 spend a few minutes today talking about an issue the whole country is facing which is high fuel costs and some initiatives to help mitigate them. There are no easy fixes to these challenges given the global nature of prices but there are steps we can take now to become more resilient in the future and less dependent on the volatile fossil fuel market. First, I realize we're just finishing up with winter and we're getting closer to the warmer months but now is the time to think about making efficiency upgrades for next winter to save costs over the long run. That's why in the budget I propose I ask the legislature to appropriate 80 million towards weatherization. This is in addition to the roughly 20 million investment in weatherization we made just last year. Fortunately, this is one area in the house pass budget where we agree and I hope the Senate does as well. Weatherization is beneficial for many reasons. It saves money, reduces carbon emissions, and combats climate change. You can learn more about state weatherization programs on the Department for Children and Family website. You could also or you should also check with your utility. Many of them have efficiency programs and incentives to help with upfront costs. Now on the transportation side, I continue to be a strong supporter of electric vehicles. This year I propose millions in electric vehicle incentives to make this transition more affordable. We're also going to continue to build out our charging infrastructure. The decision we made a few years ago to use the Volkswagen settlement money for this purpose has made us a national leader. But we have much more to do. That's why I'm happy to see the transportation bill from the house has funded many of these requests which build on initiatives from last year. Currently, Vermonters can get up to 4,000 in state incentives for EVs in addition to rebates from some utilities and up to 7,500 in federal tax credits. You can visit driveelectricvt.com to see which makes and models are eligible as well as to calculate your savings. I've long said that EVs are part of our future and will save people money in the long run. The transportation sector is also our largest contributor of carbon emissions. So the faster we make the transition, the better off we'll be from both an environmental and a cost standpoint. For example, gas prices as we all are keenly aware average over $4 a gallon today. Well, electric costs for charging your EV equal about $150 per gallon and I don't think we'll see gas prices at that level anytime soon. But I know what you're thinking. Not everyone can afford or even find a new vehicle of any type right now, which is why continuing to work to make them more affordable and accessible is a priority. So in the near term, the agency of transportation continues to work to make transportation alternatives available. You can go to connecting commuters.org to find schedules for local and commuter bus options and free fares through at least June. The service is also a good way to join a carpool, find the right park and ride location or plan a convenient bike commute. My administration will continue to focus efforts on investing in greener and more affordable transportation. And before I turn it over to help for monitors, we're dealing with high costs right now. I also want to again make a pitch from my progressive tax relief package, which costs about the same amount as the house tax plan. But mine helps over a quarter of taxpayers compared to theirs, which will only benefit about 10% of the population. My plan allows for monitors to fully deduct their student loan interest from their income tax, saving many thousands a year. It also finally eliminates the income tax on military pensions, which I've talked about for years. It would further cut the income tax on social security benefits and expand the earn income tax credit, which has been proven to be one of the most effective anti-poverty tax relief proposals there is. To make child care more affordable, it would also expand the child care tax credit. And to help folks deal with inflation, I've also proposed sending Vermont residential property taxpayers a rebate check of about $275. Because you overpaid, we have a surplus and you should get some of that back. Not a credit, but a rebate that you can use right now. Although these ideas weren't taken up in the house, I'm hopeful the Senate will consider them because of how beneficial these proposals would be for their constituents. And with that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Levine. Thank you, Governor. Good morning. I guess it's afternoon now. I'll just have a few comments today. First, as a reminder, for those who can't see some of the slides I'm going to show, the modeling slides that I referenced are available at the Department of Financial Regulations COVID-19 website. But before I start with the slides, shortly before this briefing, I think they just knew this was going to alter the briefing, we learned from the FDA that they have now authorized second booster shots of both the Pfizer and Moderna for everyone 50 and older. They also authorized an additional booster dose for people ages 12 and older who have certain immune deficiencies. Now, this is very new information, and we've not yet had the opportunity to review the details about the authorization. We'll do so quickly, as we have for every move in the last several years, and we'll keep for monitors informed of actions and guidance, including about receiving these booster shots. Now, to get to some of the data, the BA2 subvariant of Omicron continues to make up an increasingly high percentage of cases. It's now over 72% in New England, and it's close to 55% across the country. However, as you'll see, cases are not growing exponentially, which is a good sign. In fact, on this first slide, you can see that the seven-day average of cases in Vermont is actually down 11% in the past week to 131. Over the last week, Vermont reported 109 fewer cases compared to the previous week, which is now 916, and you can see that in this epidemic curve, things are quite stable, even if they're being prolonged a little by the BA2 variant. And this is at a time when testing, though it says decreasing 5.5%, has not really changed much at all. So testing has been stable during this time period. In terms of the modeling, new cases are expected to remain relatively low in the coming weeks, with some element of uncertainty due to the fact that this is the BA2 subvariant, but not a wide variation in the modeling predictions. Hospitalizations remain steady and quite low, down 87% from the Omicron peak, continuing to decrease. The number today is 12. Even more gratifying is the number of people in the ICU, down 94% since the peak, and at zero today. And in only 31% of recent COVID admissions was COVID actually the reason for admission. Vermont continues to have the nation's lowest hospitalization rate. Unfortunately, death does continue to be a harsh reality with this virus, but it's noteworthy that deaths continue to decrease, as you can see. And the number of deaths in March, with only a few days remaining in the month, is one-fifth of the level of each of the three preceding months. Now, BA2, as you know, is a more contagious version of Omicron, which itself was more contagious than the Delta variant. So it is possible that there may be a slight uptick in cases. It still is proving itself to cause less severe illness for most people, and Vermonters remain highly protected through vaccination. We will keep watching our data and monitor any changes closely. And we continue to strongly recommend that everyone stay up to date on vaccines and get tested if you have any symptoms. And by saying strongly recommend staying up to date, that recommendation predates what the FDA did today. And so for those who have yet to get the booster that was previously recommended, please keep in mind that would be a very, very positive thing to do to prevent serious outcomes of disease. In the meantime, please continue to take any precautions appropriate for your own comfort level and personal risk. And again, please take into account the risk of the people you will be with, especially older folks, children too young to be vaccinated, and people who may be immunocompromised. As you make these decisions, please remember that the easing of broad public health recommendations does not mean COVID is gone. But the risk is lower for us all. Even though the virus is still with us, and we still need to consider when and how we may need to protect ourselves and those around us, depending on our circumstances. Now one of the things that the BA2 subvariant has changed is that one of the monoclonal antibody treatments, Sotrovimab, is no longer being used in our region, where the variant is now prevalent due to concern over its effectiveness. So the federal government has ceased shipping that two states in higher prevalence regions for BA2. But that doesn't mean we have no treatment. In fact, we have a number of other treatments still available, which will be effective, including the monoclonal antibody Bebtilovimab and the Pell Paxlovent. If you are at higher risk from serious illness from COVID-19 and you do test positive, please reach out to your health care provider as soon as possible to ask about such treatments. Finally, last time I previewed that we were planning to shift the offering of COVID vaccine from large statewide clinics to pharmacies and health care providers, the traditional medical homes where we receive other vaccines. While these large clinics have been incredibly successful since the initial rollout, they've had very low uptake recently. Now the clinics that we listed on our website will not be going away, but starting this Friday, April 1st, they will be walk-in only and appointments will no longer need to be made through the Health Department registration system. New clinics may still be added, but on a smaller community-level scale. We still encourage homeowners to get vaccinated or boosted by walking into a clinic or making an appointment through a pharmacy or your health care provider. Vaccines are free, widely available across the state. We're hopeful that the pandemic is waning, but two years of experience and heartbreak tells us we have to stay ready for any new curveballs the virus may throw at us. And being up to date on your vaccinations is how you can best protect yourself against serious illness. You can find the list of clinics on our website, healthvermont.gov, slash my vaccine. I'll turn it back to the Governor now. Thank you, Dr. Levine. We'll now open it up to questions. We now have three counties, Washington, Windsor and Essex, that are classified as high spread by the CDC's new guidance. I guess I'm wondering if you and Dr. Levine could refresh us on what that guidance is from the CDC and whether any changes need to be made. Yeah, again, from the very beginning, when all of this started, we decided not to go with the CDC per county type of approach because we, you know, we travel to different communities, we travel to different counties, we work in different places, we're just so intertwined with everyone else, small state. So that didn't make a lot of sense to us. When you look at the hospitalizations, as Dr. Levine just said, zero in the ICU today. Nine, is it nine? 12. 12 in the hospital with COVID. That doesn't mean they got there because of COVID. I think it's about less than half of that. So we are very confident in our approach, looking at the metric of the hospitalizations. But there's a nuance to what the CDC is doing as well. And it has to do with hospital staffing as well. So I'll let Dr. Levine explain that. As you know, these community levels use several different data points, the number of new cases per 100,000, new admissions per 100,000, the percentage of people in a hospital that are there for COVID specifically. And they created the system to really work for the whole country. And I have to say, frankly, it works better in some places than in others. Small states, especially small states with rural counties like ours, appear to have more unpredictable and variable case rates in these counties. And the difference between a count or a color on the map can literally be a few cases. We've seen that as we analyze the data every week when it comes out from the CDC. Most of the time when a county is veered from green to another color, it's literally on the border of the two, and it's just made it into the next color range. The community levels start with the cases per 100,000. So if you're already over the 200 cases per 100,000, you can only be yellow or red. And we have a few counties that meet that criterion alone. But these are the counties like Essex County that have very small populations, which often means a small number of cases leads to a very high rate. The map also takes into account, as I said, hospitalization rates. And again, here, small changes can make a very big difference. And in one of our hospitals, we've learned that a number of the staff beds actually decreased, because a number of the traveling nurses were not rehired again and weren't needed. Number of staff beds went down, but if the number of COVID cases stayed the same, it makes it look like you've had an increase in your hospitalization rate for COVID. So again, we're often very close to the cutoff in these levels, and a little movement makes a big difference sometimes when you look at the data. We really do believe that looking statewide at the data with all the data that we can aggregate in that way really helps us provide a lot more consistency in our recommendations, especially across counties where our highly mobile population lives. And whether they cross lines to shop, to get educated, to work, that happens all the time in our small state. So that's kind of how we approach this at this point. And I would just caution people that one can get into an endless cycle of reacting and overreacting to data without looking for good trends. And you can be sort of panicking one week next week saying, oh, I'm glad we got by that one. And then the next week go, oh, my God, I have to panic again. And that's not the way we want people to live. We think that the new way of living with the pandemic will rely on more trend data and on our statewide data. School district nearby, they've already gone back to masking, some businesses here in Montpelier reinstating it. Within the state house, they're keeping it in many rooms. So I mean, should people be changing their behavior? People should change their behavior in whatever way is comfortable for them on an individual basis for sure. Because everyone's having challenges with transition at this point in time. But we don't believe that the recommendation for schools or other businesses should be so labile based on one piece of data at one time and then changing another time for another piece of data. I don't know if Secretary French may have something to say about the schools though. Yeah, thank you, Dr. Levine. I think, you know, just to echo on what folks have said so far, I think it is problematic in Vermont in particular due to the small size of our counties to operationalize that at the school district level on a weekly basis essentially promotes way too much instability in our schools at a time when we need to have greater stability. So as we've said throughout the pandemic to superintendents and school folks that they really should defer to the Vermont Department of Health and interpreting the context and applying that specifically in Vermont. We've done that successfully throughout the pandemic and I would encourage schools to do that now. Just to reinforce once more, we have 12 people in the hospital today with COVID. Four, only four are in for COVID. The rest of 12, zero in the ICU. I think we're doing pretty well. With regard to fuel costs, specifically home heating costs, since companies can set their own prices, is there any idea of whether these companies are price gouging right now to take advantage of consumer just given the fuel cost climate? I'm not aware of anyone. They're all competing with each other as well. So I'm not I'm not hearing that there's any price gouging, but that might be a better question for the Attorney General. Governor, some criticism of the of the transportation bill is that perhaps we haven't put enough into roads and bridges and we're putting a heck of a lot into the into the electric cars and getting that infrastructure going. Your reaction? I think I think we're actually if you take a look at the transportation budget between the money that we have that we normally program and the additional money we're receiving from the federal government, we're probably at historic levels for both paving roads, bridges, traditional infrastructure. So I'm not concerned about that at this point in time. We'll see how the the transportation bill makes it through the rest of the process. But but again, there's a lot of construction out there right now. And what my biggest concern is inflation, inflationary pressure, and that we're getting actually more projects completed and not just inflating the prices of those. I want to ask about beta technologies. The South Burlington Development Review Board is going to be revisiting or holding special meeting where beta may have to seek more local construction permits. Are you concerned that beta if they have to go through this process? Are you concerned that they may look take their business elsewhere? I'm very concerned. This is something that I've been concerned about for quite some time. I've been made aware of this this latest issue with the DRB in South Burlington. It all is because of a parking lot. Most of the regulations apparently say the parking lot has to be behind the building, right? When you're building something new, parking lot goes behind. Well, this is a little bit different. This is beta where they're building aircraft and they're doing it next to the Burlington Airport and the front of the house is actually the runway. So you can't you can't put parking. I mean traditionally we think about a building where the front entrance is off from the highway. That's not their front entrance. This is again they do all their business off the runway. So to put the parking and trying to reconfigure their whole design and move their operations closer to the highway so they can have parking behind their building. It just makes no sense at all. So hopefully they'll revisit that if they can't fix it. Either the DRB can't fix it or the City of South Burlington can't fix it. The council can't fix it. I'll seek a legislative fix because this is too important for Vermont. This is not just about jobs for Chittenden County. This is going to have a ripple effect across the entire state whether it's Franklin County, Washington County, Rutland County all across Vermont and this is transformational and this is going to change Vermont in a positive way. When you consider I think this is as big as when IBM besides the Locate in Vermont. This is going to have that big an impact on us and it's green green energy green technology cutting edge. They have hundreds of aircraft already online ordered and they're begging us. They want to stay in Vermont. This is the leadership of Beta wants to be here but they have another alternative and that's across the pond in Platsburg and they have an airport there. They have space available. They have everything that they need and they could quickly quickly change course and go to Platsburg and I just can't let that happen. We can't let that happen. This is too important to Vermont and they don't want to let it happen either. So it seems like there's a path forward somehow and again hopefully the DRB will be able to fix this if not the city council but then I'll address and ask the legislature to do something quickly because just delaying this project by a month could mean a delay of up to three or four months. Then we get into weather issues. We have a tight construction year in Vermont as well. They have contracts that they've signed so they're not going to have much choice. If this is delayed they may not have any choice but to seek another alternative location but they want to be here. We'll move to the phones starting with Wilson Ring the associate press. Hi everybody as always thanks so much for letting us participate here remotely. This is another question I guess variation on the statistical question that I don't I don't know who answered it first but Dr. Levine answered it at great length. Over the last several weeks I've noticed that depending on whose statistics you're reading Vermont cases of per capita cases COVID cases has been rising up the charts and today the New York Times shows Vermont has the second highest per capita and I certainly understand about the good news about it is the lowest with the hospitalization and the deaths are low but what is going on with the case the raw case numbers that are driving up those statistics? I think it comes down to our robust testing I think we're testing a lot in Vermont in fact I think per capita maybe one of the highest in the country so that you know leads to more cases I mean it's not a bad thing it's just for these two more cases but I'll let Dr. Levine answer that further. Yeah thanks Wilson we asked that same thing at our health operations call this morning and we're still not clear on why the New York Times data looks that different originally it looked different because there was a part of the state that there were a bunch of cases that were added back retrospectively as part of data cleanup and that should no longer be the reason at this point in time especially when you look at the number of cases I showed in the earlier slides where clearly we're on a decreasing trend not an increasing trend and there's so few cases being reported so it doesn't make a lot of sense and it's a little bit inconsistent if you will if we actually have the lowest hospitalization rate and amongst the lowest death rate cases don't really fit that mold at all as the governor said we are actually if you ignore the District of Columbia which is the highest we are the number one state for testing so we know a lot more about cases than any other state just because we're finding them but other than that I can't give you any better reason okay thank you very much Lisa Loomis the value reporter hello this question is probably for Dr. Levine I was reading this morning that Ibu Sheld and I'm forgive me if I pronounce that or if I butchered that pronunciation the injectable COVID treatment which can help immunocompromise and healthy people from catching COVID has been ordered federal government to the tune of 850,000 doses and I also read that eight cents of those doses are sitting unused in warehouses hospitals and pharmacies does Vermont have doses of this injectable and do we have faults for using it yes so your pronunciation was fine Ibu Sheld and thank you and 80 percent is correct so across the country 80 percent of the doses do not seem to have been used they're being warehoused if you will I don't know the percent of doses in Vermont that fit that but we have abundant doses available to be used in Vermont we have had plenty of doses used by the way but it's always hard to know if it's the appropriate number because this is for a very select population these are people who are immunocompromised or for whatever reason aren't going to be able to benefit from the vaccine so that's a small percentage of the total population and it all depends on how their clinicians interpret the risk some of these people may have a disease that leads to immunocompromise many who are eligible though have diseases that are being treated with medications that make you immunocompromised and that can be in the rheumatology field the dermatology field gastroenterology um transplants you name it uh so there's a whole host of people who just may not have assessed their risk as being high enough to warrant using this preventive medication even though they might benefit from it got it thank you very much that's it for me guy page from on daily chronicle hello governor you mentioned the the the commuter connect what i'm wondering is that that's that's a real incentive whereas the legislature at least in the in the transportation bill is using more of a requirement where they're requiring employers to have their own commuter plans to reduce the number of commuters seems sort of a carrot and stick approach and i'm wondering what you think about that using a requirement incentive an incentive to reduce fossil fuel commuter traffic well again i always would prefer the carrot approach and trying to provide incentives to do that i think the incentive today is the high cost of fuel and uh and i think that the looking for the alternative types of transportation would be important i wasn't aware of the uh stick approach that you're referring to but we'll we'll take a look i just hadn't heard that part okay we've also had small outbreaks of a highly contagious avian flu in three neighboring states a cyber attack this month that shut down milk production at hb hood and booth brothers and the new york times is talking about global hunger due to supply chain energy problems ukraine and i'm wondering uh i guess it's really two questions one for secretary french if he's available uh how the cyber attack affected school milk supplies and also if your administration is thinking about possible vermont food shortages and if so what are you planning to do about it um first of all i would just say uh they were very aware of the cyber attacks something we've been talking about for quite some time and and that risk has been heightened due to the issue in ukraine with the russian trying to to take uh disrupt all kinds of economies including our own so we're uh we're on top of that we've been trying to put in firewalls in many of our throughout our technology system to prevent some of this from happening but having said that it really is only as strong as the weakest link and sometimes that's us and clicking on the wrong link might let a bad actor in so our secretary of the agency of digital services as well as our public safety commissioner have been working in tandem working together with our cabinet to try and make sure that we're aware of what's happening so again um we're well aware of uh of what they're trying to do and we're preventing trying to prevent that from happening uh in terms of feeding ourselves again uh trying to work with our secretary of agriculture in many different ways coming i i think a lot of what we've been through over the last couple of years i think opens our eyes more to trying to take care of ourselves both as a nation but as as well as a state so we have been trying to use the working lands initiatives as well as to try and make sure that people are aware that we need our farms we this is part of the backbone of vermont but we need them to feed ourselves it's it's something that simple and it and it really is about the public safety aspect of of our state as well so having said that we're still pushing forward secretary tebbets probably can answer some of the questions about what we're doing about that but you know slaughterhouses trying to incentivize more farming production in different ways and providing modernization in that that respect it's all on the table and something that we've been we've been doing for a number of years now um secretary french are you aware of any i i don't believe there was any shortage of milk due to the cyber attack but i think it was that was fairly short-lived yes governor i'm unaware of any impact on school food supply i would just highlight in parallel that we have resources on cyber security for school districts at the agency we've been highlighting those resources in the last couple weeks and it's something i'll have on my list to highlight with the superintendents when i meet with them on thursday what sort of resources mr secretary we have national level resources that are put out for schools they're on our website be happy to share a link with that guy if you'd like thank you i would thank you greg sequenich faddington banner good afternoon uh i believe this question might be for either secretary french or secretary more uh this is with regards to school sports in the spring uh some readers in brettelboro have asked us if there are going to be any masking requirements for high school sports in vermont in the spring and if so what they are secretary french i don't believe there are greg but secretary french uh that's correct no no mass requirements most of the spring sports are outdoors something we had on our radars we were making the transition to the march 14 guidance but we have no plans for that at this moment okay um all right actually uh one one more question governor the federal government did announce that the united states would be accepting 100 000 ukrainian refugees uh sort of i asked the same question last week and realized these things move slowly but just checking to see if there's any if uh you've been made aware of any opportunities for vermont to accept any of those refugees yeah i'm not aware of any at this point in time obviously we've been focusing on the afghan refugees and we've made great strides there as you are well aware i think we have over 200 now we've relocated to vermont but we welcome any ukrainians i will say i was at a rotary chamber of commerce uh luncheon last week in winsor county and there's a springfield student exchange student from ukraine and the rotary is trying to raise money to bring his family uh into uh into the state here in vermont they have a place i think it's a um uh local parish of some sort that maybe has housing for them but they're trying to raise money to do that and this was before the announcement the biden announcement of the 100 000 so i did um i did put out that information uh to our congressional delegation and hopefully we can provide the resources necessary to bring this family in and anyone else that may have relatives as well so we again remain ready willing and able to do whatever we can to help those who are you know in conflict right now and in danger in their own country or in uh other country poland for instance for instance as well hey thank you very much governor tom davis compass vermont thanks jason uh dr levine what is uh what are you advising on the second booster for people over 50 um as i said at the beginning of my comment since it just came out literally minutes before the press conference we need to read closely what the fda is saying and analyze what data they have provided uh to make that recommendation i will note that what i've seen thus far says from the fda that people over age 50 may receive uh another booster as opposed to a stronger recommendation than that but that's about all i have to go on right this moment and we'll have more to say after we've done our review okay thank you um governor i was curious um if there's some way to work on a protocol when it comes to missing persons uh had a lot of feedback recently when state police have put out notices of people who are missing and when the press cooperates and tries to get information out the one comment i get back the most often is we never hear or rarely hear when they're found or if they haven't been found uh and oftentimes have to go looking to see uh and uh it was quite a long conversation i had from different people who were saying that it would be great if the if the state police would follow up just as they do with the first report about missing too when they're found i think that's a great point tom unfortunately commissioner shirling it isn't on today nor is uh deputy commissioner morrison but i'll have one of them get in touch with you and uh see what we can put together because that does make a lot of sense like we we do uh i think a fairly good job where i've seen a lot of the media reports uh where there's been missing people but we need to tell the good news too okay i appreciate that uh one last question i don't know if you know or off the way for commissioners shirling it recent saturation patrol picked up 19 motorists who are using their electronic handheld devices most of them were texting uh do you know if they were cited and and actually written up their ticket or that this is what i want i don't know um i would assume so but i i really don't know um we can have them follow up with you on that as well okay thank you very much that's all i have thank you and jean mcgregor caledonian record yes thank you good afternoon uh governor open the conference with um uh comments on rising gas prices and other inflationary pressures wondering if uh at the state level there's any projections or anticipation of whether that'll have a uh dampening effect on summer tourism or um the wider economy for that matter um you know it's hard to say and uh and it really depends on whether it goes any higher it is heading down a bit now um hopefully that's trend that will continue but i i haven't i haven't heard uh that there is any concern about some of the travel um and i think from our standpoint as well we're going to benefit from the border opening up so we'll have more travel that was what we've been missing for the last couple of years from our canadian friends uh basically most of them from kebec so that has opened up and and we look forward to that and uh and from what i'm seeing uh of late in terms of the activity on our roadways i'm not seeing uh that there's fewer people traveling from other parts of the northeast so those trends even with the higher gas prices we're still seeing people come for skiing and so forth and and we're not seeing that decrease um it seems to be saying uh pretty steady okay thank you very much and barbara newport daily express yeah good afternoon um governor was a little over two years ago that you declared the pandemic can you tell us what criteria that you have for the day when the day comes when you can stand at a press conference and say the pandemic is over is it based on regional or vermont data is it based on number at that at what point at what point can you say the pandemic has officially ended even if there's still COVID positive both COVID cases yeah i think i think we can safely at this point in time say that we've transitioned to endemic um but to say it's over i just can't predict the future i just don't know the next variant i just don't know um so we're going to have to we don't have a real playbook on this especially with COVID and all the variants that come along with it but so far so good i mean it's uh this is great news that we provided today and we think that because the the last strains were so transmissible that a lot of people either have had been vaccinated or have actually had COVID as a result so we have a lot of natural immunity built in so again we'll take one day at a time or one week at a time or one month at a time but right now it's looking pretty good and i'll let dr. Levine add to that just just one quick addition um i don't believe governor scott declared that we had a pandemic in march uh it was more uh we were part of an epidemic here in the u.s and part of a state of emergency but pandemic has worldwide implications and that was really the world health organization and so no matter what we say in vermont i think most of us realize that the rest of the world is still having many places where this virus is quite active and causing a lot of um death at times and certainly hospitalizations and illnesses at other times and we know that vaccination rates in places like africa many of the countries are literally 12 or 14 percent so i don't think on a worldwide stage uh anyone's been ready to say the pandemic is over but i do agree with the governor that we are certainly transitioning our behaviors to more of an endemic posture uh with circumstances the way they are in our region and in our state right now very good thank you very much tim quiston vermont business magazine hey governor you know i noticed in the um jobs report from late last week that professional business services was up which has been kind of a problem for vermont over the years long before the pandemic i was wondering if you would know why jobs in that high paying sector would be up at this at this point what do you what are you seeing i i don't know maybe it is the high pay maybe it's people seeking to relocate to a safer state um and maybe even work remotely i just i just don't know it's a good point but uh hopefully that will continue um i had an ev question actually i have a uh fully ev car and one of the things i've noticed is that the state could really use a lot more um fast chargers you know the level three dc charges and i see you nodding your head i was wondering if you have plans to put them into the um the rest stops a lot not a lot in the highway um i'm not sure that we can do that but i i will check with our transportation folks because i know we can't because we use federal funding to build some of the rest areas on the highways that we can't sell gas for instance we can't sell products at the rest areas so i'm not sure if we can sell electricity either to charge but we'll certainly check some of you know we are encouraging and we're trying to to make available some in the commuter lots uh that uh that would be one area if we could designate those uh those areas as charging locations with faster charging capabilities as well as with some of the convenience stores and so forth along the highway so we're moving in that direction we want to make it as as easy as possible and but but point well taken but i'll check on that because i i i don't believe we can but but i'll check to be sure okay i didn't i didn't notice them like in the new york state's railway they have them at the the tourist stop at the rest stops there yeah i think they still gasoline there yeah see they they didn't they didn't use federal money to build them they used holes and bonded for it so they have more flexibility than we do we accepted federal money so we're under restriction too for a lot of things uh in vermont uh in terms of why i mean we received 90 to 95 percent federal funding to build the highways and they did it on their own okay um yeah that makes a lot of sense thank you governor flanders seven days hi thanks um a couple hours ago the department of corrections announced that it was um placing that the superintendent at the new port prison on paid administrative leave and that the superintendent will not be returning to his position um but the the press release announcing this contains very little details about why this happened i'm curious if we can get um a better explanation of why this change is occurring yeah i'm aware of the situation and have been briefed but i may refer that one to secretary samelson if she's on yes absolutely and thank you for the question these are always really difficult decisions vermont DOC is leaning into a significant culture change to improve morale and well-being of both staff and incarcerated individuals i think it's important to achieve these goals um that the change requires clear and proactive leadership with the focus on making the best decisions in good faith and and with integrity um as you noted yesterday um following concerns that were raised and a thorough review by DOC and human resources that over the past month superintendent scott martin was put on administrative leave and will not be returning to his his post assistant superintendent mike polar will serve as acting superintendent again this was a difficult decision and was unrelated to death earlier this month of michael for now or the seven days article um for more information commissioner demo and his team are happy to take and answer questions offline so as folks reach out we can make that connection for you okay i'm sure we will we will be following up with commissioner um delvin i'm just curious or delvin sorry i'm just curious if there's anything else you can say at this point i mean concerns were raised or is there any indication of what types of concerns what we're talking about here yeah i can't delve into it deeply but the concerns come out of come out of this management and the direction and this leadership at north uh north urns state correctional facility again we can't go into deep detail um but again it was a a thorough review by the department and by human resources in sorry you said the review lasted a month months when did this review happen what's happened over the past months or so again commissioner demo can give provide you with more detailed information with the exact date thank you i believe this is a question for dr levine um as as we've been discussing during the presser today um you know the various metrics of um you know measuring coven in vermont case rates hospitalizations um the severity of hospitalizations we don't often hear um officials discussing wastewater data although you've previously mentioned it as kind of an exciting new opportunity um you know there's no one um collected place to see wastewater data in vermont and it doesn't seem to be utilized these pressers to kind of evaluate how um how the state is doing and i'm also specifically asking that because the latest um burlington wastewater report showed that clover was on the rise um but it does seem to vary depending on exactly which wastewater plant you look at um so i would just appreciate some clarity on how that data is used absolutely thanks for bringing the topic up because it's not just vermont it's the whole country that's sort of grappling with how do we use this data how do we report this data how do we actually analyze it in a way that uh it has meaning and can predict future events um so burlington is probably the longest standing site in vermont that's been doing this and their counts have increased over the last week they have three different uh i'll call them water sheds for lack of a better term two of them are very very modest increases the third is a larger increase although the levels that they're measuring are nowhere near where they were at a peak of various variants in the past the um national wastewater surveillance system is actually what our newest sites are all reporting to and and involved with and their primary metrics are percent total change over a 15 day period so again just like i've been emphasizing and other topics here today not uh reacting to data uh that's not able to show trends and that's obtained uh too quickly in terms of data points from previous data points we have four sites that are reporting through that system and um they have enough data to show us a trend and their trend is actually a decrease some as low as 10 decrease others close to 100 decrease and the curves that you come out with when you look at that actually look very similar to the case curve i provided at the very beginning of the press conference looking like we're on the tail of amicron so there's a little bit of conflicting data with these four sites versus the burlington site um that i can't explain but that is what what the data is showing at this point in time we have a couple other sites that are just coming online so their data hasn't really accumulated enough to be analyzed um and we'll have a few other sites that are not even submitting specimens yet but they are signed up and we anticipate we'll be doing so in the future so that's what we have for wastewater data right now um some one piece of data from our largest collector if you will that um is not going in the right direction but it's not dramatically wrong and a bunch of data from other sites that actually looks like some improvement does that help you yeah um are you aware of why the burlington wastewater treatment plants are not participating in the cdc collection um it does feel like it's difficult to kind of compare apples to apples when you're one's looking at like a 15 day period of percent change and the other is looking at kind of like these hard numbers of of fiber low yeah i don't have the firm reason although my guess would be that they were just very early adopters and got this rolling uh at a time when frankly the field was much more growing and still learning about what its potential was uh but i'm not sure that's the entire answer to your question that's as far as i can take it though okay i also have heard that there's a wastewater treatment plant uh brighten yes that is collecting data but the cdc doesn't release that data because it's less it's got less than 3000 people in it do you still receive that data are you able to view it yes we have received that data i don't know what brightens most recent data is but we have them as one of our sites and do you have any um i don't know intentions or discussions about publishing this wastewater data separately from the cdc so that you know vermonters can view it yes and again i think like other states we're all on the same learning curve and we're just trying to learn how to aggregate the data appropriately and interpret it and make sure that people are appropriately led by it as opposed to misled by it yeah yeah so like maybe as part of your kind of endemic transition strategy coming up with a way to win it i don't know release that data in some capacity yeah no i i think you're absolutely right and it's been on our it's been on our drawing board because i raised this issue quite a number of months ago even before most of these sites were online so more to come all right thank you very much that's it thank you very much we'll see you again next week