 Good morning, everyone. We have a lot to cover today, including some important updates in our weekly data and modeling presentations. So I'm going to give some brief introductions and let our speakers cover the details. First, I'm pleased to have Dr. Beth Kirk-Patrick from UVM Medical Center here with us to share some big news about Vermont's role in the work towards a vaccine for COVID-19. She'll talk about how the UVM Medical Center and the Vaccine Testing Center at UVM have been selected to take part in an ongoing vaccine trial. This is a testament to the Medical Center and the university's leadership and expertise, and will allow Vermonters to contribute to the important work of vaccine development. As we covered last week, developing and distributing a safe, effective vaccine is essential to being able to manage this virus. Without the measures we've had to take over the last six months into returning to normal once it's been safely and widely distributed, I want to congratulate UVM and UVM Medical Center on taking this on. And with that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Kirk-Patrick. Thank you, Governor Scott. Good afternoon, and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak today. As the governor mentioned, we're pleased to announce that the UVM Medical Center in collaboration with the Larner College of Medicine and the Vaccine Testing Center has been chosen to participate in a phase three trial to evaluate a leading coronavirus vaccine candidate. This is the Oxford University AstraZeneca vaccine. I want to just spend a second talking about three things, the national context, this vaccine, and a little bit about what's happening locally. I think you know that nationally four coronavirus vaccines have begun into phase three trials with two more potentially starting by the end of the year. These vaccines have all successfully made it through the first several phases of human testing, where safety is very emphasized, as well as looking at whether the vaccines make the immune response we wanted. What we don't know yet is whether these vaccines work and how well they work to prevent the actual coronavirus illness. So these are pivotal trials for us to get to the point that a vaccine or vaccines can be licensed and used in the broader population. So just to be clear, this vaccine study we're about to talk about is not part of the distribution plan that Dr. Levine spoke about at the previous press conference. It's the step before that. So these are very pivotal trials to get to FDA approval for vaccines. So the vaccine, the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, that we'll be participating in, was designed by Oxford University. About 10 to 15,000 people globally have received this vaccine already. Volunteers in this study will be followed for up to two years, and the vaccine study is designed to prevent illness from the vaccine. The study itself will have 30,000 people in it and 80 sites in the United States. Here locally, we will be permitted to enroll at least 250 volunteers, and it is a voluntary participation only. It's important to know you can't get coronavirus from the vaccine, and it's also important to know that in no way, shape, or form, will we be giving coronavirus virus to any volunteer. Finally, it's important to know it is a placebo-controlled trial, meaning throughout the people enrolled in this study, a third will get a placebo, two thirds will get the vaccine. So locally, we have a debt of gratitude to the UVM Medical Center for allowing us to set up a specific outpatient study just to be used for this trial. Importantly, this site will follow highly stringent coronavirus precautions. Participation is completely voluntary, and for those interested in participating, you go through a pretty rigorous screening process and the informed consent process, which we spend a considerable amount of time with each person walking through the whole study, risks and benefits, so an individual can make an individual decision. I wanna point out, as you may have heard, this study as well as another vaccine study were both temporary held for symptoms that had come up in volunteers. This study, the symptom mythology wasn't a woman in England, and what happened in both cases is that a very thorough FDA review, as well as an independent data safety monitoring board, spent an extraordinary amount of time looking at all the information to ask the questions whether the symptoms were related to the vaccine, and we're pleased to say that as of last Friday, this trial as well as the other trial are both reopened in the United States. Quickly before I close, I just wanna say a few more things who can participate in this trial. It needs to be people that will get coronavirus illness. In Vermont, 25% of our population in this study will need to be over the age of 65. We also need to enroll folks who have stable chronic pre-existing medical conditions and those with occupational and social exposures to coronavirus, including healthcare workers, teachers, police, et cetera. We will not be enrolling young, healthy people that will not have symptomatic coronavirus. We're highly committed to an inclusive study. Coronavirus disease has impacted greatly our black, indigenous, and people of color communities, and we wanna make sure that we offer all information and opportunity for everyone to participate. There will be a lot of information about this trial on the UVM Medical Center website, as well as pre-screening questionnaires, and I want to again extend my thanks to Dr. John Brumsted, Dr. Steve Luffler at the Medical Center and the teams there that have helped us set this trial up. Dr. President Garamella and Dean Page at the University of Vermont, as well as Dr. Levine and Dr. Kelsel at the Health Commission at the Department of Health and the entire state of Vermont. We're really looking forward to working with the community to help end the global pandemic, and I wanna thank you for your time. Thank you so much. This is exciting news, and we look forward to watching the vaccine trial progress. Next, we have the Secretary of State joining us by video today to give an overview of what in-person voting will look like next Tuesday. As you know, Vermont made it easy to vote by mail, and we've seen about 200,000 Vermonters take advantage thus far. But we know there are still many Vermonters who will vote in-person next Tuesday. It's important we understand how to do it safely. I wanna thank the Secretary of State's office for working with the Department of Health and our restart team, and for being here to give us a preview of the guidance, and I'll now turn it over to Secretary Khandos. Thank you. Thank you, Governor, and good morning, everyone. I'm excited to announce by the end of the day yesterday, we had over 208,000 Vermonters who had already voted early, safely, and securely. That number represents about two-thirds of the total number of votes that were cast in the last presidential election in 2016. With this pandemic first hit Vermont last winter, we had no idea what path it was facing in Vermont, leading up to this coming election. Based on what we've heard from state and national health experts and from the governor, only one thing was certain. We needed to plan for the worst. Since we began planning in March for how to conduct elections safely during a global pandemic and public health crisis, we have done so with two unwavering goals. We wanted to preserve the voting rights of every eligible Vermont voter, and to protect the health and safety of not only our voters, but also our town clerks and their election workers. In order to accomplish these goals, it was necessary to do what we could to reduce high traffic in-person voting at the polls on election day. To accomplish this for the November general election, we used a mail ballot to every active registered voter. The numbers above speak to themselves, but the bulk of the credit does not go to my office or the legislature or to the town clerks. It goes to Vermonters, whom I would like to thank for overwhelmingly embracing the safe, secure voting options available to them during these challenging times. For many though, the voting process this year may feel new and unfamiliar. So it is important for us to discuss what options are still available to those who have not yet cast their ballots, as well as what measures are in place to make sure that anyone who votes in person next Tuesday can do so safely. If you have not yet voted, you still have options. You can drop off your ballot at your town court's office during normal business hours, any day that they are open before election day. You can drop it off in a secure ballot drop box at their town offices, and on our website, you can check the listing of where those ballot boxes are located, or you can contact your clerk to find out where they have their drop box or mail slot for ballots. Or you can bring your ballot with you to the polling place on election day, right up until 7 p.m. If you prefer to vote in person, all polling places will be open and in-person voting can be done safely with a few extra precautions to help protect our friends, neighbors, and poll workers. It may look a little different than what you're used to, but Vermonters have once again shown their resilience by adapting to the safety measures necessary to protect ourselves and others as much as possible when in the public area. For many weeks now, we've been working hard with our town clerks and in consultation with the Department of Health to make sure that voters who want to show up in vote can feel as comfortable and safe as possible. We've developed polling place guidelines in consultation with the Department of Health following CDC's best practices to ensure safe voting on election day. This guidance can be found on our website at sos.vermont.gov. Election workers will also be helped being prior to working on election day. Names, contact information, and shift times for all poll workers must be recorded in order to enable contact tracing if necessary. We have provided all town with infection prevention kits and sterilization supplies. We've given them the PPE they need to keep their election workers and voters safe, including face masks, face shields, gloves, along with lots of sanitizing wipes and hand sanitizer. We'd like to remind voters to bring a few things with you if you can when you vote next Tuesday. Bring your ballot if you still have it, bring a black ink pen, not a sharpie, and bring a mask. If you forget and don't have any one of those, that's okay, you're still gonna be able to vote, and no voter will be denied their right to cast the ballot. Poll workers will have extra masks, pens, and ballots on hand. If you do not have the ballot you were mailed, you will be asked to fill out an affidavit stating that you have not already voted that ballot and that was mailed to you. If you have any questions about the voting process between now and election day, I encourage you to reach out to your town clerk. Vermont town clerks are our election superheroes and have been working incredibly hard to keep the front doors of our democracy open for Vermonters during this pandemic. Please make sure you thank them while you're at it. I know I will. While we have yet to return to any sense of normalcy that we have all been hoping for, we can take comfort and pride in the fact that the wheels of our Vermont democracy will keep on turning. Again, I wanna thank all Vermonters for their commitment to voting. We are leading the nation in early voting and are poised to bring right previous turnout records with continued early voting this week and in-person voting on election day. Again, here in Vermont, we still have options. You can vote early, you can vote at the polls on election day, and you can vote with confidence that the proper steps have been taken to ensure in-person voting will be conducted as safely as possible. We're exactly one week away from election day for Vermonters, so it is time to get out there and vote using whatever option you decide is best for you. I'm gonna finish with a shameless plug to the media listening in right now. I announced this morning that we will be voting the virtual media availability tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. to discuss questions on this topic and also on the directive addendum which we introduced yesterday regarding safe election procedures. So if you need to, please reach out to my chief staff at Herod Company so you can get the details you need to attend. So thanks very much. Get out there and vote. Well, thank you, Secretary Kondos and your teams for all your efforts. And as Secretary Kondos has said, if you have further questions, you can attend his press conference tomorrow at 11, I believe he said. Before turning it over to Commissioner Pichak and Dr. Levine, I have a few additional announcements. First, as you may have seen, we announced some changes to recreational sports guidance yesterday in response to hockey-related outbreaks here in Vermont and in our neighboring states. While these changes may be challenging, this will add more layers of protection so we can continue to operate these programs here in Vermont while other states have suspended theirs. You can view the updated guidance at accd.vermont.gov that it includes limiting recreation leads to in-state-only, meaning everything must occur in Vermont with Vermont-only teams. It also tightens the policies for spectators and social gatherings around these sports, which brings me to my next update. As you may have also heard over the last week, the ripple effect of the outbreak here in Central Vermont has impacted several schools, workplaces, and healthcare settings across the state. On Friday, we'll be presenting more details on how this spread and why, but it's important to note that we believe this began with a group gathering and not from play on the ice itself. Getting together without taking precautions, including mass wearing and distancing, or not following the travel guidance appear to be a common denominator in what we've been seeing over the last few weeks. And I want to be clear, this is travel by Vermonters, not out-of-state visitors. I hope everyone will think about this as we approach Halloween this Saturday, because we need everyone to be smart about any gatherings you go to. Ask yourself, will people be wearing masks? Is there enough room to spread out? Has everyone been following the travel guidance? If the answer to any of these questions is no, you should consider skipping it because it may not be worth the risk. With cases and hospitalizations growing across the country and cases growing here in Vermont as well, it's so important we do what we can to limit the risk to ourselves and others. By doing so, we can keep our schools and businesses open. We just need to use a little bit of common sense. I'll now turn it over to Commissioner Petschek, whose latest modeling will show why it's so important to stay vigilant. Thank you very much, Governor. Good morning, everybody. So today we're gonna start with a discussion about the recent uptick in our cases here in Vermont, and then turn to some comparisons between what we're seeing at the national level and what's happening in Vermont with some important contrasts as well. Also contrasting what's happening currently in Vermont with what happened earlier in the pandemic in the spring. We'll then turn to some more Vermont-specific data looking at our forecast, looking at flu vaccine updates and education updates, and then finish with a discussion about the regional travel and an update to the travel map. So if we can go to the first slide, you'll see there really are three periods of accelerated growth that we've experienced during the pandemic, one back in the spring. We've dubbed the spring peak, one around the Winooski outbreak in early part of June, and then more recently, the last week or so. So certainly each one of these upticks mirrors each other to some degree in terms of how quickly cases were going up. There's some important contrasts that we'll make in a minute, but a couple of things that are a little more concerning about the more recent upticks, as the governor pointed out, there are a number of threads to outbreaks, there are a number of different outbreaks occurring now. That's certainly in contrast to the Winooski outbreak over the summer. Similarly, we started that recent uptick in cases with a little bit higher base in the last couple of weeks as compared, obviously, to the first peak and to what happened in Winooski as well. So those are the points of comparison that I think are important, but we'll also bring out some contrast in a minute that's equally important for Vermonters to keep in mind. I think to do that, it's helpful to look at what's happening at the national level and then compare that to what's happening here in Vermont. So we'll do that both with our case growth and positivity rate, our hospitalizations, and then our death rates nationally and in Vermont. So as you can see at the national level, case growth continues to go up. Cases have really been accelerating over the last number of weeks. It's not just a matter of testing. You can see that the positivity rate has also gone up from just over 4% to above 6% over the last few weeks at the national level. Again, indicative of more virus circulating across the country. If we compare that to our Vermont numbers, I both wanna make the comparison to the national data and to the earlier peak that we saw in the spring. You can see that case growth certainly has increased, but our positivity rate remains very low compared to the national level. Just about 1% over the last seven days, again, compared to over 6% nationally. And if you look at the positivity rate recently compared to earlier in the pandemic when we were approaching numbers over 10, 15%, very different situation than earlier in the pandemic. So even though the cases are rising as they are, that's important piece of context for Vermonters to keep in mind. Similarly on hospitalizations, you can see that hospitalizations are going up again nationally, both general hospitalizations and ICU hospitalizations. Again, that's indicative of more virus circulating across the country, not simply more cases for more testing. So that's an important thing to keep in mind. But again, contrast that to what we're seeing in Vermont. Even with our cases going up, our hospitalization levels have stayed very low in Vermont, both from general hospitalization and from the ICU. And that trend has really occurred since early June and maintained throughout this entire period. So that's something important for Vermonters to keep in mind. Remembering that hospitalizations are a delayed indicator, but those numbers are staying very low, which is important. Last nationally deaths did start to creep up over the last few weeks, unfortunately. Hopefully those will tail down as the country gets case growth controlled. But again, in important contrast to Vermont, we haven't had a death since July 28th. We are the lowest per capita fatality rate in the country. This is all continuing to be very positive sound news for us as it relates to these three important comparisons. Another comparison I want to make though, which is not as favorable for Vermont, is where the case growth is happening. One of the points we've made the last number of weeks is that this third peak is occurring not necessarily in one localized region of the country, but is more spread out across the country into the South, Midwest, the Great Plains. And that's a similar theme that we're seeing a little bit here in Vermont as well. This week, for example, measured from Tuesday to Monday was the first week that we had a case in every single one of Vermont's 14 counties. That hasn't happened previously on the same pattern. And we're seeing cases spread out in a little bit more of a way than we have previously during the pandemic. That all leads us to our most updated forecast. And I think there's some really important points to drive home here. One, you can see where we are on our actual seven day average. And then you can see where we were just six days ago that yellow dotted line, showing a pretty mild increase in cases over the next six weeks. With just six days of high case growth, we're now on a very different trajectory. So again, some important things to keep in mind. One, just as quickly as that trajectory went up, we can get it to go down again, based on our own individual actions that we've partaken over the next few weeks. We certainly have control over this in Vermont. It's in our own hands to make that forecast not a reality. This has happened numerous times in the past where case growth has gone up, our forecasts have gone up, but Vermonters have responded, and those cases have gotten back down under control. So that's certainly something that we are hoping to see again here over the next three or four weeks in anticipation of holidays later in the month and next month as well. One point I want to make, and Dr. Levine will emphasize this more relating to Vermont, is that we're seeing cases going up in every part of our travel region, every state in the District of Columbia in our travel region, and every state has called out specifically small gatherings. The weather has become colder, not as nice as it was in the summertime. People are moving indoors, people are having smaller gatherings. Every single jurisdiction around us, as Dr. Levine will talk about this in Vermont, has called out these small gatherings as partly why they're seeing increases in their state. So it's important to keep in mind here in Vermont to protect yourselves, your family, your communities, even if you're going inside to maintain those different health guidelines that Dr. Levine always talks about, physical distancing, masks, and good ventilation as well. Those restart metrics that we always talk about week after week, they're all trending favorably, even though we're seeing this increased case growth. The only thing we want to point out this week on the next slide is the sustained growth rate. We're not seeing the kind of sustained growth rate that would give us concern, but it is different now than it's been pretty much at any other point during the pandemic, but for early on in that first peak in the Winooski Rise. So something that we're keeping a close eye on, but syndromic surveillance remains low. I mentioned our positivity rate remains low. Hospitalization capacity remains strong as well. Quickly touching on the flu data, you'll see really good news here, a continued high uptake of Vermonters getting the flu vaccine. You can see we're 38% to our goal for this year. Vermonters are ahead of where they were this time last year by about 13%. So that's really good news. And again, this is important to make sure we have as much hospital capacity as we can as we get into the flu season in case we do see a rise in a continued increase in COVID cases and hospitalizations. Looking quickly at the different age brackets, you'll see that those that are younger continue to do well. Those that are older continue to outpace last year as well, while those in that 20 to 30 year old range are not as well as they were doing last year. So we want to continue to encourage them to get a flu shot in everybody as well. Looking at the education update, we see that Vermont has 25 cases reported this morning in schools in 19 different schools. So something that is different than past weeks. We actually are seeing an increase here. So something that we want to pay close attention to. But when compared to New Hampshire and Maine, very different story. Similarly on our higher ed data, same sort of story, we're seeing an increase largely from St. Michael's, but much better than when compared to New Hampshire and to Maine. Looking regionally, we are seeing cases go up in the region up 21% this week. So certainly a big increase. And skipping ahead a few slides to the updated travel map, you will see the impact in our travel region. Only two counties have improved, 15 counties worsened, now only 880,000 people are eligible to travel to Vermont. Nine states don't have a single green county in our travel map district. And you can see where those cases are getting better and worsening on the next slide. Mostly in the Northeast, and just some very slight improvement in Pennsylvania. So with that, I will turn it over to the Dr. Levine. So what we've heard this morning is certainly notable for a very significant reason. Vermont has started to experience multiple simultaneous outbreaks. Now, earlier this year, we had an outbreak that was mostly in Manuski in Burlington. Later on, one from Fairhaven, and more recently, the Champlain Orchards and others. Those were cases that for the most part were among a relatively small and well-defined community cohort group. What we've been experiencing recently are different outbreaks among relatively unrelated groups and individuals spreading from the original cases to their contacts and contacts of those contacts. Crossing situations and geographic regions of the state. And there are several such events happening at once. So this is really a wake-up call for us all. And remember, this isn't all data. These are real people. You, me, our family, fellow Vermonters. My review of these outbreaks is as follows. Modest-sized gatherings with familiar faces. Often food and drink, so no masks for a prolonged time. Playing a role just when someone was at that right point that infectious phase of their infection. In some cases, it's probable, but not certain, as the governor discussed, that travel was involved. Either guests arriving without quarantine or Vermonters leaving the state and returning with an exposure that they were unaware of. Because as you've just seen, the nation and even the immediate region could be labeled as dangerous right now. And some of you may have noted a sports theme, but keep in mind it's not the playing of the sport that's been the issue. It's the team activities that precede or follow the sport, whether they be social or things like carpooling. Things off the playing field and off the ice. I'm concerned that a number of our schools, a growing number, are being impacted. And I just wanted to show the sort of curve of what we're dealing with first here. The blue items are the initial outbreak related to the Memorial Civic Center in Montpelier. As we move into the darker green area, those are more what we call the secondary infections. And as you can see, the blue are decaying off at that point. Now we have the darker green decaying off and the lighter green tertiary infections. Many of these people on the tertiary side are people who were quarantined already because they were context. And this is the only other slide I'm gonna show today, talking about how the initial outbreak has led to my concern about the schools and other places. So we can see that an initial outbreak that the most up to date number is 17 individuals, all in that earlier part of the graph, has now morphed into several workplaces and a number of schools and a major college in the area with the caseloads that are identified on there. I'm particularly concerned about the schools because providing our kids with the education and related school experiences they need has been a steep challenge. But our schools, the teachers, staff, administrators, families have all moved mountains to provide our kids with great programming under uniquely difficult circumstances. And fortunately, most have not had to close or interrupt too many classes. However, you can imagine how disruptive and stress producing this has been to all involved. And I empathize with all who have expressed that to us before. While it is the adults more than the children who have been the cases, numerous students still have had to be quarantined or had to have their classes go remote. So some key messages today. I agree with the slide that Commissioner Pichac had up from abundant other states, because the bottom line is that small gatherings can have a big impact. Something I want everyone to keep in mind as the holidays approach and as you make your plans. Something Dr. Birx stressed with us from her experience traveling throughout the Midwest and plain states that were having particular problems. Now the state of Vermont, of course, has very specific guidance in place. And as the year went on, the governor has opened up the state at an appropriate pace, which means there's a lot we can do every day in our lives. Go shopping, getting together with friends, with family, participating in sports activities, the list goes on. But, and this is a key point, what you can do is not always what you should do. And that goes to, again, assessing your comfort level. Before the pandemic, if I were to talk to our interpreter here and get too close and in his face, he would say I'm invading his personal space. Now at a time of a pandemic, if somebody's closer than six feet to us, I think we noticed that even more readily. So if we know we're inserting ourselves into circumstances that might make that happen with greater frequency, we should take our own pulse and understand that that's an important thing that we've recognized. And again, if we're invited to a gathering, we might ask how many will be there? Where will it be? What kind of setting are you going to? And assess your comfort level with crowded spaces, with will people be wearing masks reliably? Will there be room in that area for people to distance? Will the ventilation be adequate? Now we know winter is not a great season when it comes to infectious diseases. That's why this time of year is also the flu season. So I have to again remind everyone to make our flu vaccine rate approach the early voting rate in Vermont. Doing that between now and election day would be a really positive sign. It's also the time of year to be together through the shorter days and get together for the holidays. And I know that we have to make difficult choices at this time. Now you have to make your own decisions about what to do, whether it's on a weekend, whether it's for recreational activity, whether it's for Thanksgiving or even Halloween. Like other aspects of our lives, if Halloween doesn't look different this year, if Thanksgiving and Christmas don't look different this year, then perhaps we're not approaching them correctly. Because everything we do in our lives this year has looked different in our attempt to keep everything as safe as possible. So this means I would start your considerations by assuming you should limit your plans. My advice as a health commissioner and as a doctor is that it's best to not travel at this time. Travel increases your chance of getting and spreading the virus, staying home, maybe the best way to protect yourself and others. My advice is also that the dinner table should not be so large and filled with multiple households, friends, family from other locales. It just doesn't make sense. Doesn't pass the common sense test during a pandemic. As for trick-or-treating, I am fully in favor of trick-or-treating. Six foot spaces, masks on faces, avoid crowded places. If you're going out, definitely wear your mask, the ones that you wear to the store. Make sure that kids wear them as well. And you can find a fun way to make those masks a fun part of their costume. Again, avoiding crowds, avoiding indoor parties and large gatherings. If you're trick-or-treating and one street or neighborhood seems especially busy, skip to the next one. Maybe the candy hall will be good and maybe if it's not too busy, you'll even get a better hall. And if you're going around with children to chaperone them and trick-or-treating, make sure it's a smaller family and friend unit and not a large crowd. And if you're on the opposite end handing out the candy, I've heard lots of people already in my own neighborhood talk about using a table as a sort of separator so that the candy can be placed on the table but all the usual camaraderie and observations of the kids' costumes and everything can occur still without having a very close face-to-face transaction, if you will. Like with everything else that we want to do, we can find a way to enjoy, follow the guidance and act as we should, and that's how we can bend the curve. I'll turn it back to the governor. Thank you, Dr. Levine. We'll open up to questions at this time. Just a reminder, we have 22 people in the queue and an hour and 15 minutes. So, starting the room, Calvin. Thank you very much, Governor. I think this question's probably for Dr. Patrick, dealing with the new vaccine trial. I'm just wondering, specifically, why Vermont? I mean, what about whether it be UDM Medical Center or is there a case of prevalence or case load? Why have we been selected? There's a, thanks for the question. There's a few reasons. I think probably three or four I can think of. The first is that the research group here, the Vaccine Testing Center, has the experience to run a trial of this complexity in size. The second is these vaccine trials need to be represented regionally, and so we do need regional representation. The third reason is, particularly in Vermont, we have an older population and the vaccines are really important to show that they're safe and effective in those populations. I think those are the key reasons. Now, let me stop with that. And I just have a secondary question for Governor Scott. Yes, to be properly heard, UDM's leadership is proposing a freeze on tuition and room and board if approved. This will be the third year in a row for tuition. And sitting on the board of trustees, I'm wondering what sort of factors you and others will take into account, especially given potential concerns from faculty? Well, again, I think it's, I applaud UDM for taking this approach. I think during these times, during economic uncertainty, this is just exactly what we need to be doing. So again, I have a lot of faith in President Garamella and his staff and his reasoning behind this. And I think that, again, it will protect the university in the future. It's almost like investing in the university now so that when we come out of this pandemic, we'll be in better shape. So I believe it's the right approach. Obviously, he has a plan put together that will be put to the board. And I'm sure that we'll have some good discussions about how effective it'll be. I guess just a quick follow up. Are you concerned about the potential it's seven, maybe million dollars shortfall of the college? I think I'm more concerned about losing more enrollment. And I think that what we've seen with a lot of colleges in the Northeast, smaller colleges, albeit, what we're seeing with the Vermont State College system and it's all about enrollment, protecting the enrollment, making sure that you have an attractive kind of approach. And a lot of that surrounds affordability. So again, I think it's the exact approach we need to be taking in this moment in time. Ross. Governor, I was wondering if I could ask you about later sports this year, especially with the update yesterday on things in the club, hockey leagues and things like that. If seeing this develop over the last three weeks, have they changed the thinking around how we're approaching playing for the winter sports season? Yeah, it's always been about the how, right? What we're seeing right now, what we just experienced with the outbreak, with the San Fermat facility, I believe was everything around the hockey. It wasn't on the ice, it was off the ice. Social gatherings and so forth, carpooling. So we're going to have to tighten that up. We're going to be more aware of what we're doing and make sure that we continue to be able to provide for that recreation, but make sure that we're not causing some other undue repercussions as a result. So again, we'll be looking at the how as we move forward to the winter season and determining whether we have to put further restrictions in place. But I want to be strategic about it. You know, I don't want to roll back some of the initiatives that we've taken thus far. I think tightening up our policies, making sure that we've got the gaps filled. And again, it's in our hands. Each and every one of us has a role to play in this because we're the ones who can wear a mask, keep socially distance, physically distant and make sure we wash our hands and just do all the things we've been talking about over the last few months. And if we can get back to that, I think we've gotten a little bit complacent. We've let our guard down and we're seeing the effects of that. But we can, we can counter that. And a quick question for Dr. Leed regarding the cases at St. Michael's College. I know the school administration made a few statements about contact tracing that's gone on and then it seems that at least the genesis of some of those cases seem to be one or more students breaking the school's coronavirus policies. Here's a human chair, anything that you know about contact tracing, what it's shown and maybe even a message to students and anyone in the school community about what can be done to prevent future outbreaks like this. Sure. So in this particular outbreak, as I alluded to in my comments, there wasn't social gathering, but I've not been convinced that the social gathering was beyond the norms that were allowed at the college. But obviously a social gathering involves sometimes sacrificing that physical distance and that masking, especially if food and drink are involved. But I do know that many of the cases are in the same social network, as you might expect, even on a college campus, that's how that works. And again, I'm not convinced that there's any major offense that occurred, if you will. There have been concerns raised about if students that are supposed to be quarantining were quarantining effectively and I'll have to let the college speak to that more clearly. But that would be my only concern. Shouldn't school re-think what their approved social gathering guidelines are and something like this is happening within the guidelines? They should always be re-thinking that. But again, if their gatherings are a 10-person limit, that's getting pretty strict. One could get stricter than that, for sure. I will say that the college's response has been quite admirable in how they've approached things. They do have sufficient facilities to allow for isolation of cases and for quarantine of contacts. They are able to provide for those students who are finding themselves in those situations. They've gone remote with classes. All athletics have been canceled for the time being. It's essentially a quarantine campus. And I think they're all behaving very responsibly at this point in time. And they're going to continue on a testing protocol as we continue to try to make sure we're trying to contain as much of this as we can and discern if there's any other cases that develop over time. Thank you. Steve? Since Dr. Levine's up there, Dr.... The feds just announced that they've released a lot of antigen tests. Vermont getting, I think, over 180,000 of them. Your response, what are we gonna do with those? Are you gonna put them to work right away? Or is this an ongoing sort of strategic kind of stockpiling of them? That's exactly how I would describe it. We are actually strategically planning to how to utilize them. They were actually sent with the key purpose of being long-term care facility directed, creating a sort of rapid network of testing at those facilities, which is a fine use for them, as I've said in the past, using them on a periodic, no less than weekly basis in the same population over and over again. So that one turns positive, that becomes a real sentinel event that you should pay attention to. We actually have an adequate testing regime with PCR in those institutions that will carry us through the rest of this calendar year. So as we're strategically planning for the next year, that might involve actually implementing using these in a more robust way. The only thing that we have in the back of our mind is a reservation, is can we obtain continued supply? Will the manufacturer be able to put out enough so that there's a replacement supply for what we use up? Because they'll get used rather quickly if you're using them on a weekly basis. There's also an opportunity that the government would do what they did this time, which is work with the manufacturers, purchase another large bulk volume that they can distribute to the states and allay our concerns that there wouldn't be a follow-up test to do because we would have it already supplied. So those are the factors going into play. Plus we still could be utilizing those in outbreak settings. I'm hoping we're not developing abundant more outbreaks, but if we did, outbreak settings are sometimes a good place to use an agent test. If the prevalence in a certain community is going up, you can use the test and get a rapid turnaround and have the appropriate disposition for the people that are tested on a very rapid basis if they need to isolate. Governor, I guess it's my turn to ask the question, but have you come to a decision on how you're voting this time around, both in-person and then for perhaps president? Yeah, I have not. I'll be voting sometime between now and Tuesday. I don't know what I'll be doing on Tuesday in person or what I'll be doing over my ballot to the town clerk, but I haven't made a decision at this point. Very good. All right, moving to the phones. Lisa Loomis, the dialer reporter. Can I just back up? Just other than the obvious that I won't be voting for President Trump, just want to make sure that's clear. Go ahead. Lisa Loomis. Lisa Loomis, the dialer reporter. I'm going to thank you all. I'd like to follow up on a question asked last Friday about an outbreak in Waterbury, that's very good, maybe associated with the American Legion Hall in Waterbury. We've received multiple reports from readers in each town about a gathering in that hall where one of the staff was positive and exposed some of the guests. Sir, Terry Smith. Lisa, the only thing that I know about that case is there were two cases that were reported on that. And I know that contact tracing is examining that case right now, but I don't have an update unless Dr. Levine has, Dr. Levine doesn't have an update as well. I've known of two cases so far. Thank you very much. And then a quick stop off, this is probably for Dr. Levine. You get questions from parents whose college kids want to come home to ski on weekends. And some of these kids are college kids who are getting tested twice a week. And kids who suit the negative PCR tests that are 72 or fewer hours old use their college ski passes to stay in the homes of their Vermont families. I hope that our planning on skiing this weekend. Yes, that would be very nice. I think that would be challenging looking at the mountains right now. So again, we always say that the day you have a negative test is the day you had a negative test. It is not unfortunately predictive of the next day or the day after the day after. So I would submit that if you're coming from a zone that has higher prevalence, which most of the map as you saw shows, doesn't really matter if you had a 72 hour test that was negative because you could still be incubating the virus and be at your pre-symptomatic phase during that 48 hours when you can transmit virus. And indeed, I think that some of the larger social gatherings that have occurred in Vermont have actually played out in that way where potentially people who might have been asked to quarantine but weren't quarantined and came from out of state were present in a large crowd. So I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that's not the way our quarantine policy actually works. Thank you. That will disappoint some parents, but better have the quote hard truth, I suppose. Lisa, I just want to amend. I've read that we have two cases. I don't see it on my epi report, but I have read in the media that there's two cases at the American Legion, but it is not on my epi report. Should possess, what does that mean? It's just the epi report is not updated, or? Yeah, I'm not sure. Okay. Yeah, I would, I will get back to you, Lisa, to get an update on where that is right now. Great, thank you very much. And I can echo that, but I wanted to add to my other report that parents should be concerned that when their college students come home forget about quarantine before skiing, but when they come home because it's time to come home after the fall semester, that if they're coming from part of the country that would have high prevalence of virus, even if they've been through a testing program, they college students should quarantine at home if they're going to be spending time in Vermont. Thank you. Thank you. Stuart Leithetter, MDC Five. Thank you. There's some confusion based on our email about this travel map and what it means, what it does. It's been a long time since we've seen one that looks this bad. And so I'm wondering if you can clarify what is permitted for travel over our state border, particularly to the commercial areas in the upper valley and the Plattsboro. Yes, sir, Peachette. Thank you, Stuart. Yeah, this is the lowest the map has ever been in terms of the number of people that can enter without a quarantine. So that's for certain. In terms of what can happen in terms of essential travel, there is a specific paragraph on the ACC website that goes into more detail, but it is things like travel for work, travel for groceries for food, things like traveling for your own medical care, traveling for the medical care of others, traveling for school, whether that's K through 12 or college. So it's really a lot of the things that are essential to somebody's daily life and not those things that are more leisure travel focused. It's also true, Mike, that Chin and County would be bright red, too, if that were the color we used for Mon counties. Yeah, so there's a good point, Stuart, that we haven't made this in a while, but we made the intentional decision to exempt Vermont from the travel policies way back in June because we have a much more granular understanding of our own information, of our own data, of our own cases. We have more confidence in our testing capacity, our test turnaround, our contact tracing capacity. So we focus on a lot of different metrics to sort of view Vermont and use the 400 per million as a proxy for risk for all of those other counties across the region, which total over 500. All right, and one quick question for the governor. The administration announced on Friday that September revenues were way up in all three funds. The general fund was 20, 34%. And year to date through three months, you are way ahead. What does that tell you? And does that give you any comfort as you begin to think about next year's budget? Well, it certainly is positive news that we're in a position we're in at this point in time, but I'm still concerned about the future. We still need more coronavirus relief funds from the federal government. There should be a stimulus package that Congress should be working on right now. And because if they don't, it could be after sometime late January before anything comes out. And so this is part of the ripple effect of some of the economic packages we've been able to issue over the last six, seven months. And I think we're seeing the benefit of that, but that will wane off over the next month or two without some more relief. So again, good news for us right now, but I don't think this is ongoing. I think that we'll see that as the winter season approaches with the coronavirus exceeding the levels that we've seen over the last six months, region-wise, this will have an effect, more negative effect on our hospitality sector than before. So I'm still very, very concerned about the future economic situation here in Vermont. Mike Donahue. Thank you. And Governor, many Vermont businesses, especially up in the Champlain Island, have sort of looked through this summer tour season. You've been offering grants and programs, but wondering what you have up your sleeves for those businesses as they head into the winter season and the sharp downturn in the economy that they routinely face. I guess the question is, how will they still be above water come next spring? Yeah, as you know, Mike, we've been focusing on allowing or helping prop up some of these businesses over the last few months so they can survive until we get out of this, the situation we find ourselves in with the pandemic. We are at this point in time, every dollar of coronavirus relief funds and CARES Act money we've received as far need to be expended by the guidelines put in effect by the VEDS by 1231. So we are going through all those programs at this point to see if there's any unspent money that isn't going to be spent before the end of the year. And if there isn't, we want to put them to good use to help some of these businesses survive throughout the winter. Because again, when we find our way out of this, there is an effective vaccine that is put into place that's safely and widely distributed. Then we'll see the benefits of having the structure in place that we still have our economy, still have the foundation that it had previous to pre-COVID. So that's our strategy. We're looking for more funds and we're lobbying our congressional delegation and we're asking Congress to do the job and help the states out. Okay, thanks. And the other thing, the Governor's rate appears to be the only place close to state-wide rate. I'm just wondering your reaction to Democrat Mollick Ray not willing to produce any sort of tax records that would prove he filed for tax returns in Vermont at the time over the last four or five years. He does have some question as to whether he was in Vermont or considered a Vermonter. And I'm sorry, I'm a couple of leading Democrats who are mixed and people are hard pressed to think of somebody not be willing to show their qualified support or qualify for the job or maybe the qualifications to run for the job. To be honest, Mike, I haven't been following that race as closely as some, but I mean, I hear about candidates not willing to produce their tax returns, but that has been on the federal level, I'm running for president actually. So I wasn't aware that there was a problem in the Lieutenant Governor's race. So I don't know if I have any comment about that. Yeah, I'm not so sure if the tax return was just a letter from the tax department saying that he filed at the time, he didn't file it within, you know, or he didn't file it in 2016, this past year or something like that. Yeah, I'm just not. He didn't file it on time. Yeah, not aware of the situation, Mike. Yeah, okay, cool. Okay, thank you, Governor. Thank you. Greg, the honeybrier. Good afternoon, Governor. I have a quick follow-up on the question, follow-up on the announcement of the vaccine study. It was mentioned that about a third of the people that are gonna take part of this vaccine study would be given a placebo. By my calculations, that's about 84 people. At the end of the study, will those people be notified that they were given a placebo so that they would have the opportunity to go get an actual vaccine? I believe that is the case, but I'll let the experts answer. Yeah, thank you for the question. It's a short answer and the answer is yes. At the end of the trial, those that receive the placebo will be notified and will be eligible to be given the current vaccine. It's also worth noting that if another coronavirus vaccine comes out while this trial is running, as in any trial volunteers, they're always able to leave the trial if they wanted to get one of the other vaccines, and this will end up in some of the complexity that I think Dr. Levina has spoken about previously. What happens if we have several vaccines out? At right now, I say that's kind of gonna be a good problem to have, but maybe that's more information for the specific question, so the answer to the specific question is yes. And what's the duration of this trial? So, is it? Yeah, the duration as it stands right now is those that are enrolled in the trial will be followed for two years. If the vaccine is licensed before that time, the trial will be stopped and the placebos will be given the option to be given the vaccine. Okay, so it's quite possible that somebody given a placebo might not know until late 2022? Yes. Okay, thank you. And moving on, this may be for the governor, maybe for Dr. Levine. It's my understanding that many volunteer ambulance departments are having a hard time filling their ranks, getting the volunteers and employees needed to fill ships, sometimes leaving unused ambulances at the station while people are calling for 911 and having to have ambulances respond in a farther way. I know early on in the pandemic, the state changed some of their policies to hopefully alleviate some issues. I'm wondering if the state, particularly the health departments looking at any other policy changes that may help and maybe a question for the governor, is this something that the National Guard can be tapped to the slip? I'm not aware of the situation, Greg, but this might be a better question for Commissioner Shirling if he's on, if he's aware of anything that might conclude. I am on, Governor. We are aware of the staffing challenges across all public safety in emergency medical services, fire service, and we have not heard of any acute shortages, but this is an ongoing challenge that we have begun to address just prior to the pandemic with a multi-pronged approach to work on recruitment across all public safety rather than focusing on it in a one arena, a one-in-one time. So, again, without specificity of any acuity related to the problem, we're aware generally of the issue. And I do know that as you alluded to, the health department has made some licensing alterations to allow folks who are recently licensed to retain their license and to recognize licenses from other jurisdictions in response to the pandemic. But if you have additional granular information that you want to pass that along, happy to get that into the hands of the folks at emergency medical services. Okay, I may be in touch later today. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Governor. Thank you. Erin Potanko, Beauty Digger. The school data total, you're fine to say that there are six cases connected to the Montpelier outbreak in school and I had thought that that was for, you know, elementary school, those six cases. But when you look at today's Department of Health report, they don't list three cases, two of which are within the past seven days. How many cases are there in total for the Montpelier outbreak? Principal, sorry. I'm either looking for Dr. Levine or Commissioner Pichett. I think we should put that slide down a couple. The slide of slide eight. Can you clue why there's two, sorry, go ahead. Sorry, we're trying to find the slide to go along with what Dr. Levine's about to. Okay, while you're looking for that, do you have any idea why there could be a discrepancy between your report and the Department of Health data that came out today? So on this slide, we have the counts of people who are at their school or place of work while infectious. And you can see we have school A, six. We have school C, E, one a piece. So again, we look at these as people who are infectious at the time they're in the setting. We do have a number of times when someone calls the school and says, I need to let you know that I'm positive. I just tested positive, but they actually were not present in the school setting during the time they're infectious. So they don't get included in that count necessarily, even though they impact the school. Okay, so you're saying that your slides include all cases connected to the school where the Department of Health only is once they're in the building, the weekly school on day 12 or during the building. This slide is purely regarding who has been exposed at the time we're assessing the outbreak. This is nothing to do with the total numbers Commissioner Pichek put up for schools in Vermont as compared to other states, which goes beyond this outbreak. Yeah, no, I was referring to the, you know, state PDS, State Department of Health put out the school by school data, which only reports two current cases that you need elementary school. I'll have to get back to you in that because I'm not seeing that report in front of me right now. Okay, this is school cases. Is there anything we've learned recently about how transmission is happening? Sure. You know, whether it's happening in school at a specific place in school, yeah. With the exception of the one school where we had reported previously that that was our example of transmission within a school. The majority of these schools, there is no transmission within the school. The schools are quarantining those appropriately who we give guidance need to be quarantined. And when other cases develop, it's usually household contacts of the people who were the cases originally, as opposed to a transmission to somebody within the school. And as I said in my original comments, the majority of cases are actually in the adult population more than the student population. And when and if schools decide to operate remotely or have a class operate remotely, they're doing that out of caution and they're also doing that sometimes pragmatically because of staffing concerns related to the adults who can only be in the school setting. But I do think our experience has been very positive even with an outbreak occurring. By and large, when you look at the numbers of schools in the state and the numbers that have been impacted and the small numbers per school that have been impacted, I'd say we've done very, very well and the majority of our students have been able to maintain the hybrid or whatever degree of in-person learning their district was able to pull off in their situation. Thank you. Cat, WCAS? Hi, the question is for probably Dr. Stick's question. The study, how long do you have to enroll people in it? Pardon me, Kirk, I can totally say your name wrong. How long do you have to enroll people in the study and is there a deadline? Yeah, thanks for the question. We don't have a lot of time. The study should be completely enrolled within six to eight weeks. This is again, as I mentioned, a national study with at least 80 other sites and our window for closing will end when the entire 30,000 person cohort is dosed and the expectation is that'll take between six and eight weeks. So we do expect that all of our subjects will be enrolled by the winter holidays. And just because I know we're gonna get questions here after this, you mentioned there were specific groups that you were looking for, perhaps more than others. Does that mean other people who are interested should consider waiting to apply and seeing if the study fills up or should anybody who is interested to apply right off the bat? The best thing to do is to go on the UVM Medical Center website. There's a pre-screening questionnaire that's hyperlinked there. And it can help, if you go on and fill it out as an individual, it can help you identify if you're eligible or not. So the best thing to do is start with that. And if you're eligible, then the staff team, the study team will actually call you back. So that's probably the best place to start. Perfect, that's all the people. Thank you. Thank you. Wilson? Yeah, thank you. Thank you, everybody. I have a question, lady's question. Dr. Levine, those are some of the people on the hockey outbreak, if you will. Have you identified an index of case for that? And if there is a single index of case, do you know where, how that person became infected? I mean, was that in the state or from who knows where? And secondly, for the governor, Governor, as we've talked about already today, it's what we got from the election. And I don't think your campaign is going. And are you confident or how confident are you that you'll be back there in whatever day of January as the inauguration? I'll answer my question quickly first. It's so challenging in many of these outbreaks to actually be able to identify the index case. And we often become aware of cases simultaneously. And it's very hard to trace back which was first and which may have infected the other. So that's why when I present the competing hypotheses, many of which could be true, they account for the cases that we're aware of. So I can't give you the one case and say, this was one definitely related to travel versus related to social gathering. But we believe all are implicated and the social gathering being the most glaring example. Yeah, Wilson, you know, the pandemic has come first for me first and foremost, has been for the last seven or eight months. Secondary to that has been making sure that I'm doing my job, my other job, which is making sure leading the state in terms of government and the wheels of government continue to turn. So there are always challenges every day associated with that. The campaign really comes way down at the bottom of the list. We've done a pretty good job, I think thus far. We'll know a lot more in about eight days as to whether we did a good enough job. But suffice it to say, we've done all we can during these unusual times. Okay, great, that's it, thank you very much. Tim from On Business Magazine. Hi, Governor, on the hockey outbreak, it's my understanding that it was a known case by a parent and that there was a barricading on the warmth that's allowed bringing the student here to Vermont and that there was a social gathering by that parent and actor with the people and I was wondering if you were talking about being confirmed that information and it would be the follow-up if that were in the case if someone's actually willfully not follow up the guidance. Yeah, unfortunately, I don't have the answer to that. I do believe that it had to do with some sort of social event surrounding the off ice type of gathering of some sort. Yeah. In the contact tracing, the Vermont Department of Health has not found that chemist on multiple behavior. Yeah, we cannot confirm the precision with which you've delivered the news here today. We do not have that precise information but we do have enough information surrounding the events for sure. Would there be any, I'm sure it would be a little activity but what kind of action was it or could the state page under those terms? So what we're doing something willfully like that? Yeah, I should leave that to Commissioner Sherling. We have not actually implemented enforcement activities regarding people's quarantine behavior to this date. I do know that there are opportunities for the teams and their status, if you will, they're standing with the Memorial Civic Center, obviously. They are at stake but in terms of the state actually having enforcement armed regarding quarantine, the answer is we have not chosen to do that and we've looked more for education, guidance and cooperation. Kim, I just might want to add as well, any outbreak that we've had thus far when we look back through history, whether it's the UNUSC outbreak or the one at the orchards and so forth and so on, we look at those as learning opportunities as well. I think in this particular case, and we'll show on Friday just the extent of the outbreak and how it somewhat we feel has started but I think it's due to again, letting our guard down, becoming a little bit lax in how we approach things and taking for granted that we're somehow immune because we've done really well here in Vermont and I think we in some respects are suffering from that at this point in time because people think it's normal. Well, it is a normal. We still have a pandemic we're dealing with right now. We can't let our guard down. We have to make sure we wear our masks. We have to make sure that when we attend events that everyone is following the guidelines and know what you're getting yourself into and it's the risks associated with that. So if you don't have to take the risk, don't. We still have months to go with this pandemic and it's more critical than ever with the winter months coming in, colder temperatures getting inside that we adhere to the simple, simple guidance that we've outlaid. And again, I can't overstate the importance of some self-responsibility here. And so this is a learning moment for us but with other facilities, the facility itself appears to have done everything right and it was really the social aspect outside the ring where the problem was started. Ambrick, the BCAX? Don't believe me. And we've been hearing that the pharmacies that you're testing have been quite busy with the big demands for them. Is there any new partnerships in the work between private pharmacies and state pharmacies? Yeah, thanks for that. There are no new partnerships in the work so that we have a pretty abundant network currently. And we're also gonna have to observe the impact of what the federal government said regarding testing, long-term care facilities and their partnership with two of the national firms as well, national pharmacies. So we'd like to continue to expand what we have and sometimes that might just mean one of the pharmacies extending the number of days per week, the number of hours each day they test, things of that sort. I can say my own experience in talking with some have been that when there's a need, they're willing to step up to the plate so we would hope that they could continue that. Thank you. Joseph, the Barton Chronicle? I am not sure who gets this question, but recently the Riviera Elementary School sent the letter home saying that a member of the school community had tested positive for COVID. The school has, it didn't hold classes yesterday and has moved to online completely and my questions are, number one, is there any reason, as far as you know, to think that it is more than one individual and secondly, is the move to go to online education for a week at least, something that's required by the Department of Health or is this a case of someone taking maximum precautions? Was this the, which school did you say this was, Joe? The Dirty Elementary, what then, the Dirty Line? Yeah, to our knowledge, there is one positive case and obviously as I've said here many times, the number of contacts per case in October of this year is much greater than it was earlier this year, so there are clearly contacts associated with that case but that doesn't mean any of them will become cases. Because there are students and staff who are contacts, the school made its decision regarding what to do with their education beyond that. Public health always gives advice, but at the same time, it's always a conversation and a discussion amongst public health, the agency on education, the local school officials, to come to the right conclusion for that setting. And there are plenty of times when public health counsel is to continue school in session, but because of staffing considerations or other logistical considerations, the school district chooses to either close a portion of the school or close the school for a period of time and go remote and we completely respect that. But there's not been a situation I'm aware of where the health department has actually said to be much more stringent than the school already was planning to be. It's usually the opposite. Thank you, I have one other question and this may be the commissioner Pijak. I was looking at data point two and I am not entirely sure how to interpret the chart and what I'm really curious about is what if the R value, what is the effectively productive rate at this point? I'm not sure how to interpret the chart that way. Thank you, Joe. So you're talking about the one on page 19. So what's depicted is on the graph is simply the growth rate. The RT rate is not depicted on the graph. It is just showing the, I think the three and the seven day growth rates on the visual. And the RT is that reproduction rate over time. And we were saying that if it gets to a certain point, generally we were thinking 1.1 or higher that would sort of be something that would give us pause for concern. And our RT rate has fluctuated as low, well below one to just over one, depending on the particular, pretending on how many cases we have and what's sort of going on in our case count. So the RT value I can get back to you on what it is specifically today, but the reason you're not seeing it is because it's not depicted in that slide. Okay, thank you. Lisa Skagliotic. Questions that are back at the Waterbury question that Lisa Lewis has raised earlier. I think it might have been a story that I had that was discussed in the American Legion cases that I wanted to point out that the folks at the Legion said that they closed on Thursday for a week because of two cases where the individuals were exposed, but not from another individual at the Legion but from another location. So maybe that's why it's not popping up that being connected to the Legion itself. And they were doing this out of an abundance of caution. So they may not have been positive themselves, is that true? You're saying Lisa, they were just exposed? No, they were positive. Two people tested positive, but they say that their exposure did not come from another person at the American Legion but from someone somewhere else. But they are individuals who go to the Legion and presumably have other contacts with people there. So the Legion wanted to close for a week to just make sure that there was an additional spread happening among other members of the Legion. So I'm wondering if there's a chance of being able to see if there's additional data that would show any growth in cases just in the Waterbury and Ducksbury area in general before we see the map that comes out on Friday. Secretary Smith. Thank you for clarifying that. In the interim, I was getting clarification to the cases may be, as you said Lisa, the cases may be among people who are members of the American Legion. As of yesterday, the American Legion itself is not the focus of any sort of epi investigation. Also note that anyone who may be affected or close contact will be reached by the contact tracing team out of that. Can you repeat your specific question and we'll probably take it and see what we can do with that question in terms of data that you need? The increase in cases in general in the Waterbury and Ducksbury area, normally we see the town by town information comes out and gets posted on Friday that's sort of current through the Wednesday of that week. So I'm just wondering if in general we're seeing more cases popping up that might be in the community in general in addition to, you know, in connection, not connection but sort of like at the same time as we're seeing these cases that were associated with the Legion. Yeah, I'm hesitant to say something off the top of my head. I don't recall anything that strikes me as unusual in that area but let me sort of research the data and get back to you before you take that to the bank. Thank you. I have one other question that I want to keep as hypothetical as possible to not sort of identify anyone in a sort of hearsay kind of situation but I'm wondering, kind of tied to what Dr. Levine said last week about people getting COVID fatigue. There's concern that I'm hearing in our community be about people who may be positive, not staying home and not being isolated from the community but being out and about. There's, I've been hearing concern among people who say that they believe the people who have tested positive are out and they're in local businesses and I'm wondering what does a business manager or owner, what kind of obligation is there upon them if they find themselves in a situation where a worker comes up to them and says, I know these people that were just here and I'm pretty sure that they're positive and they were just in our store or restaurant or whatever and interacting with the staff and interacting while they're there. There's a sort of a little bit of that happening right now and people are scared and they're concerned and they are afraid to go to work. How does that supposed to get addressed, I suppose, in a business where they haven't been contacted officially by any contact tracer and the answer seems to be, we just wait to see if someone gets sick. Yeah, Lisa, in that situation, and you are absolutely right. I mean, that is a very serious situation if somebody has tested positive, of course, we don't want a confrontation on this. The best advice I would give is to contact the health department in this case and then let the health department follow up with that particular individual, both on an education-wise and just to make sure during the infectious period that person isn't infecting other people as well. Okay, thank you. Courtney Cramer. Hi, good morning. My question is for Governor Scott. Governor, I'm wondering if you have a comment or what your reaction is to the confirmation of the Supreme Court justice in the Coney Barrett. Yeah, I was vocal early on that I didn't believe that this should be something the Senate should be taking up at this point in time. I remain concerned about that. And based on the precedent that was set four years ago, I just think it's the wrong approach. But as far as the qualifications of now Supreme Court justice, you know, it's done at this point, but again, I think it's unfortunate that it came to this point. Okay, thank you, Governor. Andrew McGregor. Yes, good afternoon. This is for Commissioner Piciak. I'm struck by the revised forecast that shows a tripling of the projected cases over the next month. How much of that is a foreground conclusion in the sense that the exposures have already occurred and that we're just waiting for the sentence and testing to reflect that fact? And lastly, you said modeling has more granular projections, I think maybe based on counting. Does the new modeling predict that this increase in cases will be distributed around the state or are they focused in any particular area? Yeah, good. Both of those are good questions. And on the first point, you know, it's 100% in our hands what the trajectory of that forecast is. We presented forecast previously in March and April that showed, you know, not just cases, but hospitalizations really going up to a pretty significant and severe level. And with policy, policies being implemented and Vermonters following those and following health guidance, we quickly saw cases stop on a dime and go down and stay very low, you know, since the summertime. So the forecast are not a foregone conclusion. Those are trends based on current cases and they will reflect what our behavior is going forward. So, you know, we 100% have the ability to control what that ultimate reality is. And, you know, by following public health guidance we can make it a much lower reality than what's forecasted. In terms of your second question about regional data, we definitely have, you know, information. We look at it on a county by county basis. We can include something in next week's presentation. I just wanna make again the caveat that when you're talking about, you know, data, even at the Vermont level where we're a small state, you know, there's, we have reliability in it because, you know, of the statewide population. But when you get down to a county by county forecast approach, it just becomes less reliable because of the, you know, the less data that's available. So some counties in Vermont only have, you know, half a dozen cases may be reported recently, which makes it difficult to trend out in the future. But I will say just generally that there's not a particular, you know, there's some counties that maybe you would anticipate that we'll see a forecasted increase more than others like Chittenden County where there's more population and Washington County where a lot of cases have been recently. But other than that, it's, you know, relatively spread out through the state. So with good luck and good adherence, do you think that the forecast by next week would reflect a shift in that trickling by Thanksgiving? Or, I mean, my understanding with modeling and forecasting with more data comes more accuracy. So how confident are you in the forecast thing at this point? I mean, nobody, like you said, we do that with how much change. Yeah, exactly. Good question. I mentioned, you know, that the forecast that we were on, you know, on October 21st, you know, just six days ago was markedly different than the one that's forecasted for today. So if we can have the forecast change that dramatically in the negative direction in six days, we certainly have the ability to control it, change our behavior and see a decrease in cases within that same timeframe and see an improvement in that forecast. So we'll wait and see what happens. But like I said, Vermonters have always done a really solid job of responding to the public health guidelines that are coming out and adhering to them. I guess the last question, I'm still on topic. I hear that forecast becomes reality. What are the consequences that you envision in terms of hospitalizations and things like that? Yeah, so, I mean, as it relates to hospitalizations and fatalities, you know, that's why we included the slides today to make it clear that, you know, we have not seen any real marked increase in those two important factors. That was not the case back in the spring when, you know, we saw obviously a really rapid rise in cases and pretty shortly thereafter, pretty substantial rise in hospitalizations as well. So, you know, we don't forecast that in the near term and we'll wait and see what the actual forecast is. But we anticipate that, you know, we will get this under control before we have those kind of issues. Thank you. Guy Page. I could just go back just for a second to that question. And just to put this in perspective, again, we had three hospitalizations yesterday statewide. So we're in pretty good shape. Sorry about that. Guy Page. Governor, this is for you or Secretary Condo, so I gather it's available by video. The changes made earlier this month to add more voter information security to the My Voter Page Portal on the election website, are you confident that Vermont voter information is safe from cyber attack? Yeah, Guy, that is a better question for him. I think he isn't on the call right now, but he did say he's having a press conference availability tomorrow at 11. And you might want to ask him that question tomorrow. Thank you. Question for either you or Mike Smith. Congratulations on the zero positive test among over 2,000 inmates. Given that you are considering allowing, given that, are you considering allowing more inmate access to in-person volunteers and church programming? Just remember, Guy, we did have a positive in one of our facilities with a correctional officer. So we're testing that facility. I think it's today or yesterday in terms of that facility. We're going to be very, very cautious of how we open up our, back up our facilities in terms of visitation. And as I mentioned last time, it is, it's going to be a while before we're fully open in terms of those visitation, the way that visitation was before. So I would expect it's still going to be a while. Thank you. Steve Merrill, Steve, Star-6 to unmute. Okay, we're going to move on to Ashley Dalyon from St. Michael's. Can you hear me? Go ahead, Steve. Hi, sorry. I got one for the doctor and one for the governor, if I may. Go ahead. Dr. Levine, when I'd ask you about Dr. Fauci's, about face on the mask usage, I went back and looked at the 60 minutes interview and his exact words were, it might make people feel a little better. It might stop a droplet, but it's not provided in the protection of people think it is. Often there's unintended consequences, fiddling with the mask, touching their face, and then he talked about saving them for healthcare workers. I personally was talking about the N95s, but, and he kept talking about schmutz. I guess that was his term for fomites, but anyways, if the masks are that important and touching them might endanger their usage, shouldn't masks be worn along with gloves to stop the spread of fomites or you're getting them on your face or in your eyes, stuff like that? By answer to that, I'm not trying to be trite by any means, but we have enough trouble as a nation having compliance with masks. Let's not make it more complicated and add a glove dimension to it. And I'm actually saying that seriously, but let me make this a broader question so I can have a teachable moment about masks in general, because at a pandemic pace, the literature on masking has evolved and different than that early point in the pandemic that you just quoted, masks actually have accumulated much more evidence basis for their efficacy. That's the first thing. Second thing is, it's now also recognized of course that there is some probably small but still real amount of aerosol transmission, not just large droplet transmission and masks can help the wearer, not just the person that the wearer is in the room with. Thirdly, there's some emerging literature and it's not final yet, but it's all in the same direction, showing that in places where masks have been mandated, and that can be not just state versus state, but within a state where certain counties have mandated and others have not or certain towns have mandated, others have not. There's evidence that the mask has produced improvement in rates of infection. And I guess lastly, the other point is that masks are now being associated, if you will, with a lower burden of virus, so that if you happen to still get the virus, even though you were wearing a mask, it's thought that the infectious load that you get and the illness that you'll subsequently suffer because of that will be milder because of wearing the mask. So I can't again, re-emphasize 100 times how important masks are and how all the data is going in the same direction in a very positive way. I'll let you ask the governor. I don't mean like, you know, like mask mandates, but I want people who are worried for their own protection wouldn't close the... Yeah, if they chose to do that, I could certainly endorse that completely. But I again, wouldn't want to make that a requirement for people when the mask itself is really the critical ingredient. Make sure that people use sanitizer all the time and wash their hands like we've been saying as part of the core guidance. Wash your hands all throughout the day and use sanitizer when you can't. I'll let you ask the governor his question now. Great, thank you. Go ahead, Steve. Okay, thanks, governor. When I asked you about the PCB standards over at VHS, you said it wasn't up to Dr. Levine or your administration to change the standards but the legislature could say establish it to begin with. But, and we mentioned the pilot test that were done eight years ago. But the question I have today is, and the test before didn't single out the schools that were built in the 60s on a priority basis. Are you planning to test the schools built in that timeframe on a priority basis? This is number two. Would you have the stricter Vermont standard review on a scientific basis than use your effective order power to say temporarily rescind the standard until the legislature could deal with it? First of all, I would not use the executive power to rescind the PCB standard at this point in time. I think this is a legislature type of initiative and I'm sure it will be reviewed based on the case we have in Burlington. But we know PCBs are cancer causing and there was a reason for this low standard. Second, I think the first part of the question was whether we'd be testing schools. Well, obviously we'd like to do that in the future. It's going to take resources in order to accomplish that and then a plan and be happy to work with the legislature on that. But it's not a flip of the switch. It's not something that could be done overnight and it certainly isn't to the same level as like a lead testing program that was multi-million dollars that was put forth to accomplish that. This is a much larger scale than that. But again, we'll look forward to having this conversation with the legislature when they come back into session if I'm still here. And that's like in January, right? That's correct. Okay, well, great. Thank you both very much. Okay, moving back to you, Ashley from St. Michael's. Good afternoon, Governor. I have questions for you and two follow-up questions from our colleagues. With just over 1,400 students living at St. Michael's College, there are 30 in isolation and 160 in quarantine. The student body wants to know how many is too many? What would it take for a semester shut down? That's something that we would have to discuss with the St. Michael's, actually it's probably their decision at this point in time. We've been working alongside them. But I would say some of the things we've been talking about today apply to the campus. Just make sure that you're following the guidelines. Know who you're gathering with. Wash your hands, wear a mask. Don't take any unnecessary risks. And you should be fine. Putting people in quarantine at this point in time, shutting down, locking down the campus should help us get through this and help St. Mike's get through this. So I'm confident that if everyone just adheres again to the guidelines, put it into place, that we'll come out of this safely. Ifs, a question for Dr. Levine as well. Yes, I have two follow-ups for Dr. Levine. So would you suggest that all students be tested every week going forward and throughout the spring semester? Certainly we plan on testing every week going forward. And I'm not sure about the spring semester yet. That's a bit further in the future. But yes. Thank you. And one last question. Would it be feasible for the state of Vermont to provide solutions for college students? College students should be able to access flu shots without the state necessarily providing that and all have health insurance and could work with your health center there as well. And if you desired, could go to pharmacies and other clinical settings. So I'm not sure there's a need for the state to intervene in that regard. I would like to add one more line to my first answer though because I know some of the news stories that have come out have maybe not intentionally but unintentionally stated that testing a third of the student body at a time might be responsible for what's happened. And again, testing is not prevention. Testing just the text disease when we need to find it. It's all of the preventive behaviors that we tell everybody to put into play all the time that determines if there's going to be a case or even an outbreak. So I wouldn't really point to anything that the testing protocol that was being used. The good news is unlike the majority of colleges around the country, there was testing going on at St. Mike's. It was an early Sentinel warning system for us if you will on this outbreak because many of the students had no symptoms and wouldn't otherwise have sought testing. So I think the systems have worked and I want to emphasize that. Thank you. Thank you. Derek, seven days. Yeah, I have two questions related to how to take travel. The first is, given the dramatically shrinking travel map, is the state planning to do more to broadcast among restrictions to would be travelers or post penalties or otherwise improved compliance? Well, again, we want to step up our approach to this. We may be looking at the areas and maybe strategies to make sure that people are adhering to the guidelines we have into place. We do, I think we have the travel map that we put into place every single week is on DFRs, ACCDs, the health departments, all of the websites. So we're trying to communicate that the best we can. And what we've seen is that many people do look at the modeling on a weekly basis as well as count on each and every one of you in the media to communicate that to listeners so that everyone is aware because that's the only way this is going to work if we continue to show that there's problem areas that are starting to migrate into Vermont. That's where we have to put up this line of defense. That's why we put the program in place to begin with so that people are aware of what's happening. Yeah, are there any specific steps that could be under consideration? Are there tools you may have to hand over the phone? Well, again, we're taking all the approaches we think we need to take at this point, but we may have to go back into the field, so to speak, and make sure that lodging facilities and restaurants and so forth are complying and taking the information that we asked them to and then researching that to make sure that there's compliance. Mr. Pichek might have something to add to this. Just on the point about education, we mentioned this previously, but when we look at how many interactions there are with the travel map, generally, within any given 30-day period, there's about 1.3 million interactions, so there is really significant interaction with that map. I think there's widespread knowledge of it, both obviously from Vermonters and those traveling to Vermont as well. My follow-up question was related to lodging compliance. Let's look at the total for two. What is currently directed by management? You asked a question, guest, about the travel history or quarantine compliance, just to simply ask them to sign a physical compliance form. I'm wondering if you think that approach is a problem? Well, again, that's why I mentioned that we may go back out in the field and check to make sure that there is compliance as we requested, so that's one of the strategies that's on the table at this point. My understanding of this is that approach currently meets the guidance as long as the hotel has it, has the form on file that they are in compliance on what are any of the components. Well, again, it's one of the strategies that's on the table, trying to go in and actually dig in just a little bit deeper to make sure that there is compliance with that certification. All right, thank you. Pete Herzfeld, DPR. Governor, DPR done an inquiry for the listener looking for a status update on your voluntary A-Pen B-Program to the many months since you put out the ROT to insurance companies looking for prospective bidders on that. Hopefully you can tell us where that stands. Yeah, it's Ben and Lindo in a lot of respects, Pete, because of the pandemic. Unfortunately, the timing wasn't on our side. We hope that once we emerge out of this that we'll put that back out to bid so that we can get perspective insurance companies interested in that method that we put out there for the RFP. And did you rescind the RFP or did you not get any response to this? I believe, and I should check to be sure. I believe we received maybe one response, but I'm not positive of that. But let me get the information and make sure that we're giving you the correct information. But is it fair to say that there will be no statewide voluntary paid family and medical beef plan in Vermont until the pandemic is passed this by? I think it would be, yeah, it would be difficult to put that into place at this point because again, we have to reissue the RFP. And then put it into place. So it would take some time to put that into place. And we want to make sure that we're in a market that gives us the best price and everything that we ask for. So I don't believe it's right now, but again, we're going to be exploring that. We haven't given up on the idea if that's what you're getting at. I guess I'm just wondering, is it lack of bandwidth to take on the scope of that side of getting all you got going on with the pandemic? Or is it a matter of physical concern that's been telling you to put this on hold? I think it's a matter of this worldwide pandemic. And I'm not sure that anyone is at this point willing to bid on something that's so new considering what the environment we're in. So I think it's due to the pandemic. Thank you. Hannah Wall of Salon, B.G. Digger. Thank you for taking my question. Governor, just a quick one first about the revenues. I'm wondering, do you know why they came in well as well as what has been expected in the month of September? Yeah, you know, they came in strong and in a lot of respects exceeded our expectations. This just shows the volatility that we have in the economy. We feel that a lot of it's been due to the billion dollars that's been injected into the economy in whether it's the POAs or unemployment, the extra $600, and we've seen the ripple effect of that throughout the entire economy. So there's a lot of areas, whether it's real estate, whether it's outdoor recreation equipment, there are some good news out there in some respects, but a lot of it, I think, was due from my standpoint due to the injection of so much federal money into our economy, which tells me, we're going to need another shot of that to get through this as we see the light at the end of the tunnel. That's about the Department of Labor. I'm wondering if the state or a few are reconsidering how things are being managed there, because as you probably have heard and I've been hearing my know all the journalists have, there have been numerous problems in getting unemployment relief. This recent round of unemployment relief out to people who've lost their jobs as a result of COVID-19, and I guess the DOL has been telling callers that an outside vendor is handling the latest relief checks. I'm talking about the $300 supplemental checks that are coming in those two batches to cover office on the first half of September. Callers are hearing from the call answers that they'll hear back from the DOL and they never will, and the people who are on the phones are also saying they can't give out any information because they don't have it. It's all in the hands of an outside vendor. Even top officials at the Department of Labor who I've asked about things like, how many people have you asked for refunds and questions like that say it's being handled by an outside vendor and they can't tell me. And I'm just wondering what's going on there and we're now seven months into this and they really have a lot of money and a lot of things to figure out. But are you taking any steps now to change the way things are being handled there? Yeah, again, and let's take a step back and see where we've come. Had 90,000 people on unemployment almost overnight. We've been able to work through that. There's been supplemental income. We had to set up a PUA system, something brand new, never been done before on top of the traditional unemployment. And then on top of that, the extra money ran out, the extra $600, the administration, President Trump came forward with an idea to come up with $300 of FEMA money that had to be matched and then another new program had to be set up. I mean, this is so unusual and overwhelming when you think about the capacity of any department. You know, we've reacted with having inner connections with the Department of Financial Regulation, the Department of Motor Vehicle, every entity trying to help out in some way. But this is like, it was like a tsunami. This really did impact us in a dramatic way in every sense of the word. We're doing what we can. Obviously, there are some shortcomings that we try and tackle almost each and every day and we'll continue to do that. But at this point in time, I have faith in the leadership at labor and we'll continue to identify the problems as they crop up and they will continue to crop up because nothing is perfect. And on top of all that, we have an IT system that's 50 years old that we've asked for some help in previous years to replace, but that hasn't been met and people haven't been interested in doing that. So, you know, they have a lot on their plate over at labor and I thought we've had, again, some shortcomings. We've rectified that, but they will continue to be challenged as we continue to work through this because we still have 22,000 people on some sort of unemployment assistance at this point and that could increase depending on what happens in the next few months. But I mean, it's sort of an accounting question too at this point, if they don't know how much money they've put out into the set out to remonters that they're not gonna be asking to get back. It's sort of like you're dealing with an accounting that involves millions of dollars. Yeah, and you're dealing with guidelines from the federal government that make it even more problematic. I mean, these are new guidelines that they keep issuing and continue obstacles that are put into place that have been very difficult to get through. So, this isn't the standard unemployment that we've had for the last 20 or 30 years. This is something brand new in all different areas. So, I would say that again, there's a lot of finger pointing going on but the pandemic has led us to the point where this is unusual on certain times and certainly they're doing the best they can at labor. That's it. Well, thank you very much and we'll see you again on Friday.