working long hours coming in for extra hours etc. to try to keep up with this demand on top of managing the pandemic for this many months so just want to recognize them as well just one quick question the incoming administration is talking about perhaps a national policy towards the COVID response is that going to be sort of the broad brush that you're worried about you know yeah I unless they use Vermont as an example for the rest of the country I can't imagine that we would have to do anything different than we're doing today obviously everything that we put into place has had to come down so I don't believe that they are going to implement anything from a broad perspective they may have triggers and so forth and advice as to what should happen but by that time I would offer I think the vaccine rollout will be well underway at that point in time when the new administration takes office with that warm and happy Thanksgiving and I do hope everyone reflects on those who aren't as blessed as some of us are and try and take care of them as Dr. Levine had said reach out help others who are disadvantaged make donations do whatever you can to help one another and we'll get through this one way or another and I know this is going to be abnormal and different but you know we're Vermont strong and we'll get through this so thank you very much and we'll see you on Friday