 Good morning, everyone. It's incredible to think back and realize we've been facing this pandemic for about six months. In some respects, it feels like it was just yesterday and in others with all that's happened and all the change that feels like it's been years. It's true that in Vermont, as compared to other states, we've been spared some of the worst of the devastation seen in this crisis like the tragic loss of life, 185,000 in the US and 33,000 in New York alone and the surge on beds at overwhelmed hospitals in many states. And there's no denying that our success is the result of Vermonters dedication, perseverance and commitment to one another. You've followed the health department's guidance since the very beginning, whether it's wearing a mask, staying home when sick, learning your travel or changing the way you do business to help your workers who can work remotely to do so. You've done all this in order to keep each other healthy. This hard work has kept your family, friends and neighbors safe, helped us reopen most sectors of the economy to some extent and more importantly kept them open unlike other states who opened too quickly and had to backtrack. It's also kept virus levels low, low enough that public health experts continue to tell us we can open schools for in person instruction. I also thought it was fitting to recognize Vermonters strength and commitment to each other today, August 28th, as we mark the ninth anniversary of Tropical Storm Irene, which brought out the best of Vermont, even as we face incredible adversity. Like Irene, this pandemic and what we had to address as a result has come at a cost. There's still tens of thousands of Vermonters on unemployment. Families are struggling to pay their rent, put food on the table. There are thousands of small businesses who can't make ends meet because of capacity limits. And many of our critical institutions like hospitals and colleges face steep, unsustainable fiscal challenges. Working with the legislature, we've been able to take advantage of federal funds by injecting those dollars into the economy and put policies in place like foreclosure moratoriums, expanded UI eligibility and increase human service benefits to support working families. But I know it's not enough and our work to restore the fiscal foundation of our state and for the families who count on us and who we need must and will continue. One area we focus on is the health care sector, working to stabilize our hospitals and smaller practices and support those frontline workers who put their safety on the line to protect their neighbors during a once in a century pandemic. This included 275 million in health care grants to help make sure the foundation of the health care system remained intact and 28 million in hazard pay for health care workers. On the secretary Smith update you on these grant programs as well as our ongoing commitment to providing additional benefits to address food insecurity. Secretary Smith. Thank you, Governor. Today I would like to provide an update on two of the coronavirus relief fund grant programs being administered by the agency of human services. They are the front line employees hazardous pay grant program and the health care provider stabilization grant program. These are two programs that were authorized by the Legislature and signed into law by the governor on July 2nd. Let's start with the frontline employees hazardous grant program. This is a program for certain public safety, public health, health care and human services employees who the employers whose employees were engaged in activities substantially dedicated to mitigating or responding to COVID-19 during the public health emergency during the eligible time period of March 13th through May 15th. The online application portal for this program opened on August 4th. So far we have received 460 applications to date 70 applicants have met our review criteria for completeness, accuracy and appropriateness and will be awarded a total of $10,397,000 early next week. We expect to get those checks out early next week. The total appropriation for this program is $28 million. The grant review team still has many applications to review and is currently working daily on application approvals. There'll be much more coming in the next several weeks. Applications are being reviewed in the order of the application submission. We expect to review all applications received in August by mid September. Funding determination will be made for eligible applications on a first come, first serve basis subject to available funding. Applicants will be notified of approval in batches consistent with the order of applications submitted. The request for funding through this program has been significant. Once enough applications are determined approved to receive a grant award and all available funding is allocated to eligible applicants, AHS will post an announcement on the front line Employees Hazards Pay Grant Program website and not permit new applications through the application portal. In addition to the Hazardous Pay Grants, I want to give you an update on the Healthcare Stabilization Grant Program. We are currently readying the first round of payments to go out under this program. Throughout the COVID-19 emergency, we're focused on the financial stability of the entire healthcare system, including providers of an array of social services, preserving access to essential services requires buffering the providers from the financial instability of business disruptions and increased costs resulting from COVID-19. It has been and continues to be important to identify the providers who are experiencing financial distress and offer financial assistance for those organizations to prevent providers from being forced to close their business. During the immediate crisis, AHS was able to get dollars to those who needed it, but a broader program was necessary. I again want to thank both Governor Scott and the Vermont General Assembly for their support in establishing the $275 million healthcare provider stabilization program, but I also want to thank the team at AHS who has been diligently working on the implementation of these two programs. Their focus and hard work has been instrumental in ensuring these programs are successful. This program, the healthcare stabilization program, this program was designed for healthcare and human services providers for both COVID-19 related loss revenue and COVID-19 specific incurred expenses again between March 1st and June 15th. The first cycle application opened on July 17th and closed on August 15th. During this period, AHS received 351 applications from eligible providers of the applicants. 78% were new to seeking COVID-19 related financial relief from AHS. 22% had received some form of COVID-19 relief from AHS previously that could include the initial April retainer payments, sustained monthly retainer payments, direct payments to hospitals or financial assistance to specialized service agencies or designated agencies. The total applications received today, a total request of over $116 million. It is important to note that the number may go up or down as the review process continues with the agency. We anticipate having a better picture within the next two weeks. The applications covered a broad array of provider types, including dental practices, chiropractors, nursing home, physical therapists, assisted living, and long-term care facilities, acupuncturists, neuropath, physicians, DA's, SSA's, like I said, designated agencies, hospitals, ambulance providers. AHS will be issuing the first award notifications to 93 early next week, 93 providers early next week. The total of this first batch of distributions is $4,459,000. These are mostly smaller entities who were severely impacted because of COVID-19, and we are trying to get out those as quick as possible. Substantial amounts will be going out over the next few weeks to other entities, usually larger entities that more information has to be sort of reviewed before we get the money out the door for them, but those will be going out in the next few weeks. To the extent these are funds remaining after the grant awards are issued for the first cycle, AHS plans to administer a second application cycle in the coming months. This next round will cover additional COVID-19 expenses or loss revenue for the period from June 16th to September 30th, and we expect to have a robust application period during that time. Why I'm up here, I just also want to mention another thing. Vermont has applied for and received an allotment of increased benefits for those families receiving three squares benefits to be paid out in the month of September. Vermont has provided the supplemental benefits since March for a total of over $16 million extra paid out to Vermonters in supplemental benefits. This extra help is available to Vermont as part of the Federal Coronavirus Relief Bill. It will not be a permanent change to households monthly benefits, but it is critical to provide eligible Vermont families with additional resources during this time of uncertainty so they can put food on their tables. Three square Vermont households will see an increase to their maximum benefit based upon their household size, and three square Vermont households do not need to do anything to get the increased benefit. If eligible, you will see it in the same way you get your benefits now on an EBT card through direct deposit or by check. If you or your family are struggling to provide food to your family and are unsure if you are eligible for benefits, we would encourage folks to visit dcf.vermont.gov to learn more. I'd like now to turn over the presentation to Commissioner Pichek for the update, the weekly update. Thank you Secretary Smith and good morning everyone. This week we will start with an overview of our data here in Vermont and then transition to some data about higher education and the reopening that is currently underway as well as some data on K-12 reopening before turning to our regional data and then finally an update about our travel map. So to begin with I want to remind everyone that you can find this presentation for those watching at home on our website dfr.vermont.gov has all of our previous presentations and modeling partners as well. So as we said starting with Vermont's data this week our numbers were quite steady. We reported 50 new cases since we last met that's down from 60 from the previous week. We continue to maintain the lowest per capita infection rate in the country since the start of the pandemic also maintaining the lowest infection rate for the last seven days across the country as well and also the lowest positivity rate in the country. So really against almost any metric that you can measure Vermont by whether throughout the entire pandemic or more recently Vermont continues to be the best in the nation. When we look at where these 50 cases were across the state we do see on a per capita basis that they were rather evenly split. Compared from last week to this week we do see more cases in the southern part of the state particularly in Windom County and in Bennington so something for us certainly to keep an eye on but as we said cases are pretty low across the state and on a per capita basis pretty low in each one of our counties. We also saw this reduction in cases from last week while we were still ramping up the amount of tests that we did this week we conducted over 16,000 tests. I think I mentioned last week that we had conducted over 15,000 tests and that was the highest amount of tests in a single week since the start of the pandemic. We've now gone beyond that done 16,000 tests many of that tied back to higher ed but that in part attributes to our low positivity rate but as we'll get into here in a minute it also signals a successful restart to higher ed as well because we're not seeing early on here but we're not seeing the kind of spikes that we were worried about and we're seeing really steady numbers and openings from higher ed. So going to the restart metrics first for Vermont. These are the broad-based metrics that we measure every week. They are very stable as we said syndromic surveillance continues to be low. The viral growth rate obviously continues to be low as well positivity number one in the country and then in terms of hospital capacity we still have a pretty strong hospital capacity if any of those other trends ended up turning less favorable on us. So from those from that standpoint very favorable as well. Looking now at our forecast for the next number of weeks we had reported I think in the last previous two updates that we are anticipating a slight increase in cases. This week is the first time in the last couple of weeks I can say that the projections are indicating a steady flattening of our numbers over the next few weeks. You can see that we've tracked pretty close to our forecast over the last six weeks or so and we anticipate really low level growth over the next few weeks. Not factored into this although separately discussed will be the higher ed reopening and K through 12 reopening as well. But K through 12 and higher ed have much more likelihood of success as our broad-based numbers remain low which is certainly great to see. Turning now to the higher education and K through 12 data we really thought it would be important to maybe to talk a little bit about the higher ed situation and provide a specific example since there has been so much discussion in the national media about college campuses and universities that are struggling during their reopening plans particularly the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been mentioned a great deal in the media and since we have a few schools here in Vermont that have already brought all of their students back to campus and have at least tested everyone once we thought it'd be valuable to give a direct comparison between a Vermont University and UNC. But before we do that I just want to mention some of the items that we're seeing that certainly will impact whether or not you have the likelihood of a successful reopening on campus. So certainly when we look at places across the country that are struggling and we look at places that are reopening successfully it seems like just the sheer size of the student body certainly plays a role the larger the institution the more difficult it is to keep track on all the students the more difficult it is to operationalize whatever public health guidance that you've instituted. So that's certainly a key factor and something that plays into Vermont's benefit. Looking at the prevalence of where the students are coming from whether that's where the campus is located or the prevalence of the virus from where the students are coming into the state from is critically important as well and again we'll see that that's benefiting Vermont to a great degree and then also the testing policy and program that's in place and again we'll draw some direct comparisons here but you see that that certainly again is greatly in Vermont's favor. So as we mentioned we wanted to make this direct comparison with Northern Vermont University which has now brought all of its students back to its two campuses at Linden and Johnson and UNC which attempted to do the same but really had to put the brakes on and move to remote learning. So you'll see just in terms of the sheer size of student body Northern Vermont has about 1500 students while UNC has 30,000 students so a much bigger challenge for them when they're trying to successfully reopen their campus for on-person or on-campus in-person instruction but when we look to the prevalence I think that's the thing that is probably key here when you look at Northern Vermont University with about 60 percent of its students coming from Vermont and the remaining 30 percent coming largely from the northeast you see that the weighted average of that prevalence of where students are coming from for NVU was 17 out of 100,000 so 17 cases out of 100,000 people for that 14 days before they started coming back to campus. So that's a weighted average we determined you know what percentage of the population is coming from what state and what that state's infection rate was during those two weeks and you can see here that Northern Vermont University 17 out of 100,000 comparing that to UNC that had 205 infections per 100,000 basically 12 times more virus prevalence for the states where students are returning to UNC from than compared to Northern Vermont University. So Dr. Levine has made this point in previous press conferences but thought it would be helpful to put some numbers to that and show that specific example and then lastly we talked about testing you can see that the testing policies were very different for both institutions. Northern Vermont University followed Vermont's reopening guidelines and then some by testing all of their students on day zero testing them again on day seven and then even testing faculty and staff as well where UNC was really under a testing regime of people that are symptomatic or people that are exposed to COVID-19 so they did not have a universal testing policy and again you can see how that played out Northern Vermont University has conducted about 1.3 tests per student where UNC is just a fraction of that 0.16 tests per student and then you can see the final results Northern Vermont University has had zero positive tests while UNC is really leading the country unfortunately in terms of the number of tests that they've had on campus with 945 with 500 of those coming in their most recent week. So again I think that's illustrative of the example but it's also it's illustrative of what broadly is happening in higher ed restart here in Vermont. The next slide shows how many students are going to be on campus this fall whether that is living on campus or taking classes on campus it's just over 21,000 students across all of our colleges and universities. About 15,000 of those individuals will be coming from out of state with the remainder from Vermont and then you can see that just over 9,000 have already returned to Vermont so if you think of those students from Vermont is having the same type of risk that we all have and you think of those coming from out of state as maybe having a higher degree of risk we're already more than halfway through all of those out of state students coming back to Vermont so certainly a good sign by this time next week likely will be close to 100 percent of all students transitioning back into Vermont and then when you look at the results you look at the tests and you look at the the numbers they have been really positive early on really favorable in terms of what the trends are showing 8,600 tests almost 8,700 tests have been conducted across all of the colleges with only 19 positives reported so far or positivity rate of just 0.22 percent so again I mentioned that Vermont has the lowest positivity rate in the country and our positivity rate was you know something around 0.5 percent so this is half of even what Vermont's positivity rate is so I think this is indicative of students following the pre-arrival quarantine guidance they're not coming with the virus as frequently as we thought they might so again all of this at least for the transition back to Vermont is all a very good story so far I want to just touch a little briefly on K through 12 reopening we have here a map that we have created it's going to be an interactive map that we will make public that shows what each of the school district's reopening plans are we'll have a link to their reopening plans it'll talk about reopening in terms of how many days are they planning to be remote so is it fully remote or is it five days in person and I think that will be helpful for people to see the differences across the state and then it also allows us to put together some information and some data that we can monitor throughout the school year so this is a map that we plan to publish next week and keep it updated as school districts change and as things develop throughout the school year but we can see early on at least as things stand now that about 65 percent of all students in Vermont are going to be remote at least three days a week so three four or the full remote throughout the week so that is something that is interesting I think for us to look at and will help us model out the likelihood of successful K through 12 reopening as well so lastly I just want to touch on the regional data things across the country are relatively stable the only place where cases are increasing is in the Midwest there are a few states where people have some concern but largely cases have continued to slowly inch down we look closer to home we do see that our cases did increase this week in the region up about seven and a half percent we that's breaking a four week trend of decreasing cases but when you look at the individual states there's nothing particularly concerning across our region just an uptick this week and then when we look to how that translates into the travel map because some counties of similar population size went to green and others went back to yellow or red we actually stay flat this week in terms of the number of individuals eligible to come to Vermont at 6.6 million individuals eligible to come to Vermont without a quarantine you can see when you look around our travel region Essex County New York is still red largely from the outbreak that occurred last week you also see that Cheshire County in New Hampshire where Keen State is located is turned to yellow for the first time since we started showing this map you also see some issues in Maine as well we mentioned the wedding last week that occurred in Maine but that those cases have spread to other parts of the state including your county where now you see that moving from green to yellow so a few things to keep an eye on across our region but pretty stable overall and you can see that stability when you look at the county by county comparison map some areas of improvement some areas where there's worsening but nothing that stands out particularly strongly and then lastly we just wanted to show a slide now that we're getting toward the end of summer that shows the out-of-state mobility visitors coming into Vermont throughout the summer you see that we were down from our baseline of about 60 percent from the start of the summer we got back up to about 40 percent below our baseline so there's been improvement throughout the summer more visitors coming into Vermont but obviously still significantly down from a normal summer so certainly more help is on the way or needs to be on the way for the lodging and tourism industry but with that I will now turn it over to Dr. Levine. Thank you Commissioner Pichek I'll be talking this morning about few items regarding the CDC a little more data on colleges and finishing off with some comments on flu vaccination don't have much to add in terms of outbreaks or concerning events we're monitoring there's always a scattering of these throughout the state fortunately the numbers are always very small remind you that sometimes it only takes two cases to qualify to be an outbreak and almost everything we're following is below the number six putting it into an area where we don't really divulge much information about it because they're very self-limited and contained and never revolve fortunately in our recent experience. Talking about the CDC I think everyone especially those in the media are aware of some new guidance the CDC has come out with that has been labeled as somewhat controversial so on Monday testing guidance was changed by the CDC to say that people who are asymptomatic may not need to be tested even if they have been in close contact meaning within six feet of a person with COVID-19 infection for at least 15 minutes this change did raise some eyebrows among state public health officials and the medical community as I've said throughout the pandemic our recommendations will evolve and change as we learn more about the virus and the science and new information will inform our decisions but after more than a half a year and millions of cases worldwide our experience is that people who may have been in close contact with someone with the virus may be at risk of having contracted it and they can themselves shed virus before they show symptoms the so-called pre-symptomatic state that I've talked about previously we noted at that time that Vermont's recommendations for who should get tested are not changing at this time people who have COVID-19 symptoms should absolutely be tested if their provider recommends they be tested they should be tested and for those who have had close contact within six feet for about 15 minutes or more with someone who tested positive for COVID they can certainly be tested in addition for these people if they're part of or interact with a vulnerable population we might even more strongly encourage testing keep in mind that by definition individuals like like those I've just described might be identified in a contact tracing enterprise and during the contact tracing they would be advised to quarantine the goal of that of course is to make sure that even if they are asymptomatic but capable of transmitting virus they will have been isolated from the general population and not be at risk of spreading that virus further and creating an outbreak the whole strategy of containment testing isolating contact tracing and quarantine has been fundamental to our success in Vermont and needs to continue and underpinning its success is testing it's important to accurately know the percent positivity in our state as we talk about every week and you just saw here and you can only do that if you have a sufficient number of people in the state tested who have no symptoms if you're only testing people who are highly likely to already have the virus because of their symptoms you will come out with a very high percent positivity rate that won't necessarily reflect the level of viral infection in the population at large in the state so to be clear our guidance in Vermont has not changed yesterday in listening to the CDC director it appeared that he was walking back his comments a little though not the change per se i'm not here to discuss what motivated the federal decisions but i and many members of my own staff at the health department have close working relationships with people at the CDC and i know that despite what may be questionable policy choices at the top the science and evidence-based commitment by the organization at large is strong enough that sound public health practices will drive the work of keeping people safe and healthy and it certainly does here in Vermont the second newsworthy item from the CDC had to do with recommendations regarding travel and essentially not um mandating quarantine for those who have traveled either nationally or even internationally this essentially leaves things up to the states themselves as i mentioned it doesn't necessarily have a national policy of quarantine i regard that as a bit short-sighted and i think that risks replicating the mistakes of the past specifically how our country got into the pandemic in the first place but again we in vermont have the same policy the same map you just saw the same zones of incident cases and the need for quarantine if one isn't a yellow or red zone this has served us well and will keep us in good stead in terms of colleges and universities uh and as they ramp up this year i just want people to know that in public health we continue to work very closely with their administrations and their student health teams to keep students staff faculty and importantly the communities healthy every school continues to do its baseline day zero testing and then day seven testing when students are arriving from out of state and they are acting uniformly quickly and appropriately when there are any positive test results you've already heard about some of those positive test results from commissioner peach act and several of these schools now do have students in isolation and and or their contacts in quarantine keep in mind that the schools in addition to a testing on day zero policy also have a campus or dorm quarantine policy that is enacted when the students arrive as well some new cases also have been identified in asymptomatic vermont students who are actually seeking tests here in vermont prior to that departure for college in other states and as i've said before the occurrence of new cases from students arriving from out of state is expected which is why we've had these months of preparation for this and along with being in regular communication with schools statewide our epidemiology team continues to attend weekly meetings between the city of burlington university of vermont and champlain college on student return with a focus on prevention and mitigation of transmission finally i'm talking about flu vaccine over the next few weeks we're going to be discussing our recommendations for flu vaccination but making it as easy and efficient for everyone to get the vaccine will be a primary part of the strategy we are also focused on the usual seasonal transitions we're beginning to notice the early achievers of those leaves that are starting to bear their fall colors a signal that summer's wrapping up and that are planning for cold and flu season is kicking into high gear we're going to be discussing over the next few weeks the great importance of keeping the rate of flu in vermont as low as possible to ensure that we don't face a so-called twindemic of both flu and covid cases concurrently this fall and winter our primary focus will be to increase the rate of vaccination especially among children and teens to give you some data last year only 42.6 percent of our five to 12 year olds and 35.5 percent of our 13 to 17 year olds received the flu vaccine we can and must do better but i want to make one point clear there has been no decision made to require universal flu vaccine for all k through 12 students in fact across the country only one state massachusetts has moved to require flu vaccination for students a policy decision of whether to do so is still under consideration driven as always by the data and science as a physician and a public health chief i would be shirking my responsibility to protect the health of vermonters if we did not at least explore the merits as well as the weaknesses of every potential public health intervention and that of course is especially true this year as i mentioned with the issue of convergence of flu and covid at the same time it's my priority to decrease the potential morbidity and mortality associated with both of these viral illnesses and we certainly don't want to jeopardize the success of our return to school that might occur with an active flu season and additionally we must ensure that illness does not lead to the health care system becoming overwhelmed so as i said we will be discussing in the next several weeks our recommendations about how to make it more easy and efficient for everyone to get the vaccine as that will be a primary part of our strategy i'll turn things back to the governor now thank you dr leane and we'll now open up to questions we indeed were made aware of the situation in rutherland county and per our usual protocols we've responded we're investigating any potential outbreaks the investigation is actually very early we're obviously interviewing possible cases providing public health recommendations conducting contact tracing obviously recommending quarantine and symptom monitoring as needed currently there are only a small number of cases i'll remind everyone that small number means under six and that precludes us from actually offering much more descriptive information regarding any of those it was a gathering and we're actually trying to get more details on the exact nature of that and where the initial exposure might have actually occurred and then shifting to the cbc guidance as well you mentioned that we're sticking our own guidance but i'm wondering if maybe this mixed messaging from the federal government and in our own state government maybe if this is confusing people or that's a concern of yours that some people you know might say always yeah so i hope the mixed messaging is not confusing people i wouldn't be the first time that we have come out pretty definitive about something in vermont and said we are going by our data our science and sometimes our instincts and our judgment so this has happened before regarding the way the federal government sometimes messages about the pandemic versus the way we message about it but i'll just pick up on your point and make it quite clear that we still believe people who've been exposed to someone who was a covet case should feel comfortable if they want to get tested and that we are interested in them getting tested they will have inevitably been identified as a contact through contact tracing so they will be quarantined so they should be of no risk to anyone else but at the same time they have the opportunity to be tested according to our current protocols we're not worried about them exhausting our supplies of testing we believe it's important to know if there are asymptomatic members of our population who could possibly transmit the virus it's important to know that and we want to know that in the world i don't have that information of how many i think i would if it was a pattern or a big number i would have heard about it but i would suspect it if there are any it's a small number remember that we aren't the only ones that are helping in this regard the federal government came in with some aid for hospitals and other providers and secondly just remember also we put out a lot of money during the height of the pandemic just to keep institutions afloat we were very worried about the collapse of the health care system during the height of the pandemic and as as you know through various programs we did dole out a lot of money above the money that we're talking about here so we were successful in sort of sustaining and propping up the health care system during the times of most fiscal stress this is helping to reimburse them for the money that they spent or the loss revenue that they had during that talk to me on the college testing results so far and that's a huge sample that you have in more than half of the aliphatic state kids we've now been tested for at least one are we obviously we should comfort but um what is the risk going forward is that that kids will leave the area and then return or once they test negatively here once and then after seven days what's the risk going forward yeah one would assume that the risk will be a risk any of our modern living in any community has our prevalence of virus across the state or within those communities another part of the guidance for the schools and they're taking this very seriously is on travel policies for their student body and their faculty for that matter and so they're being very restrictive about that because they recognize once these students are essentially Vermonters because they've tested negative coming in and now they're part of the the environment here in Vermont that we want to preserve that the only way to preserve that is to prohibit them from going back to the areas that might be higher prevalence on a back and forth basis and many of them now have compressed their semester so that of course they're leaving right before Thanksgiving and not coming back so they're losing some vacation time between the start of school and Thanksgiving and they're having a more compressed semester and then we'll come back sometime in the winter or spring so that's also going to help that effort so I feel reassured and I'd like to reassure others we'll see how it all plays out um is tourism down 40 percent a visitor visitation down 40 percent uh do our super low numbers that have been so for a long time now are they going to allow us to relax at all uh with indoor activities or are we just in our current did you work with the governor or not well I guess it's up to him isn't it when are you gonna why don't I start and Dr. Levine can clean it up after you know our concern obviously we have priorities opening up k-12 schools more in-person instruction would be my preference but we have to prove ourselves and we have to get through this opening up schools the colleges as well bringing in a mass of people in one concentrated period is going to be challenging as we've said and we're keeping track of that so those are our priorities at this point in time after we get through those situations if we get over the hump I would believe that we will continue to do everything we can to open up the economy more the more we're wearing our masks while we're keeping distance from one another the smaller gatherings we have are all beneficial staying home when sick and so forth so those are all beneficial to our continuing a low positivity rate in the low case count in Vermont so if we can continue along this path we can get through those uh the humps that I talked about in terms of opening up the colleges and universities and k-12 more in-person education then we'll continue to expand we'll continue to open up the economy broaden that out more as we see fit but again we're watching the numbers watching the data watching the science and a quarter turn at a time of the spigot this this opening up of schools uh and uh is is another quarter turn of the spigot from my perspective anything that you know child care options they were trying to open up how much progress has been made on getting the set up and staffing them because staffing was a star does it look like that this life will have you know all the talks that happened time for September 8th and specifically because it looks like teachers will have you know child care options to put the kids into when they start up for September 8th because you know it's kind of hard stuff for them I'll let Secretary Smith answer the most of the questions but again from my perspective I think we've seen a lot of interest over the last I think it was a week ago that we announced this program so the department of children families support them very hard intelligently to explore all kinds of opportunities and we've seen a lot of interest we're going to continue to be challenged to put this into place by September 8th but but again I think the progress we've made is is pretty substantial and I'm encouraged and and in terms of the teachers they obviously will be welcome into the system as well we want them it's important for them to be in person in and having in-person instruction for our kids so we want to make sure their kids are taken care of as well Secretary Smith thank you thank you Erin for the opportunity to talk about this because there has been a lot of work in this area Vermont after school our prime the person that we've partnered with Vermont after school has received over 150 submissions from entities interest in participating in the school-aged child care hub project in order to be eligible for these funds the proposed child care must operate on remote learning days and great care right now by DCF is being taken to ensure that the potential hub sites can set up in locations appropriate for the care of children I just want to give you some sense because there has been eight potential hub sites have been identified as of Thursday that yesterday combined these when you combine these hub sites they could provide approximately 1800 child care slots and and these inquiries came came in from communities across the state and include a wide range of organizations including which we're very happy to see private business owners licensed child care centers after school programs town recreation and park programs art organizations community centers medical centers and more we're very encouraged of what we're seeing I just want to get back to talk about the eight potential hub sites that we have identified so far they are the project manager is reaching out to those potential sites to finalize the operational details and ensure that these these sites will succeed there are more sites close to competing the initial vetting process with vermont after school and additional sites can be anticipated to be announced early next week probably at the next press conference on Tuesday this is continuing areas we need would like to highlight include where we would like to see some more activity would be brattleboro bellis falls springfield bennington and saint johnsbury eight sites in six counties have been identified in addison chitlin washington franklin and windham and windsor counties as soon as final approval and agreements are in place will be will be able to offer more details in that you talked about staffing and and i've heard this a couple of times and i want to make sure that people understand what we're talking about with staffing um you talked about some of the um existing daycares uh excuse me child care centers being um it's a challenge for staffing uh staffing staffing is definitely one of the challenges of this initiative but along with our community partners we're looking to how to effectively staff these sites without draining their current system of care we want to be extremely careful here not to destabilize what we've already uh done in the system and we've done a lot in the system you know above and beyond the 16 million uh that we're talking about here um one of the things i i want to make sure that we we understand we've spent over 35 million dollars in extra money to make sure that we stabilize our system during the height of the pandemic that we had child care slots and and this um this additional money that we're spending right now so we want to be extremely careful not to destabilize the system that we've worked so hard to make sure is in place and and thriving it's also report report important to remember that this this should be temporary to address a surge um because of uh the different responses to COVID-19 that we're having so with regard to the current identified systems Vermont after school will be looking um at staffing ever efforts for the hubs next week with the realization that we can't poach off of the existing system and we'll probably do that through the grant programs to make sure that we don't poach off the system and frankly if you're an employee of the existing system and you're looking at these new hubs these new hubs again are temporary i i they're they're two different sets of considerations you you've got to you've got to look at whether you keep with a permanent job or where you go with a temporary job these are the sort of things that people so i don't think we're going to see the uh the the staffing challenges of taking one of the stealing from one system to to uh to staff another system as we move forward hope i answered all your questions i certainly took enough time thank you sorry i'll set Aaron thanks Aaron Greg the county courier good morning um i wanted to first ask if you had an update available about the dmv testing numbers that you guys were able to find out if there was a drastic difference between the past fail rate since you guys have been doing tests online versus what was going on in yeah unfortunately um the dmv we did to explore that the dmv only keeps track of the number of of past permits not the failure rate so they haven't been doing that so we have no way of comparing um so all we have is the the the pass rates and to be honest with you i didn't check to see if the pass rates were up or down from previous years but but that's will probably uh probably be a good question the dmv collects a fee every time it's uh every time there's a test yeah whether it's past or failed so would there at least be a financial i'm not yeah i'm not saying i'm not saying that we couldn't get it but it's not readily available it's just not something we keep track of so um we could dive into it if it's really that important but uh but from our standpoint we aren't seeing a great difference um so unless uh unless again it's a utmost importance uh and we could dedicate some dmv people to going back in and and doing it manually i guess that's possible but um but i'm not sure that there's a a big need for it at this point in time well moving on i know that there's a time crunch here so uh a little bit of a drawn-up question here but there with me uh last night i attended i attended a meeting in the town of richford about some serious decreases in peacefulness within the community mainly driven by crime um during the meeting it was publicly stated that uh that the state of vermont had relocated possibly more than two dozen families uh to the community to hotels and hotels as part of the response for cobit with these families being homeless you know comes a lot of other issues and and that's not to blame the families it's just what happens to come with it um but uh a state police representative did mention that richford has become the highest call volume community not by population just over all uh for the sin opens barracks um the community has contracted three days a week three nights a week the sheriff's department but we can't really afford to contract any anything more than that state police have said they've got four troopers the patrol 16 communities and being that richford is in the far corner of their coverage area they really can't spend much time there um community members are you know starting to see that you know this is exasperated by the unemployment issues in vermont and the perception at least is that idle hands are are creating this issue to be worse um so there's a couple questions that people wanted to know one was when is the state going to begin requiring unemployed vermonters to look for work again so that at least they're busy doing that um and then uh the second question i guess is why uh why does the state feel it's appropriate to move a large number of um families like this into richford but not support them with uh criminal justice policing uh you know it seems like there's a connection that the state has caused some of this uh some of these issues in richford but they're not there to help with the reaching issue at great first of all that was there any mention of the number of families who have been moved into the community by any chance um i i i don't know the exact number um an official in richford believes that there were more than two dozen which her richford is is quite a quite a large influx and when you have large families staying in a motel room that has you know a little kitchenette a little bathroom in one bed you know there's no wonder there's going to be some quality of life issues coming up um undoubtedly these are challenging times as i mentioned in my remarks families are struggling people are out of work they still have 40 000 people on the unemployment uh in the unemployment system uh and this that the economy is not opening up as quickly as we wanted to uh frustrating um but this is a pandemic and again there's no playbook here we're uh we're doing the best we can to open up the economy as quick as we can uh as well as recognize the fact that people aren't exactly um coming in swarms to vermont either because of their own and maybe um challenges with with traveling um and uncertainty about covet uh in their own world so uh it's a delicate balance uh so we're doing the best we can um i might ask either secretary smith uh first and then maybe uh commissioner shirling to respond to the uh the state police comments but uh secretary smith first to talk about those displaced families governor wrote quick while you're still there are you expecting that in the near future you're going to ask to reinstate the work requirement or search for work requirements i know i've talked to employers that have said i have jobs people just don't want to take them well we're not finding again uh we we keep track of the number of jobs available um and it doesn't come close to the number of people who are unemployed at this point in time i think the last i had heard as far as on the the labor report there may be 5000 jobs open at this point in time we have 40 000 people who are unemployed so it doesn't i don't believe there's any close proximity to the numbers so when it gets closer when we start seeing more jobs available uh and the the number of those unemployed comes down then we'll reinstate that that requirement to to look for work but at this point in time it's the it would it would be frustrating for many uh to have to do this when we know that there isn't jobs available in their in their fields secretary smith thank you very much for the question as you know when the pandemic hit um most of the shelters in this state started closing down for obvious reasons since congregate living it um was not safe to have that many people within uh the shelter system as a consequence we have as a state housed approximately 1500 people in hotels now we're starting to unwind that in maybe a month or two maybe it's even three months ago we announced a program to start moving people to permanent housing that's not going to happen overnight but at the same time we're starting to lower our numbers into the hotel system down to about roughly a thousand um people right at the moment from the height of 1500 we will continue that trend downward obviously the hotel motel program can't continue it's not sustainable we have to move people into permanent housing that doesn't mean we're going to eliminate the motel hotel program but it also means that we have to get down to sustainable levels uh not where we were now just remember too because this is quite remarkable we had a very very low case count COVID-19 case count within the homeless population this is something for Vermont to be proud of in terms of what we did how we house people in need how we made them safe in times of need now we have to make sure that we move that to permanent housing and as you as you remember we put substantial amounts of money through the coronavirus relief fund both in terms of moving people out of the hotel motel program and through ACCD in terms of building and some other entities state entities into building permanent housing and we're in the midst of doing that right now I suspect that you will see the numbers start to uh drop um at the crossings in in rich in richford um as we move uh as we start moving forward and we'll continue to do this um into the future I commissioner shirling anything else to offer in terms of the enforcement state police uh thanks governor uh nothing specific i'm not familiar with any uh indications of increases in call volume in richford not not say there aren't any as inquired um as the secretary indicated you know ahs has done uh an enormous amount of work to keep at risk for monitors uh saved during the pandemic and part of that is uh is relocating folks that to various places around the state and sometimes that does come with collateral uh impacts on services um we'll uh we'll work through the the state police and local officials to ensure we're doing everything possible to uh minimize that impact I got the impression governor from a lot of community members they're not blaming us on the people that were put there they're they're really frustrated with the state for creating this issue and not providing law enforcement backup in order to take care of public safety issues but I I believe there was an incident where they actually had to call the fire department to uh the public will have fallen into land because you know there were some incidents with fires uh I mean it's a serious public safety issue and the perception at least is that the state has created this but they're kind of searching their responsibility to protect everybody now that they've created this unintended consequence of course we didn't create the pandemic you understand that was started by somewhere else and brought to us I don't think anybody's saying you're creating pandemic I'm from what I'm hearing from the community they're they're saying what you know the state the state put a large number of people here uh and and we're not equipped with law enforcement for that influx of of that type of population asking for help and basically being told sorry we don't have anybody to give you yeah again first I've written it but we'll we'll look into it and see if there's anything we can do to assist and Greg we really expect 10 minutes and we only have 30 left I know it's a 10 thank you right uh Wilson 80 and just sorry everybody um but now we only have uh about 35 minutes left for questions so uh and still 14 in the queue Wilson the AP okay I'll I'll try and be quick with my questions uh this is for Dr. Levine this might be a variation on the question I asked you months ago about what keeps you awake at night but thinking about the CDC's guidance that uh while Ramon is going to stick to its existing protocol um does that cause you any concern that perhaps other states that might not be as diligent as Ramon uh could somehow cause more cases to find their way to Ramon and then secondly a quicker question how good is this year's flu vaccine is there any estimate on that yet um so those are my two questions yeah well soon I'd like to start by answering part of the first one and Dr. Levine can add to it but you know as you recall when when we started we had the restart uh Vermont and we uh we all started opening up the economy and it was soon after that the CDC and the feds came in and had their own plan as to how to open up the economy we decided that we uh what we were doing was working uh we were apprehensive like everyone else but we thought we had a plan that uh that would fit Vermont so we stayed on that plan we didn't go with the CDC guidelines and the federal guidelines on that and we've been successful as I stated then again we were going to as long as we're given the latitude we're going to do what we've been doing because it's working so I have great faith in our our experts our healthcare experts and others about the path forward and and I think that it's again it's been the proof is that it's working so we're going to continue along that path I will say the CDC when it came out with us the travel guidelines and fairness to them I believe they said that you should adhere to the state guidelines which that's what we're trying to to make sure that people are adhering to our modeling coming from safe counties and that we're we're verbalizing that that's what I mean and I'll just add to that that I really do think public health officials across the country have reacted similar to the reaction I showed this morning so I lose less sleep about the other states because I think they're going to end up doing the right thing unless they have some ideological reason not to do so so I think they will adhere to that pretty well with regard to the flu vaccine usually we figure that out the efficacy of the vaccine as the season's evolving so it's a little premature to comment on it yet I do know that we do look at the southern hemisphere's experience and try to see what the match is like if you will or what went into the vaccine and what they saw in the southern hemisphere and I don't yet know what that data looks like but that would be an early sign but it'll take a lot longer to come up with the answer to your question once the flu season gets rolling okay great I thank you both as always Peter may be our two quick questions for Secretary Smith Secretary Smith you referenced earlier the number of applicants for the hazard pay program you said 70 had qualified for 10.3 million dollars I was just doing the math it seems like a lot correct I can't do do each of those applications represent multiple individual employees you have a total number of employees who are doing that money if you're correct it's multiple employees because it's an employer that submits for the for for the program I don't have the number of employees but let me see if I can get that to you uh you don't have the average amount going to each individual employee either right well there's two there's two buckets that will go you either get 1200 or uh I can't remember specifically there's it's by law that you get a certain amount per employee based upon the number of hours that you work so now that you know uh that uh two thirds of Vermont students or two thirds of Vermont school districts um are going to remote for more than half of the days of the week um how many child care slots is the state going to need in order to accommodate the demand that is going to accompany those remote learning plans we're we're anticipating about 10 000 3000 through existing programs and 7 000 through the hub programs we had a we had an early look into the sort of the remote activities that were happening and took a guess we think we're going to be pretty close into what the need just just so you know that's almost doubling the existing system I think we have about 12 000 slots right now so we're almost doubling the existing system and and Pete the the eligible employees receive net hazard pay that is that is between 1200 or 2000 depending on the hours that you work got it and just be clear you said uh you can use 10 000 slots to accommodate those students um you said it really wrong there are you anticipate having uh capacity for 1800 based on what what the response has been so far so far yes and that doesn't Peter that does not include the expansion of the existing programs that we were talking about um by law change or what the governor did the other day which is uh through executive order allow these home-based um uh facilities to take um to take school-aged children during school school periods got it thank you okay that's a surge strength about state-of-the-art reopening I'm wondering um with all of the new safety regulations put in place for in-person instruction was there a need at all for Vermont schools to take on or hire more support staff to accommodate those changes what does that be like bus drivers um teacher days school nurses or even like guidance counselors thank you for the question yes I think there are uh several districts I know have um hired additional staff to implement guidance um and in some cases it's around implementing uh the health checks and the daily health check for example I know districts have hired um bus monitors and also nursing staff and so forth so I think there are um cost implications from the money we got and uh I know also the districts um are utilizing or plan to utilize their federal money either whether it's crf or what we call the ester fund uh to address those additional costs and can you just touch on I guess their role we hear a lot about um teachers anxiety about getting back in the classroom um can you talk about the role of support staff um around kids being thinks going back to school yeah I think you know traditionally support staff fulfill a variety of functions particularly I think of para educators typically implementing student individual student education programs um I think you know there's a couple areas I think who are staffing up if you will and one is to as you mentioned to implement the logistical elements involved with the health guidance and so forth I think the larger issue of student support is still unknown I think that we're you know district will be focused on real thing first and then begin to bring online their support for students and then start to articulate the staffing needs around it so I'm a second question in terms of additional support for students I think it's a little early um but I think the first question just starts our ramping up staff to rental that's the health guidance okay thank you Eric the time is yes I believe this is for the secretary french is also impossible to aid dr levy uh the state CDC guidelines for students and staff returning to school uh requires that anyone who has a temperature of over a hundred point four degrees descend home and in the very inferior area that schools are considering excluding anybody who has a temperature over a hundred degrees so is there any concern that students who want and could get in person education under state guidelines could be excluded under more strict guidelines from individual schools uh this is secretary french uh the first I heard of a district implementing more stringent requirements that's something that's what we want to talk with the school district about we are in the process of implementing and offering a statewide health check or health screening application for districts and there's three elements to that and one is uh the first question is have you had close association someone with COVID-19 the second one is a serious symptoms and then the third question is the temperature check of a hundred degrees 100.4 or greater so I think the guidance is very clear on that and I think we'll also be implementing an application that also brings some clarity to that but I'll definitely be interested in reaching out to the district to see to what extent the rationale for implementing more springes and what we're proposing the requirement. So how much discretion do districts have in creating their own health-related admissions papers? Well I think this is the first instance when I've heard of a district implementing something more stringent than what we require so that's essentially new to me but they have no flexibility in terms of meeting the the requirements that we're establishing on the guys that have the force of regulation. The question I guess you're asking is can they go beyond that? Yeah that's an open question but I want to understand the rationale for that and your question I would be concerned about them unnecessarily excluding experience particularly when we know the the science sort of behind the system checking it's a very useful for you at a certain level but it's by no means defended. Also Eric? Eric we'll try and find that a little bit more about that and get some clarity will we answer anything further? Okay thank you. Tim from our business magazine? Hi Governor you had mentioned a little earlier in the week I think it was about being maybe last week about putting more money in the marketing to help the hospitality creator now obviously and a survey came out yesterday that Vermont was is the number one destination for people who are planning to travel this winter this is not by per capita he's a total. One of the issues was people looking for low COVID states to travel to and obviously Vermont is also a vacation destination and it's sort of a double-edged sword there you want the people to travel here but you don't want some sick people to travel here. Have you thought more about I know you're working on schools mostly now but have you thought more about the marketing of Vermont's winter vacation time and whether you would maybe type back on that in response to not wanting sick people to come. Yeah first of all we want to make sure that we continue to have the low case counts low positive rates in the state and we're trying to do it safely. The marketing dollars were in maybe forecasting what was going to happen in the future if if again a vaccine was produced we wanted to make sure that we are ready to accept more people into the state because we know that businesses particularly in the lodging hospitality sector are struggling in particular probably struggling more than any other sector of the economy. So this was more in preparation for for recovery and making sure that we had those dollars in place so that we can implement that. Obviously we're we're going to have these conversations with the legislature and we'll work through that and if if they don't think it's necessary we'll will continue to negotiate with them again to make sure and you know a lot of it will depend on the flexibility issue and so we put that into place hoping that we would get more flexibility and more of an extension of time beyond the 1231 where everything has to be spent or we have to return it. So again we would not want to do prematurely market of the state before we're ready so good point but but again it's all dependent on on what Congress does as well. Hi yes hi sorry about that. This question is for Michael Pichek. I was wondering in the data where we're comparing NVU to UNC why wouldn't we compare something like the University of Vermont which might have a more similar we'll call it a similar student body where people would be coming from more very areas than just the northeast. Is it only because that UVM does not have all their students back on campus and gone through testing or was there another way to compare these schools? Yeah cat that's right and basically we wanted to pick a school in Vermont that has completed at least the process of returning students to campus and NVU has done that and they're even I think probably two weeks into having students on campus so they've done their day one testing and also their day seven testing for everyone so that was really the reason for the comparison at this time. Certainly I mean when you look at UNC and you look at our entire state and the number of students coming back we have 21,000 students that are going to be on campus they were anticipating 30,000 just at that one school so you know I think we compare favorably just as a state but certainly if you wanted to pick a state that was more similar to the sorry a higher ed institution more similar to UNC it would be UVM but we can make that comparison certainly when UVM is done with its reopening. Got it in your interest of time I'll end there thank you. Thank you. Ian Wallace Allen, BT Digger. Hi this is the question for Secretary Smith. I'm wondering about the course of the contract with state. I know that the contract fires in October at least to house out-of-state prisoners in Mississippi and I'm wondering if the state is looking to reduce the contract and it's still for how long? I'll let Secretary Smith answer that but I believe we're having internal conversations about that very fact so Secretary Smith. If we do an extension of the contract and we are having internal discussions about that right now it would only be for a year that we would have those discussions what we would do after or what we may do in between that time is something that we're looking at right now but I'm not I you know until we sort of have plans I'm not going to be announcing anything here but right now if we extend it it would be for a year. What kind of changes would you like to see made to the contract if you guys renew it? Well obviously we're doing a lot of stuff now for example where we've put the institution the Vermont inmates on a rotating basis for testing. We'll do that with the inmates that are negative. We'll continue to do that like if they were in an institution here in Vermont. We'll start three months from now doing everyone because we want to make sure that we are testing everyone even those that have had the coronavirus. Most matter of fact a lot of the inmates have sort of been in the recovery unit. There are three units down there. There are the the positive unit the non-positive unit and the recovery unit. The recovery unit is ready to get people back to the general population and so that is the bulk of Vermont prisoners are there. So we'll be looking at testing. We'll be looking at access. As you know we're putting in camera we're having getting access to cameras in that facility so we can have eyes on that facility 24-7. We're sending people down to that facility next week but it would be having a closer sort of tabs on that facility as as we move forward that we would probably look at in terms of contract also safety of inmates if we're doing extension. Are there any other options other than renewing the course of a contract? We're looking at that now. I just have one more question for Dr. Levine. Dr. Levine lately it just seems to me as so Vermont is testing as college students so much more than other states are and I just don't actually see a clear reason why that is. I'm obviously at the health reasons for it but I'm just wondering what Vermont what gives Vermont that ability that the other states don't seem to have. When you use the word ability you mean just access to testing and Not necessarily either access to testing or money to pay for it. I'm just it's sort of a striking difference is starting to emerge the more I learn about these other schools elsewhere. Yeah okay so we'll start with the public health rationale which is very very well illustrated by Vermont versus North Carolina. You know let's let's put up our percent positivity rate as 0.7 percent for sake of argument nice in between numbered for where we've been lately. That's an order of magnitude less than the 7% that North Carolina has. So some would argue that states that have you know greater than a 5% positivity don't have any business reopening their colleges. Some would go higher than that to 10% or what have you but certainly when you're below 5% a state would be encouraged to reopen colleges. We feel as a state that seems to be so popular among regional students and students who are even further than the region who come from higher positivity areas that this would have a significant public health benefit. We have ultimately put it on the schools to make sure that they adhere to the guidance we provided with testing and they've all independently negotiated contracts with predominantly one but several vendors if you will for doing the testing and can get significant discounts because of volumes that they have in terms of the numbers they're testing and the frequency with which they're repeating the testing. So it's become somewhat economical if you will if I could use that term for them as well. And so all of the colleges have good access to testing and opportunities to get good discounts on the rates that are charged for that testing for now and throughout the semester. So I mean this doesn't come up with your colleagues in other states just the fact that some schools are only testing people who are showing symptoms or yeah no it does come up because there are a number of states that have much higher populations than Vermont and schools that are on the scale of UNC as you've heard that actually are doing aggressive protocols. I don't know if they're doing it uniformly across their state or just in certain universities that are part of the state system but they are doing them and I've been written up a fair amount in the news as well but then there are many states as you're alluding to that really are doing a symptom only testing strategy and assuming that students will come back and if they get sick they will be tested. We just don't adhere to that as a viable strategy to keep Vermont safe and keep Vermont community safe and certainly we think it's a not a viable strategy in a state that has a high percent positivity rate. Thank you so much. No I'll just end by saying it's not like there's abundant federal guidance on that CDC specifically does not mandate testing college students so states that aren't doing it aren't actually diverging from any set rule book but as the governor has said in many ways we're creating the rule book for many things and we feel very strongly about this one. Do you think there should be federal guidance on the college testing? I'm going to answer for Dr. Levine. I believe that they should watch what we're doing in Vermont and maybe some other states would want to follow suit. I think this is you know another case where Vermont is taking a different path and I give great credit to Rich Schneider former president of Norwich University who led a group of restarting our colleges and universities and we were adamant about making sure that we did this safely as you might have reported in the past I don't know if you specifically am but certainly many in the media have reported about the the amount of resistance the amount of apprehension in opening up our colleges and universities and so we wanted to make sure when they did that we could provide some faith and trust that we're doing it correctly and having this much I didn't expect to hear a question about why we're doing so much testing in our college and universities today but I'm I welcome that because it does give us an opportunity to highlight how well we're doing and if we continue down this path we can open up our college and universities in a safe way and provide for the testing to show people that we're doing it in a safe manner then again it builds upon that trust to further open up the economy to further open up in-person instruction in our K through 12 schools and so forth we have to build upon our success in order to get back to some sort of normalcy so I think it's a good sign and I give again a great amount of credit to the group that put this in place as well as to Dr. Levine and his team at the health department for working together and trying to do this I was not asking why we're testing so much of the colleges I totally understand that the health oh I thought that's what you said why are we testing so much in our college and universities oh why is it so different from other states I was wondering oh okay in terms of today or money or something like that okay I thought there was almost like a complaint about testing so much but glad to hear that's not the case certainly not all right uh Robin the Caledonia record hello can you hear me we can okay thank you very much first time on um I have a question about vaccine protocols for for Vermont forgive me if this is an topic discussed before as you're looking at flu vaccine most people immediately shift okay how would that translate to how a COVID-19 vaccine would be rolled out in Vermont I don't federal government's working on getting plans together what's Vermont's role in that and how would it be reaching out to Vermonters about how it will happen here yeah I know I'll let Dr. Levine answer this as well but we have a specific team the vaccine team that's looking into this and contemplating how we're going to roll this out if and when uh or let's say when the vaccine is proven gone through the trials and is proved safe how we would roll this out in Vermont and and I know that they're working closely with our federal partners to determine how to do that but again it's early I don't expect we'll see a vaccine for until the until the next year but we are on it we're working on it health department is taking the lead on this and Dr. Levine can give more details because we're short on time I won't provide a lot of details though because that's what this team is charged with doing and already working on because as the governor stated much will be directed by the federal government in terms of distribution to states and states will see varying amounts of vaccine entering their state over varying time intervals there will most likely be a request that there be prioritization early on so that the higher priority groups such as healthcare workers who face-to-face with the disease and those in vulnerable populations who might benefit early from a vaccine get it first but then there'll be issues about how to distribute that equitably across the entire population we as a state want to make sure we don't get burned like we did early on with PPE when there was little access to PPE around the country so we want to make sure basic supplies syringes needles things of that sort are already in supply in Vermont so that we don't run into a problem getting vaccine and not having a way to actually deliver it to the population so stay tuned we'll have a lot more to report because this vaccine team is meeting on a weekly basis several times a week and addressing just these issues so uh switch to another topic I'll follow up with a question about the team members and so on with the Ethan um Broadband continues to be one of the top issues for remote learning in the northeast kingdom the rural part um some I've had some people say it in online forums that they can't even reach out get a response from utilities to come and install the broadband services using the $2000 that they could access um is the state doing more to help utilities meet these needs that's the first I've heard that there was a problem with the utilities coming to attach with the grant program that we put into place but we'll follow up with uh Commissioner Tierney from the public service department and find out if there's an area where we can assist in another way or we can spur these these cases along because because I think it is important for people to provide the limited amount of money that we have that we put forward to utilize it wisely and I look forward to the federal government the congress working on this issue so that we can solve more broadband expansion across rural Vermont and across rural United States as well because this is a big need and in this state as well as in other states across the nation Kevin seven days can you hear me okay again governor I have a quick question for you and then a question a question for Secretary Smith um governor what levers are still available to you to pull uh to increase the ability of the tourism industry and the hospitality industry that uh fall foliage season and which ones are you eyeing if things go well with the education sector to um to relieve the little well certainly in the lodging industry increase the capacity as well as in trying to solve the problem with the with the restaurants in terms of capacities as well how do we move from outside dining to inside inside dining and how do we do that safely if we can do all that in terms of marketing as we spoke before doing it at the right time when we see our rates are are leveled out uh and that we can do so safely trying to bring more people into the state so those uh those three things that's what i'm eyeing just increase capacities and uh in utilizing marketing money to attract more people would you think that the 400 cases per million is something that could be adjusted or that seems set for now I think it's set from my standpoint I mean I think most the remanders appreciate the fact that we have a high standard here we're going to adhere to that and I think the modeling that we've done Mr. Petschek has work done is is is working and we don't want to change that formula just to to satisfy another need because again our hope is that the entire northeast and other states as we've seen over the last week their case counts are starting to be reduced so that we can open up the travel area to more people coming into the state safely got it thanks and the question for um secretary Smith is how much remote learning can parents really expect that their kids are going to get uh at humped where there are no teachers and there are kids from a variety of different ages and classes in grade Kevin I don't know if I'm going to be able to answer your question sufficiently I'm hoping that that you know the remote learning will go as planned obviously it's going to be a challenge as we move forward but at the same time I mean we have a dual purpose in sort of opening up these hubs one is making sure that the parents can provide themselves with a living and make it to work and second of all to make sure we have an opportunity here to give the child a place to go where there is interaction where there is some form of opportunities to learn I think we're going to have to just wait and see is this is this better than being in the classroom no but at the same time we're just going to have to wait and see and make adjustments by the way Kevin if we have to uh to um to further help the child that are in these in these child care centers okay thank you very much I'm sorry we're at 1245 uh we uh folks could email me with their follow-up questions after this and we'll be back on Tuesday all right thank you very much for tuning in and again we'll see you on Tuesday