 Good morning everyone. Today we'll be giving our weekly modeling update which will show we're continuing to see concerning trends across the country, regionally, and even right here in Vermont. It's important for everyone to see this data and recognize we're not in the same place today as we've been over the last several months. Even though we still lead the country in so many ways, we're not seeing and we're not seeing the alarming growth many of our neighbors are, we have to take action to make sure we don't. We've gone a number of months with such low prevalence of the disease that many have become more lax because the risk has been so low. But as will be shown, we continue to see a rise in cases which shows the risk is higher than what we're used to. The good news is we've proven we can change our trajectory but we'll need to dig deep and double our efforts so we can protect the most vulnerable and keep our schools and economy open. Now I know this is disappointing but it's more important than ever to be vigilant, to wear a mask, stay six feet apart, avoid non-essential gatherings, and follow our travel policy. Over the last few weeks the number of counties open for travel without a quarantine has been shrinking. As of today it's down to about three. And the fact is, along with social gatherings, travel to and from other states without the proper quarantine continues to be one of the common denominators in our rising case counts. So as of today we're temporarily suspending our travel map and requiring a 14-day quarantine or seven days and a negative test for any non-essential travel into Vermont. Our policy for essential travel remains the same, which means people traveling for things like work or school, medical care, personal safety, care of others, shared child custody, or to get food and not are not required to quarantine. But they should only be doing these activities and then returning home. When you consider the amount of red we're seeing in the northeast and that it's not likely to improve for a few weeks, it only made sense to simplify the policy in order to ensure better compliance. The bottom line is, if you don't need to travel right now, don't. And if you do or you have someone visit from another state, we need you to follow the quarantine rules. To help with this effort, we are also increasing our outreach and educational efforts. Mr. Schirling will update you on a plan to make sure we're seeing adherence to these rules at our lodging facilities, restaurants, and bars. I've also asked the Department of Public Safety and the Agency of Commerce to reach out to communities to remind them they have the ability to add restrictions should they want to take additional steps based on the cases in their own communities. And with traditional deer season upon us, the Department of Fish and Wildlife is also stepping up outreach to make sure both Vermont and out of state hunters understand our travel and gathering guidance. And as we previewed last week, we're also working to further strengthen our testing program because testing and tracing continue to be one of our best tools to contain spread without the more severe restrictions we had last spring. Dr. Levine will share more on a new testing initiative in a few minutes. Again, with the success we've had over the last few months, I know it's disappointing to hear about new restrictions. But by acting early and doubling down on the work that made us so successful in the first place, I know we can get this under control. Hold on to the gains we've made and continue to be in a better position to get through this faster and stronger than any other state. And just like I said, since March, this is literally in our hands. And we've shown that what we can do when we all pull in the same direction. We need to think carefully about the decisions we make. Think about our wants versus our needs. And if it's just a want, let's hold off on that for a while. Because what we need to do is keep our kids in school for in-person learning and keep our businesses open and our workers working. This will take every Vermonner committing to wearing a mask, keeping six feet apart from others, following our quarantine and travel guidance and limiting how many people you're coming in contact with. This includes limiting the size of gatherings, even small ones. And when you gather, as we advised last week, keep those to fewer than 10 and to one or two trusted families at most. And I do mean we need every Vermonter. So I'd like to speak directly to the skeptics for a moment. Those who aren't wearing masks are taking these other precautions. I understand this may seem inconvenient. And from your point of view, unnecessary, unfair, and difficult, but simply refusing to do your part is dangerous to the rest of us. It puts people you know, and in many cases, people you love, at much higher risk. And it makes it harder for us to take steps forward to reopen our economy. So I'm asking you to think about what you can do to help us stop the growing wave of infections that is starting to lead to more hospitalizations and sadly will surely lead to more deaths. Please do your part. I know it's a choice, but I'm asking you to make the right choice for the right reasons. Together, we can change our trajectory, protect the gains we've made, and keep moving forward. At this point, I'll turn it over to Commissioner Pichek to show more on the data that's driving our decisions. Mr. Pichek. Good morning, everybody, and thank you, Governor. This morning, we will start out with an overview of some national data before turning to our regional data, some Vermont data, and then ending with an update on higher ed and K through 12. As you can see from the first slide, yesterday, the United States passed 10 million new coronavirus cases, the most in the world. And it was also the fastest that we got to an additional million cases. You'll see that we beat our previous record, which was set over the last million cases of 13 days, getting there this time in just 10 days. So you can see how more quickly we're adding cases here in the United States than we were in any other period of the pandemic. The next slide shows the U.S. case curve. Again, just the same point, but shown a different way. You can see back in the spring, we averaged about 31,000 cases. Then in the summer, 66,000. And now, just today, we're averaging 112,000 cases per day. So you can see how dramatic that case growth has been. The next slide is something we haven't shown before, but this is the national forecast. So you'll see both that case curve that we showed that are confirmed cases, but then also for a six-week out period, the number of forecasted or estimated cases that are expected in the United States. You'll see that we anticipate a 79% increase in new cases over the next six weeks. And on December 18th, we anticipate that our daily average will be just under 200,000 cases. So certainly, the country is trending in a very dangerous direction. Looking at hospitalizations on the next slide, you'll see that, like the peaks before, hospitalizations are also on the rise. The thing that is interesting here is that you can see that the three peaks we've experienced in the spring, then in the summer, and now, are all pretty similar in terms of the number of people requiring hospitalization. So it probably indicates there was some undercounting of cases earlier in the pandemic. But you can see that this wave is just as strong, if not stronger than those previous waves we experienced in March and April and over the summer. Heading to the next slide, you'll see that national death chart, and you'll see, again, that we are seeing an uptick in deaths more recently, but it is different than the spring, when we're averaging about 2,100 deaths a day at its highest point. And in the summer, when we're averaging 1,100 deaths per day at its highest point, we're just under 1,000. But again, deaths is a lagging indicator, unfortunately. So when you see cases, you'll see hospitalizations will follow, and unfortunately, you'll see fatalities follow that as well. So we have to keep a very close eye on our cases, our hospitalizations, and unfortunately, our deaths. Turning to our regional update, you'll see that our region is not faring too much better. We increased our case count about 33% compared to last week, and additional 13,000 cases this week compared to the number that we had last week. And just to call out here, you can see that Vermont, we had just under 200 cases this week, certainly a very high number for us, one of the highest weeks we've had since the spring. But look at New Hampshire and Maine, who both had over 1,000 cases this week and have seen considerable growth as well. So we're seeing numbers increase here in Vermont, but they're also increasing around the region, something both for us to take caution of, but also something for us to be mindful of, that we still are in a better comparative positions than pretty much any other jurisdiction across the country. You'll see that the region over time, again, we're seeing cases go up, they've been going up for now 11 straight weeks. I also see in the last three weeks, they have started to go up a little bit more rapidly than they did earlier in this most recent rise. And they're just over half as high as it was back in the spring. So clearly cases in the region continued to trend up. Looking at a couple of the jurisdictions within our region, you'll see that the seven-day averages over time for the whole pandemic here for New Hampshire, for Maine, for New York, and for Massachusetts. And you can see clearly that New Hampshire and Maine have far exceeded the case counts that they had back in the spring. And you can see the trajectory that both of those states are on, particularly Maine, which saw its cases double in just the last week. But then you can also see that Massachusetts and New York are also seeing steady case growth as well. Massachusetts is closing in on its highest point in the pandemic. And New York is clearly seeing a strong uptick, particularly as of late. We've also provided a regional forecast. And unfortunately, the regional forecast is no better than the national forecast. We've seen our numbers go up over the last 11 weeks and projected over the next six weeks, they're anticipated to continue to rise. They're anticipated to go up about 105% over the next six weeks. So as the governor mentioned, we've seen case growth nationally, we've seen it regionally. And unfortunately, it's projected to continue to go up over the weeks ahead. Turning now to our travel map, you can see the reason and the rationale for suspending the travel map. Very few places are eligible for travel. I think it's important to send a strong message to anyone coming to Vermont or Vermonters looking to leave the state in return that a quarantine, whether 14 days or seven days with the test, is the safest approach that you can take both for yourself, your families, and for your fellow Vermonters as well. Turning to a national map that we show sometimes that applies our travel methodology, you'll see that the map is really full of red. There's very, very few places that meet our travel standard. In fact, there are about 3100 counties across the United States. Less than 30 of them would meet that under 400 standard or green counties. So again, you can see how widespread this is across the country. And again, just to point out, some of these places in the country are seeing extreme case growth. Places in North Dakota and South Dakota, they're seeing tens of thousands of active cases per million. Here in the Northeast, we're still seeing 800, 1200 active cases per million. So it gives you a sense of the scale that the problem is still considerably worse in other parts of the country. Turning now to our Vermont data, we'll look briefly at our Vermont curve. You'll see that this is identified as one of three periods where we've seen accelerated case growth back in the spring, the Wynuski outbreak, and then more recently. We've shown this chart a few weeks in a row, but you can see how we're continuing to climb up in case counts, how we have more simultaneous outbreaks now than we did at previous points, and that we started from a higher baseline of cases. So that all is certainly something we've got to keep a close eye on and is concerning in terms of what we'll see over the next few weeks. Turning to the age of cases, this is from the beginning of the pandemic through today. You can see how old the people are that contract COVID-19 in Vermont on a 14-day average. You'll notice that earlier in the pandemic, the ages were higher. They got lower during the summer. But again, I want to point out that even on this metric, there's some cause for concern. As for the first time, the average age reached 50 years old for the first time since May. And our baseline that we've settled into is higher than it's traditionally been for the last five months. Again, those that are older are more vulnerable to significant or severe complications. So that's something that is also concerning to us. Going ahead to the next slide, you'll see the hospitalization data. This is specific to Vermont. We have, like the national data, seen a trend and a slight uptick in our hospitalizations, both general hospital beds and ICU beds. So again, something that is a concern for us and something to watch closely, not anywhere near what we saw in the spring, but still an uptick. And that would be somewhat expected based on the increase in cases that we have seen. Now looking at a Vermont forecast, again, not much has changed here. Our case growth has remained about where we projected it to be, although the forecast is a little higher, showing cases expected to be between 40 and 60 per day on a seven day average over the next six weeks. So it is showing that continued steady growth that we've been looking at very closely and somewhat concerned about at various points and certainly concerned about today. I want to pause and just give an analysis that I think would be helpful for Vermonters as they make difficult decisions in the weeks ahead about spending time with their loved ones and their families with the holidays coming up. I know once I looked at this data, we made the difficult decision in our own family not to celebrate together in the traditional way. You'll see that there is just a lot to lose. And if you make the sacrifice in the short term, you're certainly preserving a lot in that long term and many, many hopefully holidays ahead. So what we want to show here is a comparison to Canadian Thanksgiving. And it really is a cautionary tale for us in the United States and us here in Vermont. If we see on the next slide that the Canadian Thanksgiving is similar in many ways to the Thanksgiving that we celebrate here in the United States. Their Thanksgiving is the second week of October. This year it was October 12th. They have family gatherings. They eat a traditional Thanksgiving meal. Turkey is usually on the menu. They even have Canadian football games that are played that day. And the one thing that's a little bit different than us here in the United States is different parts of Canada celebrate it more emphatically than others. So that allows us to look at certain provinces that did celebrate or do celebrate traditional Canadian Thanksgiving compared to those that did not. So again, if we can look at the next slide, you'll see four different provinces in Canada. These are the Canadian provinces out in the western part of the country that all celebrate a Thanksgiving similar to the U.S. You'll see that on October 12th, in the weeks that followed, every one of these provinces saw a somewhat dramatic increase in cases over the weeks that followed. You'll see that every single one had a pretty low level case count. That weekend of October 12th came. And then in the weeks that ensued, their cases grew quite substantially. They actually grew in these provinces plus Ontario over 200% since their Canadian Thanksgiving. If we go to the next slide, you'll see the Atlantic provinces of Canada. These provinces do not celebrate it as emphatically, as other parts of the country. They are less prone to get together and have a more traditional holiday as the western provinces. And again, you'll see here that they did not see a considerable uptick in cases once the Canadian holiday came and passed. In fact, their cases actually went down in the ensuing weeks since their holiday. And if we go to the next slide, you'll see all of that information together on two different slides. And you can see on a per capita basis clearly those provinces that celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving, they saw their numbers go up. Their health officials attribute that to the holiday gatherings. They put out plenty of warnings before the holidays, but there was some level of COVID fatigue and desire to see their families. And many people continue to have that traditional Canadian Thanksgiving. But we want to send that warning and provide you that information about what can happen, again, if you celebrate in the traditional ways. It's really a combination, unfortunately, of travel, which we're concerned about, and small indoor gatherings, which similarly we're concerned about, and Thanksgiving combines both of those elements. I want to turn now just to talk briefly about our restart metrics. You'll see that we did not include them here because they're pretty, they're all trending pretty favorably, even though we're seeing this increase in cases. We have plenty of hospital capacity. Our syndromic surveillance remains low. The two things that are ticking up our positivity rate and our growth rate, and we're obviously keeping a close eye on both of those items. Turning now to our flu vaccination, you'll see that we're up compared to last year. It slowed down a little bit, 4.4% over last year's numbers, but some of the data is not necessarily readily available, partly due to the cyber issues that are happening at the UVM Medical Center. So this is a baseline of how many people have gotten vaccinated to date. Likely that number is higher, and we will get that information when it's available. Lastly and briefly on the K-12 and college updates, you'll see that cases have gone up in Vermont, but compared to our neighbors, not nearly as high. We added 15 new cases this week across 10 schools, but New Hampshire added 103 cases across 49 schools, and Maine added 25 total cases across 15 schools. So again, trending very favorably compared to our northern New England neighbors. And then last looking at higher education, you'll see that we added about 83 cases in New Hampshire this week from higher ed institutions, 36 from institutions in Maine, and Vermont did see a 22 case increase from higher ed institutions. I'll note that over the last three weeks, we've seen 89 cases from our higher ed institutions, but 84% of those are from the St. Michael's campus outbreak associated with the central Vermont outbreak. So putting that into relative terms and recognizing that beyond those few institutions, our higher ed institutions are performing quite well. And with that, I'll turn it over to Commissioner Shirley. Good morning. As the Governor and Commissioner Petschek have highlighted this morning, we've entered a period of time where following health and safety guidance to protect yourself, your family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, and others is more important than ever. Following the travel and quarantine guidance is essential. Being mindful of personal responsibility and safety in our homes is equally important. And for businesses, doing your part as facilitators of travel and gathering to mitigate the spread of the virus has never been more important. Not only for the safety of your staff and customers, but for the ongoing stability of our economy. As case counts continue to climb, the Department of Public Safety will be re-implementing and expanding a strategy used in the spring, the assessment of key locations for compliance with health and safety guidance. The overall strategy is to use state assets, including the State Police, the Division of Fire Safety, the Department of Liquor and Lottery, and in the days to come, potentially supplemented by local and county officials to conduct plain clothes, randomized compliance and education assessments. These compliance assessments will be directed at locations where out-of-state visitors requiring compliance with statewide quarantine requirements temporarily reside, lodging facilities essentially, and places where people congregate focusing on indoor settings. These visits will occur with the primary goal of assessing the level of compliance statewide. Additionally, as a side note, starting next week, law enforcement, beginning with state law enforcement agencies, will begin distributing COVID-19 safety cards during all traffic stops statewide as an additional educational effort. The checks that will occur statewide during a concentrated initial period, beginning on or about November 12th, will ascertain again that baseline of compliance with essential health and safety guidance at certain types of businesses. All contacts will be logged and those documents will assess the rate of compliance in any areas where additional education strategies or action may be appropriate. While these preliminary visits are designed again to be assessments, essentially compliance checks, if substantial non-compliance is found, multiple violations, staff or ownership that are actively resistant to educational efforts or safety guidance, referrals may be made to the Attorney General's office, as has been the case for the last eight months. It is our sincere hope that these assessments will illuminate widespread health and safety compliance and a continuation of our educational posture as we all work to enhance safety as we move further into this challenging wave of increased infection. Thank you. Good morning. I'd like to start by expressing our deepest condolences to the loved ones of a Vermonter whose recent death was associated with COVID-19. In Vermont, we've been spared from having to report such news for the past three months, even longer than that. Even as cases and deaths have surged elsewhere in the country, Vermont has not reported a COVID-19 death since July 28th. But this virus's potential to cause illness and death has not gone away. It can still devastate families and communities. It can prey upon people who are older and who struggle with chronic illness or other underlying conditions. So we marked this summer occasion, the state's 59th death to COVID, remembering that each death is not just a number, but a person whose life was tragically cut short by the disease. I ask everyone in Vermont to join me in honoring this latest loss by recommitting to doing everything in our power to prevent this virus from spreading. I cannot say this enough. To stop the spread and to protect each other, we need to act, and as you've seen from the data, we need to act now. We are truly on a threshold here, and the decisions we make today will truly determine our future. And I don't mean our long-term future, I mean our immediate future. Again, remember the data you were just shown this morning. That's why we announced an advisory on Friday that social gathering sizes should be 10 people or fewer with a very limited number of trusted households. And I want to emphasize the or fewer because that does not mean you should have 10 people in your house. Again, because you can does not mean you should. The safest approach is to stick to your own household, especially when it comes to indoor gatherings and when people are eating, obviously without masks on, like at a Thanksgiving dinner. And in this regard, we do need to learn from our neighbors to the north regarding the Canadian Thanksgiving data, which I find quite compelling. We must also learn from a collection of Halloween events that our contact tracers have been investigating and providing affected individuals guidance on. And keep in mind, these are with adults. It's also why we're announcing today a suspension of the cross-state travel map. The fact is our entire region is in danger from the surge in COVID cases happening right now. And it's very clear that things will not improve anytime soon. Looking at the map of red today is very instructive. We see an island where there are patches of yellow and green, which is of course Vermont, except unlike other islands that have been successful in confronting the coronavirus, which include the Canadian maritime provinces, Singapore, Taiwan, New Zealand, and the island continent of Australia. We are, on the other hand, surrounded by a sea of red. That's very challenging circumstances indeed. That's why I want to keep every Vermonner's focus on my two main points. Severely limiting travel and being extremely careful and cautious regarding small gatherings beyond immediate family. Travel increases your chances of getting and spreading the virus, so we need to avoid traveling as much as we practically can. Anyone who travels now must remember one thing they need to follow for months, quarantine rules. No matter what county they're coming from or are traveling to. Travel now equals quarantine. Just to reiterate what quarantine means, that means staying home and away from other people for 14 days, with of course the option to end quarantine after seven days with a negative PCR test as long as you don't have any symptoms. I know it is very hard to hear about staying local and limiting our gatherings, especially with the holidays coming up. But you've seen the rising case numbers. A high of 43 reported Sunday, the largest one day increase since the spring, until we reviewed last night's laboratory report with 46. As always, any decisions we talk about up here and any guidance we provide will always be data driven. You've heard the data and you've seen the projections. The health department has been responding to and monitoring 20 outbreaks and 63 situations, including in schools, childcare programs, colleges, healthcare facilities, work sites, and social gatherings. And our largest outbreak that originated with the recreational ice sports now stands at 125 cases, including 76 of those at St. Mike's. So COVID is clearly among us and it is spreading. I've said that many times that our workplaces, healthcare facilities, schools, and more, they're all a reflection of our communities. So the more we see COVID in our communities, the more likely we are to see an outbreak tomorrow. Everyone in Vermont has worked so hard and collectively been so proud of our recent tract record with returning our kids to school, opening the business and healthcare sectors, keeping our seniors in skilled nursing facilities safe. If we want to continue to keep our schools open and our economy open and our facilities free of COVID, now is the time to truly commit to doing our part. Even now, even now, a few weeks before Thanksgiving, we need to take every precaution and stay away from the kinds of gatherings where we might let our guard down. Whether it's a birthday, a barbecue, or a trip to deer camp, we need to keep social circles small and look for these things. Six foot spaces, masked on faces, uncrowded places. And if you do or did recently socialize with people outside of your usual social circle or attended a crowded event, please avoid close contact with others and consider getting tested. You can get tested now, as well as seven days after the event or gathering. To find a test site, go to healthvermont.gov slash COVID-19 testing. Call your healthcare provider if you develop any symptoms at any point. I'd like to transition now to a few items regarding testing. Testing in Vermont has been robust. According to the New York Times, we rank number one and are at over 2,000 percent of our testing target. Yet we recognize that it is still not readily available to everyone, precisely when they need it or want it. To remedy that, we are entering into a contract and speedily working toward a plan with CIC Health of Cambridge, Massachusetts to offer testing every day of the week at locations all around the state. The test will be a PCR self-administered nasal swab. This is part of our ongoing offense against the virus. This is part of our fight. Additionally, we are markedly increasing surveillance testing to better understand the level of virus that is in our communities so that that will allow us to quickly contain it and prevent the kinds of clusters and outbreaks we are seeing. Remember, surveillance testing is done in a population to assess how much virus is present and people who are otherwise feeling quite well and don't know that they may harbor it. I'd like to focus on teachers and staff in our schools first. They, like everyone, are a reflection of our local communities. And because of that, we're working with our Agency of Education to stand up testing for K-12 teachers and staff as soon as next week and then starting the week after Thanksgiving to offer testing to all teachers and staff in one quarter of the schools each week so that each month teachers and staff in all schools will have been tested. Our contractor will provide the training, technical assistance, supplies, and laboratory analysis. School districts will communicate with staff, will create teams to administer the testing, and the state will provide the funding, manage the contract, and provide electronic reporting of test results directly to the individual. Our Health Department epidemiologists and public health nurses will, as always, contact any person who tests positive to provide public health guidance and to conduct contact tracing. The Health Department's website will list schools where there was a person who tested positive in school during their infectious period. This testing program, again, will help us find cases as early as possible, especially among those adults who have no symptoms and don't realize they're infectious. And they will, of course, help us keep our schools open and students having the benefit of in school versus remote learning. Just to be clear, testing of school personnel is a public health surveillance strategy. Teachers are very special, but they don't have very special standing or are at higher risk, and that's why they've been selected for testing. They represent a large group of individuals in an organized setting. Again, they are special. School personnel who are awaiting for asymptomatic surveillance testing results do not have to quarantine. They should continue to work. And testing of school personnel does not replace the need for any of the prevention measures that we've been talking about, including avoiding travel and avoiding large gatherings. Finally, I do again want to thank Vermonters, who've been following all of the guidance, clearly making tremendous sacrifices. This has been a life-changing experience for all of us, and deciding well in advance that this is the year that they might stay home for the holidays and reduce the size of the crowd around their table. I know we will find other ways to connect to make the time together with our own households special, because how we choose to celebrate affects our family, our community, and Vermont. This is Vermont. We've weathered our lot through this pandemic so far, and I know we can continue to keep it on. Finally, I will be happy to answer any questions during the Q&A regarding vaccine and therapeutics updates that we've spent enough time this morning at the podium, so I want to turn it back to the Governor now for the Q&A. Thank you, Dr. Levine. With that, we'll open up for questions. All right. It's 11.40, and we have 22 people in the queue. We'll start with Calvin. Thank you, Governor. So probably a question for Commissioner Schirling. I can only think of the handful of cases from back in the spring where the Attorney General got involved. I'm wondering what the threshold, you mentioned, you know, there has to be sort of a repeated violation. We have to have repeated violations. I guess, what is that threshold? How many violations do you need to have? And also, what could people be looking at in terms of fines for punishment? Thanks for the question, Calvin. Working from back to front, we haven't yet contemplated exactly what enforcement would look like in terms of a fine structure or something like that. You're right to observe that only a few issues made their way to the Attorney General's office. Again, that's because Vermonters have been largely compliant with guidance and followed the health and safety rules. This is, again, it's an assessment check. What I was trying to convey in terms of what could yield follow-up during this first round is if we showed up and there were, we're not really talking about repetitive violations because we're not going back to check on folks that have been on the radar before, but if we showed up and let's say XYZ Restaurant was doing none of the things that they're supposed to do, that might trigger immediately a higher level of scrutiny. And likewise, if the educational effort fell short because there was active resistance, which again, we've only seen on a couple of very unique occasions through the last eight months, that might trigger an enhanced response right out of the gate. But right now, we're just trying to assess what the level of compliance and also equally, you know, is the message getting to the key places? Are there additional educational messages that we need to get out? And maybe this is more of a question for the Governor, but bars and restaurants and those sort of establishments, they're in the public eye, so they kind of face scrutiny from the public more often. At what point would the state need to start, I don't want to say cracking down, but taking enforcement action or, I guess, educational action against private gatherings and parties, especially as that's the mode of transmission that we're talking about here. Yeah, again, very difficult to do. So that's why we're trying to make our case for why this is so important. We're seeing an uptick in the number of gatherings throughout Vermont, people getting more and more lax. We saw an uptick even over the Halloween weekend, where I believe that there are a number of cases that are tied to those events. So again, when we're heading into something maybe even more substantial like Thanksgiving and then Christmas following, it's more important than ever that people understand how quickly this disease transmits and how quickly it can spread amongst your family members and friends and so forth. So that's what we're trying to do at this point. Again, we're not contemplating enforcement with private gatherings, more in the public eye and commercial establishments work there first. And then again, trying to make our case. And then I guess one last clarifying question. Commissioner, you mentioned COVID-19 safety cars, I think, or something having to do with cars at the border. Maybe I just heard you, was there a man is hearing you on that? Yes, I probably was mumbling a little cards. So on all traffic stops with state law enforcement and then potentially moving out to local and county as well in the future. We're going to take that opportunity to remind folks not only of the traffic safety issues, but of COVID issues as well. Those are in the works right now, hope to have them deployed next week. So Governor, the last time you're seeing these kinds of individual jumps in cases on a given day, when you're still in the middle of the stay home, stay safe order, is that something that might be on the table in the coming weeks or maybe a modified version of something that we saw in March in April? Yeah, I mean, we're not taking anything off the table, but obviously we're trying to be strategic, surgical and trying to tighten the guidelines and making sure that we're doing everything we can within the existing restrictions to make sure people are being safe, being smart, using common sense in terms of their everyday lives. So that's the first step. We'll continue to monitor the situation on an even more so. It's not just a day to day basis. It's almost like an an hourly basis. What we're seeing in terms of the data that comes back in and we'll be relying on the health and safety experts to guide us. Again, we meet literally every single day and we talk about these things and we try to anticipate what's going to happen next and what we can do to alleviate the spread of this virus. So it's an ongoing effort, nothing's off the table, but certainly we want to live within the restrictions we have in place right now. We've learned a lot about this virus over the last eight or nine months and I still don't believe we'll be going back to that what we saw in the spring, in March, because we've learned a lot about what we can do to prevent that. But again, nothing's off the table, but it won't be in the near term. And I know that right now we're turning off the travel map, making that quarantine requirement for any kind of out of state travel, but we are seeing a lot of transmission here within the state with people moving around the ice sports outbreak. You'll be a prime example of that. Is there anything that can be done to either guide people to not travel within the state or suggest they don't visit certain areas if possible? Well again, what we're trying to do is make people more aware of what they're doing. I mean having a gathering with 30 or 40 people, a private gathering in a house or something of that nature, that's not acceptable. That's not what we're trying to educate people on. It's really about wearing a mask. Those simple things we talk about all the time. You know, limit the gathering sizes. Wear a mask when you're around others. Keep six feet apart. Wash your hands. If you don't feel well, don't go to any of these events and really pay attention. Be aware of your surroundings and we'll get through this, but it's going to take all of us to make sure that we're adhering to those simple guidelines that we've set out and we talked about since the beginning. But I think again, we're a victim of our own success. When we look at us compared to other states, I watch Wyoming. I talk about this in the press conferences. Yesterday for the second day in a row, they had over 700 cases in Wyoming, smaller population than we have. 700 cases in one day. They did this over two days. So they have more cases in one day than we have in a week by far. So we don't want to be in that position. And that's why we're continuing to tighten the restrictions just a little bit at a time to make sure that we're really looking at the total picture and what we can do to prevent the spread. Governor, what would be the effect of these restrictions now on the hospitality and the ski industry right at a critical time where we're getting into the season? Yeah. Again, it may be critical in some respects and obviously the hospitality sector has been devastated by the virus and the economic ramifications of such. That's why we're working so hard to try and make sure that we have any funds that are left over. We presented a plan to the legislature, the Joint Fiscal Committee, for $75 million worth of economic relief for the economic or the hospitality sector in particular, because we know this is going to be a long road ahead and very challenging for them. So if we can take some of these steps to make sure that we're protecting them so they can survive over the next few months, that will until the vaccine arrives and we've heard some good news about a vaccine. But once we can safely distribute a vaccine widely dispersed, then we can get back to some sort of normal. But in the meantime, we need to take these steps in order to get to the end. And I know that it's going to be difficult for the hospitality sector. But if we think about, you know, we're right here in the, you know, the slow point in terms of the hospitality industry in particular, stick season, so to speak, in Vermont. If we can take these steps now, maybe we can get to a point when in January, when things start to get a little bit more attractive for skiers and so forth, we'll be in a different position. But that's why we have to take some of the steps now. Dr. Levine, did everybody sort of breathe the sigh of relief earlier in the week here when the announcement about the vaccine, the newest vaccine to come on and its efficacy or possible efficacy. What would you tell Vermont? Have you read anything about it? And what still needs to be done before we get to that point of distribution? And, and, you know, it's good to take that deep breath. But yes, and I know we presented a lot of pessimistic data today and hard things to digest that we don't really want to see. We want to deny them. They don't exist. My messages haven't been as upbeat as I'd like them to be. So I do want to be upbeat about a vaccine, perhaps more upbeat than I've been all along. When a company reports 90 percent effectiveness rate, that's sort of like way beyond anybody's wildest expectations. Now, none of us, us meaning the scientific community, have had a chance to really see this data and understand it better. But the reality is, even if it was 75 percent, you know, that's remarkable. So we should take some have a little dose of optimism about the vaccine. But I want to make it very clear to everybody and reiterate my dual pathway approach that have to be done together. Pathway A is what we're doing now. All of the guidance about distancing, masking, washing, et cetera, and especially about travel and gatherings. Pathway B is very gradual uptake of vaccines state by state by state across this country, beginning with very high priority groups and finally culminating in the general population. Because the timelines are very different. Pathway A is we've got to just keep doing it on and on and on into 2021. Pathway B is the estimations are that by the spring, most optimistically, and then into the summer, the vast majority of the population may have some access to a vaccine that's safe and effective. So that's what I'd like to leave you with. Wilson, the AP. Excuse me. Hi everybody. I'm curious when there's been so much talk of the resurgence that you're presenting. Has there been any thought of setting back up some of those emergency hospitals and those types of things that were used in the spring that never ended up being used that much? But who does come back? And if so, when and where? We still have one set up in Essex at the fairgrounds, Wilson. So that's still there, and we can quickly adapt if necessary. But I might let Secretary Smith answer that. Wilson, we in concert with Commissioner Schirling, when we took down the facilities that we had, obviously, as the governor said, we haven't taken down completely the facility at the fairgrounds in at Champlain Valley Fairgrounds in Essex. But when we took them down, we took them down in such a manner that we could mobilize them and build them right back up as quickly as we took them down. So we have the ability to scale up quite fast and quite significantly. The issue will be staffing as we get into this and start looking at it. One of the things that we haven't done, we excuse me, one of the things that we have not forgotten to do is continually watch these numbers and be prepared for a surge. As you know, we always have been looking at a surge as we move ahead. But we're going to continue to watch these numbers and react as we can. We have the capacity to build up to these numbers. We'll get the staffing to man these areas particularly. And I want to point out the National Guard has been a wonderful partner in all of this. And by the way, throughout this, whether it's testing, whether it's food distribution, whether it's manning these surge facilities, they've been a wonderful partner and they deserve a lot of credit. So we're ready. If need be, we still, Commissioner Peachek does provide us projections on flu and COVID-19 hospitalization data. And so far, we look okay, but we're, we have the ability to surge up if we have to. Okay, great. Thank you very much. I could just, I could just add one more thing. In regards to the National Guard, they did, they did help us out with a cyber unit at UVM Medical Center and are still active in that regard. So we'll add that to the list of accolades for the Vermont National Guard. Okay, thank you. Chris Roy, Newport Daily Express. Yes, good morning. The 59 people who died from COVID, how many of them had underlying conditions? I'll let Dr. Levine try and answer that. We've actually characterized that population very well because as you know, until July 28th, the majority of the deaths had occurred in that window. Only one has occurred since then. I would direct you for the precise numbers to our website, where I believe on one of the weekly updates, we've looked at the hospitalized and the death populations, but the reality is that a majority, a vast majority of the deaths in Vermont have involved people who had many, many chronic comorbid conditions and were also predominantly but not exclusively in the higher age range, you know, above age 60 for sure. And a number of them were associated with an outbreak, of course, in several of the Burlington area nursing homes. So we've got all of that there, but that's the snapshot for you. Okay, thank you. Joe, the Barton Chronicle. Joe, one more thing. I just want to talk a little bit about our demographics, because that does come into play. Or one of, or the second, I believe, oldest states in the country. We had a demographic issue before pre-pandemic. And so when you look at some of the numbers and I looked at some of the cases from last night, and about half of those positive cases were over 60 years old. So again, we can't, we can't, we have to observe that we have an aging demographic here in Vermont, and this is going to continue to be the case throughout the pandemic. We'll go to Joe at the Barton Chronicle. Hello. I'm not sure who would get this question, but it actually, I was a personal experience I had. I was speaking with my sister the other day about Thanksgiving, and she said that she had looked at various sites and seen that the area of the country she lives in has the same high rate of active cases as Orleans County and she asked why in that case I needed to quarantine if I went there or why I might be reluctant to go there. I know what I told her, but maybe you have a better answer than what I had. So remember that Orleans County was not always at a high rate. That's a very current recent phenomenon. And we do believe some of the activity both in Orleans and in Essex County does relate to cross-stay travel, but I'm sure there are other explanations as well. The reality is I think we can, I optimistically feel that listening to the kinds of things we've been talking about this morning provides us with a very unique opportunity to look at that data, look at the rate in Orleans County, and reverse that. It's, you know, the virus preys on people congregating together, people who don't know they're infectious predominantly congregating together, and spreading through small groups. It shows that being in rural America doesn't matter because it's about as rural in Vermont as one can get, and Wyoming we would also regard as a very rural place, yet they're having astounding numbers of cases per day. So I would look at this as an opportunity because I do believe if we focus on the small groups and we focus less on the travel but more on the need to quarantine anytime travel has occurred, knowing that Orleans just until recently had a very low rate and all of a sudden the rate has increased. So making sure that quarantine is adhered to by anybody, whether they're from out of state or whether they're of Ramona who has chosen to leave and come back to the state, that will really get us on top of the situation, especially when we pair it with our offense strategy of making sure that testing is available to people when they want it, when they feel they need it, when it's appropriate based on exposures, and when we have our surveillance testing which is already happening but more now expanded to the education sector, I believe we have a very good opportunity to really make sure that that sea of red that's encroaching on us doesn't totally engulf us completely. What did you tell her? I'm sure I think I'll leave that out of it. No problem. But I do have another question and this goes to your offer to talk about scientific matters. I understand that a couple of the things that controversial in past months have had some results from studies, namely the question of possible oxygen deprivation from masking for older people and also the utility of hydroxychloroquine and I was wondering if you had anything to say about that. Sure. With regard to the masking of older people, are you implying that the research has said that that's fine now where it might not have said before or the opposite? You're the one who probably would be better able to interpret the research. No good because my interpretation is actually it doesn't really matter what your age is and there have been only unfortunately very limited physiologic studies that look at people's carbon dioxide and oxygen as a result of masking and though you can cherry pick the literature and find a study that would support masking being counterproductive in that regard, the majority of the literature shows that whatever your age you should be able to wear a mask and it shouldn't injure you in any way regarding your ability to have your oxygen level where it needs to be. Hydroxychloroquine has been fast and furiously studied and the consensus is whether you're using it for therapy, meaning you've already come down with COVID, whether you're using it for therapy in conjunction with another antibiotic, azithromycin, or whether you're using it for prevention as the president once did many months ago. None of those pathways has really proven themselves to work and it's not a major part of our armamentarium and addressing ill people with COVID or people who don't want to get ill with COVID. Andrew, G-NAT TV. The question that came in from one of our viewers and I'm not sure how your announcement today may impact this but the question was the family's first coronavirus response act requires that certain employers provide up to 10 days of emergency paid leave to employees who are subject to state quarantine order related to COVID-19. This benefit expires as of December 31st and if current guidelines around travel remain in place, employees will be forced to take unpaid leave from work when required to quarantine. Has the state given any consideration to the impact of travel guidelines on workers as they relate to the exploration of federal emergency paid leave? We have concerns about the deadline in general, Andrew. December 31st is really driving a lot of the decision making in trying to anticipate that because the funds that are left over need to be spent by December 31st. So I'm not seeing any hope that the lame duck session of Congress is going to act but they could surprise us as well but we're going to need relief very, very soon in a number of different areas. So that's just one of many issues that we're going to have to contemplate if they don't take action but it's probably maybe a better question for our congressional delegation. Okay, thank you very much. Erin, V.T. Digger. With the new testing process completed, are we going to see a rise in the expected number of test conducts per day or is it more about who we're testing? It's really the major issue is not necessarily to increase the number per day but to increase the access to testing and to increase the access at the time it matters to the person who wants to test. That may well and eventually in an increase in the number of tests but as I said looking at the New York Times data we don't have a numbers issue and even when the university and colleges leave town for their Thanksgiving break which will go on for several months we're still going to be well above our target level of testing in the state. But I think when you're trying to, I'm going to adopt Secretary Smith's term, when you're hunting for the virus and you really want to be able to do the containment strategy, that's the last time you'll hear me say that, when you want to do the containment strategy so that you don't have clusters and outbreaks develop you do want to be as aggressive with testing as possible. And if you look at the New York Times data you'll still see that there's not half but somewhere between a third and a half of the country that hasn't reached its target of testing and then you see Commissioner Pichak's slide about where the United States data is going. So I'm confident based on our contract that we've discussed and all of our own testing stockpiles and supplies and strategies we've been using all along that with this additional strategy of on demand and with the surveillance component we will increase our number of tests. That doesn't mean I want to see us increase a number of cases but obviously we will increase our number of tests. Our percent positivity rate so far in spite of the increase in cases we're having is not dramatically rising but we're watching that very very closely. Yeah we have some questions from listeners, readers as to whether that testing you know numbers and the testing goal was still to be met if you took out college and university testing because that obviously formed a big component of you know testing in recent months. So it's kind of a question as to if testing will have been lining for people who are just getting you know the top of tests or symptomatic tests or if that increased just because of college and university testing. That's a very valid concern for sure. We'll still be having a lot of testing even without the College Student Star I can assure you. I also want to reemphasize testing is detection but it is not prevention. So just because testing is available will help us find more virus and take care of it quickly. However prevention is really the key to our success and again I'm very confident in Vermonter's ability based on how we got to where we are today with those many many many months of virus suppression that we've all enjoyed but now surrounded by our sea of red I'm confident Vermonters can again redouble their efforts and work on keeping the virus at lower levels. The surveillance testing specifically for K-12 is that for the holiday time period or is that kind of an indefinite plan going into the future? Yeah that that will begin for many prior to the holiday for all right after the holiday and it will continue. It's not meant to be a let's just see what the impact of Thanksgiving is. This is this is a strategy that will persevere until we're all vaccinated and doing well and enjoying our lives like they used to be. Thank you Mike. Mike Donahue the Islander. Thanks Rebecca. Governor just a follow-up. Is the UVM Medical Center at the Vermont National Guard so the computer health or was the National Guard themselves that has to be activated try to help them and what is the threshold to activate the guard for private entity in Vermont with the problem? They have national life or sanitary or construction company or hardware store on Main Street had a problem. How do they get activated for that? Well a couple things. First it started out the National Guard brought to our attention that they had this unit that was available and ready willing and able to help if necessary. We then were in talks obviously with the UVM Medical Center and they came to the conclusion that they could use the National Guard's help if it was if the offer is still stood and that's when I signed the executive order. I think when it rises you know it's discretionary on the on my end and from the governor's office to activate the guard so if in this situation when it's a risk of public health I think it rises to that level and we would take every case the same way you know if it rises to a level that really impacts the vast majority of public health within the state then we would activate so again case by case basis. Okay good. I might ask Commissioner Shirling to go further on that possibly. Thanks Mike. The governor's exactly right. Case by case basis important to note that the guard has been used in other states on a handful of occasions since these cyber capabilities were developed and one of the coordinating efforts that happened in the background was emergency management director Borneman reached out through channels and emergency management to ascertain under what circumstances and what track record there was for guard involvement in this kind of a sweeping issue that impacted public health and safety. Okay so basically public health and safety is the threshold to somebody on main street that has a company yet an actual life for beneficiaries that wouldn't necessarily be an issue versus a hospital. Well you know certainly we have to prioritize but if it if it was you know connected to economic catastrophe here of some sort and and dissemination of personal data and so forth I mean obviously we would we would contemplate that as well it's just the the level of the extreme nature of it to to impact the public. And for Commissioner Carington or Secretary Curley we've received a few inquiries about UVM medical center employees from a couple of towns. Apparently the employees at some sites have been ordered to stay home and not report to work while they sort of through the computer system problems and everything uh and they get told they have to they're forced to take vacation time against their will and some colleagues may not even have vacation time so they go without pay. Is there any state program or anything the state can do to make these employees hold and not be forced to take time off without pay? I believe they they were I believe they were furloughed Mike but maybe Commissioner Carington or Secretary Curley one of the two might be able to answer that. So I I don't want to speak out of turn and not without talking in more detail. I saw the the article that came out about it if they were furloughed or temporarily laid off without pay then they could potentially be eligible for benefits. There are some safety nets in there in terms of time off but again if they're if they're using paid time off whether it be vacation or other I can't speak to what agreement they have in place but those those would make it so they were not eligible to receive a UI benefit at the same time. These sound like these have been cases where in in recent days suddenly people don't come in today or don't come in tomorrow whatever not like they've been furloughed it's just we don't think we're going to have enough work or whatever and take tomorrow off without any sort of pre-warning or understanding. Yeah I I couldn't speak to that without having a more detailed conversation so I'm having to follow up and get back to you Mike. Okay I'll be in touch thank you very much. Peter, BPR. Commissioner Levine will teachers and other school staff be required? Thank you for getting the flavor this question. In case you're unable to get back on the answer is it is not a requirement. They can keep their job and not get tested. However I think it would be in their best interest and the best interest of their community. Peter I think we lost you I hope that answers your question and if you if you you can follow up if not we'll move on to Ed at Newport Daily Express. We're going to be back up while I hear our school staff shortages in different school districts across the state. Can you speak to that and tell me if that's actually because it's accurate and what is being done about it? Secretary French are you on the line? Thank you yes yeah the issue of staffing shortages is a very real one you know it's going to exist as prior to the emergency but certainly emergency as process concerns to the forefront. Our major approach that is you know we dissipated that and our planning districts you know have the ability to toggle if you will between remote and person adjustments based on staff availability. Is there going to be a point that you don't have to take this into role is there going to be a point where we're not going to have enough staff to take care of our students? That could be a very real concern you know once again I think you know those kinds of issues were present prior to COVID and in our my travels around the state prior to COVID I know many districts were struggling filling different positions and you know once again it's an effect of our larger demographic challenges but I think you know right for now district has some flexibility in terms of navigating that issue but it remains to be seen to what extent that'll actually cause districts to have to shut down. I raise this in part because up in derby elementary school there's COVID cases and there's quite a ripple effect where that is the teachers of school all that that can't come into work but a teacher who lives in derby with students in the school there but they teach in a different school district has to stay at home to take care of their kids so it's not always just what impacts you at that particular school but the rest of what impacts it has across the economy. No absolutely I mean our communities are all interconnected and strictly up in north country you know where there's was a lot of staff commuting in from different locations but does underscore the importance of giving the district some flexibility because the conditions are different from district to district. Thank you very much. All right and Peter Herschel is back on the line and he did have a follow-up question. So go ahead Peter. Apologies. I'm wondering if somebody is able to quantify what you believe the impact on interstate travel will be as a result of temporarily retiring these travel allowances? Well we certainly hope it's reduced. We'll be collecting that data in comparing it to what we've seen in the past few weeks as well as what we saw last year in trying to determine what effect that will have. We'll be ramping up the messaging along our highways as well as trying to again make sure we accurately collect the data so we see whether we're having an impact or not. And Commissioner Shirley will your compliance checks be exclusive to businesses or would you also be trying to get a B on whether or not individuals are complying with quarantine rules and effect here? Thanks for the question. The primary emphasis right now is areas where people are coming if they're traveling so lodging facilities and places that are facilitating congregate environments like restaurants and bars. No plans at this point to expand that but we'll again it's this is a point in time to gather some information based on what's happening out there right now and we'll assess from there. All right but you're talking to the restaurant and bar and lodging owners themselves not the individuals who are frequenting those establishments. That is correct. Thank you. All right now we'll go to Andrew at the Caledonian record. Yep thank you. Good afternoon Governor seems to change a posture on the travel map is not really a change of policy from a practical spend but one more messaging. How confident are you that this the social gathering recommendations and the renewed appeals for Vermonters to mask and distance will really move the needle on guys. Yeah well you you point out the fact that this isn't really a change in in guidance it just re-emphasizes what we think is important at this point in time and we're hopeful obviously we've seen a great benefit here experienced a great benefit in Vermont from compliance from people doing the right thing when they hear the message so we're leaving it up to again all the media all of you to try and do all you can to get this message out because this really will make a difference if we can we can all come together right now we can avoid you know some of the the more long-term effects of the spread of this virus in the coming months until we get a vaccine in place you know I know that's going to be a ways off but that's the goal we need to mitigate this as long as we can to try and suppress this so that we can we can get to the other side and keep our businesses whole as well and that's going to be really important because the restrictions the travel restrictions that we're putting into place will have a ripple effect will affect our hospitality sector in particular and if we if we can convince the joint fiscal committee to allow us to move forward with our plans to use 75 million to help those businesses survive in the coming months again we'll get to the other side of this and be much stronger as a result and be able to come out of this stronger than any other state from my perspective and is the forecast that commissioner p check showed us earlier with the state approaching 60 cases a day by mid-December is that an acceptable outcome and within within the guardrails or if we stay on that trend do you see further restrictions and measures being necessary before we actually get to that point yeah none of it's acceptable we'd like to be back to where we were in the summer but from a practical standpoint we have to deal with what we're we're seeing on the ground and what we're seeing is a higher case count as we move in indoors we anticipated this though I mean as you might recall back a month or two ago we talked about the possibility that as we got into the colder months people moved inside that this would happen the case counts would would increase so this isn't totally unexpected but I think the severity from my standpoint the severity of what we're seeing around the country particularly coming into the northeast and I watched the New York numbers the massachusetts numbers in Maine and New Hampshire in particular this this does give me pause I am concerned because their rate of increase is vast vastly compounded from ours and and I'm I'm concerned about that and and again what I see in the midwest the Dakotas and Wyoming and so forth again this is this is concerning it should be a concern to us throughout the country and if there's time for Commissioner Levine can you describe the rolling testing method for the teachers are you looking at doing a snapshot of teachers in each section of the state or are you going to go quadrant by quadrant the goal is that we test all teachers and staff in one corner of the schools each week so that every month teachers and staff in all schools will have been tested so that is a rolling kind of arrangement but it's meant to cover the universe of schools effectively so that no school will have gone more than a month without testing that's the bottom line I guess my question is are you going to tackle the state by dividing it into region you know quarterly regions and then so you know for instance schools in the northeast kingdom will be tested in week one and then they will be no school will be tested for a full month in a particular region or even have a handful of schools from each section of the state each week yeah that's a level of detail that we're working on as we speak but I kind of agree with the strategy of not restricting it to a region at a time because true surveillance testing gives you a snapshot on a very statewide basis and if we were just to restrict it to a region at a time that might not be as early a indicator as we would want that things were ahead in a particular place so I think we can advise the strategy that will go statewide and selectively impact schools across the state all right and just a quick time check it is 12 30 and we're only about halfway through the queue cat wcax hi i'm couple questions about testing with the new partnership will those tests that are offered to the Massachusetts company partnership be covered by either insurance or a health department and also what might those testing sites look like in terms of locations you know their specific spots you're looking at around the state and when might that partnership be up and running cat I'll try to answer all your questions and if I forget one please please repeat it um here's how we plan to do it that partnership will uh provides us with supplies it provides us with logistical support what will happen is basically you will register for a test at a location that's near you that location could be a a a medical facility it could be a FQHC it could be your local fire department administered by EMT we're working on those locations right now so it would be open seven days a week those are the the sort of things that we're doing right now the partnership with the with the CIC is making sure we have the supplies making sure that we have the equipment making sure we um have the scheduling sort of process that's down to help us and assist us with that sort of thing the tests will be going to Broad Institute come back relatively quickly and what else did you need to know on this one so there is no cost to people for these tests no and then do you have an idea of when this might be up and running uh I would say within the we will roll it out but I said we're starting to roll it we'll start to roll it out within the next uh week or two well and if your question there's also related testing I noticed the last health department weekly data summary showed that there were 22 000 plus tests conducted over that particular week on 5500 people which averages out to about four tests per person um can someone walk me through why there would be that many more tests than people different a lot of higher ed surveillance yeah I think you're going to see a lot of higher ed surveillance and Dr. Levine can come in and correct me there's there's there are several reasons for that people are getting tested every week um so they're you know it's one person but they're getting multiple tests correctional facilities are getting tested long-term care facilities are getting tested the same people are getting tested on multiple occasions and so that's what you're seeing as you're as you're rolling as you're looking at those numbers you're welcome Greg the county courier good afternoon governor um as you've said many times that running the state's more than just responding to COVID-19 uh yesterday in St. Albans we experienced a law enforcement response where a 17 year old was arrested um in response to possessing an explosive device um we're seeing this as another example of uh a new law where useful offenders are not named and are unable to be prosecuted as an adult are you in support of this uh law or do you believe that it should be looked at to kind of go back to the system that it used to be where it relied on the judicial system and prosecutors do you determine whether to prosecute as a as a youthful offender or an adult yeah well I understood um the premise for the law change I had my concerns as well I might ask uh commissioner shirling to weigh in I don't know much about the case in particular in St. Albans but I know you're not asking about that but just in general but but again some of these uh these cases uh that are of a high level uh in terms of public safety um I think should be should be out in the open from my standpoint but again um we'll see what the legislature decides to do commissioner shirling anything to add to that thanks for the question I would just observe for clarity for listeners that um what the one of the changes that the laws did was invert the uh the initial place where a case starts so for a 17 year old uh charged under these circumstances historically that would have started an adult court and the petition would have to bring it to juvenile court it inverted uh that process so it starts in the family court and would have to be uh moved um from there so uh there is the possibility that uh youthful offenders with certain types of charges can still be charged as adults it's just a technical component that starts it in a different place now thank you uh and quickly in regards to the cyber attack at ubm I'm under the understanding uh from people who are both working there and have been patients there that nursing staff nursing and uh doctor staffs are using personal cell phones and texting medical information from one to another uh because of the ubm system being down which certainly brings up another security issue um has the state been in any discussion uh at the state level on how workers can communicate but continue to uh mitigate any unwanted security measures sure it's mike shirling again um I'm not familiar with what you're describing I do know from ongoing conversations with uh leadership at the hospital that two main forms of communication workarounds have been established one they have an entire unit that's doing uh secure fax transmissions of records and the other is old-fashioned paper a couple things about the $35 million which is I understand it's uh basically doubling the amount for the existing grant program and the people are people out there are kind of wondering where that's going to come from as I understand it there's some federal money that came in uh for the health care to support health care and therefore it's now freed up but I'm wondering you know where that money is coming from and also how you're deciding to put it towards this program when I'm sure there's a lot of other people interested in that and the other is my second question is do it's lodging and I've heard some complaints from regular like hotels and motels etc that that people are skirting the guidance by going to air bnb and then of course it's easier to go to a 20 or 30 hotel that is to hunt down various air bnb's but anyway those are those my two questions yeah we're first of all we're aware of the bnb air bnb's and we're trying to get a handle on that as well but as you stated it's difficult because it's more singular than in a quantitative fashion so we're we're on that we're trying to come to grips with that the money I wasn't didn't come through directly for the health care facilities but we had determined that that was the need I'll let Secretary Smith describe what we found Tim thank you very much the legislature at our urging had approved setting aside a certain amount of money for the health care stabilization fund and the health care stabilization fund was to help recruit help health care facilities recoup from lost revenue and or added expense as a result of the shutdown and or added expense of COVID-19 the first round we we issued about 87 million dollars of of money out to various facilities I think we there were 350 applications I can't remember how many that we provided in terms of the money but it was 87 million dollars we're now in round two we have 236 applicants we estimated that we would not be using all of that money and therefore even with round two given that we in round one it was 87 million we don't think we're even going to match round one that we were going to have significant amount of money left over so we we you know we went to finance and management and said this money can be reallocated and as you've mentioned it's been reallocated the 75 million dollars to economic recovery which I think everybody most people most reminders agree is needed during these times is there more than 75 million and going somewhere else or that's pretty much what it is the whole package was 100 yeah the whole package was over a hundred million dollars some of it was reallocated to ahs some of it was reallocated at reallocated elsewhere I don't have the specifics on where each item was reallocated I can get that for you but I don't have it right here on at the tip of my tongue all right great thank you thank you Governor this is Secretary um um go ahead I could thank you Governor uh we uh did a reconciliation through October 29 with many of the grants and appropriations that was funded by CRS and especially the closed grant programs or best estimates we um found that we had about 114 and 17 million dollars that we um could reallocate we put together a hundred and fifteen million dollar plan for the legislature how we reached the reallocation number and what our plan consists of is posted um both by the way on the joint fiscal committee but if you want to go there now otherwise I can send you the C2 spreadsheet that show you would increase the price detail where money was moved um to make up the pot of money for reallocation that's that'd be great thank you yeah as well Tim we know the the need is far greater than the 75 million that we're proposing but it's all we have left at this point in time but it's really hundreds of millions of dollars uh that is needed and in particular the hospitality sector dina local 22 hello um my question is what would you say to the people who think they're fine to go home for the holidays because they'll be around their family members they feel like they can trust them and would that mentality what types of consequences could this have for the community yeah I mean basically they're not um I think when you think about all the people you come into contact with on a daily basis and think about getting all those different people together in one setting um that uh that's when we start to see the spread and it spreads so quickly uh and uh so easily that uh you may think that you have some sort of defense from it but but all you can do is mitigate it to the best of your ability but in an inside setting with people you're not don't interact or don't aren't somewhat uh family members that you see on a daily basis and are new um you just don't know the extent of the tentacles so um I would say for those who think that uh that they're immune to this uh they're they're just wrong about that and this could be uh be tremendously hurtful to our door efforts to contain the spread thank you anything wca next governor kind of piggybacking off of that question about gathering that will there be any new guidance about churches we received a question from a viewer just wondering in cases um and the strong uh it's from you all about not gathering with people who are outside of your health service yeah the other the other guidelines are still in place the existing guidelines uh they we have not changed them at this point in time so uh anything that we've been doing thus far uh again I want to emphasize make sure you wear your mask keep six of you apart if you're sick don't go uh and and try and find other ways to do this do it remotely if you can in uh in some of those social gatherings and uh it's just may not be worth the risk so think about what you're doing be aware of the situation and who you're going to come in contact with and you're gonna have to make that determination on your own but uh but again it's it could be risky at this point in time could we be an official reduction of the gathering size in the form of an executive order as it was earlier on yeah everything as I've said everything's on the table and we'll just have to see how successful we are in uh trying to put these measures forward restricting travel or restricting the the size of of gatherings in your home and uh we'll take action as needed as we move forward but uh but right now uh it's the only thing we've done really is to uh to postpone or pause the travel into the state without a quarantine from any counties outside of outside of the state so anytime outside if you're coming into the state you must quarantine um that's the basic message thank you Hadley the valet reporter hi governor um kind of going off this quarantine theme I wanted to ask how does the 14-day quarantine requirement apply to out-of-state hunters or um college students with ski passes can those people still participate in those recreational activities and be considered quarantining if they stay away from other people uh Dr Levine I don't believe so um you know it's in terms of essential workers uh that's uh and I read a list in my opening remarks and can get that to you on who does not have to quarantine if they come into the state but uh but skiing uh it wasn't on the list Dr Levine anything else I mean we love having people come to our state for recreational activities um it is very challenging to be so isolated that you come in contact with no one else uh or no other surfaces even uh in your existence so certainly essential work essential educational needs um those are essential grocery buying those are important things but um you you get on a slippery slope if you begin to not a pun intended uh you get on a slippery slope if you try to continue to make exceptions for various aspects of people's need to cross the border and the kind of recreation they want to do guide page chronicle of the Vermont State House Governor uh 1625 on the red tag list need uh fuel tank replacement or repair before they can receive fuel oil delivery what is the status of providing temporary fuel storage tanks or other relief measures to help people living in these buildings they want yeah we do have a program for that I might ask if uh is Julie on the line Governor this is Beth and Kerry more I'm happy to help answer that question um so we we do uh God has grant programs um to help folks with the cost of replacing their oil storage tanks um we are also no understanding that there is a backup amongst contractors uh required to do that work uh working with individuals to come up with one-off solutions um if they are in the position of being in the queue to have their tank replaced um and just haven't been able to get the contractor on site yet if you know of individuals who are having a particularly challenging time um please encourage census to reach out to the department and we can help them make arrangements um depending on the specifics of their um individual circumstances what kind of arrangements are you saying that there will be some people can actually get their fuel tanks filled as long as you're on the list they generally we are because these tanks are considered to be structurally unstable and it it again depends on the specific conditions um that have resulted in the tanks being red tags but we can make arrangements for either um more limited fuel deliveries um or or alternative structures but certainly we we don't want for monsters to go cold as the weather is turning alternative structures being what temporary fuel tanks are but potentially it really it depends on the site specific circumstances and the condition of the tank um that has has received the red tag okay thank you uh governor uh not all reliable national media have called pennsylvania for president Joe Biden and said he has 270 votes given the national associated press that called pennsylvania for biden was also very critical of the president wouldn't cover the hundred biden laptop story do you wonder if maybe you've jumped about a little bit and you can congratulate him as the president elect no i don't believe so i think uh even the senator from a republican senator from pennsylvania has uh faith in the in the process and believes that the election would go to biden so i don't believe that i jumped the gun on this okay thank you lisa the water very roundabout can you hear me you can i um i think this is a question for uh kusha p check um overall um i wonder if you could kind of walk through the best practice when it comes to both operations and messaging for businesses that deal with the public like stores retail stores restaurants when they encounter a situation where they have a worker who either tests positive or may have been in contact with somebody who tests positive and then they are in a quarantine situation it seems like we're seeing all kinds of variations on this theme where some businesses are really upfront where they will close for several days they have messaging to their customers saying here's what's going on and people seem to appreciate that understanding but then there's others that are super vague that make it not very clear in terms of what's happening where they say oh we're just closed to clean everything's fine um and given the fact that this is going to be going on for a while we're going to be living with this it seems as if um there's two there needs to be more consistency in terms of how businesses handle this and what people should expect to to hear from the businesses that they frequent in terms of their own information and managing their own risk and their movements etc yeah i think we went from commissioner p check and then i thought it was secretary curly but the longer the question it's either secretary smith or commissioner levine and if we need to tag team we'll do that bottom line is that um number one if there's a true case in a business that means they had a positive laboratory test and the health department is aware of that case the health department through interviewing the case interviewing the proprietor of the business in terms of a list of who else works there etc and contact tracing determines if that individual was actually present in the business on a day when they could have been infectious to others and if there are indeed others who are at significant risk so it may seem uh you didn't use the word random but it may seem random to you but the guidance is very specific based on the assessment of risk there are times we have actually not been aware of some positive results until later in the process due to the fact that they may have been different types of tests that didn't come through our system the same way and um the faster we learn about that the better because we actually want to be a resource for the business owner and um if i could extrapolate this to the schools this works extraordinarily well in the schools because there are countless sunday night phone calls with teachers principals superintendents regarding what to do on monday because a lab result came in over the weekend and the guidance can be very clear and specific from a public health standpoint and when there isn't enough information to make that decision we air on the side of let's take a pause from in-person learning and in this case with businesses a pause from being open uh while we collect the information we need to help you make that decision and be cautious at the same time to protect everybody's health so that's my kind of answer to what you've asked secretary curly hi this is secretary curly may i weigh in yes uh hi so it's great i just want to follow up on what dr levine was saying i've worked with many employers um the the volume is increasing unfortunately in the last few weeks but they reach out to ask um exactly that like what do they do when they find out if a customer who has been at their business or an employee um has tested positive for covid and the the best advice um is as dr levine said is if you call the health department immediately um i can actually even give you that number if you're ready it's 802 863 7240 option seven um they've been incredibly responsive even on the weekend and if you call them they will help you problem solve because i think what so many businesses struggle with as dr levine said is whether they should be tapping the brakes whether they should be sending out a notice to all their customers and so the folks that have have utilized the health department in this situation have reached back out to me to say how incredibly helpful it was so that would be um just just enhancing that message to make sure that you are communicating what you have learned with the department of health and getting their guidance thank you that's helpful so it sounds as if the guidance from the health department is that you would advise businesses to try to be as forthcoming with their customers etc as possible to let people understand what's happening i would say that is the case um we want people to be forthright with holding information only delays uh the response and then uh encourages the spread of the virus itself because uh because time is not on your side when you have something uh of that uh of that magnitude exactly thank you thank you very much that that was what i was hoping to hear calling seven days hi thanks um so i am curious can we get an update on the current testing lag time at uvmc due to the driver attack do you have any idea um say someone gets the test today how long it might take for them to hear back secretary smith yeah i'm calling i'm not sure i can give you precise um a precise estimate of what it is it depends on the lab that they send it to is whether they use their own lab whether they send it to another lab uh for those results i will say we i met with uh uvm mc yesterday and asked them about any backlogs in terms of notifications and they have said at the beginning um there was a backlog when it first hit they have worked through those backlogs in terms of notification positives were notified quickly uh the negatives they worked through the backlog and and they told me yesterday they don't have a backlog now in terms of notifications obviously what we were doing before the um cyber attack was diversifying the platforms the things that we're talking about in making sure that if we ever had a shortage of reagents or anything along that line at uvm or elsewhere we had a diversification of labs and platforms we could use in order to do that this has accelerated those discussions and hence you you know you we've talked about the seven day testing capability that we're we're building up so to answer your question as of yesterday they told me on notifications there were no backlogs uh in terms of what they are notifying the people that have been tested um you know testing has gone on uninterrupted um yeah i'll let dr levine talk to that we're aware of those results and i'll let dr levine talk about that and our plans for testing in that area just to very briefly introduce the broader public to the concept of wastewater testing um this is a surveillance strategy it's not one that has been as scientifically validated as the strategies we talked about earlier in the press conference however it does provide an opportunity to do what we would term community-based surveillance um it's being done by the city of burlington in conjunction with investigators at dartmouth and at uvm and in a private research capacity to really get down to understand this um as a tool but in a research capacity if you will and basically it monitors the wastewater that are leaving either buildings or facilities or in this example a catchment area of the entire city of burlington so this has to do with one of the three catchment areas and basically what the results can tell you is is there any SARS-CoV-2 virus in the wastewater and more importantly is there a trend in one direction or another so we've looked at data longitudinally with the city and basically they've had other than minor blips in their trends a pretty stable picture until very recently where there was a quite escalating level not at a time when necessarily the neighborhood was experiencing to what we were aware of a major outbreak and so having seen that got everybody's not only curiosity up but wondering if we should be doing something more aggressively so the city I believe is trying to hone in a little instead of just have it from one wastewater plant have it from what locations in the community are feeding into that wastewater plant to see if they can get more specific about where that is coming from the promise of this I'll call a promise because it's still somewhat theoretical but in some parts of the country it's been used this way the promise is that five days later you may see actual symptomatic people or more positive tests in the community that had a trend towards increased levels of SARS-CoV-2 in the wastewater so we have got testing actually going on in the city of Burlington every day of this week and if the city's other results that they're trying to come in with can be more even targeted we may actually target the testing even more finely within the city but there's access within the city to testing the entire time so I'm hoping actually that this isn't the harbinger of any kind of increase in cases that we'll see but we will learn from this because it's the first time it's happened in this project that's been going on for several months since the summertime thank you very much Tom VT Digger right Tom we're getting reports about it thank you we're getting reports about an outbreak of cases that are rough on nursing home what can you tell us uh secretary Smith thanks Tom we've had an outbreak at a Rutland Rutland health and rehab where there's been seven positive residents and one positive staff they've started to cohort a a positive unit cohorting staff and and residents all PPE has been deployed to that to that skilled nursing facility so that's what I know right now I know that Dale the department was meeting with the facility as we speak to see what the needs and how we could react I know that the rapid response team that we developed way back when in April to these kind of outbreaks has been deployed and we'll know more probably in the next few hours or so of what we're going to do this also you know we do periodic testing on various skilled nursing facilities this may prompt that we increase that testing capability throughout the state given the numbers that we're seeing here so the the the number of times that we test per month may maybe increase given what we're seeing with the rise of the virus in the state can you confirm the name of the nursing care facility yeah I just did uh Rutland health and rehab thank you can I ask one more question uh google and apple have an alliance that allows contact tracing through exposure notifications that is people can opt into a system in which if they get covid notification can be sent to every other phone within proximity to the covid patients phone in the prior 14 days is that something that Vermont is considering I think it's being utilized in Vermont but I'll let Commissioner peachick answer that so Tom we do utilize mobility data that we get through third party you know providers but we haven't used the google apple technology yet we have considered it all the way back from september to now we're looking at how the other states are doing you know I think there are maybe 10 or 12 states that have built their own app and started down this partnership we're also finding that they're not necessarily getting a lot of uptake from their citizens you really need to have a pretty good amount of people on those applications for them to be valuable so we're waiting to see how well or now successful they are before putting the resources and energy into that sir great thanks very much that's it I just want to remind everyone tomorrow is veterans day and it will be unusual not to have some of the celebrations and parades and so forth that we normally see but if you have an opportunity just think of that something as simple as just reaching out and thanking them for all their sacrifices all they've done for us over these many many years and if you really want to honor them really want to help them especially our world war two vets our Korean vets and those who served in Vietnam wear a mask you know protect them like they protected us so that's the theme of the day so thank you very much we'll see you on Friday