 these are difficult and uncertain times it's important for everyone to understand our mission which is to slow down the spread of this virus in order to protect those at risk of getting very sick which includes the elderly and the very ill it's also important to understand that even though most of us will have mild to moderate symptoms if we get it we can all transmit it so we all have a role to play in making sure we don't pass it on to those who are at the highest risk to further the point the best information we currently have from the experts learning from other countries says that slowing it down is the best way to make sure the care is available to those who need it especially the most vulnerable who may need hospitalization this is literally in our hands we need everyone to accept this reality and be part of this effort slowing this down or flattening the curve is the most important thing we can do mitigation along with simple steps like washing your hands a lot staying home when you're when you can and social distancing can help protect loved ones friends and neighbors who are at higher risk on Friday to act on this strategy I declared a state of emergency and we put in place a wide range of measures to slow this pandemic from limiting public gatherings and restricting visitors at long-term care facilities and hospitals to banning state employee work travel encouraging and facilitating telework extending unemployment benefits for those who have to be self-isolated and much much more Sunday I ordered the dismissal of pre-k through 12 schools which began today with it came the challenge of coming up with an education plan so kids can continue to learn Monday I ordered the closure of bars and restaurants statewide though they can still offer takeout and yesterday I directed the closure of licensed child care centers across the state however I've asked centers and schools to provide child care services for those deemed essential personnel this includes health care and public health workers first responders and those involved in our state emergency operations centers and many others knowing we may need to add to this list I realize even as we asked many to step back to help slow the spread of this virus we're asking others including educators and childcare providers to step up and provide a critical service so those who are on the front lines can continue to care for the sick protect the public and manage the this ever-evolving challenge now I know some won't be able to and that's okay but for those who can we appreciate your help because filling the need by teachers childcare providers and school support staff is critical to our response understanding how challenging but important these directives are I've also asked Neil Lunderville and Liz Miller to lead this effort to support the agency of education for this critical work lives Liz who served under Governor Shumlin and Neil who served under Governor Douglas have a wealth of experience in state government and the private sector and have already hit the ground running and they're working on other projects as well I want to again remind Vermonters that more measures are inevitable we're already working on a directive for hospitals to postpone elected procedures more details will come on this and others but I will continue to make decisions based on science data and the guidance of an incredible team of leaders and experts I have working with me this is a moment of service for all of us and those working on the front lines and health care to those who are simply following our social distancing guidance to protect others we're all in this together and we will get through it just like during Irene we're facing new challenges every single day and I know some are feeling scared worried and overwhelmed just like after Irene but we made it through and we'll do it again because we're Vermont strong in times like this Vermonters rise to the occasion we help our neighbors we answer the call of duty and we get creative to solve big problems I'm seeing it every day from health care workers state employees school administrators and business owners from those adjusting hours at grocery stores and adding curbside service to organizing online card drives to send love to their grandparents who can't have visitors right now in so many more initiatives these people with their compassion and commitment to service show me that we will get through this and we'll do it together so I'm now going to turn this over to Education Secretary Dan French to share more details on our latest education guidance thank you governor good morning this is an unprecedented situation that's calling on everyone to make difficult decisions and to take quick actions I wanted to highlight a few aspects of this work firstly child care we issued new guidance to schools last night to support the provision of child care for the children of essential personnel these essential persons include currently educators health care providers and emergency workers first responders service men and women in our National Guard we've been activated for COVID-19 and state employees working on the COVID-19 emergency response schools have been directed to provide care to enrolled students up to at least grade 8 and where necessary to students from other towns or districts and we are currently working with districts this morning to support them in organizing this work our guidance also directs the continued payment of pre-k tuition to private providers as established under Act 166 these funds are already in school budgets and paid for out of the education fund mention our work underfeeding students we've received the necessary waiver from the USDA to offer reimbursed student meals on a distributed basis 39 of our approximately 60 supervisor unions have applications approved and are ready to start serving meals many are doing so today seven other SUs are in the process of having their applications finalized and we are working directly with the remaining SUs to expedite their application process labor issues have emerged as a concern we're asking a lot of our education labor force during the state of emergency we need their expertise and dedication as we navigate these uncharted and unprecedented times we have directed education staff to report to work during this two-week period of school closure to accomplish three main objectives one to maintain the education programs of students two to support our most vulnerable students and three to plan for the continuity of education programs in the event of a prolonged school closure we are not expecting school staff to report to work if they have concerns about their personal personal health specifically the following educators are not required to be in public school buildings educators with compromised immune conditions educators who reside with someone with a compromised immune condition educators suffering from anxiety expectant educators educators with infants and educators over 60 in other words anyone with a serious physical or mental health issue is not being required to be in a public building also I've directed schools to ensure all staff get paid for their regular scheduled hours during this two-week period lastly I just want to mention work we're doing around this issue of continuity of education as I mentioned we are using this two-week closure period to prepare for an extended period school closure if that becomes necessary we are actively engaged in planning work at the agency and at the local level to ensure all students will be able to continue to make academic progress in the event of a longer period of school closure many of our high schools can deliver instruction online even though student access to the internet and computers at home is uneven around the state we will need to be more creative with the provision of educational services at the elementary and primary grades we will work closely with districts to start and plan this work together and I'm very optimistic about our ability to creatively solve that issue now turn it over to dr. Levine thank you first I'd like to give somewhat of a situational update at the moment we have 19 total positive tests in Vermont to put that in perspective that's out of a total testing run of about 600 tests so clearly far more negatives than positives but obviously we're going to focus on these positives very intently we always discuss how many people were still monitoring in the state as a health department and I'm not going to give you a precise number because that changes so rapidly each time you have a positive test result there's abundance of surveillance and phone calls and interactions with people who may or may not have had contact with the actual case and if that case happens to be in a health care setting the numbers can get quite large so just accept the fact that there are hundreds of remuners that are being monitored and interacted with regarding these 19 positive tests I wanted to just spend a few moments and feed off of a bit what the government governor was saying about the overall strategy just so people can sort of see with some clarity why all this is happening so fast and where we're going both as a state and in some respects as a nation so there are some fancy words but everything began with the word containment and containment is kind of just what it says you identify cases to identify cases means you have to be testing so you need to have some capacity to test and you have to have some ability to prioritize those tests having done that you begin to identify cases and you rapidly isolate those cases assuming they're in the community still and not requiring hospitalization and we've had plenty who are still in the community that did not require hospitalization to be clear about that and then we do something called contact tracing so that we make sure that those who may have had some contact with the case know exactly what it is they should do to prevent further transmission of COVID-19 across our communities we are still doing that and that's what I would term a parallel strategy to the now more significant strategy of mitigation trying to slow but not necessarily stop the viral spread because we know we can't stop it at this point but we can slow it down and we've shown you curves before in the past that really focus on our ability to not have a rapid spike and overwhelm our health care system but to have a more gradual flattened curve which frankly may take longer to dissipate but will have a much lower burden on the population at large and on the health care systems ability to cope the prime mitigation strategy goes under the other fancy term social distancing which I hope everyone sees we're trying to practice up here on the podium today maintaining that distance from others that as human beings we don't do every day that's not what we're accustomed to we high-five we shake hands we embrace well we're asking Vermonters to go through a significant amount of behavior change and that's uncomfortable and that's something you have to kind of be actually conscious of every time because your tendency is to do the things you've always done so we understand that that's hard and may require a lot of support and all the strategies that have occurred since we really call this an emergency in a state of emergency are really falling into place in that social distancing category so some of them had to do with protecting our most vulnerable and our elderly regarding visitation pro policies to hospitals to long-term care facilities nursing homes etc some of them had to do with how we tend to gather in groups and you've heard numbers go from 250 down to 50 and to me the numbers irrelevant because people are already understanding that it's probably not a good idea to be in a crowd at a time when you're talking about an infectious disease that can be easily transmitted through the air from one person to another so people are already falling into line with that and it's just the idea that we don't get into congregate settings that are very crowded then they have all of the issues of schools which you've just heard about which I won't perseverate on changes in work policies changes in the way that workers can or cannot travel and then really as part of the gregarious nature of human beings where do we usually do that well we do that sometimes in restaurants and bars and you've heard new policies regarding those and the only thing I want to say about those is again every step of the way in managing this I think very manageable epidemic requires resourcefulness creativity innovation and even restaurants and bars can be innovative as they're all learning now with bring something to your car takeout priority interacting with people in ways that they have to to deliver food but still being able to actually do that even though people can't sit down at a table with one another inside their premises so again I know this requires significant behavior change and hard work and nobody's going to deny how hard it may be really does require sort of a social compact and an idea that we're all here to cooperate with one another and I'm confident that we as a state can rally to that cause the final stage of sort of where we're going and the aspiration of all of us in the United States never mind just Vermont is a state where they sometimes call it suppression so you've slowed the growth of the curve it's been flattened but eventually you want it to come down and that's when you enter that state we have good experience now just by watching the rest of the world because as you know the US was not the first country to be affected so even though China has received a lot of criticism they are now in a phase where things are much more controlled and they're seeing decreasing numbers of cases all the time especially in that hot zone but even in the rest of their country South Korea is another example of that and soon we hope we'll have some European examples of that we need to observe critically and learn from those experiences and I'm confident that we will we will also learn about the timing of these things we can set arbitrary dates of two weeks of this or three weeks of that maybe a month maybe two months but we'll actually get a little more certainty about how we actually figure that out because we'll learn from their experiences and see as they've eased up on some of these more restrictive policies how things have gone and is this something that in the short term can be managed very well or is it something that's we're really in for a long-term kind of approach to until vaccines develop sometime in the next 12 to 12 plus months so again these we know these things have a lot of impact they have impacts socially economically health wise etc but we will learn from other experiences and I think benefit from those and really begin to see where the light is at the end of the tunnel in terms of how the strategies you've heard outlined today can play out in the future I believe I'm the last speaker happy to turn over to questions right now we taking one from the floor first I notice that the date is now delineating between for monsters and non-residents who have gotten positive results and who have COVID-19 and why is that yeah thank you very much the the question was about how we report the numbers of those who have positive tests in Vermont that was a bit of a miscommunication on our part to be quite frank yesterday I wanted to make sure that we were adjusted we would have just one number of both non-resident and resident positive tests and to carry that forward what happened was they eliminated the non-resident and carried the red Vermont number so the point was and we've clarified this and now it's rectified we'll be reporting just one number of those affected in Vermont they have the positive tests in Vermont from now going forward okay so the next question Molly from seven days thank you I was wondering governor and if you could speak to any continued risk at the child care facilities caring for emergency workers and health workers obviously your order of closure was designed to reduce the spread I'll have secretary French offer a few words and then maybe someone else says secretary Smith thank you yes in our guidance that was published last night we talk about the social distancing measures and our continued disinfection measures to ensure that these workplaces are safe but it is a priority to ensure that those those employees and workers that are on the front line of this emergency don't have to worry about their child care needs and we're working hard to accomplish both of those goals Molly this is Mike Smith at AHS as you know we've limited the size of the classroom size for these facilities down to 10 that means no more than 10 people in that room we've also put the various sanitation requirements in place and if we need to make those stricter we will both Dan and myself have the ability to make stricter recommendations as we move forward so right now we we limited the class size we've put in fairly strict sanitation sort of requirements and we feel that will ensure or at least make people feel comfortable about the safety of the decision we've made thank you I wasn't aware of the directive from the president so I don't know the details of that obviously we have a few concerns we have employees who live in Canada that are part of our health care system in the Northeast region and maybe in the Northwest region so that's a concern I would think they would qualify as being essential and we have to do everything we can I know Canada has taken some extreme steps as well in Quebec and across the whole the whole country and and we're going to have do the same so I would assume that in conjunction with with Canada this is the right step to take while understanding that we have a lot of trade and we still rely on a number of employees from there anyone else want to add anything to that I was wondering are you concerned about the ability of be able to carry out this mandate to provide this child care you know especially in more family staff districts that might be a lot of staff say I can't carry out this work no either because I'm anxious for myself or you know compromise or etc etc I know yes I mean it is a concern and we've been actively engaged with districts this morning as they're trying to navigate both the provision of continuity of education and child care service at the same time I think we've seen some really creative responses and really positive support of teacher stepping up to help assist in this moment of emergency so it's going to be challenges but just one in a series of challenges that we're going to have to navigate but as Dr. Levy and the governor said our priority now is to bend that curve as best we can and I think is a moment of service for all of us and I know educators and teachers will step up and help in that regard. Super quick follow up I'm sorry. What about as a child care person has to do this but not you know ordered schools have you know if you have a three-year-old and you're a nurse can you and you're trying to shut down can you bring them to the public school. In our guidance we had to make a delineation between students age zero for five and six through eighth grade so currently public schools are equipped to handle age six up to eighth grade fairly easily both from a safety and an educational standpoint we were less comfortable making a provision for younger younger children under five but we'll certainly reevaluate if the need becomes necessary. Let me let me just this is Mike Smith let me just sort of bring the pre-k up where we are right now as you know we've we have instituted a pre-k program for essential children and those child care centers were starting to contact now last night we contacted 41 programs in just one one and a half hours so far 288 children have been identified as essential people. We I've got to emphasize this there has been enormous collaboration among the private child care providers and we can't thank them enough in terms of what we're doing and how we're moving forward to this we've actually ID many potential additional staff to deploy to other facilities that may be limited to to a facility that needs those employees so we really are seeing the health care excuse me the I'm in so many different realms here but the child care community really stepping up to this and many center many centers have told us that they're willing to work extra shifts so we are grateful to all the kids all the centers we're working with organizations like let's grow kids to bring all this together and I've got to say just in what I'm hearing in the feedback that's coming back it's incredible how Vermoners are trying to help Vermoners get through this time. Do you hear me okay? We can. Okay so yesterday the state of New Hampshire announced that it was expanding unemployment benefits for people that have to stay home with school-aged children. Has Vermon considered and acted, discussed this at all? Yeah I'm going to have our Commissioner of Labor answer that. Sure so I had a chance to review the legislation that came out of New Hampshire and well I haven't been able to do the background on it. One thing that needs to be considered is it looks like there was some legislation passed that allowed those individuals to become eligible and that is something we are working with the Vermont legislature right now to expand benefits to those that have to stay home with a family member who becomes ill or is quarantined or isolated so yes we are considering it and it is moving through the legislative process but it does require a change in state statute. I would also add that the legislature has been very receptive to any of our needs and as you know a very willing partner so we're working through many of those initiatives as well as many others at this point in time. Pete Hirschfeld from DPR. Thank you. Pete, DPR? Thank you Brittany. Seems to be some increasing concern about Vermont's inmate population. Are you testing individuals that are entering the correction system right now as inmates? Can you talk about any other specific mitigation strategies like that you're using to address that concern? Sure we are testing in terms of screen testing inmates that are coming in to the facilities. If you're talking COVID-19 testing the answer is no because they aren't showing symptoms of COVID-19 or they wouldn't be allowed into the facility. So we are screening those. We've also put video visiting apparatus so that visitors are now can't meet personally with inmates but they can meet via video conferencing. We also are looking at how we segregate our population to be in smaller groups when they're in recreation areas. We have contingency plans that have been put in place in case we do have a illness within our facility. So the social distancing things that you see are a little bit different in our correctional facilities but we're putting in place those social distancing where we can and in many cases you'll see the social distancing happen within our correctional facilities. I do want to emphasize that we are being pretty stringent on making sure that those screening processes happening on entrance are really diligent as we move forward. We cannot allow a case to come into the correctional facility. So one last thing, Peter, we are stocking up on supplies a little bit more than we normally would in case we have an outbreak that includes math supplies for those who are under medical treatment for addiction. So we're doing all that right now and there's other contingency plans in place are being worked on. Commissioner Levine. Thank you for asking about testing. So I don't want to give the appearance. I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth but I do want to show reality and optimism at the same time. We have testing capacity now to do all of the testing that we've currently been asked to do in terms of physicians coming to the clinical judgment that their patients should have testing. We are grouping those into higher and lower priority. I think you'll understand that those in the higher priority group might be in a hospital bed or in an ICU bed. They may be a healthcare worker who has to know if they can continue to work in the healthcare system, etc. We have done all of our testing in-state at our public health lab because like most states that's what we have available to us right now. And in that public health lab we have supplies of test kits and reagents and everything that's needed to do the tests but we are limited in how far that supply will take us. We have literally 10 or 12 pathways that we're looking at simultaneously for obtaining more test kits, reagent supplies, machinery to do the testing with, personnel to do the testing. And that's at all levels, local, regional, national, that's public and private. So it's quite expensive. Vermont is no different than any other state in the country with regards to not being able to do what I would call expensive health surveillance. Knowing in the entire population how much disease is present whether there are people who are asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic compared to those who are acutely ill in a hospital setting. But I think as a country you're going to find in the next week or two we are all going to catch up rather rapidly. So we're working very closely with the Health and Human Services apparatus in Washington with the FDA and with the CDC all in actually separate strategies. We are working very closely with the UVM College of Medicine and the UVM Medical Center and we are working very closely with the partnership you've often heard about from the federal level of public-private partnership with companies that are commercial. And we'll have testing capability as we speak. They're just coming online now. So what I envision is that we will have greater local support through our affiliation and partnering with the UVM College of Medicine and Medical Center. And that will help us with this more high priority group which will continue to maintain in state. And we'll have opportunities to do more of the lower priority but necessary not only public health work but reassuring our citizens work about their conditions through these more national lab testing opportunities. But I have to provide a realistic expectation that these national opportunities won't have the turnaround time we've come to expect locally which is within 24 hours. They may be 72 hours maybe even as long as 96 hours but we'll be careful to make sure that they are in the group that is lower priority. I do want all Vermonters to know that we still need to have rational and reasonable expectations of who should be tested who should not be tested. And our clinical community understands that and will work with their patients to help them understand that. Because at the present time it could overwhelm the system if everybody felt that their test was the most important and that they needed to have it done immediately. Because it was certainly not in a situation where we can do that today. Patricia from Bennington Banner. Patricia from Bennington Banner. Oh the mute button. I see in the guidance here that during the clothing period schools are directed to provide care to add a minimum student enrolled in their school up to grade eight. Would that be that does not include a pre kindergarten students correctly Secretary French mentioned this. It's just kindergarten up through grade eight that are currently enrolled at that school. The guidance speaks to age six as being the cutoff not necessarily distinguishing between pre K. The guidance also speaks to the eventuality of giving those essential employees the opportunity to place their student in a district other than their home district. So for instance if it was more convenient for them to access care in a school that's located in the community where they work we want to provide for the maximum flexibility in that regard. So they have to provide care on the school for age six up to grade eight currently as of right now the students that are enrolled in that school. And for eventually and if there's a need for those essential workers that might be working in those communities and find it more convenient to access care in that in that location. Thank you. I wondered how many. Hello. Yes we we have you. Yes we can. Okay great. I wonder how many child care centers in the state are going to be closed down because of this order. Does that have any idea at this number at this point. The governor's order requires all child care centers to be closed down with with the exception of meeting the needs of the essential persons. We don't have we'll have an accurate picture of that by the end of the day of how many that will be. But one of the things that I just want to emphasize as we're looking at this is we wanted to make sure that the health that the child care system was still in place as we rolled through this crisis and what we have decided to do is continue the subsidies for the for the health for the child care system as we as we move forward. So if a child care system does close down we will continue the subsidies for that child care system. And if they take essential people essential personnel's children will look at how we can make that more of an incentive for that child care facility to take those children and that's something we're looking at right now. Dr. Levine here I'll take the nursing home when it comes to nursing homes obviously by definition everyone there is a vulnerable population. So we have to have consistently across nursing homes adequate guidelines in place and adequate regulatory structure that would make it important for them to adhere to. And I want people to be reassured that that does exist in Vermont. And indeed this particular facility that we're focusing on if I could use the word past with flying colors without any deficiencies about four or five months ago. All nursing homes are of course petrified in the winter time of infectious diseases that can take hold there, not just COVID-19 but other viruses including the flu. So they have to have effective infection control programs in place. They have to have good advisement about those programs and they do. So we're certain that they have the programs at this facility. The health department and Dale were instrumental in sending out abundant communications as the COVID epidemic began regarding good prevention strategies, good surveillance strategies, etc. And now that we have a case obviously we have embarked on a significant venture here to work with the nursing home to identify all those in the nursing home specifically those who work there but others as well who may have had contact with this index case. In addition to that we have part of our public health team with skills in infection prevention actually going to the nursing home to actually work with them and support them in their activities and make sure that all the appropriate containment processes and prevention practices are in place. Collin, I believe you said furloughed inmates, is that what your question was, what are we doing in terms of those? Well furloughed inmates are usually outside the facility is what you're talking about. They are under the sort of the same guidance that everybody would be under in terms of making sure you self screen and making sure that you know you're going to be. My question is are we considering furloughing inmates who are in the prisons right now who may be vulnerable or hearing that? At this moment in time, given the fact where we are right now, the answer is no. Hi it's Mike Scherling from the Department of Public Safety. The Emergency Operations Center has a task order which is basically an avenue of work that is assessing who's essential and adding to that list over the course of the morning and through the day. So we can get that out to the child care centers and grocery store workers, folks who are distributing food and people in the supply chain that supply that food are essential people. So we expect additional guidance to be available as that list evolves over the course of the day. And as we've shown over this short period of time, this is evolving and we are making changes as we see necessary. So we'll be reflecting on that over the next 24 hours. Thank you for taking my question. I wonder what models or scenarios you're working with. National epidemiologists are saying that there's a difference between the reported infection rates and the actual rate from the community. I mean, if they're 10 to 30 times higher than what we're reporting right now, I'm wondering what scenarios you're working with right now. What's your model shown? Dr. Levine. We're relying to some extent on those models and we're developing our own as well as we speak. Suffice it to say that the countries like South Korea that show the lowest case fatality rates have the most testing capability and have tested huge swaths of their population. So their denominator of cases is very large. And since the mortality rate we think around the world is around 1%, they can show numbers that are significantly lower than 1% because they've identified mild possibly even asymptomatic cases with the abundance of testing. So there's no question that when we identify 19 cases in Vermont that there are more than 19 cases in Vermont that we haven't fully identified. Likely though is that the majority of those other cases are not very ill or they would have come to the attention of the health care system and been taken care of appropriately. So they would tend to be in the pre or mildly symptomatic or moderately symptomatic range and will do well with their illness, etc. But having said that and I know Dr. Levine will emphasize this, but that's why we put into place so many of these steps and measures because knowing that there are some who might have this and not even know it, they're still transmitting to others. And that's why social distancing, keeping away from others, taking all the precautions that we've been talking about is so important for everyone to adhere to. If you don't know for sure, just assume you have it in some respects and I'm not trying to create panic, I'm just saying keep your distance. Make sure you're doing the right things so you're not infecting others because you may be okay, but you may be harming someone else who is vulnerable. So keep that in mind. If this goes on beyond the... Can I ask a follow-up please? Can I ask a follow-up please? Yeah, go ahead, Anne. Do we have enough ventilators? I see you guys and guys in general in Vermont. I understand we only have 210 ventilators for the sample and that we might have, you know, staying one in a thousand cases at some point. What are we going to do about that? The other states are pretty upset about that. Governor, were you on the call with Mr. Trump when he talked about the states having 5-round ventilators? Yeah, I mean it was slightly nuanced from that, but yes, I was on that call when other governors were showing some apprehension in that regard. But I'll let Secretary Smith answer the question about the ventilators in bed space. And Mike Smith, we currently have 273 available beds in the state as of this morning. That does not include possible surge beds. It does not include the capability to open up temporary facilities using the National Guard or other sort of temporary facilities. We have 245 ventilators that are available in this state. Again, if this was, as the governor had mentioned, we are trying to ramp up to add capability as we move forward here. And I think one of the things that the governor has always told us is think ahead. Think ahead the next 72 hours to know what we need and where we're going in terms of our needs. And I think that's an important message. How many ventilators do you think we need, Mike? We're uncertain right now, Ann. We're working on that modeling in case we have to use it. But right now all I have for you is the number of available ventilators at 273. When will the modeling be done? When will the modeling be done? We're working on it, Ann. I'll let you know when I can. If this goes on beyond a couple of weeks, the economic damage to people's lives and businesses is going to be overwhelming. What are you going to do then? Well, obviously this is going to affect our entire country, our entire world from an economic standpoint. And it's just not a question of if it's going to happen. It's just a question of the magnitude. I've been in constant contact with our federal delegation. Congressman Welch, Senator Leahy, I had a call from Senator Sanders yesterday afternoon all talking about what is it you need? What do you need to get through this? And obviously we don't know at this point other than we're going to need federal assistance, flexibility in all kinds of different ways. And I know they're working diligently on this effort right now. It looks like it's going to be over a trillion dollar package that will be coming to the states. So suffice it to say we don't know what our needs are, but we know we're going to need some assistance in order to get through this. Yes, thank you. Dr. Levine, you said your state is monitoring hundreds of people connected to the 19 confirmed cases. Are there any counties in Vermont that do not have people being monitored? And can you state specifically to the Northeast Kingdom? Five or six counties at this point. About half of our counties have documented cases and half don't. But I have to be careful when you're talking about who we're monitoring as a result of a case. They may live outside the county that we're concerned about if they were out of gathering with the person or what have you. So hard to say. But consider the fact that half the state has documented cases and that half is geographically heterogeneous. So it's not like any corner of the state is exempt. And we, you know, we have asked those who have been, have traveled to other countries to self isolate. So there may be some self isolating in Caledonia County as well. In fact, most counties have some who are self isolating and more monitoring. Okay, so we have time for one minute. Thank you, Dr. Levine and Governor. Tim, Vermont Business Magazine. Hi, I talked to many educators and it looks like they're going to start the learning program this Monday, the 23rd, which would trigger the free and appropriate public education requirements of the federal law. As I read your document, Governor, these will be more complicated than just making up a packet of tool or doing an online course. What is the plan for kids on IEPs starting as early as Monday? Hi, this is Dan French, Secretary of Education. We put out guidance last night on special education compliance and we're certainly waiting for more guidance from the federal government on this. During this two week period, we're expecting districts to just maintain academic performance and progress of students. So at this point, during the two week period, it's not triggering necessarily a change in students' individual education programs under special ed law, but we do have to start planning for that eventuality if school closure is prolonged beyond the two week period. Again, I want to thank everyone on the phone as well as those who are here from the media for your great work in trying to keep your listeners informed and your readers informed. It's really important that we get this right, that we give all the facts we can to try and do whatever we can to help assist people as well as to calm their fears because this is going to be a long haul. It's not going to be solid overnight and we're all going to have to work together in order to get to the end of this. So I thank you for your efforts.