 Good morning, everyone. Last month we announced we were working to ensure our pre-K through 12 schools could open in the fall. The Agency of Education, the Department of Health, pediatric infectious disease experts and education stakeholders have been meeting for several weeks. Working to provide initial guidance to help school districts begin planning at the local level and then implement that strategy over the next few months. While we're always watching the data and relying on our health experts, we know how critical in-person education is to our kids. And that's why we began this planning process so early. And while in-person connections to teachers and classmates are especially important for our younger students, it's also critical as we teach and train our future workforce in our institutions of higher education. So we've been working with higher education leaders over the last several weeks to develop guidelines and strict health protocols so we can welcome back students to our campuses this semester in a safe way. As you might imagine, there are many unique challenges to accomplish this. But we've had a very talented team of health, public safety and campus leaders working to contemplate the what-ifs and how to mitigate them. I'm pleased to have Rich Schneider with us today who stepped down as president of Norwich University last month and chaired this task force. He was joined by Susan Stitely from the Association of Vermont Independent Colleges who is on the phone and our team members from the agencies of commerce, education and the Department of Health in putting together this guidance. We also have UVM President Suresh Garemella and Vermont State College's new Chancellor, Sophia Zadotny on the line as well. And I want to thank everyone for their involvement in their work. I also want to commend our colleges and universities for their commitment to putting health and safety first. As you'll see in the guidance, these schools have stepped up and proposed strict procedures and mitigation strategies from quarantining and testing to facial coverings, limited gathering sizes, staggered dining times and much more. They've also planned for outbreaks and promise enforcement to hold students accountable if they put the health of their communities at risk. As with every step we take, I know there are many who will think this guidance is too restrictive and others who will think it's not enough or that we shouldn't reopen colleges at all. But again, a lot of work has gone into planning for a safe return and understanding the value of in-person learning for students as well as the critical role higher education plays in our communities, preparing our future workforce into our economy. Vermont has continued to show it's possible to reopen in a measured way, supported by a strong testing and tracing program while limiting spread and controlling outbreaks. I believe we can take this step forward in the fall and the guidance and work of this task force will help get us there. And Vermonters also know, as they've seen over the last four months, I will not hesitate to act based on the latest data to prioritize public help. I'll now turn it over to Rich to share more details on this plan. Rich. Thank you Governor and good morning everyone. It's great to be with you and it's an honor to serve as a volunteer on the restart task force representing all the higher ed. So higher ed institutions are an important component of the Vermont economy, the workforce development system, our culture as a state and just the vitality of the state. The state of Vermont aims to make Vermont the safest place to go to college and all of our college presidents have that in mind and have that as their target. And we're going to use the best public health emergency policies and procedures established to strictly enforce our protocols so that institutions can open and remain open. None of us want to send our students back home again as we did in March and we acted very quickly and totally rechanged our curriculum in a very short period of time, but we really want our students back. We did do it safely though and that's our primary objective, keeping our students, faculty and staff safe, but also providing them the education that they need. Colleges have been meeting nearly weekly with Dr. Levine and I want to thank him publicly. He's been with us right through this whole thing and trying to help us understand all the medical issues for this age population as well as people like myself on the faculty or on the staff at our colleges. We've also worked with the Department of Health, the Agency of Commerce and many other in leading positions to ensure that our faculty, staff and students and the communities that host our schools stay safe. And it's a moral responsibility that we have to make sure all of us stay safe. Besides we're training the next generation of the workforce, this is their normal now. If they're going to go to work, they might as well learn how to do this now in college when they're learning everything else that they've got to do to strengthen the workforce. The results of this process is a comprehensive document found on the Agency of Commerce's restart page entitled, and this is the title of the document that you want to read, Safe and Healthy Return to Campus, Mandatory Guidance for Colleges and University Campus Learning. And I want to reinforce that these are the minimum guidelines. Any school of course can impose stricter regulations and stricter guidance, but these are a requirement. This is the minimum mandatory that we all will follow. The guidance has three major components or three major themes as we can think about how we're going to bring everyone back safely and keep them here safely. So the first one is we have to plan to decrease the risk of individuals infected with COVID-19 from entering our campus communities, and we're going to use effective health prevention policies to do that. Then once they're all together, we have to make sure we can decrease the transmission of COVID-19 among the faculty, staff and students once the campus is up and running through effective public health measures. And we have those laid out in this document as well. And then finally, we have to quickly identify individuals with COVID-19 and put them in a containment procedure process, and minimize the opportunity of impact to other students, faculty and staff and our communities. So the first one is to make sure they don't come in if they're infected. The second one is once we're all together, how do we stay not infected? And if we do perchance get infected, what are we going to do to deal with it quickly? So we minimize the risk of having to shut down school again or send students home. So a few of the highlights of the plan, they include implementing a mandatory quarantine policy on our campus, putting aggressive health screening in place for students, faculty and staff. So everyone in our intellectual community. We're going to reduce the number of visitors on campus, and actually even on arrival day the guidelines say you can't have any visitors in the dormitory systems. It's just students in the dormitory systems, but you can bring two guests, but they have to go through all the normal processes of visiting Vermont. They have to go through 14 days quarantine if they're not coming from a trusted place. We're requiring all students, faculty and staff to sign a health safety contract that we will hold them accountable for, and there are ramifications if they threaten other people by not following those contracts. We're going to test every student at every college and every university campus at least once at the beginning of the school year so that we know roughly where we are. We're also going to be monitoring of course their health every day. There are things in the contract that require them to give us a health screening check every day. That's everyone, faculty, staff and students. We're reducing our academic calendars or modifying them. The vast majority of the schools and I think I, Governor, I think we're going to have unanimous on this. We'll probably send everyone home at Thanksgiving and then not bring them back to later in the spring because we don't want them traveling for a week and then coming back and then we're starting all over again with everybody being quarantined again. We're just going to say, okay, we're going to have in-class, in-person class or hybrid classes or some online and some in-class, but you're going to be done at Thanksgiving and go home and then continue online if the school requires that to happen or some of them may take their finals and be done. It really depends on the individual curriculum that are offered at our individual schools, but the idea is not to bring them, let them go for a week and then come back. In fact, we're also restricting all travel and any travel that's done by any faculty, staff on university money will require higher authority within the institution to make sure we're minimizing the risk to our employees, but the same would be true for our students. We're trying to keep them in Vermont, which is one of the safest states in the union, and we want to keep it that way. We're going to reduce the density in our dining halls and using best practices there. Some of the schools are going to do a vast majority of takeouts or you pick up a bag or they'll deliver them to the dormitory systems or they'll actually schedule class time as if you were in class, but you're going to be in the dining hall for your meal service so that we can reduce the density in the dining halls, but we have to feed them. It's not like a restaurant where we can say no, we're disclosed. I mean we have them on campus so we have to feed them, but we have to do it in a safe way. And then we're also reducing the density in the classrooms. That's probably one of the harder problems we're dealing with. As we see in this beautiful auditorium, which is what our classrooms are going to look like with appropriate social distancing between the faculty members and our students so everyone stays safe. Most importantly, we plan to work hand in glove with the Department of Health and the communities that house our universities and our families that depend on our institutions for their jobs, for their education, and for their sense of place that colleges bring to a community. We're going to work to make sure our schools remain some of the safest learning environments in the country, and I would love the rest of the country to pay attention to what's happening in our brave little state here in Vermont. We're fortunate that the Deputy Secretary Ted Brady of the Agency of Commerce is on the phone to help us field any questions. He's our leader of our restart task force, which is made up of a rep from every one of the major economic portions of our state. I have the honor to do the one for higher ed, but we have them for manufacturing and service-related and tourism and all this kind of elements that make up a vibrant economy, which we have to have running for all of us. We also have the newly appointed, no longer interim, Chancellor for the State College System. Congratulations, Sophie. I'm very proud of you, and we know you're going to do a great job for our state college systems. And the Executive Director of Association of Vermont Independent College, Susan Sealy, on the phone, Susan represents all the independent colleges. So on the phone today, we have reps from UVM, the entire state college system, and all of the independent colleges. So every portion of our industry sector is represented here today. Governor, it's been an honor to serve you and to work with Ted and the others. It's been really exciting for me as an old president in Norwich to work with these colleagues in a very different way, but it's been very rewarding and thanks for the opportunity. Thank you, Rich. You've done a great job in leading this task force, and we very much appreciate it. So now we're going to transition to a few additional updates. Yesterday, we opened up our recovery grant program, and I've asked Mr. Goldstein to give an update on how the first day went. Mr. Goldstein. Thank you, Governor. Good morning. We're pleased to announce that the ACCD and TAX grant application portals both opened yesterday for the economic recovery grants, and we saw quite a bit of traffic in the first day, but we were very pleased with how both systems held up. In total, between TAX and ACCD, some 2,300 applications were submitted. Initial estimates so far about the dollar request coming through ACCD is nearly $20 million and for the TAX application, $37 million. There were many questions people had, and our response team did a good job managing that volume. Our live chat on the website saw about 1,000 questions and the average wait time was five minutes. Our call center took around 400 calls throughout the day, and while the wait time spiked around 20 minutes in the morning, by afternoon it was just a couple of minutes. We realized the natural question was when is the money going out? Because the TAX department has an established system and can verify data very quickly through their filings, we expect that money would start going out first. On the ACCD side, the 1,300 applications received are now going through a two-step process to verify the details that are submitted. We are finding some errors in people's applications, so we will be reaching back out to them to ensure they submit everything correctly. We are giving people another chance. These are not major errors, but they do require us to go back out to the business or the organization and check on information or amend their application. We expect this process will take some time as we work through the verification process and ensuring every business submits their information properly. So we expect it to be several weeks or two before ACCD payments can start to get issued. We still have a ways to go and a lot of work to do to get this money out to businesses in need as fast as possible, but in the first day, I think the need for Vermont business community was certainly made clear. As the first 20 million in the legislature appropriated to ACCD was pretty much requested on the first day. So the second appropriation comes with many more strings attached and different details for different groups. I am thankful to the team at the agency of commerce and the agency of digital services for creating a system from scratch that allows us to shift to the next bucket of money immediately. That's all I have for the update, and I'm going to pass it over to Dr. Levine. Good morning, everyone. I'm going to begin with the numbers. Total cases at this point, 1254. You can see the number recovered, 1039. The number of deaths is quite stable for quite some time at 56. You can see that the slope of the curve continues to be pretty much where we've been. Certainly not experiencing the upsurges that unfortunately many parts of our country are now experiencing. I want to spend a little time on this slide. As you can see, this is our new normal up and down within a small number of cases. Sometimes as small as zero, other times like yesterday, three, other times low teens. This is really what we should regard as the new normal at this point in time in our state. This is a slide of all cases across the state, and I didn't prepare one specially for the outbreaks, because obviously if the outbreaks were markedly changing, we would see these numbers be markedly changing. And in fact, they are not markedly changing. The Winooski-Berlington outbreak is clearly not over, but neither is it expanding substantially. It is now at 116 cases. sporadic cases continue to surface. The last case reported was on July 3rd. None of the other outbreaks that I've reported on have had any new cases, and much of the success of this regards the contact tracing process, which I want to make a few comments on, but we'll just quickly go through the final two slides before I do that. You can again see that our percent positivity rate is in the very low single digit percents. Quite consistently, just to put that in perspective, some of the states that are experiencing surges now are in the 25 to 30 percent positivity rate. And then finally, not a lot of people complaining of COVID-like illness. That remains very close to zero to three percent range over time. But again, just to dwell on contact tracing, which really is the reason for the successes that have occurred thus far in the containment process, I want to quote former CDC director Tom Frieden, contact tracing is how you prevent cases from becoming clusters and clusters from becoming outbreaks. If person A's result takes four days, then by the time a contact tracer reaches person B, she's likely to be feeling symptoms. By that point, she may have decided to self-isolate, but only after spending a day or two already spreading the virus. We could not enjoy success if that were our process. Here are some statistics from the team. 97 percent of cases have been interviewed within 48 hours of their test result. Doesn't mean that three percent we didn't care about. It probably means three percent were difficult to impossible to find at that point in time. Timely interviews have been critical in interrupting disease transmission. There are currently 53 contact tracers that have been trained. 15 new contact traces will be onboarded. In recent weeks, as cases have surged in many states, the demand for testing has soared, surpassing capacity and actually creating a new testing crisis. Keep in mind that in several southern states, contact tracing has now been deemed to no longer be a viable strategy, meaning we're back in those states to mitigation strategies similar to the staying home concept to stop the virus spread. We've always said at these press conferences, we will operate with humility, but also we will learn from international and national experiences. The nation as a whole needs to learn from this experience right now. I want to next segue to a topic that I've mentioned here before, which is aerosols and the difference between droplets and aerosols and how virus can be transmitted. There was a letter that went yesterday from 239 scientists in 32 countries to the World Health Organization. It has to do with aerosols. The letter attested to the fact that sure, we know large respiratory droplets are a key way for the virus to spread from person to person. This letter now said that viral particles that are just floating in the air, if you will, indoors are indeed infectious. So these larger droplets can rather quickly fall to the floor, mainly due to their weight, but the smaller, lighter aerosol fine respiratory droplets that are exhaled by all of us, just from coughing or talking, can also be of concern. And infections can occur if you have prolonged indoor contact to those aerosols. And that's the concept, if you will, of super spreading in a confined indoor space. These kinds of droplets, as opposed to quickly dropping to the floor in seconds to minutes, can probably stay aloft for several hours, especially when there's poor ventilation or overcrowding. That's why we harp on this all the time. These scientists are now trying to bring this to light because the World Health Organization hadn't had much of a focus on that. They were more focused on surfaces and things of that sort. Their whole goal is just through this letter to illuminate for the rest of us that the virus can probably remain viable in the air longer than it can on a piece of paper or a piece of cardboard. So the message from all of this, really, is we should continue to wash our hands a lot, but you'll do a lot better if you also wear a facial covering. My final comments, unfortunately, are catalyzed by some unfortunate tragedies that have occurred recently. And they forced me to make a public health statement about water safety. We all know, and I'm sure this weekend we all hopefully learned, that swimming and water activities are a great way to get outside and we can still practice distancing and other measures to reduce the risk of infection and cool ourselves off. But we urge Vermonters and visitors to also practice swimming and boating safety. Simple messages. Always wear a life jacket on a boat or even something as small as a kayak or rowboat. Be aware of the local weather patterns. We all know Lake Champlain very well. Summer storms can come on rather suddenly. Always safer to swim with a buddy or in a group. Goes without saying to not use alcohol while swimming as it will alter your response and your reasoning in an emergency. And most importantly to the adults and the babysitters, put down your cell phones and other distractions and always, always watch the children when swimming or boating. In fact, we have the concept of designated driver after you've been out to a restaurant or bar, designate an adult to be a water watcher. So there's always someone to concentrate on supervising children and teens. Unlike the movies with people splashing and shouting, drowning is often all too unfortunately quiet, quick and silent. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Levine. We'll now open it up to questions. Dr. Levine, could you tell us what you know about the Elderwood situation? I understand there's a new confirmed case at that nursing home in Burlington. What, how concerned are you about that? What's the department on that? Sure. To steal a term, this is somewhat breaking news. And so it's very early. So I can't say tremendous amount, except that there was a positive case reported. My understanding at this point in time is that we should actually record this positive case as a success story. And the reason I say that is because this case involved an individual who was actually under quarantine already at the facility. I've mentioned at prior press conferences and it's worth repeating part of our aggressive stance with protecting the most vulnerable in long-term care facilities is to protect the entire facility from the quote potential danger of a new admission, someone new to the facility, whether that's a new staff, whether that's a new patient. So there are testing protocols in place for those patients and there are quarantine protocols in place for those patients. And when they're adhered to, we should allow ourselves to recognize that somebody who may have contracted COVID outside of the facility, whether it be in a hospital, but doesn't have to be in a healthcare facility, it could have been in the community. But as asymptomatic when they arrive, could be incubating that condition at the time they arrive. So as long as we take all of these precautions, we shouldn't be dismayed or concerned that in a virus that's spread through community transmission, we may occasionally see a case coming into a nursing home. So I don't have every detail yet, but that is my initial impression of how that is playing. It's one case. Yes. And Governor, if I could follow you, you said you've shown you have no hesitation to take whatever steps are necessary in light of new testing data. I'm wondering, with thousands of colleges coming back, what would it take for you to shut down? Is there a threshold in mind, or how about as we're seeing in other states, Florida and Texas and California, what would it take for you just to do what you don't want to? Yeah. Well, again, that will be determined based on the data, based on the modeling. We on a weekly basis, we have commissioner P check come in and there really are four criteria in the modeling that we we watch. But also, you know, I rely on the experts if if all of a sudden we see a spike and we don't believe that we can control it, then we'll have to take action and won't hesitate to do so. But at this point in time, because of everything that Rich Schneider had laid out with the task force and all the guidance put into place and all the protocols, I believe this is a good a good step forward. And that we will be able to keep people safe. And if they can keep people keep the students on campus. And again, with all the testing, as well as all the different policies in place that we can do this and be be safe. But again, we'll be watching the data to make that determination with Kevin from seven days weekend. Thank you, Governor. I appreciate the time. My first question involves how many students do colleges in the state of Vermont have a sense will be returning? Or is that too soon to estimate? And I guess that question could be for Rich. Yeah, I think I'll ask Rich Schneider. There is approximately 56,000 students in colleges in Vermont. At this moment, none of the college presidents know exactly how many are returning now. We're all hoping that we're going to have full classes, but parents are going to make individual decisions. Individual students that may have some underlying health condition or some immune problems may decide with their primary care physician when they consult with them that going to any college, whether it's for modern or anywhere, might be too risky for them. There may be some that might want to take a gap year or or things like that. So but I think the high water mark would probably be about 56,000. I can't imagine that we'd have more than that. Well, if I could follow up on that, my question is restaurants and other businesses have been asked to limit their patrons to a certain percentage of capacity. And I'm wondering, is there anything in the guidance about capacity for colleges? You just mentioned that your hope is that we have full classes. And I would imagine that a lot of people actually probably can't envision having kids, young people in close proximity in what they would normally imagine to be full full classes. Can you speak to that? Sure. There is a requirement in the guidelines that we're recommending no more than two students per bedroom. And each of our schools has a different physical layout and different capacity. Some students, some schools are fully enrolled. So at Norwich, I can speak with authority for Norwich, we had quads and triples last year. We're not going to have quads and triples this year. So that puts a lot of pressure on the institution. Other institutions would love to have full enrollment but don't, but they have an opportunity perhaps to do single bedrooms. So that's one way we might be able to minimize the risk. But all the other strategies that have laid out should allow us to have these students here safely. Excellent. Thank you very much. And my, my, my follow up question, my second question really is for Dr. Levine, if that's okay. Go ahead, Kevin. And it, it is, Dr, I was wondering if you could speak to whether you feel as though the huge spike in protests in the country have in any way possibly contributed to the spike nationally in infection rates. Obviously in Vermont that has not been a problem. Our local protests do not appear to have contributed to any outbreaks or problems locally, but I was, there's a, there's a degree of, I don't know about consternation, but certainly it's not clear, I don't think. And there's no consensus about whether protests seem to have an impact on infection rates, especially given what you've expressed about aerosol. Yeah, thanks for that question. You're right. The, the prior, the pretest probability of protests leading to high infection rates seem to be high to everyone. However, that has not been borne out by the data. Now, in Vermont, our data clearly says that we have not seen cases related to protests. I do have frequent opportunities to converse with my colleagues from all over the country. And most of the local public health data in other states also does not support protests being a major issue with regard to why they're seeing more cases. Protests have generally been in a stereotypical way, but this is what has happened. They tend to be people who are actually wearing facial coverings to a high degree, and they are outdoors, which is always better than indoors as we've discussed. And when possible, they're actually practicing social distancing within the context of the protest. So all those things are in favor of not spreading disease, as opposed to many of the pictures we're seeing from Memorial Day and now from July 4th, with people congregating very closely together, sometimes in the water, sometimes on the beach, sometimes at a bar, without physical distancing and without any facial covering. And that's where the concern has come in as to even further spreading of the virus, but not from the protest group to answer your question. Okay, thanks very much. That's all I have. Thank you. Hadley, the Valley Reporter. Hello, Governor. Can you hear me? I can. I see that the Vermont Department of Health website now shows travelers monitored as part of its coronavirus data. Who are these travelers and how are they being monitored? Dr. Levine. So many of these travelers are actually people coming from out of state who are visiting Vermont and have informed us of that. And often they're asking about the quarantine policies at the same time. Some are Vermonters who are returning to Vermont as well, because that traveler category is broad. They are all, because we know that they exist, they are all offered the opportunity to use the CERA Alert system, which is our major system for communicating between the health department and the person and vice versa, so that they can understand about checking for various symptoms on a day-to-day basis, etc. That system, as I've emphasized before, is an educational system and a connecting system for the communication channels and allowing people to understand when they need to get in touch with someone, etc. That is not a monitoring system where we know the GPS coordinate of the person and can understand if they're staying at home or they're traveling or what have you. It's clearly not that kind of system at all. It doesn't gather any data on the person. They're whereabouts or anything of that sort. And as a follow-up question, how do you know when a traveler is coming into the state? Yeah, so the only way we would know is that they have contacted us. Okay. Thank you. Greg, the county courier? I hope you had a nice long weekend. I first wanted to start by asking about the business assistance grants. I have no doubt, along with many other people, that many of these businesses do need help. At the same time, I spoke with a business owner yesterday who just completed the application and she said she clearly qualified for it but needed and that she was going to take the money and invest it for another rainy day down the road. It's a state trying to identify those businesses that need the money and those that don't or is it just if you qualify then you can get the money? I'll refer to either Joan or Ted Brady? Yes, sure. I'm on the line. So basically in order to be eligible, you had to have shown at least 50% loss in any one month from 2020 to 2019. So you do need to meet that threshold. And there's also an adaptation about that these funds need to be spent on things that arose as a result of the coronavirus crisis and that the funds would need to be spent by the end of December. So do they need to submit any information to show that they've used those funds in a specific way and can they just use those funds instead of funds that they're bringing in in the month of July or August? Well, I think what you've outlined is the fact that this person is actually thinking about saving it for next year, doesn't sound or another time doesn't sound like it's in compliance. And so it will be we are recommending that people save their receipt and their records because there is obviously opportunity for audits. And a question for the governor. As we know, each state has their own requirements for traveling. Maine recently announced that they're going to allow people from Connecticut and New York or New Jersey just like any other traveler. The case density calculated by Vermont's GFR is based on the people that are residing in certain counties. So it's from Vermont or travelers to a county in Maine that they're allowed to travel to without quarantining and have contact with somebody from New York City or New Jersey that might have a higher case count. Might be putting them in a higher danger zone than they might otherwise think. So are you considering any changes to Vermont's travel policy based on other states' policies changing or is it going to continue the way we've been going? Yeah, admittedly, it's not a perfect system because you can come in contact with others in other states that don't have the same requirements that we do. But we're going to continue to do it the way we're doing it now and we're going to advocate that people take responsibility for themselves, physically distance, wear a mask, wash your hands a lot, and so forth. So just be careful when you do travel and you don't come in contact with others in any of those ways. So we'll continue. It seemed to be working for us at this point in time but we'll monitor to see if any changes are necessary. One quick question for Dr. Levine. I don't know if I can get a third in since we're only doing two days a week. Sure, go ahead. He doesn't mind. I'm curious, Dr. Levine, if the contact trace routes have had any issues with people mischaracterizing their history over the past two weeks from when they were tested or just trying not to be honest because they don't want to maybe, you know, let people know that they weren't following a certain quarantine rule or if any of the contact tracing has picked up anything like that. You're sort of getting at revealing the the darker side of human nature. I've not heard that from our contact tracers. We like to say that we're Vermont and that wouldn't happen here but the fact is I'm not hearing a lot of that. One thing I have heard and it's, I've not just heard it, it's been verified for me is that in other states, and I won't name specific states, but there have been reports of fairly high percent, like 20 to 40 percent of people actually not answering the phone when I came to the contact tracing process and so much of that is really important to pick up the phone so that you can discuss things with the person from the health department on the other end. I'd love to think that that's because we're Vermont or because people trust our health department in our state and that they do actually respond when their phone rings compared to places that may be more densely populated or whatever. So we've had good success with not only connecting with people but having them understand why we're calling and what we're talking about and I would think that if we were having a bigger problem that the slide I showed you earlier wouldn't have been so true because we have disease be spreading much more quickly than it has spread in Vermont based on the non-compliance of people who have been sought out in the contact tracing process. So I think we've done what done fine with that. Thanks for your time, Governor. Thank you. Lisa, the AP. Lisa, the AP. Hi, can you hear me? We can. Okay. I have a question for Rich Snyder. Can you tell us more about this contract that students will be required to sign and what are the ramifications if they don't follow all the contracts? Sure. The contract is a moral commitment and actually a contractual commitment and it's not just for students. It's for all employees also. And what the state has required is that anyone that breaches the guidelines, the good public health safety processes and procedures we put in place would be immediately disciplined and not take months to figure it out because we need to protect the public health. So it would involve things like throwing wild parties, for example. That would be one of the worst things I could think would happen. But there is a lot of concern, but the institutions are prepared and ready to discipline students and employees. For example, let's say you have an employee who says, no, it's my right. I don't have to wear a mask. Well, then it's not your right to work at my school because you threaten the entire population by not doing that. So the contracts will be, I think there will be a basic boilerplate for all of our schools, but each school could put its own first couple paragraphs on it and I'll use an example. So Norwich has defended this republic for 200 years. So for our students, students, you're going to be defending this republic, but you're going to be doing it because you're exercising good public health procedures. Another place, let's use Middlebury, has produced global citizens for the world, for example. And that's part of their global responsibility. So we will appeal to our students' inner best self, and this is getting ready for the workforce, too, and to be global citizens, that this is an expectation. It's time to put on your adult pants now or skirts or whatever. This is really important. You can really hurt people and that is not our intent. Our intent is to make a better world at our colleges and universities. So I think there's going to be a lot of trumpeting these contracts. We intend to enforce them and I do think it will be great for students, faculty and staff to all work together to keep each other safe. Okay, and what type of discipline might they face? Well, up to including termination for employees and up to including dismissal for students. Okay, and then I have another question about UVN. Someone on the line from UVS? The president for UVM should answer for UVM. Okay, I'm wondering, what schools are considering buyouts for faculty? Will UVM use buyouts or furloughs for faculty or staff? Yes, thank you for the question. And, you know, just about the previous question, too, so we've just shared with our students and parents the green and gold promise. It's on the website now, go to our UVM.edu.usage promise, so it gives you a clear idea of what we're expecting the students to do and it also discusses the sanction process. So that was just the biggest question as a very specific example, if you like. So we are at this point working with our faculty to offer all our courses in, you know, multiple formats that have online only mixed mode, which is streaming from classes and sort of completely in person. So we are, we've also just announced last Friday at stay at home option so that students who either them or their parents are concerned about coming back to campus are able to stay away and still get a good quality education. So with all these moving parts in place, we don't anticipate requiring any of our faculty to be bought out if that's where your question's coming from. We're hoping that between the stay at home option and those that come to campus that we expect all our, you know, tenure track and tenure faculty to be teaching as well as our lecturers. Okay, thank you. Thank you for your time. Colin, BT Digger? Yeah, hi. For both the Governor and former President Schneider, it seems like the idea that universities are going to be able to police thousands of students and hundreds of staff and kind of ban hospital thinking. I'm wondering if these moral contracts are most preventative shifts, the legal liability of reopening to students and staff rather than the administration of these schools? From my standpoint, these contracts are just what they appear to be to make sure that we're keeping people safe, that we can open up these college campuses safely, and we can put the general public at ease as to the seriousness of the situation. So from my standpoint, I'm not sure that it's a legal mission. It's more to make sure that we're keeping the campuses safe and the general public safe. So this is Rich Schneider. I'll speak to the supervision part. I think what we're about to do is change what's normal and how to affect behavior. And certainly our faculty and staff are in proportion to the number of students we have, so there should be no problem where we can't get our message across to our students, and to hold them accountable, at least when they're in our presence. When they're in each other's presence, they have to hold each other accountable. Now we've done this on other issues, for example. Quaintance rape, for example, and how we've changed behavior. Not perfect yet, certainly, but certainly much better than we were 10 years ago. So that's what we have to do as well. It has to be not cool to be doing bad things that could risk other people's lives. And I think that in our hearts of our students, they want to be good people, and they are good people, and they will respond, and the other ones need to hold them accountable. That's what we expect and that's what we require. Does that answer your question? Basically, staff and students, this time, presumably, if they don't follow that behavior, then they could be found to be at fault. I'm just wondering, from a sort of legal perspective, how you view these contracts. I'm not a lawyer, so I really am not qualified to answer the question. That's not why we wrote the policy as we did. We wrote it to show our students what is right. What does it look like? What are we expecting of them with their behavior? None of us thought about, to be quite honest, and I was in the center of this, about the legal. I don't think it's going to protect you. I think general contracts can't protect you anyway. Things like that. Certainly, if someone wants to sue you, they're going to sue you. I will say this, though. If we do have an outbreak, the relationship we have with the Department of Health is that they immediately come into campus. They immediately do the contact tracing. We can quarantine, for example, a whole floor of a dormitory. We could quarantine a whole dorm, or we could quarantine the whole campus, and hold everyone there. The faculty and staff would probably shift immediately to online instruction. There'd be enough essential employees left from a student life perspective to keep order and discipline in the dormitory systems, and we've got to feed them, and we've got to keep the place clean, so the janitorial staff would be there. I don't think these are going to have the force of law. What it does do, though, as institutions, we do have administrative judicial control over students. We have the right to lay down the rules. The students break the rules. We have the right to discipline them. It's just that simple. It's not a legal issue. It's an administrative issue. We could administratively throw students out of school, which costs mom and dad quite a lot, to be quite honest, because you don't get a refund, so picture your halfway through the semester. Junior is not behaving himself in accordance with the standards, and he's coming home. That's a pretty expensive lesson. I think that's probably better than any legal issue that could happen. This is sort of the most visible example of this right now, but a lot of students who have moved back to the city to Burlington following these guidelines, and I'm just wondering how quickly you expect to engage those people to make sure that basically their lack of adherence to the guidelines over the summer doesn't cause further spread in Burlington. Here, Paul, like the others have said, this is not a trivial matter. It's probably the largest, the most difficult of the issues to resolve in this whole reopening process for us. As I said, we work carefully with the Department of Health with President Schneider, who's just been amazing, but he's failed at his retirement, but we've been really thankful for the work they've done and what the Governor has put out in terms of the college restart plan. We want to work and in love with the Governor's office, with the city, and so that's how our promise was developed. We've just sent it out today to the off-campus students, their parents on campus, etc. In terms of how is this being enforced, we have standard procedures for quota student conduct, and we will put the students through those procedures that are well-established as we identify and situations abroad to us where they're clouding these rules. Of course, the city has that big role to play here, and we will be partnering very closely with them, with Champaign College, St. Mike's, etc. Thank you all for your time. Steve, can he clear TV? Hello, can you hear me? He can. Great, thank you. A couple for the Doctor, maybe one for the Governor, if I may. Dr. Levine, how would you explain the massive rise in positive cases, yet the drop in fatality rate? They're talking on a nationwide basis, I presume, now. Yes, sir. Yeah, so it's a well-known fact that there's been a, I can use the word, I believe, dramatic downturn in the average age of the newest cases around the country by many, many years, actually. I don't want people to come away with a feeling that a lower age makes the person invincible, that they won't have a significant illness from the virus, that there's zero chance of them becoming part of the case fatality rate. But understandably, there are some notions that in prior months this was a disease much more impacting the older and frailer and more vulnerable in our society, and certainly the case fatality rate was being impacted by that. I think we're seeing some cumulative effects of the protection of the vulnerable across the country. A lot of the countries have very bad experiences in the long-term care and correctional facilities, meat-packing plants, etc., and those are now coming under control a little bit, if you will. Strategies and testing are being developed to protect those. But we've seen a dramatic drop in age and a dramatic change in the cases being in younger people who are tending to congregate more as part of the reopening process of many states. So that has gone kind of hand-in-hand. And it's not just to stereotype the pictures you may see on the evening news. It's data-driven fact that with the reopening there has been more cases of people congregating, less physical distancing, less facial covering, and that is translated into more virus transmission amongst people who tend to be of a younger age than the very vulnerable that I described earlier. So it doesn't mean we should sort of say, oh, this is acceptable and we'll have the population just all get exposed to the virus because most of them aren't going to die. It's going to be fine because you have to realize there are still significant consequences to letting that happen. And we only need to look to countries like Sweden where they've tried that as a strategy to achieve community or herd immunity and that hasn't worked so well with regard to their case fatality rate and not even achieving the immunity they wanted in the population. Did you have another question for me? Yeah, and it goes to younger people congregating. There was an incident up here I heard last week at a local popular swimming hall which happened to be on private property I believe and two state troopers showed up to apparently to question someone without a state plate. They, the plates were from south of the Mason-Dixon line and the girl who was driving was a native from Monter and she was rather feisty and she kind of refused contact with the state police but they kept at it and the person she was with was a minority. I don't know if that had anything to do with it but would that, would a contact like that be forwarded to your office from the state police? Generally not unless there was a health issue that precipitated that contact in the first place and I'm certainly not aware of the the anecdote that you're you're telling us about to comment on it any further. Okay, thank you. One for the governor if I may. Go ahead Steve. Okay governor apparently we had someone up here who was in the prison in Newport who was on suicide watch and they they attempted to hang themselves and they're I heard they're on life support and it doesn't look good. Have your office been made aware of this incident? That would be under Secretary Smith. Steve, thank you very much for the question. What I've been told and informed is that on Thursday July 2nd there was an attempt to commit suicide at the Northern State Correctional Facility. A former offender was being held at Northern State Correctional Facility attempted suicide. The person was in the intake quarantine cell. They were taken to the hospital. I believe it's Dartmouth. The court has dismissed all charges so therefore once the court dismisses all charges our connection with the individual is severed at that time. The person is now considered a private citizen and I can't comment on their medical condition. I actually don't know their medical condition at the moment that would be at under the purview of the family. But they were on suicide watch? They were not on suicide watch. It was a new it was a new intake if they were in quarantine it was a new intake into the system. I see. Thank you, Mr. Smith. I wonder if the Governor may very quickly. Steve, Commissioner Schirling just had something to add to your previous question. Thank you. Yeah, it's just briefly since it's now out there hanging I just want to voice a skepticism about the premise of the question that it seems very unlikely to me and we will look into it whether an interaction of that type occurred given our educational posture on on compliance enforcement. So we're going to look into it but I just want to get on the record for everyone that I am skeptical about the premise of that question being accurate. Well, I heard the incident from someone who was related to the person involved. So it might have changed, but the premise seems pretty accurate to me. But anyway, thank you. All right, and VT digger. Hi, can you hear me? I can. So this is for the educators in the room. When you were setting up the guidelines for the colleges, did you look at what other institutions were doing in other states? I'm sort of wondering how these compare because a lot of students are now in the position of wondering whether they should keep going to the school that they're going to or they should transfer. So there's sort of a there's sort of a comparison going on of learning conditions now. So this is Rich Schneider. We looked at Connecticut, New York, the two or three others that were out. But we really took this from ground zero and built it. We were looking at the others to see how they were approaching it. And I'm thrilled that the governor actually has published them now to make it very clear what it will be like to come to school in Vermont. Our state has been very clear now with these guidelines what will be expected. There are a number of states which we all compete or many of us that are national institutions. Some states haven't gone public yet with how it's really going to be. But the presidents of the colleges have. Well, the presidents of the colleges they do a lot of things guys, but they they don't make the rules. And the governor has every right to say to any state institution how in especially in a time of emergency how you're going to operate. And so I think they're trying to preserve their classes until they're waiting for guidance from their state. So yes, I do think for freshmen in particular, they have a lot more options to transfer or not go or take a year gap. But for seniors and juniors, man, they want to get to the workforce. They and they want to get back to their own school. I mean, these students love where they're going. I mean, think of yourselves when you made decisions, those of you that had the opportunity and privilege to go to college. It's a place that you love and you want to be there with your friends. So they really want to come back. The freshman haven't or the new students haven't had that experience yet. So they have a higher probability of jump and ship. But I think we we used what we thought was valuable. And then we actually I think have actually better guidelines than than some of them. But it's very comprehensive for us. Say again, I think they're more specific. We're we're stronger, I think on testing and quarantine. I think in those areas in particular, and our state has been very prepared to do contact tracing, which we think is essential for us to be able to minimize any future infection. That would be my answer anyway. Did they have contracts? Some of the governor just asked me, do the other states have contracts? Some are due and some have not mentioned it. But every school has a set of behavioral rules and guidance to students how they're supposed to behave. And so I'm sure everyone will eventually do this. And we all do share information. Higher ed is a very unique industry in the sense that most of us, and that's true, certainly in Vermont, are not competitors of each other. And so we share freely information. It's just in our DNA as academics to share. And so I'm sure we'll learn more. The one issue that still that needs to be resolved is athletics. And we are looking to the NCAA and to the conferences to give us good guidance along with our doctors. And and we are very worried about high contact sports and what that would mean. And so some presidents have gone out and said, sure, we're going to play football. Well, we haven't said that here. We're waiting to see what we've learned and what might happen in regards to sports. But that that piece still has to be done at the conference level first before it gets up to the presidents. The athletic directors usually deal with that. Does that help with your question? It does. Thank you. I just had another question, a quick one for the governor. Sorry, it's the ever popular mask question again, because now you guys are sort of setting up some mask requirements for faculty, staff and students at the colleges and universities. That's going to involve a lot of people. And it sounds like there's pretty firm sanctions in place if they don't wear masks. And in fact, in this language, one of you has said that if they're not wearing that when they're around other people, they are in danger of each other. So I'm wondering why this wouldn't be the case in the state at large, why you wouldn't want the mask mandate under these circumstances? Well, I think first of all, I think that it's up to the colleges and universities to implement those policies as well as to enforce. And it's more of a confined area. They're able to do that better than at large. And I think that that's problematic. I see the, you know, I've tried to encourage and we're going to continue with this campaign. I wear a mask because campaign, because I think it's a good education, it's good policy, it's good guidance. And I want people to wear masks when they're, when they can't separate themselves, physically separate themselves from others. And I think it's the best policy. The enforcement piece is always the problem as we've seen throughout the country. I mean, look at California, for instance. California has a mandatory mask policy. Yet they are one of the top three states at this point in terms of active positivity rates and in growing in large numbers day to day, even with an enforcement or with a mandatory mask policy because it's difficult to enforce. We want to take a different track. I'm not saying that we'll never implement, but we will give this a try. And I believe that this is a good policy for Vermont. I think that we've done really well. We're one of the fourth, we're the fourth lowest in terms of the number of positive cases in the United States. And our track record is good. So we'll continue down this path until we see the numbers change or shift in the other direction. Good for me. Thank you. Thank you. Kat, WCAX? Is there concern that with these changes on campus and to the college experience that students won't want to return, but also won't want to pay the same level of tuition for something like online learning? I guess so in other words, like will they feel they're getting the experience that they're paying for? Rich? Well, thankfully, our policies don't speak to any of that because it's an individual business decision what the schools charge. And we certainly don't want to be charged with antitrust problems either. So that's one area that we don't normally share a lot about, which is our pricing strategy. I will say from a cost point of view, though, the kind of things that they're probably going to miss the most are the tight, a large number of people gathering together and hanging out. We don't charge for that. And there's really no cost for that. So there's nothing to save. They're getting academic credit, which is how we build our cost structure with the faculty and the staff. The other pieces of college that are so wonderful and that add to the richness of the experience is all the personal interactions. Well, there's no cost for that. So there's nothing to save. And so, but I do believe that some schools, if they have to go, for example, let's say all online, might think about reducing their price to either one be more competitive or to try to hold onto the students that they have. But that's going to be an individual school decision. I mean, I think some people, what are your student life does have a cost and it's part of the tuition that the school charges. I guess, you know, if I'm a student and I'm looking at, do I go to college in Vermont in Perth then or do I go online for a cheaper option somewhere? You know, what's to keep them coming here if they can't have the experience from a college that they're looking for and that includes the social one? Well, that's a great business question. I think that the institutions, individual institutions, will try as best they can to provide as much of the college experience as is safe. But there are certain things about a college experience that under the current situation with COVID-19 are not safe, no matter where you go. There are certainly cheaper online opportunities in colleges and universities across America. And if you only want to deal on price, then they could certainly go do that and they might actually decide on price to go do that and leave their residence halls and just do it online. But talking with many, many parents and alums and others, the vast majority of parents want their kids out of the house going back to college or back to school. They've had it with their kids at home. And being in the basement is not a good social experience, even if it might be the safest thing. So there's there's a cost, right? We're all managing risk. And to be perfectly safe, it's like the institutional technology guys that want to harden our system so no one can penetrate them, not even us, so we can't get the information out that we need. Well, it's a safe system, but for what purpose? So we have to manage risk and there is a cost and or to every risk. So if a student wants to have a cheap college experience, yes, they can get it in other places online only. But I don't think that's what the college experience that the vast majority of students need or want. I think they want as much together as they can safely have. Last question related to the colleges here. Is there any concern that if there is, you know, strict enforcement on campus of large gatherings that that will push those gatherings off campus and into the public? So, for instance, pushing more students into off campus housing where, you know, it's private space or into a beach ground or a bar or something like that. The institutions don't have any legal authority over their students when they're not on their campus. It could this be a long term unintended consequence that more students would want to live off campus? It might. But normally most schools require a student petition to live off campus. And that depends on what kind of student you are, how are your grades, what your behavioral discipline situation, and what pressure there may be at the school in regards to housing. Some schools have adequate housing for all freshmen through seniors. Others guarantee housing for, let's say, freshmen and sophomores and the juniors or seniors are expected to live off campus. The police department is responsible for all of our citizens if they're not behaving off our campus. So, and I know that they will do that. Does that answer your question? Yeah, I think I was thinking in terms of more of like parties or things like that. But I think you have to do well enough. Well, the other thing too is we have to make it the social norm that that's not a good idea. And it's not cool to do that. You are risking your classmates' lives and their parents and their faculty members and their loved ones. That's not an adult behavior. And we need to educate our students, and I absolutely believe in the power of education that can change behavior and change attitude. And that's what all of us have to do. You've done it. Look at us all wearing masks and doing social distancing. And it's important that we all do this. And it's important for our students as college students to understand it and do it. We have to hold them accountable. The police, if they're off our campus, if there's large parties, we know that that's risky. And I have every confidence that the police department will handle it. Thank you. Yep. Avery, WCAX? My question is also for the folks in higher education. So, I've been sure you've all seen federal immigration and customs enforcement as the universities and colleges move completely online. International students will no longer be allowed to remain in the country. Do you all agree with that? Do you think this will have a big impact on Vermont schools? It's my understanding. I read this morning that if an international student is completely online, they would not be authorized to live in the United States and continue their instruction with us. That's done by the Department of Homeland Security. I will tell you that all of our major associations like the Association of A.C.E. and a few others have already written letters to the department, at least to what was reported in the press today, objecting to that, saying that we should treat all of our students the same. But that is a federal policy. It's certainly not a state policy. I'll say Avery. Any items? I just wanted to see if Dr. President Caramella also had anything to say about that. I didn't hear that very well, but I think you've invited a comment. You know, I think we should be very careful. I hope that the government is very thoughtful about this because some of the directions in which there are steps that are driving this can have unintended consequences. I do obviously believe in the power of immigration and the great value that international students add to our economy, to our community. And so I hope that as we did, as we had in the spring semester, when there was special consideration, there will be some reconsideration there as well. As President Schneider mentioned, APLU, the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities and others have provided some very strong feedback. And I hope there'll be some thought given to it. That said, at UVM, as you know, while we have offered an online remote stay-at-home option, we will be open. So we hope that there should be no effect to our students. And of course, I'll put in a plug if anybody wants to transfer to UVM. They're welcome to. There's no competition here. Thank you both. All right. We're going to move to the next questioner, but just flagging that it is 12.30, and we're only about halfway through the question, too. So keep that in mind, please. Guy Page. Who's next? I have two quick questions. One for Dr. Schneider, one for the governor. Dr. Schneider, you said colleges already have policies regarding off-campus living. Did the task force consider mandatory guidelines on student living off-campus or in the great deterrent of these authorities, either making them more restrictive or just forbidding them for more or all two? We decided to hold all students to the same standard. Okay. That's doable with them being not on the premises. We think so. We feel that the contracts, which would be for both on-resident and off-resident students, would be the same. There's no different contract for all of our students. There'd be one contract for them. That means their behavior would be judicial, actionable. Okay. All right. Thank you. Governor, you said that President Trump is unfit for office. Do you think that Vice President Biden is fit for office? First of all, I don't—did I say that today, Guy? Well, I think that was—it's possible I could be paraphrasing, Governor, so I apologize, but I believe you said it's someone asked you that question a couple weeks ago. Yeah. I don't know as I've answered in that manner. I will say he isn't my first choice. He has not received my vote. He won't be receiving my vote in this election, but I haven't—I haven't made a decision on who I will vote for. Okay. Thank you. Local 22. Question for Dr. Levine regarding the Elderwood positive COVID-19 test. You said that the first positive positive was already under quarantine. I'm wondering why they were under quarantine. Were they new to the facility? That's precisely the reason to my understanding. Okay. Thank you. So the policy is that even if you present on day one with a negative test, but you're new to the facility, you are in quarantine for the full 14 days, and you get tested every several days during that 14 days. Okay. Awesome. Thank you very much. And then just a second question. What is the testing policy or procedures for staff at these senior care facilities? Are they being ramped up? Is there the positive test? What's going on there? So in the past, any positive tests in a patient or a staff member would generally lead to facility-wide testing. If, in my understanding of this Elderwood case is accurate and it is a new person to the facility and they were under a quarantine process and adherence to that was strict, we would not necessarily recommend facility-wide testing at that point in time. It would all depend on our investigation of the infection control practices at the facility and the contact tracing process. So we would at least use judgment at that time. Still might eventuate in an entire facility being tested. I'm not saying that isn't a possibility, but it would be more nuanced of an approach now because of the very strict process we're using with the new admissions. Perfect. Thank you so much. On to the Chester Telegraph. Thank you. This is for Secretary French. It appears that there are both teachers and the parents of students who will not feel comfortable coming back to the school building this fall. And the idea of sort of remote academies for those students, taught by teachers who are not coming back to the school building has been brought up. We understand that some hurdles to clear to make that possible. Do you support this option? And can you speak what needs to happen before this can be offered to students? And how long do you think it will be able to take? Yeah, thank you for the question, Sean. We're in the process of reviewing what we're calling hybrid learning. This would be the ability to school districts to simultaneously offer instruction and remote learning. We're going to be looking at the regulatory authority to do that. I do expect to provide guidance on that before the end of this month, but I don't have an opinion otherwise. Thank you. Liam, BPR. Hi, this is a question for the higher ed folks in the room. I'm wondering how, you know, I know that not everybody is necessarily going to be having all their students coming back on campus, but a mass majority are having students return. And I'm wondering how much of that decision is being driven by the financial situation that many of these institutions, and if they don't have students returning to campus, if the future of the schools would be uncertain and they might have to close? Well, it's certainly true that many of our institutions are under great financial stress. I will tell you that the thing that was driving us in the writing these guidelines was for us to be open in a safe way, and we're confident that that can happen. Does that mean we're going to be zero risk? No. Does that mean there'll never be a potential outbreak? No. But we feel that we've got the resources to contain that outbreak and to keep everyone going to school. We think it's very important that these students go to school. And the seniors last year already lost their last senior year and all the underclassmen as well, and we did pivot and we did do online. That was done very quickly. Some of it was done very well and some of it was not done very well. And that's not what the students want and that's not what the faculty want. So we believe that there's a place in society for residential higher education that's absolutely essential to making good citizens and to drive this economy, which are all national issues and are important ones. So no, I would say it is true that some schools are under strain that COVID has made it worse for all of us with the expenses, whether it's testing or PPE or many of us return portions of dormitory fees. Well, the costs are still there for the colleges. They were still paying mortgages on those places. They still had to, in fact, extra costs for extra cleaning of those places to make sure they were disinfected properly. And so the cost didn't go away for the schools. What went way up are the expenses, which were already very difficult for schools. And enrollment is a problem for many schools. We lost, you know, three wonderful small schools in Vermont last year because of inadequate enrollment. So all of it fits into the equation. It's not driven by one thing, but what has to drive us is giving high-quality academic education and experience and keeping them safe at the same time. We have to balance that equation. But would you expect any schools to close down if they didn't have in campus? Absolutely. Yeah. Do you think that could happen? I believe in the nation, we will see an acceleration of closing of institutions, especially small ones, not large ones, not ones with large endowments. But high quality, valued-centered small institutions, I think this will accelerate the closing of those institutions. I have a question for President Garamella. You know, we had a number of UDN's return to campus or a return to Burlington in June. You spoke a little bit to this already. And then you said that you sent out this pledge to them. And I mean, you know, when they moved back, you had already set pretty, I don't know, pretty clear standards of the kind of behavior and the way that they should be behaving and being tested. What is signing a pledge to do? How does that change the situation from what the expectations were of student behavior before that happened, before you sent that out? Yeah. Thanks for the question. And just so everyone's aware, I'm going to jump off after this question. So by the way, I want Richard Schneider to be our spokesman forever. He's amazing. And I agree with everything he said. So look, as I said before, this is not an easy question for all of us to address. But the importance of education, the importance of the on-campus experience are important, too. And we need to balance the great quality of education we offer with the health of our community. We had not previously shared what we're calling the Greenville Promise. So we shared it today because it took a while to develop and we wanted to be consistent with the governor's college restart plan. So it's, you know, as it turns out, there weren't that many students that came back as of June 1st and was feared by some. So I think this is a critical partnership between our community, the city, and UVM. We will do our part. And it's a promise. It's a promise that comes with sanctions. And as President Schneider explained earlier, the sanctions go from, you know, warnings all the way to expulsion. And so we will all look for our students to behave and behave in the interest of the community and grow up and do the right thing. And so I've recorded a video. We're sharing that with our parents and students. And I guess if we need to take serious action, we will. And maybe that will get the word out. So I think it's a, it will take the whole community to get this right. But we're all working on it together. Thanks. You mentioned specifically doing your part, President Caramel. I'm just wondering what, what is that specific thing, you know, that UVM is doing, should be their part for the community? You know, it is a group effort. But what specifically will you be making UVM do as the President? Well, as I said, it's a promise and you should look at it and you'll see how serious it is and how detailed and consistent with the, with the college restart plan it is. So that just went out today and, and I anticipate it has its effect. We have, in parallel last Friday, our Provost Patrick Freelach sent out a very detailed set of instructions and, and, and, and expectations regarding the stay at home versus those that come back. And we will continue to monitor that. And we obviously have a community relations team, which will work with the city as needed to address these incidences any way we can. Thank you. Tim, for my business magazine. The numbers you were describing before, and it looks pretty promising for a lot of these companies. But as you said before, it's not going to be enough money. And there's a, there's a pot of money still laying in the legislature, you know, at least $100 million. Would your, if you had, you know, your, your druthers, how would you see that money being paid out to businesses under the same system? Obviously 75% lot, really big lot. Well, thanks, Tim, for the question. I think that it's too early to come up with that answer. I think we want to let this unfold and see where the demand ends up being. We've heard various things from different types of businesses. But at this point, let's see what the demand curve looks like after we're through. And then we can come up with that proposal for the, the additional, you know, any, any remainder money. And, and, you know, for the people out there, it has to be spent by the end of this year to care money. So, and that, and just judging by how quickly you've got this, these applications, you could probably turn that around pretty quickly. There's also, just to be clear, I know the answer to this question, but it might be worth for you to say, if you've received a PPP or EIDL, it doesn't prevent you from getting this money from the state, correct? That is correct. And that is something that we should continue to explain and do reach out about because it does not preclude you from applying. We just are making sure that folks know you can't use it for the same exact expenses. You need to avoid any duplication of benefits. All right, great. I'm sure there, there's plenty of things you can look at to spend money on. Thank you. Good luck. Absolutely. Thank you. Mike Donahue, the Islander. Thanks Rebecca. First, is there an update on last week's question about the public safety agencies have reported positive impacts of COVID-19? I know we mentioned the Bretland police last week and I mentioned to Commissioner Shirling, three other departments that add positives. I'm just wondering what the update is on that list we asked for. Commissioner Shirling, do you have any updates for us? I do. Thanks, Governor Mike. We checked with emergency management and through the VEC and we've not received any reports. So your list is longer than our list. So is there a problem with the reporting system? I mean the Hineford Police, Hineford Fire Chief was quoted talking about his department. There's, you know, there was a news story on that. I mean, there's information out there. So how is it that? No, no, I appreciate the question. I wouldn't say there's a problem in the reporting system in our communications, which are now going out twice a week. We're going out daily to all law enforcement agencies and everyone in the fire service. There was a request to report these up through the Information Center, but it wasn't mandatory. It really was to try to ensure that if we started that the wider scale impacts in public safety that we were able to implement strategies to backfill and ensure there weren't gaps in coverage. So, you know, while there were departments that clearly have had cases, they apparently didn't rise to a level where they needed coordination of state assets. So what you said your department hasn't had any, you don't know whether they may have or haven't, whether they've reported or what? No, I'm confident that in public safety, we have not had anything. Okay, today's question comes from a former law enforcement officer, Governor. The state laws are passed in part to avoid having 251 different laws in town. So remoders don't have to memorize what's acceptable and what isn't in the town they happen to be in. And state law mandates seatbelts in every Vermont town protect not only the driver, but those they're transporting and those they come across on the highway and later the non-compliance by remoders including mass gatherings and the safety concerns President Schneider and Dr. Levine talked about this morning. What will it take to have an executive order to protect all remoders equally like is done with Vermont seatbelt law? In what regards, Mike? Well, they're going to have them, it's all piecemeal it seems. Sounds like they're going to have to require masks on campuses. But yet, you know, in stores people are going in and out without masks. I think you said a couple weeks ago there was a survey that showed it was 5050 in retail operations. I don't know who filled it out, whether it was the frontline workers that deal with customers who refuse to wear masks or whether it was filled out by somebody who trying to make money and pay the bills and they don't care as much about people with masks as much as they do about staying afloat. Yes. What they're going to take like all these other states that have a statewide so everybody's treated the same. Yeah. Well, again, I don't think it's we don't have I don't think there's even a majority in the in the country of states that have mandatory mask policies. As I said before, making it mandatory doesn't make it so it doesn't. The enforcement piece is is the most problematic and there's a lot of friction, frustration and so forth. And I would rather us have this this policy where we tried to educate where we tried to lead inspire those to do what's altruistic and trying to take care of our neighbors, take care of our families and so forth. We've begun this campaign. I wear a mask because campaign we're going to continue to work that through and hopefully we'll have compliance as as you know, we don't have a primary enforcement provision for seat belts in Vermont and that's been a source of contention. But we have a high compliance rate as well. When I look at California, as I said earlier to Ann Galloway, we they have a mandatory mass policy in the state. But they have the highest one of the highest rates of positivity in the in the country right now. So just because that tells you to it's one of two things, whether it's either the mass don't work or they're not able to enforce. And I would say that they're probably the mass do work. We promote that. I believe it's a great way to keep others safe. But they are not able to enforce and we don't need to get into that situation here. If we continue to have good numbers in the state with our low positivity rates and we don't have these tremendous spikes and we allow for local control with different communities. I think it's just the Vermont way and it and it shows that it's working at this at least at this point in time. And if it if it if it proves not to work, I will react accordingly. But again, people are being treated differently if they're being mandatory at college campuses and other places but not going into stores. Yeah, I mean they're treated. That's why they're not being treated equally. They're treated differently depending on the workplace as well. You know, in certain certain areas the employees are required to wear facial coverings. And so we we have this policy that seems to be working for Vermont giving flexibility. Social or physically separating is is key. If you don't have a mask or don't wear a mask, you don't need to wear one all the time out in public. It's just when you're around others. So again, until this proves to be not the case where our numbers are not showing that we're having compliance, then we'll continue with this approach. Great. Thank you very much. Joe the Barton Chronicle. Governor, everything to be up to 50 percent sometime in the near future. But if I recall, having such restrictions in place requires an emergency order to be in effect with the current order expiring on July 15. You anticipate renewing it? Yeah, we're only and not in all sectors, but we're fairly close to 50 percent across most sectors in Vermont. And so this would require us to continue to expand and to to have the enforcement order in place, the emergency enforcement order in place for another 30 days. So I would anticipate that in July. Dr. Redlich. Erin, BT Digger. What I'm hearing for the college reopening plan in terms of continuing potential outbreaks is what students will get tested when they come into campus? What plans do you have to prevent outbreaks once they spread? And are there any plans to do regular testing of college students or allow them to get tested on a regular basis if they think they've been exposed? Because of course, we know that many younger people won't be symptomatic or won't have clear symptoms that might trigger a test otherwise. Hi, this is Dr. Levine to answer that question. Thank you. The across the board colleges will have testing when the students arrive in seven days after they arrive. So we will have a great idea then of how the college melting pot, if you will, people coming in from various places looks at that point. We may find some cases. We may not find some cases. We will find out. The colleges are all engaged right now in the process of trying to set up their testing structure and make their contracts so that they have access to testing all the time when their campus is up and running. So it won't just be an exercise we do when people arrive and then a struggle later on. They will all have very clearly stated testing plans and all of the logistics of that will have been worked out. So if there's a need because a student presents to the health center with symptoms for that student to be tested, that will happen. If there's a need because a student has been found to be positive and that student then needs to be isolated but also have the contact tracing process begin, the health department will work very closely with the colleges and the contact tracing will go just as it goes anywhere else in our society and result in whatever it needs to result in in terms of students who can continue to go to class versus other students who may need to be quarantined or what have you. Not across the board, and it's not a recommendation we've made across the board, but some colleges have already elected to have regular testing of their student population, perhaps their greater population, not just the students over the course of the semester. That can look like every other week. That can look like twice a week. In this whole exercise, if you will, of reopening colleges, there isn't a lot of evidence for us to draw upon. So much like numerable other aspects of a pandemic response, some of the playbook is being written as we play. That's just the way it has to be. So there really is no experience prior to this to tell if routine testing of a college campus is a wise strategy or a foolish strategy for that matter. So I think one can put together a very strong rationale that should be respected for those colleges that want to do that and if they want to do it at the frequency they want to do it at because they really don't have a lot to draw upon in terms of all of the prior science that's out there. So this restart plan and document that you've heard about does not articulate a specific protocol after the seventh day of students return for a college to draw upon. And a lot will have to do with their own philosophies, with their own experience early on, and with the kinds of students that are on their campus. If they perhaps are a very Vermont-centric college and there are very few out-of-state students, perhaps their campus will look different than a college that has students coming from all over the country. So we'll just have to see. Okay, and one kind of clarifying question about the elderhood case, you said that the, you know, situations of the case did not trigger facility-wise testing. Could you give me an example of what would trigger facility-wise testing at this point in time? Yeah, and I want to be very clear. This is, as I kind of referred to it earlier, is breaking news. So this is all just happened. Our understanding is that it is a person who was new in the facility and was under quarantine. Obviously, details will come out as we pursue what we always do in terms of the contact tracing process and further investigation. So it does not mean this facility is not going to be totally tested. I just can't tell you at this point in time that I have enough information with literally just hours of knowledge of this case before. But generally speaking, if this was not a new admission to the facility and there was one positive case in a staff or a resident of the facility, it would immediately trigger facility-wise testing. Okay, thank you. Andrew, can I have your record? Yes, good afternoon. Thank you for taking all these questions. Mine is for Chancellor DeBatme. Congratulations on your appointment. Andrew, I... Rick Schneider said earlier that most of the state colleges do not yet have a good sense of enrollment numbers for the fall. I'm wondering, is that an accurate representation for the state colleges, especially with respect to NVU bended? And if there's an assumption that they will be down, what effect is being anticipated on the financial pressures that have endangered NVU already? And are there decisions to be made about the potential staff and faculty cuts, reductions in course offerings, thanks to that nature for the upcoming school year? Okay, for incoming students, I think it's the numbers are looking down for NVU and part of that I'm sure is related to the news that came out or the potential closure that came out a couple of months ago, as far as the bid on enrollment. And I think everyone's in the same boat, not just in Vermont, but nationally, is that everyone's kind of waiting to see. CCTV, for example, is having a very successful summer with 3,000 students taking courses right now. But I think even the data that the colleges are receiving there's some skepticism as to how solid those numbers are. So, we're in a way you can see attitude at the moment. The colleges in the Vermont State College system are working hard to consider what they will be doing. For the fall, again, this guidance has come out. We will be looking at the guidance and seeing what we will do with that. No decisions have been made with respect to layoffs and things like that. The Vermont State College system is working through various task forces, taking a hard look at its current situation. They'll be working with the legislature that has created a select committee to take an in-depth look at the Vermont State colleges and its future. We have received and we're very appreciative of the funding we've received from the State House just recently with the budget. Some of that is COVID-related money that will be tied to COVID-related expenses consistent with any rules and regulations regarding use of that money. I don't remember if you may have had some other questions in there. I'll follow up on that. You mentioned no decisions have been made yet in terms of upstaff cuts over course offering reductions. Is it still possible that there will be adjustments prior to the upcoming school year? Options for students. They're doing online synchronous and remote hybrid. Some online, some on-ground lab components. What their plans are regarding that start date. So a couple of them will be starting. They've been scheduled and back to where it started, cancelling October break, having students go home at Thanksgiving and then complete the semester online as needed. But there's still other decisions to be made and we will be exploring those for the residential campuses in terms of integrating the guidance, the mandatory guidance that's been issued and how we can make that work if there are other disappointments to all of that. Okay. Thank you very much. That does it for today. Appreciate everyone tuning in and we'll be back on Friday. Thank you.