 fellow governors and White House officials, but he will be joining us shortly today. I'll start with an update of our progress with the vaccination program and provide details with some of the upcoming vaccine clinics. Commissioner P check will present our weekly modeling followed by commissioner squirrel who will give a mental health update and then Dr. Levine will give us a health update before the governor joins us with the latest from the White House briefing. First, I want to congratulate all Vermonters. We are now first in the nation for vaccines administered per 100,000 people. This is quite an accomplishment, but we still have more work to do. If you haven't done so already, please make an appointment to be vaccinated. Your participation is critical for us to reach the next milestones in the Vermont forward plan. You can sign up online at healthvermond.gov slash my vaccine or you can call 855-722-7878 to make an appointment. As I mentioned on Friday, we are transitioning our vaccination program to not only provide the mass vaccination sites that you have grown accustomed to, but also to provide more opportunities for walk-ins and pop-up clinics at venues such as colleges, worksites, fairgrounds and speedways. In the future, we are also considering areas where people may assemble for other activities. This is done in an attempt to get as many people vaccinated as possible by making it easy and convenient. As an update, we are offering numerous opportunities to be vaccinated this week, including today at Middlebury College and Bennington College, May 6th at St. Michael's College, May 7th at Northern Vermont University in Linden, May 8th at Castleton University and Northern University in Johnson on May 11th. These clinics are open to all eligible Vermonters and there are some walk-in and walk-in opportunities available at all of these clinics as well. We are also hosting vaccine clinics at the Tumbridge Fairgrounds this Friday, May 7th. And again, registration is preferred, but we also will take a few walk-ins at those facilities. And we are finalizing plans to partner with the State of New Hampshire at the Lancaster New Hampshire Fairgrounds on Friday, May 21st. Turning to racetracks, Bear Ridge Speedway in Bradford is hosting a clinic on Saturday, May 8th from 4 to 7 p.m. And we have a May 8th clinic planned at Devils Bowl Speedway, although this time has not yet been established. We are also looking at an event at Thunder Road. I'll announce the details of those events as we finalize them. Please note, the speedways are walk-ins only. You don't have to register, you just need to show up and you will be vaccinated. Our EMS partners in Newport slash Glover and Calyx will conduct an Essex County barnstorming event, hosting clinics offering Johnson & Johnson vaccine on May 8th and 9th. There are nine locations scheduled, and here are the details. On Saturday, May 8th, the Concord School from 8 to 10 a.m., Lüneburg Common from 11 to 1 p.m., Maidstone Town Office from 2 to 4 p.m., and on Sunday, May 9th, at the East Haven Community Building from 8 to 10 a.m., the Island Pond Fire Station from 8 to 10 a.m., the Newark Street School from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., the Norton Miriam Nelson Municipal Building from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., the Broomfield Silvio Conte Forest Parking Lot from 1 to 3 p.m., and the Canaan High School from 4.30 to 7 p.m., although again, we encourage registrations. Some walk-ins are available at each of these sites. In addition to the clinics, I just announced, there are many other clinics with available appointments throughout the state. You can sign up online at HealthFermont.gov slash MyVaccine, or you can call 855-722-7878 to make an appointment. You can also make an appointment directly with CVS, Walgreens, or Kenny Drugs. We have been successful getting shots in arms, and up to this point, we have been using all of our weekly allocation from the federal government. I want to thank Fermaners for doing their part to get vaccinated. In terms of overall progress as of this morning, 351,300 people have been vaccinated against COVID-19. There's 104,000 have received their first dose, and 247,300 have received their first and last dose. In closing, last night I saw a news story on WCAX about an assisted living facility in Woodstock where a mother and daughter had the opportunity to hug each other again for the first time in a year, and that's because they were both vaccinated. Ironically, I happen to know the mother and the daughter from my days growing up in the area, but it struck me that this is just one of the many reasons to get vaccinated, so that we can visit our loved ones once again. Knowing how difficult it was to restrict visitation in long-term care facilities, this story, and perhaps many others like them, compels me to again request, if you haven't been vaccinated, please make an appointment. There are many more hugs to give as we return to life as it once was. At this time, I'll turn it over to Commissioner Pichek for a weekly update. Thank you Secretary Smith and good morning everyone. We continue to see improving COVID-19 trends across the country, across the region, and here in Vermont as well, with the vaccines really beginning to demonstrate their power to end this awful pandemic if we continue to step up and get vaccinated. This week, Vermont is reporting 537 COVID-19 cases, a slight bump up in cases compared to last week. However, our seven-day average remains stable, decreasing very slightly, and cases reported over the past two weeks are the lowest totals that we've seen in nearly six months. Further, Vermont continues to lead the country in per capita testing both over the last seven days and the last 30 days. So we can be confident that we are continuing to find a significant number of COVID-19 cases that are present in our state. Additionally, when we take a closer look at the cases by age, we see that cases among those 40 and over actually decreased 22% this week, while cases among those under 40 increased 23%. And again, we can explain this by taking a look at the vaccination rates. 78% of Vermonters, 40 and over, have started or completed vaccination, but only 41% of Vermonters under 40 have done the same. Now these age groups did become eligible more recently, but they are not scheduling to the degree that we would like them to, which is particularly true for the 18 to 29-year-old category. In fact, when you compare vaccination uptake by age in Vermont against the U.S. average, you will see that Vermont is far ahead or in some cases pretty far ahead in each age category, except for the 18 to 29-year-olds, where we are actually slightly below the national average. And with Mother's Day coming up this Sunday, there is certainly no better gift that you can give your mom than by taking care of yourself, your friends, and your family by getting vaccinated as soon as possible. Cases were generally stable in counties across Vermont. We did, however, see improvement in Chittenden County and in Orleans County, and again, generally saw improvement in the Northeast Kingdom. However, Essex County did see a jump in cases this week, and this was something that we were concerned about last week, considering the high case rates in Coas County in New Hampshire and the counties in Western Maine as well. It does appear that those counties in New Hampshire and Maine have seen some improvement this week, but again, we want to provide an extra word of caution to those living in the area to make sure that you are getting tested regularly and, most importantly, getting vaccinated. Taking a look at the forecast we presented last week, you can see that we are generally following that trend over the past seven days, and this lower case trajectory is something that we anticipate seeing through the month of May and into June. Further, the CDC ensemble model, which takes a number of different models from across the country, also anticipates cases following in Vermont over the next four weeks. And again, to ensure these trends continue, and we're able to put this pandemic behind us in less than two months, we urge those who have not yet stepped up to get vaccinated to do so as soon as possible. As we were expecting, Vermont's hospitalization rate is starting to see a steadier decrease this week, with overall hospitalizations down close to 13 percent and down 19 percent over the last 14 days. Over the last seven days, Vermont has had the fewest number of current hospitalizations on a per capita basis in the United States. This decline is largely being driven by fewer people over the age of 60 requiring hospitalization. In fact, from March to April, the rate of hospitalization decreased 36 percent for those 60 to 69 and decreased 60 percent for those over 70 years old. Further, with vaccination rates continuing to increase and case rates continuing to decrease in the population 40 and older, we expect to see hospitalization rates to continue their decline through the next few weeks. The improved case and hospitalization trends have continued to favorably impact our fatality rates here in Vermont as well. We did unfortunately report 17 deaths in the month of April, but that was a decrease from the 24 we reported in March and the 71 that we reported in January. Further, our May fatality projection remains unchanged and we anticipate seeing a further decrease in deaths in the month of May, with fatalities in May projected to be as few as five and as many as 15 for the month. Turning to our general vaccination progress, as Secretary Smith mentioned, Vermont continues to be a leader standing at number one on doses administered per 100,000 and standing third in the country on the percent of our population with at least one dose and the percent of our population that is fully vaccinated. And again, when it comes to our elderly Vermonters, our older Vermonters 65 and older, 95.5 percent of them have received at least a single dose and 85.2 percent of them are now fully vaccinated, making us again number one in the country. And even though we want to see stronger uptake from those 18 to 29 and some other states around us and across the country are seeing a declining interest in vaccinations, you can see on the next chart that Vermont continues to have a steady trend and you can see over the last couple of days how we started to stand out from the rest of the country and particularly some of the states that were closest to us. Looking at the next slide, you can also see that the demand for those that have not yet started vaccination is the highest in Vermont compared to any other state. So we continue to have a really strong uptake in terms of those who are starting vaccination when compared to the states around or the states across the country. So again, that really speaks well to the vaccination program today and what we expect to see over the next few weeks. Looking at the Vermont forward plan, you can see that today we stand at 57.4 percent of people in Vermont that have started or completed vaccination. That is per the CDC. If we were to use the 2020 numbers, it would be a little lower, the 2020 census numbers. But in any event, we anticipate that over the next two to three weeks that we will meet our next goal in the Vermont forward plan. That is assuming that we have demand that is consistent with what we've experienced over the past few weeks. But again, the only way that that will become a reality is if those who are not yet vaccinated step up to do so. COVID-19 trends across the region continue to be another bright spot. This week we are reporting 47,000 cases across the region, the fewest cases that we've seen since November 2nd. This represents 12,000 fewer cases than last week, a decrease of over 20 percent. We also saw a decrease this week of 14 percent in terms of hospitalizations around the region and deaths fell as well. Looking ahead, the new regional forecast projects decreasing case trends in each jurisdiction neighboring Vermont over the next six weeks, decreasing to levels that we have not seen since last summer, painting a very optimistic picture for the Northeast and for Vermont in the weeks to come. And at this time, I would like to turn it over to Commissioner Sarah Squirrel. Thank you, Commissioner Piacek. Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for listening in today. It's timely that I can speak with you all today because this month is Mental Health Awareness Month and this week is Children's Mental Health Awareness Week. We know the impact of COVID-19 has had on all of us, especially on our children and youth who have experienced incredible change, chaos, crisis and uncertainty. We also know that even prior to COVID, many of our children and youth were struggling. Our pivot as a state to remote and hybrid learning did leave many of our Vermont children and youth lacking the benefits of access to school, the social interaction, the personal connection, the safety and structure and routine. We must also remember that remote learning does disproportionately impact our most vulnerable children and youth, those with disabilities, special health needs, mental health needs, and those living in poverty. In March, I shared data from the Pace-Vermont study, a collaboration between the University of Vermont and the Vermont Department of Health. This study highlighted that youth ages 12 to 17 reported significantly more depressive symptoms and elevated anxiety in the fall of 2020 as compared to the fall of 2019. The next wave of data for the Winter 2020 study indicates that this trend continues to move in the wrong direction. Teens continue to report increased depressive symptoms even over what was reported in the fall of 2020 and continued elevated increases in anxiety. In addition, in April, we saw an alarming surge in youth presenting in emergency departments for mental health needs. Fortunately, these numbers have decreased recently, but continue to warrant our attention. The data is clear that COVID-19 has and continues to have a significant impact on the mental health of our youngest Vermonters. Our school systems are a critical point of both access to services and supports as well as assessment of need. In calendar year 2020, almost 50 percent of children and youth on Medicaid access their mental health services in a school setting. Fundamentally, our efforts to fully reopen schools have been critical, and I want to commend the efforts of our education leaders, teachers, and support staff in working to achieve this. We also know that now, more than ever, the fundamental building blocks of social and emotional competency are critical to our children and youths overall health and well-being. This is why social-emotional functioning, mental health, and well-being are one of the three legs of the Department of Education's recovery plan and identified as one of the core underpinnings necessary for students' optimal growth and success. The Agency of Education's recovery plan clearly lays out that as our children and youth return to school, we need to attend to their social-emotional well-being, structure, and re-establishing strong and secure relationships. The more that schools can focus and invest in promoting mental health and equipping children with social and emotional skills, the fewer children and youth will develop more serious problems down the road. It is also important to note that schools and educators should know that they are not alone in this. Addressing the social-emotional mental health needs of children and youth can only be done through collective action and partnership between our education, health, and mental health systems. The good news is that Vermont is poised to meet those needs and leverage the assets and strengths that we have. Vermont achieved the number one ranking in mental health access in the nation earlier this year and a lot of this ranking is based on incredible health care coverage for children and access to special education services. We also have one of the best and most revered school-based mental health systems in the country that we refer to as Success Beyond Six, a partnership between our education and mental health systems that we should all be proud of. Success Beyond Six reduces cost to education by leveraging Medicaid and has built and solidified an incredible partnership between our local community mental health agencies and our education partners with Success Beyond Six services and over 90 percent of our supervisory unions. I worked for a community mental health agency and ran a school-based mental health program for over a decade in northern Vermont so I've experienced firsthand how powerful this collaboration can be. I can remember my work in rural Vermont. There was a family in town that we were particularly worried about, likely substance use, mental health issues in the home and young children. On the first day of school that year we became aware of one of the youngest children in the family, a three and a half year old. That three and a half year old got himself on the bus and arrived at his first day of school wearing nothing but a diaper and carrying an empty lunchbox. Now that is resilience. The principal of the elementary school and I worked side by side to support him and his family. I am happy to say they graduated from high school and are working in their community. As mental health and education partners we will continue to work together to address the social emotional and mental health needs of students and as schools fully reopen to ensure that all children have the opportunity to thrive and to meet their full potential. We can also take this opportunity to fully realize the opportunities that summer camps will offer and I would encourage parents and caregivers to go to the summer matters page on the Vermont afterschool website, vermontafterschool.org slash summermatters. Summer 2021 will be an important time for Vermont's youth to re-engage in recreational interests, activities, reconnect with their friends and rebuild that sense of optimism and sense of connection to their communities. Again I want to commend our education system for their efforts to tackle the complexity of reopening schools and the issue of supporting child and youth mental health is not one to be addressed in isolation but together. We should also keep in mind that children and youth are resilient. They have great capacity to adapt and change if we provide the right supports around them. We have a lot of work to do but I have confidence that we can do this that we can support our youngest for monitors to ensure their social emotional and mental health needs are met and they can thrive as we of the state continue to move towards recovery. We can do this because we have some of the best conditions in the country, the strongest partnerships and the moral imperative to inspire us to work together. If there is one thing I have learned in my work is that when our communities, the state, mental health and education partners align towards a common goal there is nothing we cannot accomplish. I also want to acknowledge that as we move towards full recovery as a state these are still hard times for many Vermonters and if you or someone you know is struggling don't be afraid to ask for help and don't be afraid to talk about it. Vermonters have a broad range of free 24-7 confidential mental health supports available to them. You can still call Vermont 211 to access counselors for support or referrals to services. If you or someone you know needs immediate support you can access the crisis text line simply text the letters VT to 741-741 and if you or someone you care about is struggling with thoughts of suicide call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Thank you for the time this morning and I'm going to turn it over to Commissioner Levine. Thank you Commissioner Squirrel and most of you are aware that the commissioner will be leaving office at the end of the month. We wish you the best in your future career and as the leader of the other public health portion of the agency of human services we appreciate her collaboration and leadership and expertise. Regarding my comments cases continue on a positive trajectory with daily reported cases running as low as 34 on Monday and only one day over 100 in the last two weeks. The positivity rate remains 1.1 percent. Hospitalizations continue to trend lower with 17 reported today six in the ICU. The seven-day case rate for Vermont is 88 per 100,000 compared to the national average of 101.6 per 100,000. While I'm always glad to report declining numbers I do want to thank everyone who has been getting vaccinated because this has made a huge difference. At the same time it's important that for Monters especially anyone not yet vaccinated not let up on prevention avoiding crowds wearing a mask keeping a distance and getting tested was still critical to ending this pandemic. Variants of the virus do remain a significant factor in the spread that is still occurring and we need to keep a close eye on them as we move toward the end of the pandemic but keep in mind if the variants were not able to be managed with vaccine they would be seen at increasing rates as we speak but let's not forget we are still in a pandemic. Now maybe we're also used to hearing this that the word has lost some of its impact but just look at how the virus is currently devastating India right now after first waning there and remember what COVID has done already here in the United States. We are very fortunate to have some power over this virus a way to slow it down and even stop it and that is through vaccination of course but we need to use that power to its full potential partway just won't cut it so anyone who has not yet gotten the vaccine especially younger Vermonters who waited patiently as we first protected those who were older and higher risk I want you to know it is your turn now your shot is waiting for you you can join the more than 350,000 Vermonters who have gotten at least one dose that's more than half of the state's entire population for many of you who have not yet taken the time to get vaccinated I know you're not in the group that will never take any vaccine quite the contrary you may just be waiting to see but my question for you now is how long are you going to wait we're going on a year's worth of real-time data and study data that tells us this vaccine has been remarkably effective and safe look at our own experience here in Vermont we almost never see a case in anyone over 65 these days death rates have plummeted especially in those over 65 and 65 and when a death occurs it is almost invariably in an unvaccinated person and we're not hearing about delayed or unanticipated side effects of vaccine months after inoculation instead we are hearing stories of people who got the COVID-19 virus and are having prolonged symptoms or even long-haul syndrome who had not gotten vaccinated the vaccines have now been available here since December late December at that they've been studied in thousands of people been proven to be safe and effective at preventing severe illness and hospitalization and now with months of real-world results to study we see they mirror what was seen in the original studies the vaccine is clearly making a difference in slowing the spread of the virus it is okay to have questions but please don't leave yourself vulnerable to the virus and don't assume others will protect you it's just too risky i've talked here before about how even if you're already vaccinated you still have a role to play you can help others along their path to vaccination whether finding a personal reason to get vaccinated or literally by giving them a ride to a clinic so if you haven't yet i ask you now to reach out to someone in your life especially if they are younger who may not be vaccinated whether you're a parent or a grandparent aunt or uncle or friend maybe the registration system feels daunting or they just don't want to pick up the phone maybe they think there is no clinic close enough to them or they just haven't found that much time in their day or maybe a final exam is standing in the way or like i see in my days as a doctor maybe the idea of a shot just makes them feel a little bit nervous no matter what there's an option available for everyone because Vermonters have already told us they're willing to get vaccinated and Vermont standing as a leader in getting people vaccinated proves this to be true we just need to help get those who are currently unvaccinated to the finish line faster so share your experience and see what you might be able to do to help your influence likely means more than you really know in the meantime as you've been hearing this team will keep doing everything we can to make it as easy as possible from clinics at college campuses and in communities to walk-ins or drive-thrus to even some of the more interesting locations you heard the secretary discuss with the right information from the right person and the right reason they will do it but we need to do this together 100 with this changing virus doing it part way just isn't enough the vaccines available to all now is your time and your turn since the governor isn't here just yet i have a few other comments i'd like to make because in the last several days virtually every epidemiologist and a number of public health leaders like dr. Fauci have been weighing in on the issue of community immunity also called herd immunity some have mentioned that 30 or so of the u.s. population indicate they have yet to be vaccinated asserting that no matter what percentage they give to achieving herd immunity they don't think we'll get there they say we've already taken care of those who are most vulnerable especially to severe illness and there will be less hospitalizations and deaths covid will just become a disease that younger and healthier people get and maybe that's okay but that's not where i stand not in this state where we have a tradition of promoting and preserving good health we need to appeal to vermonters with more than talk about herd immunity and make it real vaccination means protecting vulnerable relatives visiting with family and friends sending kids back to school and adults back to the workplace and continuing to make vermont be the safest state to live you saw the data and the diverging curves showing vermont's vaccination rate continuing on nicely and the rest of the country tailing off significantly it turns out there's only eight states that have a curve that resembles anything close to vermont's and only one other in the northeast which is new york state so to those who have yet to be vaccinated i say what about the outcomes for young people when and if there are enough cases in young people the hospitalizations the long haul covid the disruptions to life due to acute illness and if there's enough spread and transmission what about the impact of new variant strains and breakthrough infections simply put we can do better vermont can do better we know how to do it and are fortunate to have the vaccine and the know-how we'll now go into the question and answer period yep he should be down in the next minute or two so we'll start with calvin and if you have another one for the governor when he arrives we can come back to you doctor will be night um oh wait got away good timing i guess well good morning everyone i uh just got off the phone with fellow governors uh dr fouchie the cvc director dr will linsky white house officials and others um here's what we heard our fizer and madurna will remain relatively steady over the next few weeks as will the johnson johnson allocation so while we don't expect an increase next week it will be steady at our current allocation rate but there is some some good news they're making some changes to the ordering process which would entail creating a federal pool which may allow us to order above our maximum allocation if there are doses that don't get ordered by the states which we believe will be the case previously we couldn't order more than our maximum so if we can keep out demand in vermont this could be extremely beneficial to us so that's about it from the call so next as we mentioned on friday uh this past saturday was green update i want to thank all those who were out there cleaning up the roadways across the state diana and i spent a few hours greening up on saturday and we saw quite a few people out there as well the biggest find for me this year was uh was this i found an iphone uh by the side of i89 near exit seven near borough and pond and this is southbound i plugged it in afterwards and it took a charge so if you think it might be yours just call the office and we'll give it back to you next as you saw in commissioner pjx presentation of vermont continues to be a national leader on vaccinations ranking first in the nation on rate of administration and well over 60 of adults have had at least one shot but we can't let up now putting this pandemic behind us means we need as many vermonas as possible to be vaccinated we've seen incredibly high numbers for those over 65 with almost 95 of them receiving at least one dose but we still have some work to do with our younger populations as of right now only about half of those 30 uh under 30 have either been vaccinated or scheduled their first dose so even though we hit our may first target which helped us move into step two of the vermont forward plan we need to increase our numbers over the next few weeks to make sure we hit our june first goal of over 70 percent of those eligible being vaccinated that last step is critical because we hit that mark by july enough for monas will be fully vaccinated so we can drop mandates and restrictions and get back to more normal times which i know we're all looking forward to and we all want so if you want to attend concerts fairs and festivals if you want restaurants and bars to stay open past 10 o'clock do your part and get vaccinated this truly is a moment of service on friday i talked a little bit about my dad and the greatest generation who sacrificed so much for all of us when their nation called them to serve people like my father answered as some of you have heard me talk about before shortly after d-day my dad was on his way to liberate st. low france when his tank in a land mountain losing both his legs he spent two years recovering at welter eed hospital but he thought he was one of the lucky ones because many of his fellow soldiers never made it home they answered their country's call they stepped up not for themselves but for the greater good and helped secure the freedoms behold so dear now your state your country are asking you to step up and this ask is much less than what many before us have been asked to do we just want you to get vaccinated by doing so you'll not only help yourself but the people around you the businesses and your community your friends your parents your kids your even your grandparents who might have served themselves together we've shown the way during this once in a century challenge and all of our monitors should be proud of what we've accomplished but we're in the last few laps of this race and now isn't the time to let up now is the time to focus and finish this off for the win getting a vaccine is easier now than has ever been and there are plenty of appointments so i'll leave you with one more thought and one more reason to get vaccinated if you're wondering what to get your mom for mother's day which by the way is this weekend send her a picture of of you getting your shot i bet that will mean a great deal to her so with that we'll go back to questions we'll go right back to calvin thanks governor so either for you or for dr levine so of course we're we're hearing that potentially next week um kids 12 to 15 may be eligible for the um the Pfizer shot so you know should that go through i guess what what are you expecting the uptake to to be and i guess how how confident are you that that parents are going to sign their kids up the shot yeah i'll let dr levine answer that but we did talk about that a little bit on the call with the white house and as you said we're looking forward to that emergency authorization authorization i believe there will be a good number of people who will sign up but dr levine might be able to think into that we're thinking there's in the 25 to 27 000 number of teenagers in those eight ranges and if their vaccination expectation matches that of their parents and the curve in vermont we think there'll be very strong uptake in that group we also think that the timing will probably be sometime next week everyone's got a different date but their thought is that the advisory group will have made their decision within a day or so the decisions from fda and cdc will occur and we'll be prepared for that should coincide pretty nicely with the way our vaccine effort is coming out we have a lot of the pediatric community already engaged working with communities and families and having them understand the value of the vaccine as well and sort of a prelude to getting the vaccine and i think my second question is probably for commissioner squirrel so i understand that the administration and lawmakers you guys are working on a plan to relieve the backlog of youth that we're seeing in emergency rooms that are waiting sometimes for days on end for acute mental health care i guess i'm just wondering what what does that plan look like in the interim short term medium long term and then i guess how how much do you expect this to cost and maybe is it going to be paid for by by federal funds or what sort of avenues do we have there yeah thanks for the question i appreciate it first i just want to know that this is not necessarily a new issue but one that is certainly been exacerbated by the pandemic having children on youth waiting for extended periods of times and emergency departments is unacceptable it is a systemic issue that requires a systemic response which is why this morning the agency of human services presented our actions and strategies immediate short term midterm and long term solutions to address this issue second i think we have to keep in mind that long wait times and emergency departments whether it's children youth or adults are symptomatic of a broader issue in the system which is flow so when we start to see backups in emergency departments it usually means that there's a backlogs among us for example we did see an uptick in youth presenting in emergency departments in april i'm happy to report that that is trending down as of today one of the primary issues that was contributing to that was lack of step down options for those children youth who were in the bridal bro retreat at that time thus indicating that some of our solutions need to be on residential capacity step down capacity and those are some of the solutions the department for children and families put forward today in addition to that we can't ignore the fact that the pandemic has continued to have an impact on our system of care services not being provided fully in person decreased capacity in our hospital diversion programs decreased capacity in our residential programs as i noted we have already worked immediately with the vermont department of health to adjust some of the guidance thus allowing community mental health partners and agencies to provide more in-person services and supports in the community as well as lifting some of the restriction on our hospital diversion programs and residential programs thus increasing capacity thus increasing access to care thus creating that flow in the system that we would like to see from a resource standpoint we're in a great position as a state right now we have put forward recommendations supported by the administration and the governor to implement mobile response mobile response is a direct antidote to this problem it will allow us to work more proactively in communities providing crisis services to children youth and families in their homes we are looking forward to piloting this as a demonstration site in rotland along with looking at other opportunities within the state we are also well positioned to deploy and invest many of the additional federal funds that are coming into the department of mental health in a targeted way to address these needs we presented some of those options the legislature this morning and that will all be done in collaboration with our community mental health partners and with our hospital partners as well and i guess just a follow-up i mean do you have a specific you know dollar amount potentially of how much this might you know you'd like to see of our american rescue plan funds taken to this and also i guess when you look at the the need i guess for investments in beds and facilities i mean what what does that look like you know physically you know what kind of concrete steps does will that look like well the good news is we've already made strong investments in our community mental health and system of care for example 71 percent of the department of mental health budget goes to community mental health agencies and resources we have always demonstrated our commitment to support our community mental health agencies the provision of almost nineteen point seven million dollars in crf funds to our community mental health agencies and as we move forward we look at what we have proposed in the f y 22 budget in addition we have over eight million dollars in additional federal funding coming into the department of mental health there are many needs in the system we will certainly be prioritizing the targeted investments of many of those flexible resources as we move forward and some of these ideas and solutions to expand capacity steve long champ local 22 local 44 with that again going back to the 12 to 16 year olds that if it occurs it would open up the vaccination to middle and high schoolers is there a plan in place to kind of jump on that as we did with the teachers and get to the schools and and the parents just carry out we have we have been anticipating this and do have a plan in place yes steven you'll probably see a hybrid model where you can have the option of going to a mass clinic or we'll have some options going to the schools as well so you'll probably see a hybrid model as we move forward we'll be ready to move forward on this plan as we were we had the the 16 to 18 year olds and as we were with everyone else on this but it given the age of this it has to be a little bit more of a hybrid model okay so how does that work parents maybe a sheet goes home with the kids and the parents sign off on it yeah or the parents can come the parents maybe in in if it's a mass back site that the parents accompany the the children um even at a school site maybe the parent would want to accompany the child as they move forward i think those are the things you know the the details of a parent child relationship that we're just going to have to work through in the next about two days any sort of reward incentive i.e. free recess something like that we we have discussed incentives but i don't think you need an incentive to get a vaccine a life-saving vaccine i think is incentive enough go to the phones now starting with steward ledbetter nvc five good morning uh colleges are trying to figure out the fall plan and locally i'm the only one i'm aware of that that is a decided to oh i'm sorry there was some noise regarding requiring vaccinations for returning students this fall do you have any recommendations for vermont colleges on what they should do you know this is a discussion that's happening nationwide and uh i think there is going to be a path forward for those who are those universities and colleges and i and i think it's necessary i think that's creating a path where there's going to be more normalcy in the fall maybe dr lean can answer further but but again what do you think is this is a part of the future there are already five schools in vermont that have voiced the idea of mandate vaccine for the fall so the movement is already beginning there are over a hundred schools in the country and i'm sure that number has increased since the news report of the hundred came out so i think that the academic university college community is speaking with its actions and saying that they would prefer to have normal operations or operations as close to what normal used to be and to do that effectively they want to make sure that they have a vaccinated student body they have a lot of issues to still you know get through in terms of their faculty their staff colleges are big places employ a lot of individuals so they'll have a lot of other things to address but certainly the discussion is going to colleges it's going to the business community it's very early in the stages right now in this country but it's being talked about with sufficient vigor that i think we're seeing a lot of actions on that front whatever with whatever advice a state would give the fact of the matter is those communities are already speaking lisa rathkin associated press thank you the health department mentioned that there are more clinics taking walk-ins i was wondering are people taking advantage of those and is there any way to put a target though to this uh younger group that you're concerned about yeah we definitely want to meet them where they are and we are seeing some success we saw that in part when we had the drive through a type of approach and we have to walk in that you have to recall which was in part of the success secretary smith anything to add to that at least the walk-ins are going to be we're doing it because a lot of people want convenience and walk-ins provides that convenience we're encouraging walk-ins in all our clinics now so when i listed all those sites that we'll be doing vaccinations in the next week or so i said that most of them would be accepting walk-ins and and the drive-ups to the speedways for example at devils bowl and others is walk-ins only we as the governor mentioned in barton we saw an enormous success with walk-ins and so we're we're taking this tack where we're including walk-ins in our strategy in terms of our vaccination and as i as i mentioned in my opening remarks we're transitioning from that mass clinic sort of concept to these opportunities at various venues and opening these various venues up to walk-ins i think i i think that will help in the age group that we're looking at to target which is the 18 to 29 year old and did you notice if you had more a significant amount of that age group in the barton clinic yeah i haven't i haven't looked at the the demographics and that that's a good question that i will look at but it just it just goes if we take the vaccine where where they are it just goes for reason that will will pick up that age group but one of the things i mentioned is going to various venues we've been talking about church street having a vaccination site on church street on occasion maybe down at the waterfront as well in burlington but not only burlington but elsewhere throughout the state where there are people that get together in downtown areas and the various things like that we're we really want to make sure that vermont stays number one and that we get as many people vaccinated as possible as dr levine said the more that we can get people vaccinated the better it is for the state the better it is for the country okay thank you cameron poquette sainald messenger hi there is a question for the governor um i wanted to ask about you've mentioned potential for asking for more vaccines in the federal allocation i was wondering what is vermont's current cap and what could you see the acting for we could ask well our current cap is we've been been allocated based on population um i think that's been around i shouldn't say this i think it's around 20 000 per week but but we can get you the exact number uh what the what they said is you could you could ask for as much as 50 more on a weekly basis so if you saw a need where you're having more demand or you're having a mass uh vaccine clinic clinic of some sort and needed more vaccine you could ask for that up to 50 percent and it really does depend on on how much is in the federal pool but i will add you know or a small state and asking for up to maybe 10 000 doses wouldn't be a big ask for us in some respects on a federal level so i think this is a an improvement of the system if uh if it's not being used in other areas we would we would then just make the ask and we would get that the following week and we would know within a day or two whether that they could commit to that all right and i also have a question from the leader here um regarding the school so um i believe one of the current cvc guidelines that schools but the school can't return it in person then it's recommended to form a promote learning the offer you know depending on how vaccination rates go um and if the vaccine has opened up to younger age groups i mean could vermont potentially allow some leeway on that cvc guidance to allow more in person uh if there are do happen to be some schools that um can't quite get back to full in person um well we're encouraging all schools to get back to in person um even before the end of this school year there's still time so that fits into our strategy and hopefully by fall we'll be able to offer that age range that was uh mentioned the 12 12 and over so that that shouldn't be a question and we know that there i think maderna is doing some trials for a younger population i think it's six to 12 at this point in time so there may be some more good news by fall in that regard so so i everything points to uh we should be back to i would think almost all in person instruction by fall great thank you and your record call me record uh yes thank you good morning uh this one for secretary smith um now that the vaccine is available to everyone and there's at least potential lock-in to every clinic does the health department website allow for monsters to search and and view the entire list of clinics without having to create an account and log in to the registration system i would think that would be lower the bar for awareness and access uh yeah i'll check i'll check into that um and see if there's uh now that we're doing walk-ins you know as the way that we have been doing it is you log into the system uh you register for walk-ins let me just take a look at that's a good question let me take a look at it make sure we adjust um are sort of forward approaching and making sure that the list of of clinics is out there i think it is on the website but i will i will double check if it is it's it's pretty well buried okay and my follow-up question is when someone does choose to register and go looking for appointment what's the average um what's the average delay from when someone logs in and schedules an appointment to when they actually receive their first dose now yeah it's about two weeks still two weeks so maybe the best option is to live for a long time well there you know it depends on where you are i say on average two weeks but you can find clinics if depending on where you want to drive you can find clinics that are going to be quicker than that um i say i say two weeks not to over-promise to be honest with you thank you lisa lumis the value reporter good afternoon my first question is about the remote cases by age slide and this on today's slide desk it shows for the last three weeks the highest number of cases in those 20 to 29 year old 20 to 29 years old the second highest number of cases is between the 10 and 19 year old it is possible to get any further breakdown on the ages in that 10 to 19 year old age band are we really seeing a significant increase in cases in 10 to 12 to 13 year olds i'll let uh go to repeat checkings about yes well lisa that is something we certainly can provide you we provided these these 10 year increments just um you know to be uniform with a lot of other measurements but i know uh even though those cases have gone up cases in schools have been low with April vacation and then even this week they were relatively low compared to to past weeks but again those age groups are still disproportionately high in terms of the cases that they're seen so happy to provide uh whether it's next tuesday or whether it's to you directly happy to provide a further breakdown of those um by the age that you'd like still there lisa lisa this is part i think i'm sorry connection at the counter uh i heard someone just say my name yeah yeah julie it's mike charling uh i was going to say the same thing that sounds like the conference dropped so we should hold for a minute i think hello you're still there lisa we hear you i okay can you repeat your most recent question it might have dropped for a second yeah i think commissioner petech did answer my first question my second question is probably for commissioner herrington um reader who was a state employee received a letter from the unemployment office about fraudulent claims while talking to someone at the call center she verified that the hackers had her driver's license number mailing address and her state salary level she wanted to know which databases the hackers had access to and what other personal information may have been compromised i just get into my mute button um to your specific question it's not necessarily that they have access to a specific state database um but uh what we are finding is that the hackers if you will or uh fraudsters are pulling from compromised data that could go as far back as 10 15 years it could be as part of um you know some other large national data breach i think at some point all of us have probably been informed along the way that our data may have been compromised by either some large online shopping store or some other instance so from that perspective what we're actually seeing is people you know we we do know that expiry in at one point has been breached in years past so that would be another instance where someone could identify that those data pieces so from that perspective it doesn't take much in the in the world of locked data to come up with a name a social security number a date of birth a mailing address someone's income because they're reported at so many different levels and so many different points i would also say that you know state employee salaries are also public information and can be found openly on the web so if they knew that this person was a state employee um and and wanted to file using that information they could also pull that information in by searching the the public database for employee salaries so but what we're finding is it's more of a coordinated national and international crime ring and they're pulling on old data from large institutions that could be compromised anytime in the past it's not necessarily that there was some state database or anything locally that was essentially compromised that led to this do these people need to take any new or extra security precautions will they be receiving any monitoring as the people who had the fraudulent or the incorrect 1099s sent out so i swear yeah i want to i want to draw a clear distinction there um you know the issue with the 1099 situation um was due to a circumstance occurred um by the department and on behalf of the state and so you know we felt obligated to provide protection of these individuals due to the error that occurred in this case um you know this is simply someone outside of the department um getting their hands on private information and then using that to try to file a claim and we are stopping i would say a majority of the fraudulent filings but the data that they're using didn't come from the department or didn't come from the state in any way that was data that was compromised probably through some other third party vendor or loss of data um so i i do encourage people and i would encourage people to look at our website we have sent fraud alerts and notices um out over the past week and a half uh including press releases to the to the media about what um individuals should do not only if they believe they've been subject to ui fraud but just in fraud in general the easiest thing they can do or or the first thing they should do is if they believe they've been subject to fraud and someone has filed a fraudulent claim they should contact the department they should complete our online uh web form uh fraud report uh that will go to our fraud team so we can stop the claim um an individual that has a fraudulent claim filed on their behalf is held harmless in those cases so we stop the claim and we work with law enforcement to pass information on so they can pursue investigation but we do not hold the individual whose identity was stolen um you know uh in any type of of uh you know trying to recap from money from them uh due to no fault of their own so um they're usually held harmless in those circumstances i will say that we know that um you know this is a good indication for both to and we know that it means someone else has their information so um they should be taking necessary steps to protect their information whether that's just simply um monitoring closely their financial accounts and credit information they can also put on a free temporary security freeze on their credit um or they could choose um you know their own cost to enroll in some type of identity protection um but this is in line with what we are seeing nationally um and it's impacting you know hundreds of thousands if not millions of uh americans across the country um and it seems to be just moving from state to state using people's identity to try to receive uh benefit thank you very much that's it for me Mike john adieu the islander uh thanks Jason uh governor uh we had some questions about when the legislature will be going home that here and uh apparently word is they're going to take at least another extra week uh past the planned deadline uh readers we've heard from say they're concerned that the legislative session was supposed to be designed primarily for covid issues but the legislators have backed strayed to other topics that weren't covid related or even urgent issues and now this morning we heard they made plans to bring the legislators back for four more weeks sometime in the fall just wondering what you heard and what the expenses for the taxpayers for each day that they are in the session um well obviously I don't control the legislature so this is uh whatever they decide to do um they made the claim early on that they were going to focus on the uh covid related issues and I would say that they have strayed away from that a bit um in terms of uh coming back uh again I would just remind everyone uh there are still opportunities for um vetoes uh to be honest perfectly honest with you uh and they would have to come back I think they have a veto date uh a veto override date of uh sometime in late June so they may be coming back then um and they are uh considering from what I've heard maybe coming back in October based on what we might learn from the federal government there is a an infrastructure package that President Biden is considering Congress is going to be taking up and if there is any movement there I think the legislature has an interest in coming back then but time will tell that's uh totally up to them separate branch of government can you do you know or can you find out maybe even for next time I realize it may not be right in your memory here but what percentage of bills that have been forwarded to you are actually covid related this year yeah I don't I don't have that uh Mike but uh we can take take a look next time yeah we can take a look yeah okay and just one follow-up from the other day we have in fact heard from some more state employees since the press conference that they are in fact have been asked about whether they have the vaccine or have to prove it in light of the responses from the other day one state employee is wondering if it's possible for somebody in authority whether it's human resources commissioner or the secretary of administration to send a memo out to all the state employees and especially the supervisors so it's clear that asking about shots and demanding written proof is outside the bounds from what I understood the answer to be I understand you know word of mouth is hard to to do when you're spreading it to six or seven thousand state employees but it seems this person seemed to think the memo might be a good way or posting it on the state website maybe uh secretary young maybe on the line could comment on this uh thank you governor I am on the line thank you Mike uh I I personally am not aware of the um situations that you're mentioning where employees have been asked and I will uh circle back to our commissioner of human resources and find out what communications that any have been sent to date and um follow up on on that idea uh and think about what we can do thank you very much I appreciate it cap wcax hi so for the walk-in clinics that are the two-dose shots how does that work for a follow-up do people make appointments on site for that second dose or do you plan a second walk-in clinic for a few weeks after in that same location that's a great question cat and when we've been working out the last few days we'll make an appointment uh for those people uh in a follow-up clinic we're just working out the logistics now but yeah that that's basically what it would do we would either assign them a clinic that we already know about or we would do a follow-up clinic and make sure we notify them but they will they will know where they have to go and what what they have to do to get their second shot are you concerned at all that people who did walk-ins for the convenience factor may not show up for their second dose i i'm not that concerned if they're showing up for their first dose they'll show up for their second dose i mean um why show up for your first dose if you're not going to show up for your second dose we we've had limited um limited people that have not showed up for their second dose so there isn't a huge um uh sort of number of people who have not shown up for their second dose in our experience since since december uh there are some but they that it isn't a huge number so i don't i don't foresee us having an issue with with that whether it's walk-in or whether it's a a mass clinic or a drive-up or anything else if it's a drive-up uh obviously we'll have to do a second clinic on a drive-up but the um you know i i i just don't see that as an issue and then how is the state accounting for people who get their shots in another state so i had a viewer who asked this question after saying you know hey i never told anyone in florida anything about having a remont address when i got my vaccine there and i have to assume on the upper valley side that some demonstrators are getting their shots into cancer so are we potentially more vaccinated than our numbers show or do we have a really definitive way that we keep track of when people get their shots in other states yeah with health care facilities it's a lot easier to answer that the answer is yes we get we get notified from a health care uh facility in in sort of the registry we get notified by primary care if it's done in another state as well what we're doing now is following up the databases along the border for example new hampshire um and and more particular we're just making sure that we capture everybody in esssex county um and that we are going to the pharmacies now and asking for uh records from the pharmacy on the new hampshire side as you know about three weeks ago new hampshire allowed anybody to come and get vaccinated in their state um we're just making sure that we capture those people and bring them bring them forward but to that's where the complication comes in in terms of health care facilities a dart myth for example regularly reports other hospitals on the other side regularly report other health care facilities regularly report um and we're just getting the notification from the cdc in the next week or so where we'll get also um department of defense data uh for vermoner's national guard for example and uh va data uh that will be coming our way so we'll have a more complete picture of this as we move forward but it sounds like there is some opportunity for someone who likes got vaccinated in florida which is not a quarter of a month potentially not be counted even there there are some there's some there is some potential for that we think it's limited great thank you greg lanero the counterer good afternoon governor staff uh quick follow-up on the identity theft question uh i think lisa was the one that asked it uh one of the one of the replies to the question was that the information could have been stolen from people 10 or 15 years ago and and i kind of hurt my ears but because the state breach in data from the from the health from the labor department uh covered those people for identity theft protection for one year uh i'm wondering if if the state should actually be covering those people for a decade or two with identity theft protection commissioner herrington i don't know if you have any more information on that i thought that was offered for more than that one year you're correct governor it's actually more than a year we don't typically announce what the full term is simply so we don't inform the fraudsters who are typically listening in when it will lapse or end i do think it becomes a challenge as you know with people being able to hold on to data for that long um covid is a pretty unique circumstance in this regard um and i think what we did look at is what is the industry standard um what is recommended both by our insurance company as well as identity protection services that were out there and that's how we landed on um the the amount and length of coverage um you know which is is pretty standard to my understanding um when there is some type of of data loss uh do the people know do people that you're protecting know how long they're protected for yes they do okay and i would use this opportunity actually to remind folks that if they were a claimant in the 2020 calendar year they are still eligible to enroll in ID theft protection uh and they have until may 19th to be able to do that um and before uh before that window closes uh this may be a question for mike charling uh or or the governor is not sure they're listening in to the local municipal uh first and testimony that they're from understaffing issues at the the vsp barracks in st alton's which after our discussions close to a year ago uh certainly you know brings up the question how understaffed is the state police and from an administration point of view is that how you're helping to balance the budget and and is this uh understaffing issue improving um a couple of things i think uh it's important to recognize we have uh staffing issues throughout the state in all different sectors private and public uh combined um i'll ask maybe i'll ask commissioner charling and then possibly um secretary young as well to comment on this we opened up for positions we had a freeze on during the pandemic but we have opened up and we're at this point in time trying to hire more state employees good afternoon and that thanks for question mike charling from public safety the uh the freeze that was in place during cova did not affect one positions in the state police for emergency communications dispatchers as the governor indicated uh staffing uh and workforce is an issue in all sectors it is an increasing concern in law enforcement in particular not only in the state police but across the entire array of law enforcement in uh in vermont and beyond um that it's been a challenge for more than a decade that challenge is uh being exacerbated on a week to week basis at this stage uh in terms of the state police staffing um you know the challenges continue i wouldn't uh indicate that we're at a crisis level at this point but each barracks is dealing with vacancies in a variety of different areas um and uh the hiring pool is shrinking and so for anybody listening who is who's interested in a career serving your community both state police and and other municipal departments and sheriff's offices there are a variety of vacancies available can i get a list of those vacancies i uh if you send us a message i will follow up with you i agree i think that's probably it for now i appreciate your time and uh thank you governor yeah thanks uh bregg secretary young is there anything you wanted to add to that uh governor i think i could just add that we did have a hiring freeze um that had uh quite a few exceptions including law enforcement and positions critical to the emergency response and operation so i know we have been recruiting and and um hiring throughout the last year in some key positions we did open it up um about i think maybe two to three weeks ago and we're starting to recruit and i think we'll have some better data uh in in the next few weeks as to whether we're seeing a sort of shortage of applicants as we've now opened up the entire workforce um for recruitment and wallace allen seven days hi thanks governor uh do you support removing the the year 2020 from the calculation for the unemployment trust fund goal as you know the base size of the trust fund is based on um the year you know how how many people applied for unemployment in the year and if 2020 is in the goal the trust fund would jump from 500 million to a billion and um i know lawmakers are looking at this right now in house commerce yeah um as you also know and this was something that we started talking with the legislature about before the session started and said that it was imperative that we take action on this and they had said they would uh it's still stalled as of right now which is critical in in this in this time because as you said this is going to if we don't do something now this is going to further impact a struggling business climate here in vermont and through no fault of their own so i do support taking action on this i think removing 2020 is reasonable i think that that gets to where we are we may have to take further action later but that would that would help right now but we provided language we've provided testimony and we're doing everything we can to get the legislature to take this up and solve this issue just just this one issue you don't have to combine it with all the other initiatives within uh multiple bills just to take care of this one issue because it's uh it's critical right now uh commissioner herrington i might uh ask as far as your concern i think there's a date uh that we need to take action or this goes into effect and we have no choice but to to ask the business community to step up that's correct governor as you mentioned we brought this up actually last year around september with the various committees of jurisdiction we typically begin the process of assigning tax rates to individual businesses beginning in march and into april we postponed that work in hopes that the the legislature would move forward and and act to provide some necessary immediate relief to employers and are still waiting for that to happen so we are on a very short timeline right now in order for us to set the tax rate um slot the individual businesses and inform them prior to july 1st when the new tax rate would take effect and so we are you know roughly about a week or so away from needing to set that rate or set the tax schedule if you will and without action uh by the legislature we will end up in tax schedule five going from one which is the lowest to tax schedule five which is the highest um and and as you said our fear is that this will be a burden that that some businesses uh can't withstand and and we're trying to avoid that at all costs and i might also add uh this is directly related to covet and this should be prioritized it should have been prioritized long before now thank you um this other question is a little bit it's a little easier um for people who are um working outdoors does your relaxation of the math mandate include them but if they're they're doing their jobs outdoors they don't have to wear a mat yeah it's uh it sounds easier um but it may get complicated um by osha and we are looking into that at this point in time obviously those who have the occupational safety and health act takes precedent over almost everything um but we're asking the business community to use some common sense we have relaxed our policy in terms of not having to wear a mask outside if you're can keep six feet away from someone else um but that doesn't provide for those who need to wear a mask uh on a job site for let's say uh with uh with some of the requirements by uh osha and vosha so again we'll provide more guidance on this i know it's been an issue with some of the businesses and uh we need to react to that to provide some clarity you do you just have the power to say okay you don't have to do it anymore no um because we are under uh the osha which is a federal requirement the occupational safety and health act is a federal requirement on any job site um so and uh that impacts employers directly so we don't have uh ours doesn't supersede theirs they take precedent what's that when you say we need to react to that what can you do because i think that there's there's some confusion as to what we're asking or what we're allowing uh and again if you could if you could let's just say it this way and we'll again we'll provide more clarity but if you're on a job site before covid and uh you could go without a mask and then you can go without a mask now um that's my interpretation but we want to make sure that we provide the best guidance for if you had to wear a mask before covid on a job site you're going to have to wear a mask now so again that's the type of clarity i'm i'm hoping that we can provide started thank you joseph dresser the barton chronicle hello this might be for secretary smith uh i'm curious johnson and johnson left over after the barton clinic or whether you've got enough walk-ins to use up the entire supply well i think we had enough for about 400 and we had a less than that show up but we didn't um we didn't dispose of those we utilize them in other clinics so they didn't go to waste no i didn't i just was curious just to whether um when uh secretary smith was talking about success whether you had that level of success or something left as i recall there about 215 appointments i think we had i think there was under 400 in the end but i think we had over maybe a hundred walk-ins and it was pretty remarkable if you think about it we we didn't uh we didn't even open this clinic up until 10 a.m on a saturday and then on tuesday it was open i mean that that was just to register so this was by the media and word of mouth and our website and social media and so forth but to get that many people into an area that has a very small population i think population of sx county is somewhere around uh 68 000 people so that's i think that's we did pretty well yes i i'm not going to dispute that um it was very full second question and maybe this is for dr levine but i'm not guessing right today um it's about the astrazeneca vaccine and whether he has any idea whether they will ever ask for emergency authorization in the united states and if not whether that might um people's willingness to take it in other parts of the world given that it's uh less expensive and easier to store and use than uh visor and madama yeah i think that is a dr levine question but i will also say that your first question was a secretary smith question i was just able to answer it okay well thank you i need to get him to keep answering my questions so so i don't have a great deal of insight into what the astrazeneca executives are are doing or discussing with the federal government uh i do know that as you kind of characterized that they there certainly aren't um rushing into the eua process and now as you can see we're at a stage of vaccination in the country where i'm not sure how much difference it would make because we have a lot of vaccine for the other three platforms and they're all except in the eight states that i mentioned they're all in states that are having decreasing vaccination rates but nonetheless the stockpile of astrazeneca in our country is rather large and the investment that was made by our government to get doses ahead of time just like they did with some of the other companies so i do know that a lot of that is going to be shipped to other parts of the world knowing that it's received approval in many other countries of the world and there are places that desperately need vaccine so it's certainly going to be sent other places even if it doesn't get the eua here or go for the eua here and i don't think that's going to um impair its use i mean there are select countries that have not have said they're not going to use it one was denmark i believe the other was south africa but that was much more because of its performance against the variant that's in south africa but uh there are plenty parts of the world that could use it and um should use it uh and i believe that's an important thing that our country will be doing to uh encourage its use but i don't know if there are a lot of new ua schedule at all or ever will be can't answer that well thank you very much erin tango vermont digger sounds like um you know you guys are kind of pushing for vermont to still try to aim for herd immunity or something close to it um even if the rest of the nation has a low vaccination rate but what would it mean for vermont on term if we have herd immunity and the rest of the country doesn't um you know we certainly get a lot of out-of-state visitors and tourists you know what are the implications of of of vermont kind of being this island of herd immunity um in the rest of the nation yeah i think it makes it even all that more imperative for us to protect ourselves you know we can do that pretty easily by receiving the vaccination so if we can protect ourselves the more people we can get to do that the better off we're going to be because as you said we are affected by a number of high population centers around us we we want tourism we need it here in the state so um but it'd be you know again imperative that we protect ourselves in order to do that yeah i couldn't agree more uh the other factor that is um if we protect ourselves to that degree there will be very little um virus transmission within the state of vermont there'll be some because there will be everywhere um it's still believed that this is going to become sort of an endemic virus where there's it doesn't disappear but it's around so even if somebody from a less well vaccinated area comes into the state with the virus it isn't going to go very far and while it may impact that individual who had it in the first place its ability to be transmitted across the population of vermont is going to be limited and we're still going to be very protected from that so we shouldn't see a lot of variant strains coming in and then proliferating because the only way they proliferate is to have unvaccinated people to be transmitted to so that would be the goal so it shouldn't deter us from trying to achieve our own goals in vermont of trying to have as much community immunity as possible and that and that's the course we're headed on so that's that's how i look at that um so new jersey recently announced this um rather viral get a shot and get a beer uh campaign where people who are vaccinated can get free beer from certain breweries and it reminded me of a um you know planned idea from long ago that people might be able to get a free creamy coupon from getting vaccinated whatever happened to that oh that that idea is alive and well um and we're just figuring out where to deploy it actually um i believe the number is in the 10 000 creamy coupon range so um stay tuned those will be available um i i think they're not being used as a incentive so much more reward i would say um because um well i mean everybody wants a creamy especially on a hot spring or summer day but the reality is i don't think that's going to make the difference in someone's decision but at the same time why shouldn't they get rewarded if they happen to be there so we're going to be able to um deploy those and we just have to figure out how to operationalize that and i all the students really like that free food i i could definitely be as an incentive rather than a reward but uh yeah thank you same equation for my business magazine hi governor you mentioned earlier in the press conference about the potential veto session and i was wondering about the uh the budget bill basically they've they've cut in half the the amount of ARPA funding at this moment at this speaking anyway uh they're willing to spend this year and also they've also cut back some of your plans but would that assuming that it was just cut in half and they're saving half for next year would that work for you or or do you really need yeah there's some other factors um that our showstoppers in some respect for me um one of them being both the senate and the house took a portion of the rooms and meals tax that we had dedicated for water quality and they are supplementing ARPA money for that six points on the something we agreed to two years ago was it was uh it was uh i guess well received by the eba by clf by everyone we had struggled with that as you might remember we struggled for years uh trying to agree on a funding source i think the legislature had wanted to create a new i mean i remember all the different initiatives to create a new tax in order to to satisfy the the water quality issue that we were facing so i kept saying that we had enough capacity within the system to do that and we finally came to agreement on that and used six points of the of the rooms of meals to do that well now they're taking that away or they're saying five years and they're going to supplement ARPA money which doesn't get us from my perspective doesn't get us any further on water quality because you're taking away the money source you're just using some creative counting to do it and free up other money for other purposes so that um that's something that i couldn't agree to and i'm still looking you know we have enough money in the system as i said before back in january we had a two hundred million dollar surplus and there were a number of initiatives one-time initiatives that i put forward in the budget that i presented and since then the surplus has grown it looks like it's going to be to the magnitude maybe 300 could get up to 400 million in the end so there's no reason to play this shell game you know we can they can get what they want and use some of the surplus money that we know is going to be there they don't have to use ARPA this one-time money think of it is taking a loan out you wouldn't use loan money to fulfill budgetary ongoing budgetary concerns and this is the way i look at this this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for us we can't blow this we can't squander we have to to have a plan in place and and i haven't seen a plan either i mean i put forth a plan on how i would spend the billion dollars over the next four years and i haven't seen anything from the legislature yet so they moved in the right direction they did provide for more transparency which i appreciate and they did reduce some of the the money that was spent for ARPA but but again we haven't even received the the instructions from the treasury yet either nor have we received the money so we have a long ways to go i'm hopeful the house will take another look at this and see how we can all get what we need out of this budget because i i think there's enough money there it's just the question of how we're spending that money well they have to move pretty quickly at this point right i mean what would be the deadline for the you know the house that covers committee to come through with the plan it would be acceptable well they don't there's i mean they can stay there as long as they want to get this right or they can come back in in june we'll we'll take care of it then okay thank you Kevin Devin Bates local 22 local 44 yeah i had a question for dr. labine i'm seeing that visor plans to file for full u.s approval and the differences there would allow them to market directly to consumers and it could make the booster shots available to the public later on without needing to go through the emergency authorization again my question is as you know we're talking about trying to reduce vaccine hesitancy even though that's to a lesser degree here in vermont but do you think a full authorization would move the needle on that at all and convince some people who are on the fence and are there any other aspects of this full authorization process that you're watching yes so you're talking about going from an ua to an approval state i assume right yeah yes um so you know i i frankly don't think within vermont there's that kind of resistance to vaccination that would be determined by people thinking that an ua is an experimental kind of thing because we've educated a lot and ua actually still requires a lot of checkmarks on a lot of boxes um with regard to effectiveness and safety so this is about that time in the natural cycle when you would hope that approval could occur because of the number of months the vaccine's been in use and more importantly the number of months follow up from the original studies where the vaccine's been in use so i don't think that's going to tip the balance in vermont i think vermonters have been accepting of all of the science that we provided them to this pointed time with regard to the booster you know a booster still requires an approval process it's not you know dr woodcock from who's the interim fd8 commissioner has been careful to say it's nothing like what they went through to get the first approval um and it's uh it's it's fairly brisk and doesn't require a lot of pre-work if you will especially because the booster would either be extremely similar if not the same as the original or it would if it's the mRNA vaccine perhaps be adjusted a little to account for one or two of the variant strains that might be present at the time so that process is going to be very quick and frankly by the time anyone would require a booster which would be a minimum of six months after the first shot and most people are talking further nine 12 months i think a lot of these vaccines will have already been formally approved uh just by the passage of time being appropriate for their approval to come up right and then a question for secretary smith as well i was wondering if you could just kind of dive into a little bit what we're seeing through the first a few days or weeks at these walking clinics and some of the metrics you're looking for as the state decides where to expand this to other ways that this can be used to to reach people in rural locations etc what have you seen in the early stages of this and how does it bode for sort of the future of walk-ins i think it bodes well for the future of walk-ins we saw this success in barton as you know we are going to be using walk-ins exclusively on the drive-ins at the speedways so i think what we're going to see is a lot of success in the areas of walk-ins when we have opportunities in a in a clinic now we are planning for walk-ins now not all clinics have walk-ins at this moment but i think in the future you'll see most clinics will have walk-ins and for example all the college lists that i had which is quite expensive and and throughout the state we've made provisions for walk-ins there and as well in essex county now we'll be using johnson johnson in essex county so it's one shot we don't have to worry about the second shot in in essex county so you know these sort of things that we're talking about i think are the future bringing the vaccine to the people um instead of these uh you know through these various venues that we've been talking about i i'm pretty excited about it and i think uh i think the demographic that we're looking at um those that are looking for convenience and ease i think really this this option is attractive to to them great thank you i just wanted to add you know barton was eye-opening for us we had put that in into play in a short period of time and we decided to try the drive-in walk-in type approach as well because we were using the johnson and johnson the vaccine that is like a one-and-done type of vaccination process so it lent itself well we're trying to experiment a bit we knew that they were um northeast kingdom essex and orleans wasn't meeting our expectations in terms of vaccination rate and i do realize that barton is in orleans but but it's right on the edge of essex county so we were looking for a population center uh that was easy to get to and uh and and was we wanted to make it easy for people not to have to go through any uh type of challenges and signing up to see if uh if that would give us a positive response so it did and that's why we decided to move to this next phase of trying everything we possibly can get as creative as possible in order to get more shots and arms so that was just an experiment that we decided to to try out and it was successful and we're going to replicate that throughout the state thank you howard vpr excuse me uh eric times argus and then we'll go to you howard yes this is a likely a question for dr levine we heard from a reader in ruttland who noticed that cases in ruttland county aren't falling quite as quickly as they are in much of the rest of the state seems like the county is getting vaccinated they're at 60 61 percent vaccines so the reader wants to know what is going on in ruttland that they haven't experienced a similar significant favorable decline sure um i'm looking at commission of p-check because i do not believe they're experiencing an increase increase this week but so it's just so they had one week with a slight increase all the previous weeks have been going down because literally every county in the state has been going down with the exception of essyx which was just a few cases and it can it's a smaller county so that's more susceptible to those numbers but um we have not documented new uh outbreaks or patterns of transmission in ruttland so i can't explain why in one week they had a change i can't believe that will be a trend but we'll have to watch that but i do think um they should not be alarmed and should continue their robust vaccination effort because uh it's obviously been doing a lot of good i just wanted to add a comment to the walk-in issue as well there's what i would call a scheduled walk-in which is you kind of know the walk-in is available that day and you make a plan to go to it there's also a phenomenon of an unscheduled walk-in and secretary smith referred to the potential if it would happen to be walking down church street and actually there's a tent set up and there's an opportunity to get vaccine with some knowledgeable people from the healthcare professions there to talk with you and it might be that moment in time when you say gee i haven't gotten my vaccine maybe i ought to do that um and we'd be meeting you where you are so to speak which is really important i already know from some of the pharmacies that even though they may not be advertising walk-in they do have people who shop in their pharmacy and ask the question and if there's an opportunity it can be vaccinated so that would be what i would call an unscheduled opportunity for a walk-in too so keep in mind that there's a lot of ways for people to get vaccine when it works for them and when they happen to be ready both in their mindset and where they happen to be Howard vpr yeah thank you um i think this is for secretary smith we got a uh note from a listener and he was wondering uh when volunteers will be allowed into correctional facilities he said a lot of volunteers take part in recovery programs and he was wondering if that's going to be something that's going to be used up soon yeah we're looking at that right now Howard volunteers and visitation by the way we're looking at in corrections right now one of the things that you as i don't have the the statistics the exact statistics right in front of me but we've had out of our population we've had about 800 that have been at least one dose of vaccination and 400 and some odd that have refused we want to get we want to circle back on those refusals and see if we can get the population um more vaccinated in the inmate population as well so we're looking at um you know trying to raise the vaccination level within the correctional facility more and then talking about volunteers and visitation once we feel comfortable with the vaccination or working through who who's been vaccinated and who hasn't in order to re-establish the volunteer and and the visitation policy we just want to be safe on this one those numbers you just gave me that was for inmates or is that staff as well and is staffing in issue as well staff is about 80 percent vaccinated in terms of inmates the the numbers i gave you were inmates those that and i can get you how are the exact number but roughly it's out of the 1200 that are incarcerated we have about an 800 400 split 800 have taken the vaccine 400 have refused so do you think in hope this is weeks away or is this probably maybe more month or months away i i would say probably by the time we get everybody vaccinated which will be at the end of may uh with their second shot i would say it's probably about a month away okay um and thank you very much another question i'm wondering um if you're looking the last person asked the question about the different parts of the state that um the vaccination rates are higher and lower there have been national reports about red state blue state different vaccination rates i'm wondering if someone can speak about what we do know about the parts of the state that are not getting vaccinated what are you hearing what have we learned if anything demographically speaking i think demographically speaking we're talking about sx county um as as where we've been focused and demographically i mean it's a very rural county as the governor said there's about 6000 people in that county very spread out so what we are doing now is and by the way they have a border with new hampshire up there as well so there's opportunities you know i talked about Lancaster um in terms of new hampshire at the fair we we have an agreement in colbrook with the medical center there um so we're trying to get those numbers up but i you know i haven't attributed it to red blue i've attributed it so far to rural and uh trying to make sure that we do this sort of barnstorming idea for the second time the first time we had great success with the barnstorming the the second time we're hoping to have the same sort of success um through uh through this barnstorming method um anybody else want to discuss is that okay howard yeah that sounds great thank you so much thanks avery howell wcax you've seen a few vaccination clinics specifically for the homeless population are there any plans to do more of those yes we we are targeting over the next two weeks we'll be um make uh really making a conservative effort um two to three weeks making a conservative effort to uh vaccinate the homeless population mostly with johnson and johnson we're looking at johnson and johnson because it's one shot and done uh as we move forward but you'll see us moving forward over the next several weeks on vaccinating the homeless is there any way to measure how the percentage of how many of them have been vaccinated so far i will you know of course we have the people that are in the general assistance program the hotel motel program i'll take a look and see if i can find that avery didn't see if there's any information on that and see if we can if we track that right thank you michael vermont dager can you hear me we can okay thank you uh i wanted to ask about the school guidance uh from the health department uh back in the fall of we kind of heard this referred to as the running nose rule uh that children see uh the school or child care uh for any cold symptoms uh including now as we're talking about uh return to school full time getting parents back of course i wondered if there was uh any plan to revisit that guidance i think you uh i think we get the flavor uh you're cutting in and out uh do you want secretary french first and then dr levine secretary french anything from you and then we'll turn over to dr levine yeah thanks i think i caught most of that um yeah i think you know i would just say that um there's subtlety obviously to the question and um i would just point to the track record schools the pad i mean it's almost been a year an hour schools have been open and having to navigate these issues and having gotten through uh you know the wear months and cold and flu season and so forth i think i think they've worked out uh that subtlety and cooperation health department and um you know i'm optimistic now that uh case counts are coming down schools are doing the best to expand in person and um yeah so i i think they've figured that out and uh i'm optimistic in the next couple of weeks that we'll see more in personal learning i'm trying to discern if there was another subtlety to the question regarding the actual symptoms which come to the forefront this time of year when a lot of students and adults have allergy symptoms and i believe we've navigated that pretty well uh and we've had great input from the pediatrics community at large um who obviously are helping case by case so i think i'd go along with secretary french that you've done well in that regard was there anything we didn't answer in your questions because it didn't come through very clearly i'm sorry about the sound problem there i guess what i was getting at was you know we we've heard from parents throughout this season uh that that's really cut into their ability to really consider school or child care and has really full time uh and especially you know when it comes to the idea of folks getting back to the workforce and particularly folks that uh you know teams have have really been uh at a disadvantage so far parents particularly moms uh you know is that your consideration at all any kind of uh of change that guidance with those kind of factors in mind yeah so just to introduce that topic there's been a lot of news lately about the differential impact of the pandemic on women versus men a lot of it looks at just what you mentioned uh women's ability to maintain their position or enter or re-enter the workforce uh concerns about child care most of that is relating to schools that actually are in non in-person or hybrid learning um and the uncertainties about will there be in-person learning etc so that hasn't been our problem as much i think you're referring to more the need for absenteeism on the part of the student because of symptoms that may not be COVID but that could be COVID and uh could we uh be more flexible on those so they did not change substantially in the newest iteration of the guidance um although there is a fair amount of um health care system decision making that's incorporated into that and i'm sure that that will be revisited for the fall but uh not at this point in time thank you chronicle the vermont state house last week police arrested an enosberg man for dealing heroin and meth and what the state police said was a quote the conclusion of a wrong drug task force investigation that began in july 2020 this man was out on probation when he allegedly committed the crime and after his arrest he was cited to appear in court was not returned to prison and i'm wondering uh and my readers are wondering is this a police tactic to perhaps lead them to other dealers to just an example of the trend towards decarceration or is it something else and in any event what would you say to vermonters who don't think that heroin dealers on probation should just be released with a date to appear in court i may refer to uh christier charlie on this one good afternoon thanks for the question uh over the years the options available to the front end of the criminal justice system in particular law enforcement have become more limited in terms of the rules of arrest and when folks can go to jail and otherwise um i'm not sure whether this particular instance is an example of that but i make that observation more generally um we don't discuss investigative tactics so if there is another um there's another motivation behind that it's not something uh we would be openly um discussing uh in terms of the the general uh approach to folks who are dealing heroin methamphetamine uh and drugs that are clearly destructive in our communities something that uh drug task force takes incredibly seriously and i trust that uh whatever tactics they're employing are uh the ones that have been best deemed to uh bring a case to successful conclusions so when you said at the beginning options have become more limited what do you mean by that so this could take a while to unpack but generally um the ability to incarcerate someone pre-trial has been limited substantially by uh new statutes that have been passed again whether this is specific to that i'd have to look into the specific circumstances but i think you will see generally uh more and more people released on citations rather than being uh lodged initially and a much larger cross-section of people that are not detained pre-trial regardless of their um offense or alleged offense you're concerned about that as far as just general public safety i am concerned that we have lost our general sense of balance in the criminal justice system i think some of the efforts that have been put in place in recent years have improved operations but at the same time i i think there are others that are questionable public policy initiatives um thank you i think as well you know detaining someone uh at this point in time throughout the last year has been problematic because the court system has been impacted by the pandemic so i think this is uh further um it's been problematic in a lot of different ways and hopefully in the future we'll have more timely court appearances when the judicial branches opens up further okay thank you tom navus compass vermont hi thanks jason uh i have no questions today thank you all thank you don't and lastly ed barber new port daily express questions one of my want to follow up with the issue of uh department of corrections since the uh pandemic went into effect i seem to uh believe that there was a um semi lockdown the inmates had to stay in this house they couldn't congregate for to the cafeteria for dinner and were and they sat down to put up remote questions industries um with a number of people have been vaccinated now are you going to be um loosening up some of those restrictions um especially in light of the fact that this also creates a mental health issue or is it exactly uh yeah i'm going to let uh secretary smithy answer that but but i would add as you look at the number of offender the offender population being vaccinated it isn't consistent throughout the system so making a you know broad statement about opening up wouldn't work because there's some some of those facilities that have a very low uptake and and so you wouldn't want to open anything up in those areas but secretary smithy and thanks for the question as you um as you's covid protocol requires that if we have anything um where we have cases within within the facility um that we go to a lockdown status we don't have any but any facility right now any full lockdown status we haven't been a modified lockdown status which is the standard sort of during covid-19 i think um we are discussing how we're going to be opening up the various as i mentioned before how we're going to be opening up the various activities within the department of corrections that can be anything from visitation to as you mentioned the industry's aspect of it up in the new port facility in terms of how we move forward we also are looking at the the pandemic really did shift the skill levels that you're going to need for different things and looking at how we can meet the needs of of those inmates in terms of having technical skills when they get out of the facility all of that is being reviewed right now as i talked to howard about we're looking at you know the visitation we're looking at volunteers we're looking at how we sort of bring the in the industrial industries aspect of corrections back up to speed and including work crews for the summer how do we bring that all up to speed we do have to get better vaccination rates in uh the department of corrections among inmates uh and we we we are putting in place a a revisiting program i guess is to those that have declined vaccination trying to find out why and trying to answer any of their questions that they they may have along the way so um i would say add stay tuned and the other question operator of the ups or a new port that was um defying them that mask mandate his attorney is back in court um with a unique argument that suggests that that the state of emergency should have been stopped from the legislature reconvened that was one of several arguments that was being made that is being heard before it judged do you have any comment on what the legality of legislation i would only add that we're on solid ground we we feel that we have the obligation in the right to impose these restrictions during this time of emergency so we feel we're on solid ground there very good thank you very much okay well thank you very much you too in closing i just want to note that it's teacher appreciation week and natural teacher day so i want to send my thanks to the teachers out there who have been working under very difficult circumstances over the last 14 months to do what's best for our kids so with that don't forget to sign up for your vaccine consider the mother's day gift and we'll see you again on friday