 First, I know many Vermonters watched the President's remarks last night and have a lot of questions about the timeline he talked about. I want you all to know. I believe that in Vermont not only can we meet his May 1st target, but we think we can exceed it, but I want to be very clear. This timeline that was given last night is for eligibility, not necessarily when people get their shots. While we appreciate the stake in the ground, what we really need is the doses to fulfill the timeline that we're laying out. As I said on Tuesday, we have an aggressive vaccine plan, but we've been waiting for confirmation from the federal government on what our Johnson & Johnson supply will be before we lay out a timeline in detail. Following President Biden's remarks, I'm assuming a clear supply picture will be made available to the states as soon as possible so we can confirm the schedule of our remaining HBNs and share it with you next week. But again, I want Vermonters to know if the federal government delivers the supply will more than deliver on the President's eligibility goal. Next this Monday I'll sign another one month extension to the State of Emergency as a reminder. This is how we put into place mitigation measures needed to keep people safe, but we also need it to methodically reopen. Next as you know, we've moved up the opening date of phase 5B of our vaccination rollout which began yesterday. So everyone over the age of 16 with certain high risk conditions can sign up. This is in addition to school employees and child care providers as well as all those 65 and older. I want to remind the folks that just because we've moved into a new phase doesn't mean you can't sign up if you were previously eligible. So if there's anyone over the age of 65 who hasn't scheduled their shot yet, please do so. The website and the number to make your appointment is on the screen behind me. Next as we previewed on Tuesday, I'm pleased to announce a few small changes in our guidance today. As you know, Vermonter has taken one of, if not the most, cautious approaches in the country in order to slow the spread of the virus and reduce deaths and hospitalizations. I know this has caused a lot of frustration. I hear from people every day who think we should be moving faster to reopen like some other states have. But I want to remind Vermonters, there's a reason we had the lowest number of deaths in the country and the lowest death rate in the continental U.S. If our death rate was as high as some of our neighbors like New York, we wouldn't be talking about 212 lives lost. We'd be talking about 1500 or more. So I'll continue to take a methodical, strategic approach and turn the spicket a quarter turn at a time in close consultation and agreement with our help and epi experts. Fortunately, as we vaccinate more people, you can expect the spicket turns to be more frequent than they were last spring when we didn't have vaccines to help protect us. As let's remember, vaccines will help us beat the virus without all the mitigation measures we used over the last year. So today we have two changes. First, as you remember, we put in place a multi-household gathering band just before Thanksgiving. And recently we listed that for those who've been vaccinated and changed the guidance so a non-vaccinated household could gather with others who were vaccinated. Today we're issuing guidance to allow two non-vaccinated households to gather at a time. You might recall last spring, we took a similar step with trusted households. But this is a bit different. Effective today, two non-vaccinated households may get together, but you're not limited to choose just one other household. You can do so with multiple households as long as it's just one at any given time. Of course, those who are vaccinated didn't count against the limit. So you and one other non-vaccinated person could have several vaccinated friends or family members over for dinner. Another example, kids who obviously can't be vaccinated yet can have plate eggs again, which we know have been sorely missed and would be good for the mental health and emotional well-being of the kids as well as parents. We also change, we also change our restaurant guidance, which currently restricts tables to just one household at a time. Effective today, restaurants will be able to seat six people at a table and they can be from different families. Of course, capacity, distancing, and every other guideline remains in place. Or making this change because our health experts believe it's safe to do so. And because we know how hard it is for staff to determine who is and isn't from one household. This table limit is a way to ease the burden on them while allowing people to get together again with some mitigation measures in place. Now I know these changes are not as big as many other states have announced, including those in our region. But we feel they're positive and safe steps forward and you can expect more spicket turns next week. As I've said, we'll be taking incremental steps as more Vermonters are vaccinated. But I'm not going to flip the switch, like Texas or other states. I don't believe it's the safest or fastest way out of this crisis. Nor do I believe it's what most Vermonters want. And while masking and physical distancing will remain for months ahead, as I said last week, I believe we're going to be in very good shape by summer, mid-summer. As you might remember, the governor's meeting with the White House didn't happen this week until after the media briefing. But the Biden administration told us was that we would only be receiving about 500 doses of Johnson & Johnson this week and probably none the following week. But thought, but not confirmed, we'd get 4,000 to 5,000 doses by the end of the month. And again, as I said, next week, depending on the supply picture we received from the feds, I should be able to announce a vaccine timeline for the rest of the age brands. And then outline our larger exit strategy in detail by the first week of April. I appreciate everyone's patience and I know all of us want to get back to normal. But as Dr. Levine and others have said, March is a critical month as we complete vaccinations for the most vulnerable. So we must continue to do all we can to help ourselves by wearing a mask, keeping our distance, washing our hands, and avoiding crowds when possible. But again, we're in the last lapse of this very long and tough race. But I believe we can win it if we stick to our strategy and stay united. Next, it's my pleasure to introduce a special guest joining us today, Senator Sanders, who's been working hard for us in Washington on the federal relief package. I've had conversations with him as Budget Committee Chairman, as well as with Senator Leahy and Congressman Welch over the past several months on what Vermont needs are. So we're very pleased with much of what's in this package. And I want to thank the Senator for all he's done for our state. And I'll now turn it over to Senator Sanders for an update on what Vermonters can expect in the package. Welcome, Senator Sanders. Thank you very much, Governor Scott. And thank you very much for allowing me to join you this morning. And let me congratulate you for your leadership in these very difficult times for our state and thank the legislature as well for their great work. I think everybody knows that last week the Congress passed what might well be the most consequential piece of legislation to impact the lives of working people in many, many decades. And the theory behind this bill is that we have to take a hard look at the unprecedented set of crises facing our nation. And that is, as the governor indicated, this terrible, terrible pandemic claims hundreds of lives in Vermont, over half a million lives nationally, made millions of people sick. We have to take a hard look at how the pandemic impacted the economy, millions of people lost their jobs, small businesses went under, had to take a hard look at the chaos and disruption that our young people from literally childcare to graduate school experience because of the disruption of their education. So it is a very, very comprehensive piece of legislation, which more than any legislation that I have seen really does focus not only on the needs of the wealthy and the powerful, but on the needs of ordinary people. The bill has 628 pages and I'm sure you don't want me to go through all of them, but let me just highlight some of the provisions in it which will impact Vermont. For a start, Senator Leahy, Congressman Welch and I worked very hard to see that we could increase the amount of funding going directly into the state of Vermont in these difficult times. The bill that came to us from the House had about 800 million in it. Senator Leahy, who is chairman of the Appropriations Committee and I am chairman of the Budget Committee, were able to get that number up to about $1.3 billion going into the state for the myriad needs that the state will have. Further, I have believed for a very long time that in a moment when half of the people in our country are living paycheck to paycheck, probably the most important thing that we could do at this moment is just get cash into the hands of struggling families. I will never forget, because I'm sure the government will not, just the long lines of cards that we have seen all over Vermont in Burlington, all over the state, people lining up like hundreds in order to get emergency food packages. People are hurting and they need help. Probably the fastest way to alleviate that financial burden is to get money directly into the hands of families. As you recall a couple of months ago, we were able to get direct payments of $600 per working class adult that is people $75,000 or under for individuals, $150,000 for couples. This bill increases that and adds another $1,400 per person that includes the children as well. So if you are a family of four, that's $1,400 times four, $5,600, and by the way, dependents will also be included in that $1,400. The President is cognizant of the fact that it's imperative that we get that money out as quickly as possible, and I think people will see direct deposits coming into their accounts literally within the next few days. In addition to the direct payments, which I think would be very, very helpful, and by the way, that means in our state about 89% of the households, 428,000 adults and 145,000 kids will be beneficiaries of these direct payments. Almost everybody will receive them. A lot of people in Vermont and around this country are still unemployed. What this legislation does is extend unemployment benefits through early September. There will be a $300 supplement on top of what the state provides, and importantly, there will be in this bill a tax deduction for the first $10,000 unemployment that people received in 2020, and that would be a big help to a lot of people who filed for unemployment in 2020. I don't have to tell anybody that the United States has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth. This bill in a very aggressive way addresses that crisis. It increases the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000, or $3,600 for families with kids under the age of six. What studies have suggested is that this will, in fact, cut childhood poverty in the United States of America by up to 50% an extraordinary achievement. Furthermore, many people in Vermont and throughout this country are struggling right now in paying their rent. There's a rent deduction, which at some point is going to end. People need help in paying their back rent and making sure that they can pay their mortgages. $152 million will be coming into the state of Vermont for rent and utility relief, and $50 million for mortgage assistance. The goal here is to make sure that people don't lose their homes or that they are not evicted. Again, we can't bring people back to work unless they have a safe place to send their kids. And this bill will increase funding for childcare by some $391 million from early childhood to higher education. A lot of money coming in for education in the state of Vermont. Also, obviously, the goal of the President and all of us is to crush this pandemic as quickly as we can. What we will be seeing hopefully sooner than later is an increase in production of the vaccines that we need. And most importantly, as the governor was talking about getting those vaccines into the arms of the American people as quickly as we can. And when we talk about healthcare, one of the issues I have worked on for a long time and deeply concerned about is primary healthcare. Making sure that, especially in this pandemic, people can get to the doctor when they need to get to the doctor. And I'm happy to say that in this bill, we have double funding for community health centers. About 25% of Vermontans get their primary healthcare, get their dental care, get their mental health counseling, which is a huge issue. Get their low-cost prescription drugs from community health centers. As a result of this bill, there will be a significant, significant increase in funding for community health centers in Vermont and around the country. One of the areas that I worry about is that as a result of the disruption of the education of our kids, our kids have lost a lot of time in school. And what we are putting into this bill is almost a tripling of funding for summer programs and for after-school programs. So I would hope that what we can do in Vermont with the folks working with the governor on that is create exciting, interesting summer programs this summer to make sure that kids can gain some of the classes, regain some of what they had lost during the school year. And we're also going to be able to build very strong after-school programs next year and the next several years as well. In order to make sure that we get doctors into underserved areas, we also triple funding for the National Health Service Corps. That means making sure that we get doctors and nurses and dentists into areas that we need them. So our bottom line is this is an enormously comprehensive piece of legislation. It will impact, I suspect, almost every family in the state of Vermont. And the goal here is to do everything that we can to help people who are struggling right now to rebuild our economy, to open up our businesses to get our children back to school and to crush this pandemic as quickly as we can. I would also add that the work that we have to do here in Congress is certainly not done with the passage of the American Rescue Plan. Much more has to be done. And in the coming weeks and months, I think you're going to see some efforts coming from the Budget Committee and elsewhere to create the millions of jobs that we need in this country, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, no secret to anybody that in Vermont, all over this country, roads, bridges, water systems, wastewater plants are in desperate need of help. We can put people to work doing that. And we also have got the combat climate change to transform our energy system. And as a result of focusing on those issues, we can create millions of good-paying jobs. So I think we are moving forward in a very positive direction. My hope and expectation is that this legislation is going to ease a lot of the anxiety that many families in Vermont are now experiencing. And I look forward to working with you, Governor Scott, and the legislature to keep going forward. Thanks very much. Senator Sanders, and very welcome news for Vermont. And we really do appreciate all you've done to protect us and help us through the recovery in transitioning to some normalcy. And this should be just the booster shot we need, the booster shot for the economy and for families in Vermont to get us to transition again to some sort of normalcy. So thank you so much for all your efforts and all you do for Vermont. Thank you. Next, we'll be going to Secretary French for the update on education. Thank you, Governor. Good morning. I do want to thank Senator Sanders and our entire congressional delegation for their support of our schools. The strategies he outlined today, particularly summer programming and afterschool activities, will be key strategies for our schools in their recovery work and really help support our students, particularly those that live in rural communities. I want to begin my report with an update on our weekly PCR surveillance testing of school staff. Each week, we test about 25% of school staff and the weekly sample includes schools that are under geographic state. We've not conducted the testing for a few weeks due to winter school vacations, but the testing did resume this week. This week, we tested just under 3,000 school staff. To date, one positive case was identified, so the positivity rate for school staff this week was 0.03% and the positivity rate for the state as a whole remains low at 1.5%. With the implementation of our new vaccination program for school staff, it's likely we will make changes to the surveillance testing program in the coming weeks. We'll have more information on that soon. In terms of the vaccination program for school staff, Secretary Smith will provide some additional information, but I thought I'd make some comments on how it's going from the perspective of the agency of education. Our agency manages what I'd call the customer service aspects of the program dealing with the direct communications with school districts. This week was the first week of the program with respect to it when exceedingly well, considering how complex the logistics are for the program. There were a few bumps in the road, namely with the location of vaccination appointments. School staff are given codes, but they are available to make those appointments anywhere at any one of our clinics across the state. So what happened was that some of the slots filled up more quickly than others, but I just want to reassure people that due clinics will be implemented as the supply increases. So school staff should not worry about getting an appointment if they were unable to schedule one this week. School staff are also eligible to register through the pharmacy program, so they should check back regularly with those pharmacies to see if appointments are available through that program. We've implemented a monthly survey to get a sense of the operating modes of our schools relative to the extent students are learning in-person, hybrid, or through remote learning. And we recently compiled the data from the February survey, that provided a quick summary. The survey is given at the end of each month. In February, 77% of our schools responded to the survey. Typically, we do see a slightly higher response rate at closer to 90%. But in February, we saw slight increases in the amount of in-person instruction more or less across the board at all grade levels. For all students in K-12, for example, about 34% were learning through in-person, and this represents about a 4% increase of the amount of in-person that we saw in January. This same trend is apparent when the data is broken down by grade level. At the elementary level, there was a 4% increase. The middle level, it was about 3% and the high school, 1%. I think the data does show that schools have made it through the more challenging winter holiday period with its elevated virus activity in January. And as the weather gets warmer and vaccination expands, we can expect to see the amount of in-person to continue to increase in the coming weeks. Our team met this week with the Department of Health to review possible edits to our Safe and Healthy Schools guidance. No final decisions have been made at this point, but we are reviewing the guidance relative to entering into the recovery phase of our pandemic response. Much of this guidance document was created in the context of figuring out how to reopen our schools over the summer, and the document has grown to over 40 pages. And the last time we made edits, the document was in October, right when we were trying to anticipate the holiday period. We have learned a lot since then. We must now plan for conditions improving. Also, there's always new information and data from the public health community to consider and evaluate. So we'll be working on that in the coming weeks, and I'll provide an update on that soon. Lastly, we received the expected waiver template form from the U.S. Department of Education this week relative to SBAC testing. The waiver form allows us to request a waiver from some of the testing provisions, but not the testing itself. With our priority on returning to in-person this spring, we would have welcomed the opportunity to waive the testing altogether, but the Biden administration will require states to hold the testing. We still intend to pursue waiver of some of the testing provisions, including a waiver of using data for accountability purposes. We will publish our waiver proposal soon. It must go through a public comment period so there will be plenty of opportunity for interested parties to give us feedback on our proposal. That concludes my update. Thank you, Secretary French. And good morning, everyone. Today, I'll update you on the overall progress of the state's vaccination program, as well as provide an update on the specific groups that have been recently become eligible. I also wanted to share that when we near the completion of the groups we currently have in process, we plan to move back to our age grouping strategy. We feel it's the most equitable, effective, and least divisive approach. We are targeting the end of March to transition back to age grouping starting with Vermonters age 60 and above. But this, of course, all depends on the allocation, the vaccine allocation from the Feds that it continues and that it does increase over time. In terms of overall progress, as of today, 138,700 people have been vaccinated against COVID-19. That's one in every four Vermonters with at least one dose. 64,000 have received their first dose of vaccine, 64,900 have received their first dose of vaccine, and 73,700 have received their first and last doses. As you know, yesterday we opened up registration to those 16 and above with high risk conditions. That means all of phase 5 is open for registration. All of it is open now. As of this morning, 21,700 people in phase 5, both segments A and B, have made appointments. I encourage those that are eligible to make an appointment via the state website at healthvermont.gov or by calling the vaccine call center at 855-722-7878. On Monday, March 8, we opened registration to teachers and school staff, and we are expanding access to vaccine clinics as soon as possible. So far, 11,000 educators and child care providers have made appointments. As a reminder these groups can make an appointment through the state system when an educator's vaccination clinic has been scheduled, or they can make an appointment at Walgreens and bring their confirmation e-mail to the appointment. The state website is healthvermont.gov slash myvaccine and the Walgreens website is walgreens.com. Next week, clinics have been scheduled in the following counties. Addison, Caledonia, Chittenden, Orleans, Rutland, and Wyndham. We have 25 additional sites pending and we will announce those once confirmed. We also opened up registration for child care programs up ahead of the 15th schedule. Eligible individuals have already received their instructions and I want to provide some clarity of who's eligible, which includes the following. Individuals working in regulated child care programs who have direct contact with children, including registered and licensed family child care home providers, teachers, teacher associates, aides, directors, after school program staff, substitutes, and trainees. The following individuals are eligible if they have direct in-person contact with children, after school activity specialists, auxiliary staff, business managers, and partner staff. Household members in a family child care home 16 years of age or older that have direct in-person contact with children are also eligible. The individuals must be working in a regulated child care, regulated child care preschool or after school program that is currently operating and providing direct in-person care to children. Here are the individuals that are not eligible. Those that work in a regulated program but do not have regular direct in-person contact with children. Those employed by our program, not currently providing in-person direct care to children. Those that work in unregulated programs. And household members in a family child care center that do not have regular direct and in-person contact with children. Vaccine clinics available to teachers and school staff are also available to those in a regulated child care programs. They can make an appointment through the state system at healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine or by calling our call center at 855-722-7878 or through Walgreens at Walgreens.com. And last but not least we continue to expand opportunities for Vermonters to receive a vaccine. We have added clinics in Chester, Grand Isle, Ludlow and Rockingham. CVS pharmacies in Vermont will join us in our vaccination efforts. Tomorrow you can make an appointment at CVS locations in Berry and Morrisville by visiting the health department's website or you can go to CVS website at CVS.com. Other CVS pharmacy locations will begin to schedule clinics as additional vaccine allocation becomes available through the federal retail pharmacy program. This concludes my update and I'll turn it over to Dr. Levine for a health update. Good morning. Today we're reporting 121 cases and one death bringing the total deaths to 212 our sympathies go to the deceased family and friends. There are 23 Vermonters who are hospitalized with COVID-19 with 4 in the ICU. These numbers continue to trend downwards. Our positivity rate also continues to trend downwards and it stands today at 1.4%. You've now heard that the governor has announced that Vermonters loosening gathering restrictions a bit. This will be welcomed by many to restore a greater sense of normal to our lives while we wait for the families to come together. I don't want to be confused with close friends or let children play together in two household gatherings. But I want to reiterate that everyone in these gatherings who was not vaccinated still needs to follow our important prevention guidance wearing masks and keeping at least a six foot distance. Remember how well we did with this last summer while still taking those necessary steps to protect one another. I know we can do that again, especially with our progress in vaccination. But this virus has not gone away. We're still seeing cases of COVID-19 and we know we are now dealing with a more transmissible variant. So please, if you do get together with another household, keep it as safe as possible. Stay outside if you can, choose activities that you can keep masks on and maintain your distance. Think about where you've been recently and whether it could put others at risk, especially if they are at higher risk. Remember the COVID talk? Have that conversation with others to negotiate boundaries and establish expectations before you get together. If you need a refresher, this is all still on our website at healthvermont.gov to watch COVID talk tips. And of course, avoid any gathering if you have any symptoms of illness. Keep in mind that Vermont case growth, hospitalizations, and deaths are all going in the right direction. Our level of immunity to the virus acquired through infection is probably the lowest in the nation, maybe 5% at best. So we really have to count on our very aggressive vaccination program and throughout the spring our ability to avoid risky behaviors. Clearly on the order of 20 to 25% of our state now has an element of vaccine-provided immunity. So total population immunity is now in a 25 to 30% range. We are currently probably seeing some element of the presence of variants and their increased transmissibility, but neither here in Vermont nor in the nation are these factors causing major increases in infections. And the final critical piece of our state reopening carefully still remains testing. Do not mistake the strides we're making in this pandemic to mean that we no longer need to worry about testing. The more we are around others again the more we need to remember testing. You could have COVID-19 but not know it. And the only way to find out is to get tested. Then you can get the health guidance that you need for yourself while protecting your family and your community. We have plenty of capacity for testing right now across the state. So if you want to get tested for any reason, please do so. It's free and it's easy. We've been hearing a lot about different COVID related activities lately. From the first case in our state to reflecting on our own memories of the last normal activities we did before our lives changed in ways we could never have imagined. Yesterday marked a year since the WHO declared a pandemic as the new coronavirus spread quickly across countries and states. You may recall I was a little critical of their timing then but they were the last to call it a pandemic. Since then this pandemic has touched all of our lives leading to suffering and loss impacting physical and mental health probably in ways we don't even know yet. But what is clear is that some people and communities have suffered more during the pandemic. People who are already struggling faced even more challenges of job loss or food insecurity as you heard the senator just say had harder access to education and health care. Communities of color have been especially impacted. We can see in a way that we never had before how we are not all equally healthy nor do we all have similar opportunities for good health. The conditions in the places where we live, learn, work, play truly affect our health and outcomes. We've come a long way in this pandemic and I only hope that as we emerge we can continue to pay attention to these inequities and work to improve policies and programs to improve the health of all Vermonters. And the nice thing is we already wrote some of the future playbook during the pre-pandemic time when we developed our states health improvement plan which stands on a foundation across all sectors of state government and focusing on the so-called social determinants of health and addressing health equity. And finally I'm happy to announce that I'm getting vaccinated today. We've been working so hard on vaccine and getting it to Vermonters that I've hardly had a moment to reflect on what it means to me. But like many of you I look forward to spending time with my family and friends to seeing my out-of-state son and his wife and my daughter and her husband and hugging my granddaughter. And yes, hugging will be an order and will be the doctor's order for all of you who follow in my footsteps. Like many of you while I feel somewhat grateful for Zoom it has not come even close to making up for missing seeing her grow from an old baby to a year-and-a-half toddler. I've said it before but today I'll get to show it these vaccines are safe and effective it feels great to do my part in protecting my community and stopping the pandemic. I encourage all Vermonters to do the same as soon as they are eligible. Governor? Thank you Dr. Labine. We'll now open it up to questions. Thanks Governor. I've mentioned a pandemic exit strategy. I guess I'm just kind of wondering if you could provide a little more clarification on what that means. Whether that's a timeline for you know we have a timeline for or next week potentially we'll have a timeline for vaccinations but maybe if it's a timeline for the specific. Yes, this will be as I said next week we hope when we get confirmation of what we're going to get for a supply and we can count on that to figure out the vaccine strategy in detail. Hopefully the following week we have a plan all in place ready for an exit strategy. How do we get between here and what I think is normal and very normal by 4th of July. I think I said that last week that that's our goal to fully back to normal. So we will have a very detailed plan and it'll show just exactly where we're going to be what the gathering limits will be and what we can do during those periods of time but again it will be very detailed and it will be very transparent but that'll be before probably the first week of April by the time we are able to deliver that but vaccine supply has to come first. On a sign note I had a question about the 1099 genes as well I understand those were sent out maybe this is for Commissioner Harrington as well but I understand those were sent out a few weeks ago we're still hearing from some people and their family members that haven't received them of course the new stimulus checks and other things will be based off of your 2020 income. So we're hearing concerns that people might not get them in time to file their taxes. I'm wondering where we are on that process and if there's anything holding it up. I'll refer to Commissioner Harrington on that if you heard the question. I did not Governor. It was about the 1099s Calvin was saying that he's hearing from some of their listeners that they have not received them yet and just wanted to know if there was an update on that or if there's a reason why some may not have received theirs. Sure thank you. Well all the 1099s we had good addresses for went out the door. There was a small population of folks where we had to reach back out to them to validate their addresses. There is an opportunity if someone did not receive a 1099 on our website where they can request the 1099 and for some reason they didn't get it but like I said there was a when I say a small population I believe it was you know less than a thousand people out of a hundred thousand where we had bad addresses in the system just based on how the application was filed and we had to try to validate those addresses. So when we ran our cross check against other data sources we had both at the DNV and at the Department of Taxes we were able to find this subset of people where the address didn't match. So we are also doing that information in cross checking that to get some more out the door and that will happen probably over the course of the next week but certainly if someone did not receive one and they know they should have they can request that on our website. One last actually follow up to the spigot announcement today with restaurants does that include bars as well? It does not include bars at this point in time but I can say I expect a turn of the spigot in that regard in the very near future. Coming up so on the issue of these vaccination clinics for healthcare excuse me teachers and school staff as well as childcare is there any problem with notifications on the childcare end of things? Childcare centers being I have received a few comments from childcare centers specifically in Addison County where they did not have a chance to sign up at the Addison County stuff because they weren't aware of them whereas the teachers were. I believe we just started the childcare providers this week so I would expect that would change as the week moves on but maybe I will ask Dr. Smith. We decided to release them because there were opportunities at the federal pharmacy programs and we decided to release the instructions as you know there's different instructions for educators as well as childcare providers because we have specific areas where they can go in specific clinics that they can go to so we release those early it may be as we were releasing them some of those aspects of some of those clinics being full but I would check the federal pharmacy program to see if there's any spots there of course as we move on we'll start adding clinics and again we have to abide by what is given to us by the federal government in terms of allocation remember we had an extended period of time that we were going to get this group done into April and I think we said either the first or second week in April so it's going to take some time to get through this group we anticipated taking time to get through this group we will continue to open up clinics as we go around the state as I said we had several counties we'll be opening up in next week and we'll continue to open up clinics They were more concerned about the fact they did receive their identification numbers all of that stuff but what they were having problems with was knowing that there was a clinic coming that they could then apply for We'll look at that Steve and make sure our communications Whenever you roll out a new program there are a few people that have glitches it's not any fault of theirs it's just we need to figure out how the communications went on that and we'll continue to communicate with them and that is counting from what I'm hearing I think it highlights the difficulty in doing specific groups special groups the complexity gets more challenging making sure that you have to develop a new program every time you do that that's why we're going back to the age banding which is so much more concise and easier to understand it's based on age I'm wondering if the state has considered opening eligibility to the parents or spouses of those people since that household could still be considered high risk I'll call on Dr. Levine if he has anything to add as well but I'd like to vaccinate every Vermonner today but we do have a limited supply of vaccine that we have to apportion out according as we did where the greatest risk is and the greatest risk in many of these cases are one age and you saw us go from 65 above because 90% of our deaths and then high risk conditions is another one we want to get to the people that have high risk conditions and with the vaccine supply that we have we feel we can get to those people but we can't expand it to other people within that family and then I did have a question from a viewer who wrote in to us saying that she couldn't make her second dose appointment that she had originally scheduled and she wasn't able to make an appointment in that ideal time frame just wondering if there's any sort of solution for that did she indicate whether it was I doubt it was through the state program because we hold back the second doses and make sure they're second doses did she indicate whether it was through the pharmacy program or through the state program okay well maybe I can talk to you afterwards and we can get there but I want to turn it over to Dr. Levine to talk about because we've had a lot of questions about this it's not the exact date it may be a few days later or a few days or you know mostly it's a few days later I'd like Dr. Levine to sort of leave what he has said before about that particular issue we all know that in healthcare precision is really a good thing we don't want to get an extra milliliter of the vaccine if we don't need it nor do we want to get only half the dose of the vaccine if we don't need it in this case precision has a little wiggle room when it comes to the actual timing of the dose I have heard similar stories from others in Vermont I have to say that as the secretary was alluding to most of those end up getting resolved pretty easily and they were often systems with the computer systems that one of the pharmacies was using and not an intentional neglect of any sort but the reality is the Pfizer is a three week to the second dose the Moderna is four weeks to the second dose and all of the companies as well as the CDC agree that you can err on the side of several days before or after and if God forbid it came to the point where it was six weeks after that's still acceptable even if it's not ideal so I want people to just feel comfortable that they have a window of time and that precision there is not necessarily going to do anything for their favor or against them the reality is as you know some places around the world are actually intentionally holding the second doses and doing their own experiment with the population at large to see if they can wait as long as four months after the first dose and we'll learn from their experience but in this country six weeks would be the outlier and people should feel comfortable to be within a few days on either side of their dose Thank you I had a question about the lag time between registering for appointment for your first dose and actually getting the vaccine I know someone with chronic condition 65 and up who made an appointment recently and I think is scheduled for the first shot on March 31st is that sort of standard for that group now and will that sort of where you're registering where you live how much vaccine the state has and do you anticipate that speeding up at all when we get to the age group again? I'll let Secretary Smith answer this but we have run into that in some situations and we would encourage those who are signing up if they don't find one in their region in their area of that specific time period that they look elsewhere if they can go to some other area and get it sooner they should and I think that that's been a little bit of confusion on the part of some but Secretary Smith Thank you for the question I just wanted to point out that there is a in this group the high risk conditions there is a verification process that is in place so what happens that takes a few days to verify so what happens it doesn't allow you to sign up on a certain amount a certain day until that verification process is complete so that is part of the issue. Second of all these clinics have been filling up fast you know we have 21,000 people who have signed up for these we usually depending on supply will open up more clinics and we'll see we get you know the federal government as the governor had mentioned is we're going to have a pretty flat supply here for the next few weeks and then at the end of the March we hope to have a bigger supply so maybe we can move up the clinics at that point but right now there are two processes that are in place there's the verification process that takes a few days and then you know the supply where we had been hoping for a consistent supply of Johnson & Johnson that just hasn't materialized over the last couple of weeks or the next couple of weeks and we're hoping according to what the federal government is saying that will change at the end of March. Okay and as the governor was saying that you could register at another location that's not the closest one to you because I know that in the early stages of this you should really stick to the vaccine site that's closest to you. Yeah we're getting a little bit more liberal on that primarily because we're trying to sort of balance out where we have where we have slots and where we don't have slots obviously we would prefer that you try to do the and this is on the these are on the open programs which I'll you know which would be the age banding programs and the well it would be with any program but you know we would ask you to first try around your area but you know we want people to get vaccinated and we don't want open slots so if there's somebody that needs to get vaccinated that wants to get vaccinated that wants to drive if they're in LaMoyle to Chittenden County we're not going to discourage that. Okay thank you. Thank you Rebecca. Good morning Governor. Governor I'm wondering if the state is looking at opening up spectators for any sort of championship games it would seem that with a lot of the older population grandparents and whatnot being vaccinated that facilities like the Berry Auditorium or maybe a large hockey rink could accommodate some vaccinated spectators. Yeah this is one of those what ifs questions and we aren't there at this point in time and again I would ask for some patients as we get through the next couple of weeks when we can confirm the amount of supply we're going to get and then we can figure out our strategy over the next two to three months and it'll get very prescriptive and you'll be able to see what we're looking at in terms of gathering sizes and what it means for those who are vaccinated or not. So again we're not allowing that at this point in time but it won't be long before you'll see some steps in allowing for group gatherings and then getting to some sort of normalcy by mid-summer or 4th of July from my standpoint. Okay and the other question I have is we're seeing some school closings sports being cancelled for the rest of the season most notably at the Siskoe school district wondering what sort of light you can shed on that situation as part of knowledge the state has Commissioner Libby Hi I presume you're referring to the sport of hockey Yeah I'm hearing that there's quite a few cases through some of the sports teams especially hockey teams and it's led to the closure of school for the next possibly 28 days. I'm not sure about the school closure part for 28 days but with regard to the teams themselves you are correct that there have been cases on several hockey teams we know of transmission only within a team as opposed to between teams like in competition and as you know sometimes because of a case or several cases on a team there are abundant contacts because the team is a team and depending on how they were practicing or scrimmaging or playing the amount of opportunity for players to come in contact with one another is increased but at this point in time we're not aware of any cases transmitted within a competition across teams Secretary French do you have anything to add regarding Mrs. Coy? Thank you Dr. Levine yes Greg Superintendent in the region reached out to me the other day and just gave me a heads up that they're having trouble with staff availability essentially as a result of the number of cases they've seen in the community we have scheduled a time for next week for the two of us to connect and so we can explore our options see what we can do to help but my understanding it's the impact on the staff and patterns thank you very much I'll leave it at that thank you Governor and have a great weekend thanks for taking my call Governor Scott you've said that you want people to have a choice in which vaccine they get for those people who do have a preference for which vaccine how can they know which one they're getting our readers report that there's no indication of which one they'll get when they're registering yeah that's going to not in some respects not an option because we only received the first tranche of doses from the federal government which was about four to five thousand doses so we don't have that many in place and we've utilized most of those for some of the 1A population public safety and so forth expansion of public safety so we don't have any to have a choice at this point in time but we expect again the federal government becomes more clear about what we can expect in the future we're developing a plan so that you'll know or we'll make sure that certain distribution points will have enough of the doses there to give you a choice but we just haven't worked out all the details yet but we have some time because as I said we're not getting any significant amount this next week after and there's no promises on the week after that so we'll hopefully know more on Tuesday and then we can talk a little bit more about what the opportunities are thank you and my other questions for Dr. Levine the CDC and Vermont's vaccination advisory committee recommended that a BMI of 30 be considered obese in terms of qualifying as a chronic health condition why did Vermont use a BMI of 40? so 30 is a traditional definition if you will of obesity and 40 is a definition of what's term severe obesity and we felt that based on discussions with our advisory group as well as looking at all of the data that it would be best to keep it to the severe obesity group and that way we could get quickly to back to our age banding as well because there would not be as many individuals to go through in that group okay thank you very much good afternoon a couple of things I received this question a number of times can you mandate that the schools reopen in a similar way that you've managed they closed a year ago and you're just leaving it up to the districts at this point or do you not have that authority yeah it would be very difficult to mandate that and from my standpoint I think it's much better for us to deal with this giving some latitude to the districts we have a different policy in Vermont you know much more local control and we want to observe that so we've taken this different we knew the obstacle the main obstacle in the way of reopening as we've heard over the last month or so has been to vaccinate education the education system the employees and staff of those of the education community so with the Johnson Johnson coming on being approved we thought this was the best approach so once we get through that obstacle which we're trying to deal with right now we believe that there are going to be more schools coming on board opening up for in-person instruction and we'll work with them with other obstacles that may be in the way and to accommodate that so we just think it's a better approach and to force someone to do this at this point in time doesn't make a lot of sense from my standpoint we haven't used that except to close we haven't used that approach in anything we've done and we've had some good compliance in some respects and those schools reopening because they know our education community knows that's what's best for our kids they're not okay they're suffering at this point in time and by opening to in-person instruction it will be best for the emotional and educational needs of our kids I think one of the parts of the question whether you could legally do that I don't have the answer to that I assume the powers are broad I assume that we could but I'm not sure that we'd have the results that we'd hoped for nor this unity that we've enjoyed in Vermont we've come together we've adhered to the guidelines we've done a lot of things right and this approach has worked thus far so I'm in hopes that once we vaccinate the school system, the education employees, the staff members and so forth that we'll see a large majority of those schools opening back up to in-person instruction an unrelated question that I've received is a woman who's pregnant right now gets a dose and should she be concerned that the second dose would come after delivered and whether she could breastfeed and that sort of thing Definitely a question for Dr. Levine Yes, it's been determined that breastfeeding is not a contraindication to getting a dose and one can safely get vaccinated even if they're breastfeeding All right, great, thank you Thanks for a back-up For mothers get a lot of numbers thrown at them at these breast briefings One or two more significant numbers are completely missing especially when the state is pushing the return of teachers to schools for total in-person learning and I'm just wondering what the agency of education or the health department have for numbers of schools across Vermont that have a current active COVID case or and what does the state know about schools that are operating remotely or full operation I think a lot of that's on the website Mike, from what I've seen but maybe I'm wrong Secretary of French Yeah, your first question Mike about the number of cases in schools that's on the Department of Health's website it's updated I think twice a week and in terms of to what extent we have promoter in person or not, we do monitor that on a monthly basis so it's hard for us to pin that down in a specific moment of time so we decide to do that on a monthly basis to give a sense of the general trends Well, I know the Champlain Valley Superintendent's Association this morning at a meeting and 13 out of 14 raised their hand when asked if they have an active case in their school today so 13 out of 14 and more than half that they have one or more classes fully remote because of quarantine requirements so I'm told the school districts are doing their own contract tracing because of delays at the health department in their tracing so is this part of the reason that the superintendent say there's a disconnect between schools and the state? No, I would say again that the information is on the website I would also observe the Champlain Valley Superintendent's Region it's one of the largest regions it starts all the way in Middlebury and goes all the way up to the Canadian border so you're talking about a large number of our school districts but the data is there and we still see cases in the schools on a daily basis and to their credit it's being managed exceedingly well it's unfortunately to a certain extent become just part parcel of our operations but takes a lot of effort to do that the schools are doing a great job managing it and as far as the schools taking over the contract tracing from the health department yeah I don't know that's not true and I'll invite Secretary Smith or Dr. Levine to weigh in on that but we still do all the contact tracing at the Department of Health well not according to the superintendent I talked to they can't wait they tell me Mike it's a collaboration do their own collaboration between the schools and the Department of Health because you are correct there are times that at 10 o'clock on a Sunday night the schools want to know and need to know what impact that's going to have on their operation and they do that preliminary contact tracing we have an entire team that is our school outbreak prevention and response team that interacts with the schools constantly and has been very tightly connected with them so it is a collaboration and it's a productive collaboration and it works very well actually and it's been working all year through the pandemic so I want you to view it as a collaboration not a disconnect as you framed it well I'm just talking to the superintendent to see a disconnect there but my other question today and I know we've talked about cashiers food antlers at grocery stores they've been considered essential workers but these low paid employees don't seem to get a lot of attention in getting shots I'm not quite sure as to can you say what is the clear message today for these workers as to when these people on the front lines are going to get their shots when they're eligible and everything well again Mike I think we've seen you know with the childcare providers and so forth level of complexity when you have to determine exactly who it is that is going to be able to receive those and not having that finite list is problematic so we want to go back to the age banding it's just so clear so concise so easily to easy to understand and we get requests all the time and I think you can make an argument for almost any category as being essential to someone and I think we shared with all of you the number of entities that have officially reached out to our office to ask to be put to the front of the line I mean we have a couple pages here it's probably 60 entities and I'll just give you a flavor I mean and again you can make an argument for each and every one the HVAC contractors heating and venting contractors when you think about schools you know want to make sure that they can get in to provide for that relief pilots, college professors hotel employees, postal workers grocery store workers food and beverage staff food distribution drivers forest product workers let's see cleaning industries wait a second let me finish communications workers services hardware stores dairy workers U.S. border border patrol and customs again library staff I mean each and every one and that's just a small portion of the number of requests we get and so you can make an argument for each and every one but then you have to if you decide you're going to do that you have to decide who gets it how do you get the names do it and how are you going to get them to sign up and then it's a level of complexity that slows down the process so going back to the age banding as I said we feel we're going to have the opportunity to have everyone sign at least signed up by May 1st that's like you know six weeks away so we'll get there we just need to have some patience and understand we've been through you know virtually a year now and for the most of that time we didn't have a vaccine available and we were able to keep fairly safe during the summer and it escalated into December and January and we put extra mitigation measures in place to counteract that but now we have the vaccines we've been able to get to the chronic conditions those with underlying conditions high risk categories like age 65 and over I remember when we announced that many people said I think Secretary Smith announced we'll be through that we'll be able to get through all of that in March and many doubted that we'd be able to do that but we accomplished that and we're going to accomplish it and we're going to be able to get everyone at least signed up had the opportunity to be able to sign up before May so I'm just asking for patience we think it's the easiest way and the fastest way for us to get through this but I understand everyone wants to be put to the front of the line and you can make an argument that everyone is essential in some way when you make those arguments well in my mother being a librarian I probably probably shouldn't be saying this they're worthy people but when you have cashiers working every single day providing food and drink and everything to people that seems to be a higher priority and on that list that you were reading from are massage therapists spa workers, miners things like that I think people would have a hard time trying to put them up at the top of the list we get flooded with questions like cashiers at grocery stores wondering and I guess we're not hearing an answer today as to when they might I think I told you by May 1st they should be able to sign up I think that's the answer it's like six weeks away okay thank you everybody very much I have a clarification on vaccine clinics at schools how are you deciding which school districts are the clinics on site and is the shortage of Johnson & Johnson forcing you to cancel any of those Secretary Smith we have not we have not canceled any vaccine clinics that we have announced so there's been no cancellation I'll turn it over to Secretary French on how sort of the process works in terms of when and when vaccine clinics are done now we have to wait for Johnson & Johnson so our planning is waiting we're always planning clinics we're always in the background planning and what we're trying to do is make sure we match the clinics with the amount of vaccine that's coming in so the answer is are we continuing to plan have we canceled any clinics that have been deployed the answer is no and I'll turn it over to Secretary French for any additional insight into how those are put together yeah thanks Secretary Smith it's been a complex process and now certainly tightly driven by supply variations but we knew all the tools we have and our tool kit so to speak to get the vaccine out as quickly as possible so that's sort of the first thing to acknowledge that there's multiple configurations of clinics whether they be mass vaccination sites health district offices of course the pharmacy program and so forth so the planning process starts with consideration of the inventory and information of the state emergency operations center intersecting with data from the information to put that together but this week was the first week we're quickly moving into a period where it'll be certainly driven by the specific supply of the vaccine that's available I guess I'm thinking like okay there's a clinic in Jericho at Mount Mansfield you know why would they have one and not say like South Burlington or Burlington or something like that so just trying to get a sense of how you choose which districts you're going to yeah and it is a good example like at the Mount Mansfield area that functions as a regional clinic as much as it's housed in a specific district we have to consider a number of clinics to be deployed in the immediate Chinning County region due to the density of population of educators so we have the information for the districts and then we have to map out the logistics, find locations and once again use a variety of our delivery and logistics systems to ensure that we have enough vaccine in the area to meet the need and the last question related to school, vaccine doses is probably going to be one that Secretary Smith might take on are you still only using the so-called extra doses those from Johnson & Johnson and going through the federal pharmacy program to Walgreens for educators or are there vaccines now coming out of the general pool of vaccine doses that the state is getting that were initially tagged for the high risk for monitors I know this was initially pitched to kind of a parallel vaccination track with separate sources of doses it appears based on how this rollout is going that the high risk for monitors and educators are really both kind of lumped into phase 5 not really Kat we had extra doses of Pfizer that were left over from the long-term care facility that we have rolled into the system now we recaptured those from the federal pharmacy program and rolled those into the system so you will see in the sort of the rollout of this we have used Pfizer because Pfizer will have three weeks until your second dose and then you know we have scheduled for the second week of April to be through all this so we started with Pfizer and a lot from the long-term care facility left over in Clawback I would call it from the federal pharmacy program we do you know we had expected a continuing supply of Pfizer we are using some of our Pfizer supply that came in the first week and as the governor had mentioned our Pfizer supply has sort of dried up a little bit for the next couple of weeks we are anticipating that will come in in larger amounts at the end of the month and we will finish up the clinics the education clinics then so we are using a combination of Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson sorry I just wanted to clarify there you said the supply of Pfizer has dried up no I am sorry I am sorry I meant Johnson & Johnson if I said that then I was wrong okay so just to be clear though for people the vaccines that were still targeted for high risk for Monters are in fact going to high risk for Monters yeah there is enough vaccine for the registration that we have I just want to make sure we always are adjusting based upon the registration so we will use vaccine where it is needed but we are always adjusting but for the bulk of starting the education and child care program we put back into the system the extra Pfizer doses we will continue to adjust if we see that we have extra in one program we will move to other programs for example at the end of the month we said we may move to 60 we will adjust based upon what we have available at that point got it thanks can you hear me we can so President Biden said the U.S. could be celebrating its independence on July 4 especially by that point a lot of people will be wanting to forget this past year but from a public health perspective I'm interested to hear if that timeline plays out how much of your work and the work of other public health leaders is still going to be COVID focused beyond that date whether that's getting a better grasp of the long term COVID symptoms the widespread mental health impact so basically when the work on preventing the spread is easier because people are vaccinated have you given a lot of thought on what your responsibility and the Department of Health's responsibility will still be when it comes to keeping all of those loose ends that are left behind sort of in the spotlight so we don't forget this old virus pageant before Dr. Levine answers I just want to again reiterate that we believe in Vermont by the 4th of July we'll be back to much more normal than the President had described last night I think he described maybe getting together for cookouts and small gatherings at home we believe will be at that point in April and we'll be able to open up to much more normal if everything holds up from a supply standpoint by 4th of July Thanks for that question because you're right the virus doesn't all of a sudden disappear July 4th it'll still be here on the planet Earth the bottom line is though we do expect that summer will be a time when there is a tremendous amount of suppression of virus activity partially because of the natural immunity those who've been infected have for a big portion related to the vaccine produced immunity that we get from vaccination and the fact that cases are going down now as we've talked about and there's hopefully going to be less virus circulating the whole goal of what we need to do for the future is really now this joint pathway of keeping ourselves protected by following all of our guidance and preventing future infections with vaccination but making sure that the level of virus activity is so low that the virus doesn't have a chance to be transmitted between people and then have mutations that could become active and keep it going in populations of people so our health department won't ever be able to take its eye off of this during the course of 2021 doesn't mean that this is forever into the future but certainly this year we're all going to be watching very closely in the fall to make sure as weather changes and people congregate to get in what have you that there's not a lot of increase in viral activity but the anticipation is that from a health department standpoint the amount of our workforce that's dedicated to COVID which is literally in all hands on deck experience even though not each person is doing 100% COVID they're still doing the jobs that they've come from the percentage of the workforce will decrease that's dedicating itself specifically to COVID and we'll be able to have a more COVID division if you will within our health surveillance that's able to do all of the epidemiologic work of managing this virus that we would normally do much like all year round the various microorganisms that cause food poisoning and GI illnesses that we follow all the time the illnesses that are caused by ticks and mosquitoes there may be active more in the summer and fall and spring but we follow them year round and we have lots of work to do with them every year we have to deal with flu shots and flu influenza season and the impact of the flu on the population COVID will become like one of those groups it will never go away it will be something people say oh yeah I had a case of the flu well I had a case of the COVID you know last week and that's why you didn't see me or what have you it's going to become that way and hopefully more and more people will be vaccinated and there will be a higher level of resistance kids will be able to be vaccinated because the trials will be over and we'll find that there are vaccines that are safe and effective in that population and that's the way the future will evolve so I hope I've answered your question without being too wordy yes thank you both appreciate it thank you Governor I was trying to get a sense of how you expect the legislature will review the big chunk of federal money that will be coming in do you think it's going to be do you expect you'll be dividing it up into tranches for legislative review I know there's it comes in over time three years I think for some of it but I'm you know we're in the middle of the session and I'm trying to get a sense of of what they'll be asked to do whether you'll have a plan for some of the money initially and so forth yeah a couple of things John first of all that's my understanding that the bulk two bulks of dollars will be this year and next year so we won't get it all in the first in the next couple of months so we'll we'll have to work from there now remember as Senator Sanders had described a lot of the money let's say if it's 1.25 billion a lot of that is going to be sent direct to Vermonters in terms of the $1400 per person and that's per family I mean per family as well is going to get an increased amount so I'd say the bulk of the dollars is going directly to Vermonters and then we're working our way through some of the details that we know about right now but just again keep in mind when Congress passes something much like the legislature does there are always rules that follow afterwards we received the first package for instance we found out over the period of months what the rules were going to be associated with the money that we're receiving so we want to respect the process I know some states the governor has control of the money and can disperse it in any way they want we wanted to respect the process in Vermont the way we've done things and work with the legislature whatever funds are available and we'll continue to do that here from my standpoint so we'll see what happens with the money once we get a few more details and be able to develop a plan but we're working on what our priorities are going to be and we will engage with the legislature sooner rather than later so they understand what we think should happen I mean broadband would be a high priority there's money in there for our businesses for the hospitality sector in particular that is most at risk that we want to make sure that they get the money just as quick as they possibly can so time will tell but hopefully we'll have more answers as the days and weeks progress thank you they're working on a broadband film now so would you advise the committees to wait and see if they can add more money to that bill for a few months from now it would be my recommendation to continue to work on that bill you can always add money to it as you remember we started this with our proposal to the legislature in the budget so we had put $30 million, $20 million into broadband in our budget and they're working out some of the details and I think they wanted to add some money with this package coming through we'll have to see what the details are we may want to add further but having a longer period of time to deal with that is important and broadband is important but we're not going to get it all done in the first year we won't be able to disperse all the money in the first year so we'll take some time to get it right the priority at this point would be a recovery for those businesses in the hospitality sector to make sure that they can make it until July 4th and so that they're still in business so people can go back to work and we can bring more revenue into their coffers which means more money coming into our coffers as well so again we'll engage the legislature and it took a turn as well the House version from what I understand from Congressman Welch was a little bit more flexible and then the Senate was a little bit more prescriptive so again we'll have to see what that means to us but we'll work out those details and we'll work with the legislature to make sure that we prioritize and get the money in the hands that we need first okay thank you is there an update also on Newport the outbreak at the correctional facility and has that outbreak changed at all you're thinking about vaccinating inmates it hasn't changed my outlook it has been decreasing I think Secretary Smith can give us the numbers at this point in time but as I described before we're going to be moving to the age banding I think that's the simplest most efficient and effective process easily understood and everyone will be a part of that we've been vaccinating by population in the offender population as well so we hope by May 1st everyone will be signed up and shortly after that within the next few weeks after that they'll have shots and arms I think this is the most efficient process and we're going to stick with that Secretary Smith yeah John we we will be moving and I will get the precise number from corrections but we will be moving approximately 106 of those inmates out of isolation it'll be out of medical isolation into a new pod because they've gone past their COVID period so we're going to be moving that population today as the governor said and I'll get that specific number to you as the governor said you know we have we're in the process of vaccinating along with the various age bandings that we have done and now that those with high risk conditions are going to be vaccinated we anticipate that there will be a large a number of inmates that will be falling into that category I don't have the exact number now but it's going to be much more than have been vaccinated so far 37 in-state inmates have been vaccinated so far through the age banding and we'll continue to do that through the high risk conditions but it will be quite a bit more than 37 thank you on March 2nd at the press conference you did some projections for the amount of doses of the vaccine that we're coming in at that time you said that first week in March that was 20,000 doses followed in the second week by 25,000 doses and then an expectation by the end of March to be to 35,000 can you give us an update on what the latest projections are? I don't know if that we'll go back and take a look but that isn't those aren't the numbers that I recall so maybe Secretary Smith can clear that up yet Tom we were talking about capacity in those numbers and that meant personnel and the capacity to administer the vaccines those were I said we had expected to be able to administer 20,000 doses per week by March 15 25,000 doses per week and by the end of the month 20,000 doses per week that is if we had the doses at the time that is not there's a difference there between the capacity to administer the doses and the actual doses we have coming in we think next week we think we have about on the state side about 16,660 doses now we had hoped that was going to be more given the Johnson & Johnson but we're going to just have to wait for the next couple of weeks I guess on Johnson & Johnson this week we're administering the state not the pharmacy programs the federal pharmacy programs are administering about 5,540 doses next week about the same that they're doing this week this week we are using the excess doses that we had I talked about it a little bit earlier through the long-term care facility to be over 20,000 doses that we're administering this week so that sort of gives you an update got it one follow-up on that so on those predictions of your capacity have you stayed treated those? yeah we have like I said this week over 20,000 that's with just the state add on another 5,000 or so with the and first and second doses and whatever the federal pharmacy programs doing with that we have the capacity as of the 12th nearing in on 25,000 a week that's very much what does this week the state announce the eligibility for BIPOC for Monters to bring their household members to get vaccinated as well and in response I got some emails from BIPOC for Monters saying when, where which clinics can I do this for so I would just like to know you know if you're just a BIPOC for Monter who would like to participate in this program how can you find out about it and get registered well thank you and I'm glad that my comments were noticed about the program so we anticipated there would be some questions I was careful in my comments previously to say that it was not beginning this week so I hope I didn't set any unrealistic expectations for people that will be in the ensuing weeks we're currently working on coordinating our vaccine clinic events with community partners and pinning down the precise locations that these events will occur at so I would just ask everybody to be patient and check the health department website for additional information when it becomes available in the meantime don't worry that your name isn't on a list because there is no wait list and do not try to walk into a clinic to get a vaccination as a walk-in because that program is not going to be recognized at the clinic right now those are all by appointments but clearly individuals who want to take advantage of this program will be able to in these next several weeks and we're just making sure all the details are pinned down some people ask what populations qualify as a BIPOC for Monter and the answer to that is but if you self-identify as black, indigenous or person of color and live in Vermont you qualify for the program other question would be what qualifies as a household member and clearly again if there is somebody who's in the household who's eligible to get the vaccine and the program I just talked about and there are other people who are household members and they qualify assuming they're not younger than 16 and wouldn't qualify for a vaccine at this time okay you've mentioned in the past that you're working with community groups to kind of do outreach to community of color I was referring if you were doing any work with community groups to reach high risk performers as a group you mentioned on Tuesday that they were potentially kind of a target for registration signups I had one high risk performer email me to say that their doctor had reached out to them to tell them oh registration is open now you should you know just letting them know you should sign up is there anything like that kind of being planned or just any kind of targeted outreach yeah the main outreach we've had is actually over the course of these conferences when we've announced who qualifies in those groups we've had on our website for quite some time what conditions qualify for those groups and we've worked with the medical community if you will so that they can be informed as their patients ask them questions about if they qualify or not qualify we haven't done a specific outreach to a specific disease condition heart association for heart conditions or the long association for COPD and I don't think there is a need to actually because I think everyone in these groups has been waiting with baited breath hoping that we would get to this band as quickly as possible because they've been so concerned about their own conditions all along so that kind of communications I've been receiving are just making sure that the person has the right condition and wondering when their time will come so we have not perceived there's a need for further engagement of groups yeah I mean I guess the parallel thing I was thinking of is in the England of course they have the NHS which is really convenient system for reaching out to people who qualify is there something like that in Vermont? I mean I know the UVM health network has coordinated help system is that a possible route to take today? Right, you know you could I suppose use large databases of health information to connect with people I just really don't think that that's been that important at this point in time but I do want to take advantage of your question though to allow me to say that clearly there is opportunity for people who are in the high risk condition group to still schedule appointments and one should not be hesitant about it because we have a process for you and it's pretty easy to do so please make your voice heard and register on the site and schedule your appointment. Okay, thank you. Yes, thanks Rebecca, good afternoon not the folks who are getting vaccinated is there any indication when the US Canadian border might start to reopen and I'm also curious that how the state is going to collect information if they're going to collect information for our farm workers so they're not concerned about facing other legal problems? I may ask you to clarify the second question the first question I had asked that actually the Governor's conference call with the White House about what the plan was going to be in the future with the Canadian border a number of us share borders with Canada and wondering whether there's going to be some sort of a vaccine card or passport or something that might be utilized in the future they didn't have a whole lot of information at that point obviously this is a negotiation between the Canadian government and it doesn't involve the states but I think it's not too soon that I started thinking of that I think we're still I'm confident there'll be an extension and we won't see the border opening up this month but I think it's it might be the 23rd right now of March that seems to be a recall of a date right at this point in time what happens but it's clearly out of our hands maybe you could clarify the second question I'm just wondering when you collect information from migrant farm workers what information you're going to collect from them if any so they don't be concerned about being deported or anything along those lines we're not anticipating collecting any information from them maybe I'll just ask Commissioner Levine to elaborate yeah I say exactly what the governor said about not collecting information but also they fall into the groups that we actually work with our community partners to engage some of the migrant farm workers may live in a congregate setting so they may be at higher risk of transmission of virus to one another in getting ill so we certainly want them to get vaccinated and that's part of the effort we're doing now beyond the traditional if you will BIPOC designation since these migrant farm workers are from a variety of places in the world we want to make sure that we are a trusted, vaccinating entity to them and we do that through the partner organizations we have who are advocating for them and working with them to make their lives as healthy and prosperous as possible while they're in our country so we're connected with them and should not be seen as a threatening force if you will in terms of getting vaccinated okay thank you I have a question that was sent to us by a reader who wanted to know whether the current outbreak at the northern state correctional facility does or should have an effect on the measures in place at local long term care facilities to restrict or allow visitation well from our standpoint Joe and I'll let others answer this but that's why we went and we did the age banding we did the long term care facilities making sure that we were able to vaccinate that population so they should be protected at this point so I'm not sure that anything would change based on that information but Secretary Smith Joe thanks for the question I'm going to expand it a little bit because I think people should know that in our correctional facilities we have a philosophy of test of suppress which is being done not being done throughout Vermont we would like to do that anybody that wants to test but we have sort of mandatory testing in our correctional facilities and as a result we're picking up sort of more asymptomatic COVID positives than would otherwise not be identified they wouldn't be identified if we were just doing testing for symptoms so as we look at the positivity rate and I think that's what we look at as a state and that's what we would look at in comparison with the corrections facility as well and this is the number of positive COVID tests divided by the number of tests conducted you have to remove some duplicates within a 90 day of each other but if you look at the positivity rate within our in state correction facility 1.5% now you'll notice that number is basically the same number as the state as a whole at 1.5% so we really pay attention to that number and really you know corrections I think there are some numbers that really really stick out I mean corrections has done 10,050 tests as of two days ago and the rate of testing that we do is second in the nation we both do in state and out of state in terms of positivity rate when you put both in state and out of state and of course we have out of state prisoners we're the third lowest positivity rate in the nation but we're missing out from being number 1 by 3 tenths of a percent so we're 3 tenths of a percent behind but looking at it apples to apples there's very few states that have a unified correctional facility like we do and if you look at the states that have a correctional facility like we do in the northeast for example Rhode Island and Connecticut but there's also Delaware and Hawaii and others if you look at that we are Vermont DOC has the lowest rate of COVID positives compared to all other unified correction systems in the nation and of course we've had zero deaths and we've had a half a percent hospitalization rate we've had two out of 411 that have been hospitalized so those are the statistics that we look at when we're looking at protecting those inmates and as I mentioned earlier we are vaccinating inmates in the same way that we vaccinate any other Vermonters through the age bands through high risk conditions and we'll continue to do that as we move forward I don't know if I answered your question did I? We answered a lot of questions the specific question I had was whether the fact that there is at the moment an outbreak in at Northern State should affect how people outside the facility in the community act in other words if you were running a long term care facility would you tighten up the rules on visitation as a result? We have tightened up the rules on visitation in our correctional facilities since last March we also when we have positives within our facility we do go into full lockdown or semi lockdown depending on what we have there so we try to contain the spread in there but what we're seeing is that our facilities have been very very safe where the virus has been coming through is through staff that live in the community so where the virus is coming in is through staff so we have various protections that we have done to keep the virus contained within the facility so we started in terms of the testing protocol that we do to make sure that it doesn't get into the facility I think he's worried about the long term care facilities and reaching them should they be hanging out? and Joe did you was your question if this is an outbreak in Newport should we worried about the long term care facilities in that community is that the crux of your question? I think it was then I apologize the most you know we have not seen that in terms of long term care facilities be an impact in fact if you saw Michael Pichek's slide the other day you will see that 70 and up tremendous drop off with the 70 plus up population in terms of COVID related cases and COVID related deaths thank you that was a lot to digest I appreciate it my question for the governor you opened the press conference by saying that you think Vermont can not only meet the May 1st target that the White House set for vaccine eligibility but that the state could get it I know you are talking about timelines coming soon that we might learn more but is there anything you can say now about how much earlier than May 1st would Vermont be positioned to have everyone eligible for a vaccine? can you say that at this point? again I am going to confuse the issue a bit but we are waiting to see what the supply is with our plan and the segments that we want to lay out for you next week we still believe if we receive more supply that we will get through that quicker and we will be able to meet or exceed those, signing those people up even in the last category but to be honest again you could play the game here and other states have all you have to do is open up the age band you could open up from 16 to 50 to meet that goal of May 1st so that doesn't tell you a lot about getting shots in arms and getting people vaccinated so again we are confident here in Vermont that we will have the majority of those who want to be vaccinated long before the 4th of July so our goal is to work along our plan with age banding in the traditional sense of what we have laid out and do it before May 1st but some of it does depend on the supply great and then for Dr. Levine or you Governor is there any concern about any spikes in case counts for the relaxing of restrictions on non-vaccinated households gathering I know that the guidance still applies for folks to wear masks in distance themselves but it didn't sound I think like the restaurant guidance multiple households could go there and dine together and they presumably won't be wearing masks I'm just wondering if one of you could speak to any concerns about a spike potentially I'll let Dr. Levine answer that but obviously we're always concerned about case counts but at the same time our strategy has been about reducing the number of hospitalizations and deaths so by focusing on those greatest risks as we have done with the chronic conditions and so forth moving through those populations in the age bands that we have we feel good about that we have reduced the number of hospitalizations and deaths and that's what we're focusing on and that's what we'll watch the case counts are going to continue to be about what they are I believe we'd like to see them reduced but it's almost a fact of life because we can't eradicate the virus as Dr. Levine had said earlier but I'll let Dr. Levine answer the rest of the question Thank you Governor In my prepared comments I did talk about masking about the fact that this is going to continue for some months I'm certainly an advocate of people who go to a restaurant wearing their mask while they're not eating and drinking there's no problem with that and I'm not so concerned about people getting transmission of virus from one table to another table because we have a lot of good strategies and guidance in place that the restaurants have been very faithful to but that part of my talk having the COVID talk is still important because presumably you're not dining with strangers you're dining with people who you want to go out to have a meal with so just actually having an understanding and taking I hate to say it but some personal responsibility for the level of risk you're willing to put yourself towards if you're unvaccinated specifically because that's what the question was framed around so clearly you know you presumably know the other couples or families or individuals that you're dining with and have a sense that this would be a safe and experiences it could be during the times we're in and covered that at least in your own preliminary thinking or even in your discussions with them as you were making plans to meet them so that's how I would look at that Thanks, that's all for me Governor earlier this week you said that long term more state employees may work from home your budget proposes to sell three Baldwin Street Montpelier office buildings which were built as residences have you considered rehabbing these buildings and other unneeded state buildings into much needed low and medium income housing I don't know it's a good question but what I know about the buildings that we're talking about they were single family dwellings be tough to turn them into something that would cost a lot of money to renovate in terms of multi-family house that would accommodate multi-families so I don't think that would be the best use of money I'd much rather sell those put them back on tax rolls so it continues to lower the tax burden on others but maybe building more efficient housing in different areas now if this was a somebody owned the home themselves or bought these buildings they could do whatever they wanted and maybe they would see something that I'm not seeing but the ones I'm thinking about are conducive to the type of residential expansion that you're thinking thank you I've heard your administration may replace a member of the Fish and Wildlife Board over some social media posts about national elected officials do you plan any imminent changes in the membership of the Fish and Wildlife Board we have not contemplated that at this point in time thank you yes this question is likely for Secretary Smith when it comes to inmates and the state moving to another vaccine group or expanding access to the vaccine are those inmates who are eligible approached or is it on them to figure out they're eligible and to ask for it themselves I believe we know who they are and we know how old they are and we go to them I believe it's the same there we know their health situation so we can go to them and when inmates say they do want the vaccine how long usually does it take for them to get it is it the same amount of time as somebody who's not an inmate I would say it's probably a shorter period of time but Secretary Smith is shaking his head yes it's usually a shorter period of time thank you good afternoon probably for Secretary Smith this one wondering about the persistent and now widening lag in vaccinations in Essex County is this a question of availability of doses in clinics or is there a lower rate of uptake by the residents there I'm fairly certain it's not a demographic issue because Essex is the oldest county in the state so why the lag and are you doing anything to address the issue that's a great question Andrew thank you for asking it as you know we've put more and more vaccination clinics in there Beecher Falls Island Pond and then surrounding that county in St. Johnsbury at the southern end of that county and also on sort of the western side of that county in Newport plus the pharmacy programs a little bit of why the uptake it's been increasing as you pointed out maybe about a month ago it was really low it has been increasing in the last few weeks to three weeks but we are we're a little puzzled there and I we added the Beecher Falls vaccination clinic primarily for that reason to get the northern section of that county you know a place to go plus the mid part of that county in Island Pond and then you know the hospitals on sort of bordering that county we're going to continue to look at that I don't have an answer for you okay and then for the governor I've got a spigot question for you from a business but it may not be what you expect this is about the employee retention tax credit which is just extended through the end of the year by the American Rescue Plan as described to me this tax credit is significant and one of the easiest qualifying metrics is if their operations are fully or partially suspended due to COVID restrictions it's described as a windfall that many businesses should take advantage of and so they're wondering is it likely some level of restriction will stay in place through the end of the year so that they can count on being eligible for this tax credit and allow that to weigh on some immediate hiring decisions yeah I'm not sure about the rules that will be written around that in particular but I might refer to Secretary Curley to see if she has any anything to offer on that sure Governor actually this was raised to me this week by another business owner and I have reached out to the tax department just needs some help on it because I'm not really sure who has the lever to pull on this one so I don't have an answer yet but I'm happy to get it back to you okay thank you just knowing that it's being considered I'm sure will be of some comfort for the business owner and I know we're running late but if I may just pipe in on an issue that Mike Donahue raised earlier and I saw Jason just emailed out the school report I've come to realize that that school report when it comes to the cases within schools doesn't account for all of the cases that have occurred as a result of school activities I'll point out that there was an outbreak here at a high school in the kingdom that affected 14 members of the school community but the report only reflects one case because the other 13 subsequent infections had been quarantining and were considered infectious well at a school activity so at least on the surface that strikes me as being a report that maybe doesn't fully reflect the prevalence of the virus and its impact on schools well again I think and maybe Dr. LaVine or somebody else can answer this but if they find one positive case and they've interacted with others they have to quarantine but it doesn't mean that they're infectious or have been infected is that what you're getting at that it should show who should quarantine that would be a vast list but if we did that throughout the system because as you know I had to quarantine at one point along with Dr. LaVine and I'm not sure that we were counted in that because we weren't we didn't have the virus well no I'm not saying that it should reflect the number of people that had to quarantine and eventually were proven to be negative I'm saying there was an outbreak that infected 14 kids or community members could have been staffed however the school report only ticked up by one case because the 13 additional cases all developed their symptoms and were infectious while they were at home so the report suggests that this high school has only had five cases but it's really approaching 20 at this point but again I'm just an outbreak but the report doesn't show that I'm just wondering did they get a test to determine they were indeed positive or did they just have symptoms okay Dr. LaVine yes on all counts so just Dr. LaVine so obviously the crux of the matter of what you're discussing is how much connection was there for the school environment and becoming a case as opposed to people were in a community got infected couldn't go to school because they were sick but there was one student who was present in the school at a time when they may have been infectious so those are the kinds of decision making made from an epidemiologist standpoint so I'd appreciate it if you would connect with us about the exact incident in school because I'm sure we have an explanation for it and I want to be precise but I think I've given you the the gist of how we analyze these okay thank you for the extra time can you hear me? We can yes this first question is for Dr. LaVine a couple of reader questions first being that if someone tests positive for COVID how long should they wait for getting the vaccine and is that any different if the person happens to have one of the high risk conditions? yeah that's a great question so first of all it is important that if you've ever had COVID no matter when you've had COVID that you still get the vaccine the answer to the first part of your question is that we want you to be well and resolved when you get the vaccine so normally we would say to wait several weeks before you get the vaccine after you've had your illness and resolved all of your symptoms and that doesn't change if you have an underlying condition no I wouldn't I wouldn't qualify with anything okay my second question would be for governor so we recently in town here at the YMCA child care center closed which took away 38 slots for child care you know obviously the problem around the state and you identified it during the state of the state speech but I just want to know where is the administration at on support for these child care centers and child care in general I'm going to let secretary Smith answer this one as you know we provided tremendous financial support during the pandemic to child care centers in fact we subsidized child care centers even to make sure that they stayed in business so when we came out in June out of the sort of the initial impact that they were still there to provide child care we also provided subsidies for those essential workers during the first part of the pandemic and we provided money for them to come out to help adjust in terms of the supplies they needed and other things subsequently in conjunction with the legislature we provided even more money we're close to 42 million dollars and there are other areas that are looking to be funded as we move forward there is a bill that's going through the legislature right now that has child care emphasis on it the governor has been very very clear that he wanted to make sure that this pandemic we came out of it with a strong child care system and we've done that nationwide we're one of the ones that were recognized for what we did many states didn't even invest in their child care systems when the pandemic hit we did not choose to go down that path we went just the opposite way we invested heavily into our child care system to make sure that it was stabilized and it was there for us when we needed it when we started opening things back up so I don't know the particular situation in St. Albans I'll look into the particular situation in St. Albans it concerns me when a child care center does close down as you know we created hubs as well for child care during the time we were opening up schools in September a lot of investment into child care let me do this let me have my office reach out to you to find out the particulars of this and we can we can go from there yeah thank you it's true that you know I was by no means criticizing the child care response it's a lot of concern folks about that facility closing down around here so I figured I'd flag it for you guys okay no we'll look into it how's that great thank you that's all I have we can the health department last week identified Stowe as a couple of places where the COVID spread was significant significant enough to warrant a two-day testing clinic at the high school this past weekend considering the town's aggressive adherence to pandemic regulations and what we're seeing seems to be a fairly high level of buying from the local population the mysteries where the spread is coming from has the testing clinic over the weekend or contact tracing in Stowe doing any insight as to the cause of the spread whether it's in-state or out-of-state folks ski resort guests or restaurant diners fortunately there were not abundant positive tests out of the weekend clinic and there were actually less than 200 tests done but that may I'm not criticizing the number because again we're coming in a smaller area but the bottom line is perhaps we're at the peak and they're coming down because when we look at our county data across all of Vermont LaMoyle County has kind of leveled off and not gone up and it's not that far off from the average county in Vermont at this point it was much more Stowe stood out more as a community that had a higher than expected case load so at this point in time there's nothing about new cases that has guided us in any way that's going to be helpful my hope is that we're seeing a decay and the rate of new cases occurring so that things will sort of take care of themselves if you will and Stowe and the rest of the county will just continue to assume the appearance of the rest of the state when it comes to case groups wish I could give you more than that but nothing has turned out I mean the hypothesis at Stowe is not sorry, was the hypothesis at Stowe just because of being a big tourism town related in comparison to the rest of the county yeah that's always a potential hypothesis and certainly was one of them and that has neither been proven or disproven at this time and the only data we have is the Bromley and Mount Stratton data that didn't really implicate out of state disease vectoring as being a super prominent role in the cases that they were seeing but I can't necessarily apply that directly to Stowe thank you and again Governor acknowledging what you said earlier there are a large list of workers who feel like they ought to be prioritized for vaccinations and I hope everyone can be signed up by May I would be remiss if I didn't pass along the concerns of restaurant workers here in Stowe of which we have a lot of which I'm getting a lot of concerns from several Stowe restaurants that had to close down temporarily due to the COVID exposure and a lot of people are saying that's just the right thing to do and they're not permanent closures they're weekend closures but what I hear from a lot of restaurant workers is that these are restaurant workers largely from the house who work for tips, rely mostly on tips working among mostly maskless diners so what kind of message would you deliver to the restaurant workers who have to go in every day to work for tips while they're serving don't wear masks? Well again I have an extreme amount of sympathy for them, respect for them and what they've had to endure what all the monitors have had to endure over the last year we were able to get through the first part of that 11 months, 10, 11 months without a vaccine and we're just going to have to be as cautious as possible and get through the next 6 to 8 weeks and offer every single sector can make an argument as to why they should be put to the front of the line and if we did that for every single sector we wouldn't get through this as quick as I believe we'll get through it as if we do it with a clear, concise plan of age banding so sympathetic but at the same time I just think this is the right path forward and just be as careful as possible and we'll get through it we'll get through it Thank you, but I won't hold up the end of the cahoots any longer Thanks, everybody Well thank you very much and we'll see you again on Tuesday