 Good afternoon, everyone. As you heard late last week, a technical glitch with an IT vendor delayed some case reporting for the days of September 9th through the 17th. That issue has been resolved, but some cases that should have been reported earlier were delayed and reported throughout last week instead. So that does make our day-to-day projection a little murky as you'll hear from Commissioner Pichak in a few minutes. Regardless, we know we had case counts in the hundreds to two-hundreds over the last week, and our hospitalizations have ticked up slightly. Though, and this is important because I've seen some misunderstanding here, hospitalizations are still below our peak. I went back to my notes this morning and found we had days in February where we were in the mid-sixties. What we also know is these upticks are being driven more and more by the unvaccinated, which account for about 80% of hospitalizations and 83% of those in the ICU. For example, yesterday of the 47 in the hospital, 46 were adults, and 35 of those adults were eligible to be vaccinated, but were not. We also see the gap between the vaccinated and unvaccinated widening when it comes to cases. And in recent weeks, about 75% of cases are among those aged 18 and over. As has been said before, and I'll say it again, this is now a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Primarily unvaccinated adults who are eligible, and it's adults who are at the most risk of severe outcomes. So the most important step we can take as a state is to get as many people vaccinated as possible. And if you're still on the fence or just haven't found the time, please take a look at this data and do some soul searching because vaccines are safe, effective, and they're the best path forward, not just for yourself, but for your family and friends and the rest of us. So we don't have to move backwards or need new restrictions. Now I know there are some who would like to see more restrictions put in place. And I'll remind you this would take a state of emergency. I'll also remind you that broad restrictions had harmful impacts in other areas, like people not addressing their health care needs, isolation of older family members, remote learning, and business closures that put people out of work. So I'd like to make clear what we are doing right now. As the data shows, the vaccine is the best tool we have in the toolbox and is a game changer. From the beginning, we took quick action to vaccinate as many Vermonters as possible. And as a result, we have the most fully vaccinated population in the country at 78.1%. And 87.3% of those eligible have started vaccinations. And we aren't done yet. To set an example, and in hopes of encouraging more to get vaccinated, we've implemented a policy affected this week that all state employees must either be vaccinated or wear a mask and test. Remember, we have about 8000 state employees. I also continue to urge employers and schools to adopt a similar policy while we await more details on the President's proposal for vaccine requirements. On masking, we also have some measures in place. First, every school but one has a masking requirement, which means we effectively have a mass mandate in schools. Next, as we discussed many times, if you're not vaccinated, you should absolutely wear a mask when indoors with people from outside your household. And you should think about other protective measures like avoiding crowds and getting tested. And as the Health Department has recommended, while we're still seeing this Delta wave, vaccinated Vermonters should wear a mask when in crowded indoor settings. We also continue to offer a lot of testing options. And while I know some are seeing delays, which we're working on, the fact is we're still among the top five states in testing and are frequently at the very top. And we're always looking for ways to make this process better and faster. Now, I understand these are not state mandates, but they are actions that have an impact. Again, for broad mandates, I need to declare a state of emergency and the data still doesn't support that step. What's more, I don't think it's the right approach and my team hasn't recommended it. We're not in the same place we were six months ago and neither of Vermonters who have been reevaluating their risks because of the vaccine. And we simply can't be in a perpetual state of emergency. It sets a dangerous precedent and would be an abuse of my authority, given that vaccines are proving to be so effective in protecting people. The fact is COVID-19, like the flu, is going to be here a while. So we need to use the tools we have and what we've learned to help people make smart decisions at the individual level. Things like staying home when sick and getting tested if you think you've been exposed, especially if you're planning to visit someone who's vulnerable like an older relative or someone with a severe illness. It also includes understanding who the most vulnerable are, who is actually at risk of having a severe case, and also how vaccines are significantly reducing risk because they are. For example, I know some continue to only look at case counts. And I get it. For many months before vaccines, cases were all we talked about. It was the most effective way to communicate the risk of hospitalizations, long-term care outbreaks, and deaths. With vaccines, these rates are decreasing, which means risks are changing. But it's clear we need to show how it's changing. So Vermonters have more information and can continue to do their part to protect those who are most vulnerable and make smart choices. So our team is currently looking to compare key pre-vaccine data points to our current situation to help Vermonters see how things are actually improving, even with Delta because of the vaccines. And over the next several weeks, we'll be sharing what we find with you. Knowing this has always been a virus that most often harms seniors with underlying conditions and had a big impact on our long-term care facilities, we'll be starting with a look at how outbreaks and outcomes have changed there, which Dr. Levine has discussed multiple times at these briefings in recent weeks. Well, this is data we've looked at throughout the pandemic. Our focus is on better comparing what we see today to what we saw before we had the protection of vaccines. After we present the long-term care data, we'll present other updates, including more details on declining hospitalization and fatality rates. Some more information on factors and conditions that make people vulnerable and other useful information. In the meantime, please get vaccinated, watch the Health Department guidance, and pay attention to what you're doing so we can get through this Delta wave and continue to move forward. And with that, I'll now turn it over to Commissioner Pichek for the modeling update. Thank you very much, Governor, and good afternoon, everyone. I wanted to start with a picture at the national level and also bring that back home to Vermont as well. I think as many in the room know, yesterday the United States crossed the threshold of the 1918 pandemic in terms of fatalities. Here in Vermont, we've also reported three additional fatalities bringing our total over 300. But I think it's important for all of us to remember where we stand relative to all of the other regions and all the other states within the United States. We estimate that the vaccine, the availability of the vaccine here in Vermont, has saved 520 lives. The vaccine has also made it so that Vermont has the lowest per capita death rate in the country for the entire pandemic. As we've always said before, it's Vermonters early on the pandemic that cared for each other, for their communities, for their families, followed mitigation measures, followed recommendations to get vaccinated, did so, and we're seeing the benefit of that. Although at the current moment, our case counts are high, as the Governor said. Looking at the picture nationally, after Labor Day, we continue to see the national numbers come down. Again, that's driven by places that were hit early from the Delta variant, the Delta Wave. Places in the Deep South, places out west, a couple of large states like California and Florida that are seeing their case numbers come down. We're not yet seeing that in New England. Other parts of the country, particularly parts of the Midwest and parts like West Virginia and Tennessee are seeing their case counts continue to rise, which is keeping overall case counts a little elevated in the country. But you can see they're down about 22% over the last seven days. And on the next slide, you can also see that hospitalization rates, which continue to be a little bit more stable metric during this period of time as we get out of Labor Day. And those rates are going down across the country as well, with similar patterns that those states hit earliest are seeing their cases come down more quickly at the moment. I wanted to look at a few states that are seeing their case rates come down and compare that to Vermont and look at that seven to nine week window that we've talked about in the past. You can see from these states, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, California and Vermont, when you look at when the Delta variant started in those different states and then when they peaked and started to come down. You can see in the states that were hit most significantly hard like Louisiana, Florida, Arkansas, their rates went up much more quickly. They have a much lower vaccination rate, many more people that are able to get infected from the Delta variant. Their rates ended up being much higher and then they started to come down sort of within that window. If you compare that to Vermont, we've had a much slower progression of our case count. We have a really high vaccination rates, harder for the Delta variant to find unvaccinated people here in Vermont, although obviously it is still doing that. But that might account certainly for why we've seen this prolonged period of time where cases are higher than what we're seeing in some of these other states that had a much worse experience than Vermont in terms of the total case count in terms of where they got in terms of their peak. And in many of these places, even though they're improving, they're not even at the same case levels as Vermont, they still have higher case counts. So again, something for us to consider, but as I said, we have not seen that clear trend down in the region at the moment. All of New England is very well vaccinated as everyone knows. So the same that I mentioned for Vermont would hold true for New England as well. Looking at Vermont's seven day average, you can see we have a note here that the technical glitch that happened last week certainly impacted the seven day average. It is the highest it has been during the pandemic. The case counts are still high as the governor said. But again, we want to look closely at all of the data, some of the reasons for why that is happening. And on the next slide, we'll see something that we've shown in the past when we've talked about holidays. We've talked generally about each of the holidays that have come and gone during the pandemic. Some have seemed to impact our case counts. Others really have had no effect. If you remember Halloween from last year, that was an incident that seemed to really impact our case numbers into November and early November into mid-November. Other holidays seemed, as I said, to have little effect. Here looking at when Labor Day fell for that full weekend, looking at the 10 to 14 day period and incubation cycle after Labor Day, you do see that that's generally landing on where the cases started to rise last week. So it gives us some indication, at least from a timing perspective, that some of this might be tied back to Labor Day. The last couple of days, the case rates have been a little bit lower. We're through basically that 14 day period. So we'll want to watch that closely, hopefully showing some signs of improvement. On the test positivity, another thing to keep in mind is that we had pretty high test volumes over the past week as well. And our test positivity rate remained relatively level during this period of time. So certainly we're doing more than enough testing to get the cases that we have here in Vermont. It gives us confidence that we're picking up a lot of the cases that maybe other states are missing. On the next slide, as the governor mentioned, you can see that difference between the fully vaccinated case rate and those that are not fully vaccinated. It's now four times greater in that not fully vaccinated rate, increasing 21 percent over the last week, while the fully vaccinated rate only increased 7 percent. And you can see that that fully vaccinated rate has been very stable over the last five or six weeks. Looking at hospitalizations, it's even a more dramatic story in some ways. It's still four times as high for those that are not fully vaccinated who are in the hospital. But the rate is also increasing twice as fast as the fully vaccinated rate. And similarly, you can see here how those who are fully vaccinated have had a pretty stable rate over the last five to six weeks, while that not fully vaccinated rate has continued to rise. Looking at case counts across Vermont, generally elevated week over week, but a couple of places to point out, particularly in the Northeast Kingdom and Orleans and Caledonia County, you can see that case counts jumped up quite a bit week over week there. And when we look at our next slide that looks at Vermont based on regions, you can see that the Northeast Kingdom really does jump out on a per capita basis over the last week and a half compared to the other areas of Vermont. Looking now at higher education, the vaccination rate now just under 95 percent for college campuses, continuing to go up as more and more international students get vaccinated and as the schools get more and more information about those who have not yet submitted their vaccination status. This week, 68 cases on college campuses out of about 6,500 tests. On the long-term care facility side, we can see that we had 136 cases this week, 10 current outbreaks. So that's about the same case count we had last week at about 134. A few more outbreaks at 10 this week compared to 7 last week, but good to see that those case counts are staying stable in those facilities. Looking at hospitalizations, we talked about how those rates are different for the fully vaccinated and the not fully vaccinated. And again, you can see it here. Our hospitalization rates overall are trending up as you can see, but we continue to have the lowest hospitalization rate in the country at this moment and throughout the entire pandemic. But most importantly on this metric is that 80 percent of those who are in the hospital over the last seven days have been unvaccinated. So again, all the more reason to convince your friends, family, others to get vaccinated so that they can stay out of the hospital and help reverse the trends that we're seeing. You also see on the ICU side that number is up to 84 percent as of today. So again, really that critical care and general hospital use overall being driven by those who are not vaccinated. And I should just make a point of clarity here. Those who are not vaccinated who are eligible to be vaccinated. So again, largely it's adults. As you see on the next slide, it's largely those who are over 70 who are in the hospital when you break it down by age bands. Although you can see some individuals in the 50 to 69 year old and some younger adults as well. And every so often a pediatric case. But generally, as we mentioned, it's those that are older unvaccinated driving hospitalization rates up. So they've done a very good job so far of getting vaccinated. Certainly all Vermonters have particularly those are most vulnerable. But again, all the more reason to go out and protect yourself during the Delta wave by getting vaccinated. Looking at the CDC ensemble forecast. Usually we show the ensemble forecast when it's all together showing one sort of trend from all of these 20 different models. But we just wanted to show this, which is the component parts of the CDC ensemble forecast from late last week. Basically you can see of the 20 forecasts that make up this sort of universal ensemble combined model. There are some that are suggesting cases will stay pretty flat in Vermont. Some suggesting they'll go up, some suggesting that they'll go down. So it's a moment in time where we'll just need a little bit more data to understand the trajectory that we're going to be on. You know, we saw some improvement last week. But again, we also saw some technical issues with the case reporting. Those technical issues make it a little unclear, you know, what our forecast is. And again, we'll just need a little bit more time before we find out which trajectory we are on turning the vaccinations. You can see that we are at 87.4%. As the governor said, up 2188 week over week, we crossed the 480,000 threshold of Vermonters. So 481,000 Vermonters have now started vaccination, less than 70,000 Vermonters who are eligible who have not yet started vaccination. The rate continued to go down a little bit this week, down 6.6%. But generally staying relatively stable over the last 10 days. And then again, as the governor said, and the key reason that we have the lowest fatality rate throughout the entire pandemic at this point, the vaccination scorecard showing how we continue to lead on most of these metrics, but on the most important metric with the Delta variant, those that are fully vaccinated continuing to be number one. So with that, I'll now turn it over to Secretary French. Thank you, Commissioner Pichek. Good afternoon. Our teams met this week to further review our contact tracing process in schools and to make it more responsive to the dynamics of the Delta variant. We're hearing from many schools that the current contact tracing process is not sustainable, so we have to continue to make adjustments. One high school reported they spent over 20 hours doing contact tracing to only identify a few students needing to quarantine. And that was among a very large student body that they estimated had a vaccination rate of over 90%. We also heard from school nurses in the Champlain Valley region about contact tracing and the impact on the education of students. One of them said, right now close contacts are missing between 8 to 10 days of learning and spending up to 12 days in quarantining even after testing. In our first three weeks of school, 54 students were quarantined and missed a total of 166 learning days. We must find a quicker way to get the kids back in the classroom. We think we can leverage our relatively high vaccination rates among eligible students to shift our limited contact tracing resources towards the elementary level where most students are not yet eligible for vaccination. We'll be announcing a revision to our process that limits contact tracing to schools where the student vaccination rate is less than 80%. In schools with a vaccination rate greater than 80%, a letter will be sent to students and parents in the affected classroom or program with a recommendation to get tested within three to five days of the potential exposure. This will largely impact high schools, but will allow districts to focus more of their resources at the elementary level. We also know many high schools probably do not have vaccination rates at 80% yet since the statewide average for these students is although very high across the country relatively speaking is still in the mid 70% range. This is why the other half of our strategy pertains to testing. I used to view contact tracing and surveillance testing as sort of being complementary strategies, but when we consider the limitations on our resources both in terms of people and time, contact tracing and surveillance testing I think now are easily viewed as being competing strategies. We're seeking now to create a better balance between these strategies to create a more sustainable approach. In terms of testing, we are prioritizing testing capacity for schools when there is a case in a school. This will ensure that testing is available to students when they need it. We're also piloting the use of take home PCR tests in five districts. Those districts are the Champlain Valley School District in Williston, the Montpelier Roxbury School District, the Beddington Rutland Supervisor Union in the Manchester area, the Wyndham Southeast Supervisor Union in Brattleboro, and the Essex North Supervisor Union in Canaan. We intend to roll this program out to all districts in the near future. The take home testing kits are used when a student is in close contact and is in quarantine or when a student is symptomatic staying home and needs a test. The kits are self-contained with everything the family needs to register the kit and give testing consent. Kits do require a computer or a smartphone to register and consent for minors is built into the registration process. Shipping is prepaid as part of the kit. A student takes the test and then either returns it to the school or drops it off at a UPS site. The tests need to be taken in return for shipping the same day because we have a short timeframe to get them to the lab with the results coming back in 72 hours. The use of these home testing kits should speed up access to testing for affected students. We're also working to speed up our surveillance testing in schools and to identify cases as soon as possible. And this will definitely be an essential part of our strategy as the Delta surge comes down. Last week we had a conversation with White House staff in the U.S. Department of Labor about the president's announcement for utilizing OSHA emergency temporary standard or ETS to mandate private employers of more than 100 employees requiring vaccination or testing for their employees. 26 states and two territories have approved OSHA state plans that would expand this mandate to include public sector employees including school district employees. Vermont is one of these 26 states. Vermont's OSHA state plan must be as least as stringent as federal regulation. Under the proposed standard of employers with 100 employees about 60 of our 154 school employing entities would be required to mandate vaccination and testing. These employing entities include both school districts and supervisory unions. We don't know all the specifics of the federal ETS until later this fall, but once it's published, Vermont will have 30 days to amend its state plan. Since our plan will need to be at least as stringent as the federal one, we are considering expanding the state requirement to include all school districts, not just those that have more than 100 employees. We'll have more news on this in the coming weeks. Vaccination will continue to play a central role in ensuring our schools can remain open. We are in the process of designing a data collection from schools that describes the vaccination rates of each school including student vaccination rates and staff vaccination rates. This information will be collected locally through a voluntary process, but this information will become increasingly important when we need to make changes to managing our pandemic response in schools in the coming months. I wanted to highlight that yesterday I had a great visit to the Stafford Technical Center in Rutland to a person. Both students and staff were very excited to be back in school full in-person instruction and back in their programs, which do involve a lot of hands-on learning. I thought I'd share some of the things I saw students doing yesterday, which was just phenomenal, honestly. I saw kids working on robotics, they were welding, working in an auto body shop including restoring a Ford Model A that a local person had donated to the center. I saw students learning about residential wiring and plumbing in a classroom shop where they ultimately would install complete bathrooms. I saw students in a culinary arts program making pastries, students receiving cosmetology instruction from a local business owner. I saw adult nursing students enrolled in a nursing program through VTC getting a remote instruction from a teacher in Bennington, which was pretty awesome. I saw public safety students analyzing a mock crime scene and digital arts students working in state-of-the-art media lab collaborating on the graphic design and music projects. I also stopped in to thank the school nurses. The nurses there served both the tech center and the high school. Our school nurses have been the real heroes of our pandemic response and education. But thinking about all those activities, like our other tech center, Stafford did a great job last year with hybrid learning, but it was at best imperfect. Our students do not want to go back to it, frankly. We learned so many lessons last year about how to manage a virus in our schools. We know how to use the various strategies to keep our schools open, but this year it will come down to vaccination. Every Vermonter has to do their part. Quite simply, if you want to keep our schools open and keep our kids in their education moving forward, you have to get vaccinated and get your children vaccinated. It's as simple as that. That concludes my update. I'll now turn it over to Secretary Smith. Thank you, Secretary French. Good afternoon, everyone. Today I'll provide a few updates. Let's start with COVID-19 booster shots. The proposal for the Pfizer booster shot was reviewed by an advisory committee at the FDA last Friday. It must now go to the CDC for review and potential approval this week. The FDA's committee recommended a third Pfizer dose for Americans 65 and up who were last vaccinated at least six months ago. They're also recommending booster shots for people 16 and over who are at high risk of getting severe COVID-19, but they did not define high risk. High risk will be defined by the CDC this week when they review the recommendation. As I have mentioned for the past month, we have been actively planning for those that may qualify for boosters, making some assumptions so that we could be ready when approval comes through. Although at the moment we do not have the precise eligibility criteria, we are gearing up to begin vaccinating as soon as we have approval. It is likely that approval will come later this week. We anticipate that registration will start the day following approval and appointments will start shortly thereafter. Remember, this only applies to those individuals who received the Pfizer vaccine and who qualify. When it becomes available, federal officials will also review the data to determine whether boosters are needed for people who receive Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Now let's move to the planning. Licensed long-term care facilities will be partnering with pharmacies. Most already have a pharmacy relationship. If they have difficulty in establishing a relationship, then we will step in. For the general public, we are setting up mass vaccination sites. These vaccination sites will be available for those to get a booster, as well as those who haven't yet been vaccinated. You will have to make an appointment to get vaccinated at one of these sites. When you go to register, in addition to checking the state registration site, remember to check your local pharmacy website, including the pharmacy at your grocery store near SU. It is also recommended that where you got your original Pfizer dose, whether it's at a state facility or at a pharmacy, you try to go back to where you got it originally. It may help you in the process. The FDA still needs to issue a final approval along with CDC guidance. We anticipate this will come either at the end of the day on Wednesday or Thursday after the CDC advisory committee meeting. We continue to monitor the FDA and the CDC's guidance closely. Turning to testing, as I mentioned last week, we have 38 state sites and 21 pharmacy sites for testing. Over the last seven days, we conducted 53,000 tests. We have added capacity where we saw over-subscription at test sites and are now planning to add even more testing opportunities in the northeast kingdom, Franklin County and Grand Isle. Sites in Newport, Glover and Johnson should also come online this week. We're also working to identify timing of when sites will begin testing in northern Franklin County and Grand Isle counties. In terms of school testing, as Secretary French was talking about, we are piloting several initiatives that go beyond surveillance testing. This will include ongoing surveillance testing, as we have discussed in the past. Plus, we are piloting at several locations, testing at schools when there is a potential case or contacts, and take home test kits. Depending on those pilots, options will be expanded across the state over the next several weeks. We hope testing through the schools will better serve families and children and speed up the process so we can reduce the number of days students are out of the classroom. And state employees testing will begin later this week at larger hubs and early next week at smaller workstations. We are exploring, but haven't made a final decision about altering our process for reporting daily positive cases. The goal is to eliminate the need to revise the previous day's case count. I just wanted to give a heads up since this is under active examination, so we don't surprise anyone if we make a switch. As I mentioned last week at the press conference, and as was mentioned by the Governor and Commissioner Pichek, early last week we began to identify a delay in lab results. The delay was not related to testing capacity, the state's IT system, or lab turnaround results. Upon further investigation it was discovered that where there was an issue was with the outside labs IT vendor. The IT vendor, LK, provides services to Broad Institute, a main processing lab in the northeast. LK indicated the slowdown impacted at least Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine and Rhode Island, but LK services as many as 12 states for Broad. LK performed a review that identified that LK added a column to their software program that caused the slowdown in reporting, which went unnoticed by them because the higher volumes of tests throughout the northeast massed the slowdown. The tests were still being transmitted through the IT system, but at a much slower speed, and thus results were delayed. Once identified, the fix was immediately implemented. To avoid future delays, LK is implementing new monitoring tools to prevent issues going forward. As of Thursday night, all delayed tests had been cleared so that any positive cases reported on Friday and beyond do not have any delayed test results in them. I do want to thank those state employees and partners that helped Broad and their vendor LK to identify the problem so they could quickly fix it. This included employees of the Agency of Digital Services, the Health Department, and Vital. As I mentioned last week, we are also asking Vermonters to make an appointment if they want to get tested for COVID-19. You can make an appointment online at healthvermont.gov slash COVID-19 slash testing or visit your pharmacy website. So let's turn to vaccines. With the increasing cases and hospitalizations of those who are unvaccinated, we are asking Vermonters more than ever to protect themselves. Their families, friends, and co-workers by taking this opportunity to get their shot. It's free and it's easy than ever before to get vaccinated. I also want to take a moment to reflect on the rise in cases that we've seen recently. By and large, this is caused by the unvaccinated. The vast majority of our nightly positive case counts are from those that are unvaccinated. A large percentage of these people can be vaccinated and have not done so. Commissioner Pichek already pointed this out, but it is worth noting 80% of recent hospitalizations and so did the governor in his remarks. 80% of the recent hospitalizations were among the unvaccinated. 84% of our ICU cases were unvaccinated. Our positive case counts are in the mid-70s in terms of unvaccinated. Last night, for example, it was 70%, positive cases were unvaccinated. Often it is higher percentage, and as the governor mentioned on average, it's around 75%. The bottom line is COVID-19 vaccines work. The point I'm trying to make is that we share the list of pop-up opportunities and soon mass vaccination sites to make it easy for people to get vaccinated. This week you can visit 25 school-based vaccination clinics or pop-ups that are just available this week. We will send out the press release shortly with these locations. Please take advantage of the opportunities. You can find information about the vaccination sites at healthvermont.gov. Now I'll turn it over to Dr. Levine for a health update. Good afternoon. As you've seen, we're once again at a time in this pandemic that is difficult to predict. Nationally it appears infections may be starting to fall, but that's not yet the case here in Vermont as the Delta variant continues to spread. Recent Vermont data shows that people who are not vaccinated are paying a higher price with COVID. At the risk of being a little bit redundant, the percentage of daily cases among those who are not vaccinated has increased from the 60% range to 70 to 75%. This figure includes children under 12 who can't yet be vaccinated and who account for 20 or 25% of cases. But hospitalizations, which are almost exclusively in adults, now are made up of 80% unvaccinated individuals, and critically for their health, almost 90% of those in intensive care are unvaccinated. The vaccines are still our best protection against the worst effects of COVID, but the nature of Delta means we need to do more during the current surge. Remember, Delta is so contagious, it can spread more quickly into more people than the original coronavirus. And though it's less likely, it is possible for vaccinated people to get and spread the virus for a brief window of time. This means we need to think not only about ourselves risks, but to those around us, in our homes, in our schools, and where we work. By taking simple common sense steps, we can protect one another, especially during this time of high transmission. So in addition to getting vaccinated if you're eligible, wear a mask indoors in public. Mass help contain your respiratory droplets, and it can help them from reaching other people. You should also stay home if you're sick, from school, from work, from sports, from social activities. While this may seem obvious, we all know how easy it can be to ignore something like a runny nose. I know it's hard, and it can be inconvenient, and sometimes difficult to arrange. But preventing further spread is how we can keep our kids in school, people at work, help our teams do the work that needs to be done, and protect those who are vulnerable. And of course, get tested, so you can either rule out COVID, or if you're positive, take steps to isolate and notify your close contacts as soon as you can. Remember, it's really difficult to tell if you have COVID or another respiratory virus. We just spoke to all of our colleges once again this morning, and there are many respiratory viruses present on the campuses, the least of which seems to be COVID in many cases. If you do decide to get tested, you will find expanded capacity where the data showed us the need was, and decreased waiting times, thanks to many of you who did what Secretary Smith just said, scheduled appointments rather than walked in without an appointment. You should also get tested if you may be a close contact, or have taken part in any activities that could put you at risk, such as attending a large gathering. And always keep washing your hands, especially as other seasonal respiratory illnesses begin to spread. As I've said, the information about what to do is at your fingertips. You don't need to wait for us to say what to do. Please go to healthvermont.gov slash COVID-19 to find our current guidance, recommendations, FAQs, and other resources. Public health experts and I have talked about COVID eventually becoming endemic. This is when enough people have gained some immunity, either from vaccination, which of course is preferable, or from the actual infection. COVID would not be gone, but our immune systems would recognize it, so the worst outcomes could be avoided. When COVID is endemic, it would still be in our environment, but hopefully just another one of those viruses that leads to annoying symptoms and cold symptoms. However, as Delta has taught us, we are not quite there yet. It could be three or six or many months away. We still need more people vaccinated, including children and perhaps boosters, before we are at a place where we live with COVID, but without seeing concerning spikes in hospitalizations and deaths. Moving to the topic of boosters, the federal decision-making process is moving along. You know that the FDA Advisory Committee voted Friday to approve emergency use authorization of Pfizer for booster doses for age 65 and up, and for those in high-risk and high-risk occupations. However, the FDA hasn't formally yet approved, and then CDC committees will review as well, and more specifically define these high-risk conditions and occupations. As you all know, if you have a current immunocompromising condition, you've already been authorized to seek your third dose, and I hope most have. The federal approval for these additional booster doses may come as early as the end of this week. There's also hopeful news that vaccine may be available for children ages 5 to 11 this fall. Pfizer just announced that a lower dose of their coronavirus vaccine, one-third the amount given to adults and teens, is safe and triggered a robust immune response in children as young as five years old. Now, this data has yet to be peer-reviewed, but it is anticipated that they will be submitting for emergency use authorization with the FDA very soon, potentially leading to a late October date for immunization of children ages 5 to 11. We're planning for all these types of clinics, and we'll keep you informed as soon as we have information to share. Finally, a brief comment about a recent CDC report released on Friday that compared the effectiveness of all the COVID vaccines in preventing hospitalizations among adults. The Moderna vaccine may have captured headlines as it was found to be 93% effective against COVID hospitalization, but Pfizer and J&J were not far behind with 88% and 71% respectively. All three still provide substantial protection against COVID-19 hospitalizations in the real world, not just in study circumstances, which is why it's so critical to get vaccinated, period. Thank you, Dr. Levine. We'll now open it up to questions. I know it's early to be asking about the children's vaccine, the vaccine for kids, but do you have any idea how that would be administered or would be at school or would there be regular clinics and would there be some kind of new public relations campaign aimed at parents? I would say all of the above. We'll want to get shots and arms as quickly as possible, depending on the amount of vaccine that's available, but we'll look for the most efficient way of doing that. So we're considering that as we speak. We're looking for guidance from the federal government as well, but again, it's a little early at this point in time, but we're hopeful that this will be approved for emergency authorization. As Dr. Levine just said, sometime in October. Can I also ask about the OSHA rule for teachers? That went a little fast and I wasn't clear how that was going to work. What would be the timeline and which educators would be affected and would that also be everybody in the building? Sorry, I went through that quickly. As I mentioned last week, we had a briefing from White House and Department of Labor on this, so we still don't have a copy of a specific standard, the emergency testing or temporary standard. So until we see that specifics, we're just going based on the information they're providing. But what is being proposed would affect all private employers across the state, across the country. Those states that have OSHA approved state plans, of which Vermont is one, would also expand that to include public sector employees, including school districts. In Vermont, we estimate that to be about 60 of our 154 entities that have employees. So we'll have the opportunity in our state plan to consider expanding that to include all school districts in the state. Right now it appears that they're going to produce the emergency testing standard. It goes into effect, I understand, upon publication. Expect that to happen before Thanksgiving. That's the timeline we're looking at now. And then Vermont would have 30 days to amend its state plan to enact at least a stringent reserve requirement. So it covers all employees, not just teachers or paraeducators. It would be all school district employees. Do you know how many people that is? I don't off the top of my head, but we can give you that information. I just wanted to finish up on the pediatric question. You referred to like a public relations campaign. I'll reframe those words just in terms of more providing of sound medical guidance by the pediatric community. That happened very much so before the 12 and up age group. A lot of town halls had throughout, were held throughout the state. Not only opportunities to provide the appropriate medical information, but to have concerns addressed as well. But in terms of the delivery of the vaccine, the pediatric community will be part of that actually. We can't ask them to do that heavy lift all by themselves, nor would they be able to do that. But they will be participating in that as well as family practitioners, as well as school based clinics, which are already operating and will continue to operate. I don't suspect there'll be as many children going to pharmacies, but that will still be a potential possibility as well as our other sites around the state. Can I just ask one more question? It's about Canaan. I believe that's the school that doesn't have a mask mandate. Have you guys approached them directly to talk to them about that? Yeah, I've talked to them about that. I'm also going up and visiting in a couple of weeks. One of the reasons we prioritize them for the take home testing kits is to do whatever we can to support them. I think it's important to acknowledge that they're not necessarily an interstate school district, but they're an interstate school. Half the students approximately in that school are New Hampshire students, so they have the added difficulty of having to work essentially under two states, from a cultural standpoint under the two states approach. But they're doing fine. They had a case among their soccer team. They ended up testing 26 students as a result of that, and all the tests came back negative, so so far they're doing pretty well. Where was that case? Fairly recently in the last week. Okay, thanks. Governor, as you mentioned in your opening remarks, the data right now when you say it doesn't reflect the need for a state of emergency because of our hospitals, we haven't reached that point. In your mind, what is that point? Where do you draw the line of a need for a state of emergency? Yeah, healthcare capacity. That's what we've been looking at since the very beginning. As you remember, flattening the curve about 19 months ago was a common phrase, and it's still true today. We want to make sure that we can protect the system that we have in place. When that is in jeopardy, then you could see that we might make some changes. But until then, it's not going to be case counts. It's going to be a number of factors, but we'll do it as a team. Do you know what our statewide capacity is for hospitalizations? How many beds we have? Yeah, we have that again on a weekly basis. I get updated with an HOC briefing. We know the number of beds available and how many are being used for different purposes. Now, again, some of the stresses we're seeing in the hospitals are not related to COVID, not directly. And so we look at all different factors in that regard. I don't know if Secretary Smith or Dr. Levine, Secretary Smith, want to add to that? Calvin, we look at it on a daily basis. We look at how many beds are available. What is the capacity within each facility as well? And as the governor rightly said, we're seeing COVID cases, but COVID in and of itself isn't causing capacity problems. The workforce, what we've found is that people are showing up at the hospital sicker. That's one. We have mental health borders that cause some escalation of the census, as well as long-term care. People that would normally go to long-term care having difficulty leaving the hospital to go to long-term care because of workforce shortages in long-term care facilities. And then couple that with a few cases of COVID among healthcare workers. We look at all of that combined to look at capacity as we're moving forward. So COVID is a factor, but it isn't the main factor in driving a lot of the census issues in hospitals. And as the governor said, we monitor the capacity system-wide, not just one hospital, but system-wide on a daily basis. Secretary Smith, and also, Governor, I'd like you to weigh in on this, too. This Thursday, eligibility for the general assistance program is changing in about some 500 or so for monitors. We'll have to find a new place to live. Can you give me an update as sort of what is happening with that situation and address concerns that many have about this kind of sparking a new public health crisis, especially as winter is coming? Yeah, I assume. I don't recall who reported on this, but this was a topic of conversation when the legislature was in session. The advocates came together from our legal aid, the advocates, DCF, the legislature. We came to agreement, and in fact, there was legislation passed confirming this date. This was the date that was agreed upon. But having heard some of the, I guess, people that are concerned about this date, I brought the team together this morning and said that we should have a 30-day pause to reflect on getting everyone back on the same page. It will give us an opportunity to reengage and make sure that we're doing it for the right reasons. So we thought we were all on the same page. We all had the same goal, but that seems to be fracturing as we get closer to the date. So I thought it was a good idea to just pause this for 30 days and we'll come to bring everybody together. You mean like a 30-day extension? I mean a 30-day pause on this. We will continue. We'll have more details and we haven't worked everything out. But we will continue down the path of if someone wants to transition to permanent housing and wants to take advantage of the financial incentive that's been put into place, we'll continue to do that during this pause. But again, we'll reengage and see if we can work this out. And just the last question on that. You know, we're hearing that FEMA, and you might have heard this too, will reimburse cities and states through the end of the year for expenses from the general assistance program. I guess with that news, I mean, why not just extend it? Well, again, I don't think it's good for those who are involved in the program in general. We talked a lot about this before. There's a need for wraparound services. They don't always get that attention when they're somewhat in isolation in hotels and motels. There's less capacity in some of the hotels and motels, especially when we're getting into our tourism season. So there are a lot of factors that have to be considered with this. So what we want is we want to do what's best for everyone involved. And we're not sure that this is the right approach. We've acknowledged this. I think everyone would agree, or most everyone would agree, the legislature certainly does, that this can't go on in perpetuity. So what happens if we go till January 1 and this ends at the end of the year, what then? We're still going to be faced with the same situation. So we need to get on the same page. We need to agree upon the goal again and a path forward. Anything else you want to add to that? I think we're all set for it at this point. Governor, do we have any details on when the 100 Afghan refugees will be arriving in Vermont or any other details on the situation? Nothing that I am aware of at this point. It's over the next few weeks. But I know that there was some issue that prevented some from being released to the states. And so I don't know. We're anticipating it will be sometime in the next four to six weeks. And then a quick question for Secretary Smith. There were 53,000 COVID tests this week. I believe you said there were 36,000 last week. What is that spike attributed to? Is that just putting more resources where there was a high demand for testing? And where does this rank sort of in the busiest weeks for COVID testing we've seen through this pandemic? I think we've had a week where we've had 72,000 was our high in terms of testing. I don't think you read anything in and of itself in that we're doing more testing. We have increased capacity in certain testing areas as well. But I think the fact is that we're asking people to get tested. And you're going to see more and more of that as state employees get tested as schools. We ramp up the school testing. You're going to see this higher testing capacity that we have as we move forward. So it is something that shows that we have the capacity as the governor had mentioned. We're consistently fifth within the top five in the nation in terms of testing on a per 100,000 basis. And we are oftentimes number one. So it's a good place to be as a state. So why Labor Day doesn't seem to be having an impact nationally as it is on Vermont? It seems like cases are down 20% nationally in spite of the holiday, but they're up 20% here because of the holiday? Commissioner PG. Oh, it's a good question. I mean, I thought about the same thing. You know, we've seen holidays that did not seem to impact Vermont that impact the rest of the country. I mean, I think back in July 4th of 2020, that was when cases started to spike across much of the south and south west as well. But we didn't see that in the Northeast. You know, Halloween was particularly hard here in Vermont, but not necessarily in other places. So they don't always move in unison is the best answer that I can give you. Some of these places across the country, you know, they've already been in this sort of decline. And I think the reason that they're in that decline is because so many people have been infected by the Delta variant. So they, you know, there's just not a lot of other places for it to go. So as they're, you know, they're still higher case counts than us, but they're on this sort of decline. Even behavioral changes like Labor Day doesn't necessarily mean that their case trends are going to reverse. But again, here in Vermont with our high vaccination rate, low number of unvaccinated people just, you know, takes a little bit longer. And maybe there's more exposure when some of that behavior changes. Now to the phones. And we'll start with Lisa at the AP. Wait, everyone. So I guess going back to schools. Thank you. Sorry, Lisa. We just had one more question in the room and then I'll jump back to you. Sure. Going back to schools, it's a, you know, there's a highest amount of cases that happened this week. Is this kind of expected to, you know, with students going back? Is the number of cases kind of expected, you know, to trend, keep trending upwards or do you see this just being a high and then come back down? Well, again, I will let others weigh in on this as well. But when you see more community spread, you're going to see more in schools. And when you have 80,000 kids in school, again, from a percentage standpoint, it's a pretty low number. But I don't think it was beyond our expectation to see some growth as there is some growth in the communities as well. I just say what we've seen all along, I think that the cases in school parallel the cases in communities. You know, it's still been our experience that more often than not, the virus is brought to schools. So if there's elevated case counts in the community, that ends up in the school. That's right. Thanks, Rebecca. Commissioner Pichek and others have talked about how this has been uncertain time with the virus. And it's too soon to tell what will happen in Vermont. But what do you need to make a better projection? More time, more data. But I'll let Commissioner Pichek try and answer that. Yeah, this is a great question. I mean, you know, when we look at the forecast and the projections, you know, we're looking first at the trends that are occurring in Vermont. You know, what's our vaccination rate? What is our case growth rate? How many cases do we have? Who is becoming a case? Is it among the unvaccinated? Is it elderly people? What's our testing volume? What are hospitalization rates? And then we look at those for the region as well. Are things in the region moving in the same way as Vermont? Are they moving opposite? Are they getting worse better? We look at all of the different models that we have. We look at the observed trends from other jurisdictions. And those are kind of the, you know, the sort of the quantitative measures that we use. We also think about any of the qualitative measures like behavioral change or instances that might impact the numbers. And when all of those things line up together, then it's easy for us to say this is the trajectory and this is the trend. And they had all been lining up for the last, you know, three or four weeks. The case growth had been slowing down. Testing remained steady. Hospitalization was steady. Similar trends were occurring around us in the region. Observed trends from other jurisdictions were showing that cases were coming down, you know, seven to nine weeks as well. But of course there were those behavioral items that we mentioned in past press conferences, Labor Day, school starting as words of caution. So really you want to see all of those measurements. You don't want, you want to have all those measurements moving in the same direction. You know, whether that's good or bad or neutral, right now they're just not all moving in the same direction. So you want those all moving in the same direction. It gives you a pretty clear picture. And then you also want to make sure that there's no sort of wild card behavioral item that's coming up that might change any of those trends. So that's what we want to see. We'll keep a close eye on it and hope to see some more trends developed this week. Okay, thank you. Okay, county courier, right? We'll go to Chris Roy, Newport Daily Express. Thanks, Rebecca. Good afternoon. Because somebody talk a little bit more about the uptick of cases here in Omies County. And particularly if there's any event that led up to that uptick. Maybe Dr. Levine can can explain further. From my perspective, I think you have to just look at the vaccination rates around the state and see that there's a higher population of unvaccinated up in the Northeast Kingdom than there is in anywhere else. So that would lead me to believe that it's again a pandemic of the unvaccinated at this point. And I definitely agree that that is a significant part of things. We also, you know, we follow in the range of about 60 outbreaks across the state. And one thing that's notable to me about these outbreaks is the numbers in them are not very large. And they're pretty distributed around the state and there's nothing in them that stands out for Orleans County to explain any significant percentage of the case growth that's been occurring there. Which tells us much more that this is community transmission occurring, not necessarily a specific event or a specific, you know, time and date that everything began with. So really can't give you much more specificity than that, unfortunately. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Rebecca. When, when Governor, when the governor's changed in New York recently, suddenly 13,000 more COVID deaths were found. And somehow Governor Cuomo apparently was providing false numbers. And for my get lots of numbers thrown at them each week at this press conference. I'm wondering you as governor, how do you know the statistics you're given each week on deaths on vaccinations on hospitalizations on outbreaks are 100% accurate, especially in light of the major IP glitch in reporting numbers. I mean, how confident are you in the numbers? You know, the old saying in journalism when your mother says she loves you, check it out. I mean, how do you know something is true? I've never doubted when my mom tells me that she loves me. She told me the same. You know, I have complete confidence in our team and nothing is ever 100% as we found last week. So when we do find there's an issue, we try and be transparent, bring it to your attention. And so that we can continue to have the faith and trust that we need to get through this. So I again, I don't have any specific answer or anything that I can point to. But between all of us in our different different backgrounds and looking at the data from different perspectives, I would hope that we have all the information that we need. I mean, we're a small state and having, for instance, Secretary Smith checking in with the hospitals on a frequent basis, Dr. Levine as well. So we get a sense of what's going on there. And again, with the backing of the CDC and their data compared to our internal data trying to rectify all that. So again, I'm confident, but trust and verify. I mean, that's what we're all here to do and making sure that we have all the correct information and that we're being transparent with all of you. I mean, obviously the numbers always sound plausible each week, but to have a major glitch like you did, it just seems that there's always a chance for errors, reporting errors. Yeah, no doubt about that. I mean, again, when you look at the data from last week, we've been hoping and predicting that we were going to have a downturn in cases. So when we started to see a downturn in cases, it confirmed what we were anticipating. And then to get the surprise, this ratification of the data from one of the IT providers, it was a bit of a shock to us. But we reported it anyways. We didn't hide anything. We reported it. So even when it's not good news, we tell you. And I think that again is part of what we want to make sure that we give you, provide you again. It's not always good news, but it's what it is. Has the state auditor looked at any of the numbers as far as you know, or has he weighed in yet? Not that I'm aware of. No, I just don't. I've not heard of that. No. Okay. And the other question. What is the latest on the inability of the Department of Public Safety to be able to properly roll out that Valkor dispatch and record system? It sounded last week, it would be a quick fix, but yet a week has gone by and I'm still told Valkor is still on the shelf for the state police fishing game. And two dozen other police agencies. And now I just learned that apparently the state police dispatchers have been told to take all the case information and the traffic stops out of the Valkor system and enter them into the old spillman system. So it sounds like it may be a little while. If Valkor never gets running again. Yeah, I don't think it's a question of if it's just a question of when and when it does happen. We want to make sure it's 100% that we did, you know, had a challenging point to overwhelm the system. And we just want to make sure that that it's 100% when we implement it for the second time. So I think that's all I can offer at this point, unless Commissioner Scherling has anything more he'd like to describe. Governor, no, nothing that it we're not on a specific timeline. Take our cues from the project team and the agency of digital services on what the right time to roll back at it. Commissioner is the system is it is it named for your boat or was a boat named for the system. Like I don't know where you're getting your information named after an island in Lake Champlain that has a famous battle associated with it. In New York State, you didn't find a you didn't find a landmark in Vermont. You could have named your system after that's still in dispute. Mike, we think it's our island. Commissioner, the question is about where the island is located. Yeah. Thank you, Rebecca. I just want to make sure I understand what you mean when you say pause as it relates to the motel housing program. Are you saying that none of the 541 households that was set to lose that housing will be forced to leave their motels for at least another 30 days? That's true. Yes. Commissioner Brown told the Joint Fiscal Committee on Friday that that would not be possible because the state didn't have enough motel beds available to supply that housing. What changed in the intervening days? We're going to have to get very creative in trying to find enough housing, but we feel that we can accomplish this. Again, we just want to make sure we take this pause to make sure that we all agree on the path forward and so we can get more permanent housing up and ready as well. So I think, you know, nobody, I think all of us should agree that this isn't the most ideal situation with temporary housing. What we need is permanent housing, and that's what we've advocated for, and we'll continue to push forward on that. But, you know, I don't want to waste a lot of time, energy and resources battling this out in a court environment. I want us to get to the root of the problem and fix that problem. So if it takes 30 days to do so, we'll take this time to make sure that, again, we're all on the same page pulling in the same direction so we don't have all of this unnecessary, from my standpoint, unnecessary conflict. So, Mr. Brown, anything you can offer in regards to the room availability at this point? Yeah, we are experiencing some capacity issues in several areas of the state. Fortunately, we do have a couple areas of the state that has capacity and so we'll be working with our community partners, our housing partners, to make sure if we have someone needing housing in an area where we have no capacity that we're able to assist them accessing that motel capacity in the other area, but also maintaining the connection to services and housing case management, which is crucial for someone to move on to permanent housing. So we're going to need to work with our partners to coordinate the movement of households where we have no capacity and decreasing capacity to areas of the state where we currently do have some capacity still. We did project that we would be losing additional capacity in the coming weeks with a tourist season upon us and we will continue to monitor the situation. And as the governor said, we'll be going to be very creative to make sure everyone has a place and that we work with our partners to ensure that we're still connecting folks to services, which is critical. Again, Pete, we also, that's one of the reasons why we want to continue moving forward with the $2,500 incentive in some respects that for those who want to transition out of the temporary housing and can find more permanent housing at this point in time and have that financial incentive, that might help reduce the burden on the rest in the program and reduce the burden on the number of rooms that are available. So again, we have no way of knowing exactly, or I don't have any way of knowing how many people that will be, but we'll see because it's on the table. That part's still on the table. Thank you. And apologies for taking so much time. I have one question for Dr. Levine as well. Dr. Levine, are you comfortable with the cessation of contact tracing in schools where vaccination rates are 80% or greater? Or is this a less than ideal option that is rendered in a necessity by the circumstances we find ourselves in? No, I actually feel fine about this. I also feel fine because of the fact that we have this, as Secretary French labeled it today, a competing strategy, but it's another strategy that we're hoping will be successfully piloted and can successfully keep more kids in school, which is the testing strategy. Just for people who aren't as familiar with the kind of strategy we're talking about, it would mean if a case was found in a classroom of kids that were too young to be vaccinated yet that potentially instead of having that entire classroom be quarantined, students could test on a repetitive basis with rapid return antigen testing and remain in school. And it's been found in some of the literature at least when there's mild to moderate levels of transmission of virus present in a community that less than 2% of the rest of that class would turn positive. So rather than exclude an entire class when you might find one person additionally who's positive, this way you can actually keep the rest of that entire class going to school, which is really important. We've also done a lot to simplify the contact tracing process and try to help provide further guidance to schools. So I think the total picture will be one of increased ability to keep kids where they should be, which is in school. And that's why I'm optimistic about that. Thanks all for your time. Sorry, going to take up so much of it. Chris, the Brattleboro Reformer. Good afternoon. I have a question for Dr. Levine. I was just wondering if you could say what kinds of information you'd like on packaging, labeling for cannabis products and just say how the process is going on the Cannabis Advisory Committee. That's a change of subject. So there is a Cannabis Control Board and there is an advisory committee that I'm on, which is the Public Health Advisory Committee. So what things we're involved in is labeling specifications, warning labels, making sure that things like edibles don't get into the hands of young kids who shouldn't be getting them, etc. So the process is actually evolving. So I don't want to give a laundry list of all of the things we're concerned about, but obviously there are many basic considerations you have to have regarding labeling a product, making it quite specific that it's for adult use, making sure that you don't have labels that would be so attractive to someone who is not supposed to be using this because of their age, that it would encourage them to get into the product, tamper-proof aspects of the product, a whole host of advertising considerations. So it's a very long list and I won't go into it all here at the podium just to say that we're just probably about a third to a halfway through this process. So we have a lot of considerations left that we have to weigh in on. So maybe ask me in a month or so or two months and we'll have a much more thorough ability to give you everything you're asked for. All right, thanks a lot. And then I just had a quick question. Are you going to be reporting the percentage of state employees who have been vaccinated? I wonder if Deputy Secretary Clouser is on, might be able to answer that question. I know we have a number of attestations, but I don't know if that's public or what we're doing with that. Yes, Governor, we do have currently 70% of eligible state employees who have attested to being vaccinated. And information is available if requested through the Department of Human Resources. All right, thanks a lot. Have a good day. Thank you. Andrew? Yes, thanks. Good afternoon. Circling back to Orleans County, are you suggesting a cause and effect of the low vaccination rates there leading to the higher per capita cases? That's just my perspective, but I would say that that has something to do with it. But the low numbers as well is something, it only takes one event. In some respects, we saw it here in Washington County. For instance, there was recently a wedding and then a reception and then tied to a bar as well. And so all of a sudden we had quite an elevated number of cases as a result of that one event. I'm just saying that this is a highly transmittable disease with the variant and those who are unvaccinated are, I think, more susceptible. But again, I'll let Dr. Levine clarify any of that. Well, the governor is quite correct on that. When we look at the rate of vaccination in Orleans County compared to the rest of the state, it is not the lowest, but it is on the lower side. It's about the third lowest county. So many, you know, and they're in the low 70s percents, where many of the counties are in the mid and higher 80s percent. But there's always more than one piece of information to help guide you into figuring out what is caused, what is effect. So the vaccination rates part of it. I would also raise as an issue. I'm not saying it is an issue, but you have to wait in the balance, the adherence to various parts of mitigation strategies, specifically use of masking and indoor settings, whether by vaccinated or unvaccinated people. We don't have a rate for that anywhere in the state. So I can't point my finger at one part and say it's different than another, but you'd have to consider that in the equation as well. And then just quantity of large gatherings that may have been occurring, social gatherings that would have allowed people to continue the higher level of transmission of virus present in the community. So it's going to be very multifactorial and impossible to really pin your finger on one thing or another. But the vaccination rate certainly isn't helping. I'll put it that way. Okay. Perhaps for you, Dr. Levine, or Secretary French curious about how derby elementary school and I guess you would call it an outbreak at this point. I know that's a very specific term, but they've had 31 cases there now. How does that fit into the expectation you all had for the experience that schools would have to start the year? It sticks out as a sore thumb when you look at the cases while infectious in schools report. Is this just the upper end of what you anticipated? Is there something unusual happening that's happened up there in Derby? Any understanding of the cause and how other schools might avoid this type of circumstance? Yeah, I think into a certain extent it is, I would say disappointing, but it can happen. You know, the superintendent, John Castle, he's a great leader up there. He's kept me apprised of their situation. I think it could happen to many of our schools if we're not careful about precautions and vaccination rates and so forth. But he had to ultimately make the decision due to a number of considerations to close the school for a bit. I totally support him in that decision making, but it has been challenging for the community. I've been in some discussion with the state representative in that area about expanding testing and so forth. So we'll continue our reach out and support districts as we get through the sort of challenging moment with the Delta surge. And Secretary French, last question. That report, the infectious in schools report this week had 174 cases. Is that the most that particular report has seen since the pandemic started or did we have higher reports last year? Yeah, I'd have to go back and check. It is certainly caught my attention at some of the higher levels that we've seen so far in the pandemic. Thank you. So I have a question about the long term care facility data. It seems that some of the numbers like say the Vernon Green nursing home, it almost seems like there were zero cases the weeks before and 30 cases now. And I'm wondering if that's to do with the data glitch or some other reason. You're talking Vernon Green. I'd have to find a table from further back to know if that has grown as quickly as you said, because I've been watching on the list all along. They have a companion facility Vernon Hall, which is also on the list, which is located on the same property. I'm just kind of interested in knowing if any of the numbers that we've had so far to cumulative numbers that we've seen, like if some of that has been affected by the glitch that involved it seems like an uptick in other cases as well. I missed the last thing you said. Sorry, I was just saying, I'm just asking is some of these rises that we're seeing, if it's because of the data glitch that's similar to. Yeah, I don't believe the data glitch has anything to do with this specific outbreak. I mean, it's a small number. So a week ago when we presented our table, there were 28 cases. Now there's 30. Okay, I guess I have a couple of other questions. I was wondering how you guys plan on sort of working on the booster distribution plan, given that there's such a shortage in staffing. Which shortage in staffing are you referring to? I'm talking about healthcare staffing, sorry. Yeah. We're deploying all sorts of staffing, whether it's the National Guard Coyote Task Force or Task Force Coyote, with the National Guard that we used in the previous round of vaccinations. We're using EMS that we've been using throughout this pandemic and redeploying some of the pandemic. We're using some of the health department and some volunteers as we move forward. We're using our partners in the healthcare arena, whether it's hospitals or FQHCs or other areas in order to provide the staffing for these vaccinations. So far, knock on wood, I think we'll be able to accommodate the various boosters that we have to have with the staffing that we've lined up. Last question. How many folks, like you guys have an estimate of how many folks are eligible, will be eligible for the next sort of, in that next round of boosters? About 113,000. Thank you. Good afternoon. The first question is for Commissioner Pichak. What do the numbers on the bottom access of the slide comparing Delta variant peaks across the few states meet? The numbers start at negative 10 and go up to 100. That's slide six of the 23 that were included for reporters today. Yeah, for sure. The bottom access needs. Yeah, so we should have labeled the day zero, but basically all of these states had their Delta wave start at different points, right? It could have been in June, it could have been in July, it could have been in August. So we wanted to put the point where we started to see cases rise in those states and then compare them uniformly so we can measure them over time. So basically when cases started to rise, that's day zero. We went back 10 days just to show that cases were low before that rise. And then you can see them rising along sort of similar time trajectories. So it was really just to compare apples to apples and put them on the same timeline. And so a couple of weeks ago, I believe you said Vermont was in week seven. So how are we to know where we are in this trajectory? So I think there is a... Are we in week eight? I think the online version has a better, clearer, you know, seven to nine week window over. You can't see it very well on the TV. But yeah, exactly right. We were sort of coming through week seven and eight right about now. So, you know, as we said, actually, we're actually a little bit further than that because seven to nine weeks is that time period. We're probably more like nine to 10 weeks. So we thought we were seeing that downward trend last week sort of would be right in that time period of the nine weeks. But we're basically on week 10 now and we haven't seen that sustained trajectory down. Like we mentioned earlier, you know, you can see some of these other states have just a much higher case counts than we do. They had much lower vaccination rates than we do. It seems like Delta has burned through their states just more quickly than it has in Vermont. So the bad news is that, you know, the heightened cases might not come down as quickly as some of these places. But the good news is that our case counts are dramatically lower than them. Even the states that are improving, you know, our rates are lower than them. Got it. Thank you very much for that clarification. And a question for Secretary French. What's the cost of the agency of education take home PCR test pilot and who will pay for it once it's rolled out statewide? And then secondly, can you clarify the turnaround time on these take home tests? Are they the rapid test? I missed the first part of your question, Lisa. Could you repeat it? Sure. What's the cost of the take home PCR test pilot program and who will pay for it once it's rolled out statewide? Yeah, currently, we're paying for it out of our federal grant. I don't have the cost information with us with me today. I can get that for you. And can you clarify the turnaround time on these take home tests? Are they the rapid test or the traditional PCR test? I would say traditional PCR. But as I said in my comments, we're expecting results back in 72 hours. It does require the test to be shipped the day that they're administered. But these are not antigen tests. Okay. Okay, thank you. And then finally, a quick question for Secretary Smith. Are pharmacists in vaccine clinics seeing many wasted doses these days? Will doses that might be spoiled be released to people seeking boosters at the end of the day or clinic to avoid wastage? I'm sure the way that the United States is vaccinating now and vaccinating everybody that there is going to be spoilage. At the beginning of the pandemic, in such short supply, we were really monitoring that aspect of it. Now with the vaccine being plentiful and trying to get as many people vaccinated as possible. For example, we'll have vaccination clinics where we'll have 6 to 12 people. And, you know, we have made the policy decision that it's most important to get those people vaccinated. If we have spoilage, we have spoilage on that. But we don't track that. I don't think any more. But maybe, well, Dr. Levine says we may track it. So I'll turn it over to him to give you how we track it and what it's saying. The current rate in Vermont is 3.9%, which is a high for us, but it's still lower than what has been deemed to be, if I could put it in quotes, acceptable with other vaccines, which is in the 5 to 10 or more percent range. So we're still adhering to that well. We do want to avoid just utilizing any doses that might be left over for a particular person who says they're due for a booster or what have you without really having the firm guideline regarding that so that we have our equitable process and make sure that we're not mistakenly giving somebody a dose that may not benefit from it versus not having a dose for someone who needs it badly. So this will all be sort of evened out in this transition period. Once we get the firm guidance by the end of the week, it'll be quite clear. Great. Thank you very much. Thanks, everybody. Two questions. Tim, Vermont Business Magazine. Hi, Rebecca. I only have one question for the governor. Governor, you know the stock market's been struggling lately. Meanwhile, Vermont's economic data from last week, the jobs, numbers, and the tax revenue numbers were pretty good. What's concerning you going forward given what looks like pretty good news here in Vermont? Yeah, my concerns are consistent. Our workforce shortages, demographics, and inflation. Short and sweet. Thank you, Governor. Welcome to Barton Chronicle, to Guy Page, Vermont Daily Chronicle. The Portland Clinic on the PCR diagnostic test says that it's only suitable for the 2019 COVID-19 virus. So I'm wondering, since the variant is a somewhat different animal, what kind of confidence do you have that the current PCR testing is also accurate for the variant? I believe it's still COVID-19, but it's just the variant of the COVID-19. But I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that if the experts across the country, across the world, have faith in this PCR testing, then I would assume I would too. But Dr. Levine? The variant is still the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the actually tests have been done, as each variant has come through, to make sure that the PCR is still adequately identifying it. Usually the concern we get is actually that it's over identifying it, because it's finding people who may actually just have fragments of virus and their nose that aren't even transmission-competent viruses. And so we get concerns that, gee, we're over identifying it with this very sensitive PCR test. But people should rest assured if the Delta variant is what's causing your symptoms, the tests are still going to pick it up. Very good to know. Thank you. Governor, a UVM MC nurse told the national TB audience last night that some UVM physicians refuse to consider vaccine reaction as a possible cause of otherwise inexplicable symptoms, which she says she started notice picking up in January. Have you heard about this TBER report, and do you think her complaint has merit? I didn't see the report, and I didn't see the story on this either. I'm looking at Dr. Levine. He has not heard of this either. Secretary Smith has not either. Is anyone in the room? Perhaps I could forward to you. I'd be glad to forward it to you and seek your comment on it. Yeah, that'd be good. Thank you, Guy. Alright, next from BT Digger, we have Aditi. Thank you for taking my question. I just want to follow up on the computer glitch issue that's been addressed many times. Looking at the new adjusted data that was sent to us, it looks like we did have some really high numbers on September 11th and 12th. And we see that the number of cases, when they were actually added to the data, but not again when the cases occurred, do we know if that is going to be fixed any time soon as in what those added tests are from which days? Yeah, I don't think we're going to be able to accurately go back and rectify the daily numbers. We know the numbers throughout a period of time were accurate. We had that many positive cases, but I don't believe that we're able to go back and really put them into the proper places, which makes our projections at this point in time a little problematic, to be honest with you. So Commissioner Petschak, anything you want to add to that? Yeah, I'll just add that, you know, we look obviously at the seven-day average. You look at the 14-day average. You know, when you have these broader averages, they're going to capture sort of the rate of growth that you see over a longer period of time. And we know on the 14-day average that those glitch days are included in that 14-day average. So we have a sense, you know, of our general trend when we look out longer. We don't have a good sense of the trend in terms of the shorter term, but this will work its way out of the data pretty quickly as we get through the next week or so. So I think, you know, that's certainly the good news. That's great. So we are going to get the data more current in the coming week, but still a day late, right? Because you still look back at what went in yesterday. Rather than several days late, will you just get data that's a day late? Right, exactly. So as a result of the fix, you know, the number will come in tonight, for example, and that will be reported tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. And that's the number, you know, that won't have to be revised up as the hope at this point. In terms of like getting that, just to be clear, when we say it's going to get worked out in the data, we mean that the seven-day average will advance and that those particular couple of days where there was a glitch will sort of fall out of the trend and will have a better sense of where our trend has been more recently. Understood. Do you think it's possible to get to a place where we get day-to-day data in real time so we can accurately track a surge and our other states doing it that way anywhere? Yeah, I think the key word is accurately. So I mean, there needs to be time to look at the data to confirm that the cases are indeed positives that, you know, the health department is getting five, six, seven, sometimes 10,000 cases, you know, tests a day. So it's a lot of work for them to do. Certainly we want to do it as quickly as possible, but obviously we want it to be accurate as well. And this cadence has worked for us during the entire pandemic pretty much. And many other states are on a similar cadence. Some states have even moved to a longer-term reporting every week, or some states don't report over a weekend and Vermont's gone back to that. So we have obviously tried to be as responsive as we can, but you certainly want to build in a little time to make sure that there's quality control and what we're providing is accurate. Wonderful. I have one small follow-up question. What is the number of vaccinated children in Vermont in the 12 to 15 age group? CDC says a little more than 40% of children ages 12 to 15 have been fully vaccinated nationwide. Yeah, it's a good question. So Vermont's right about 77%. I think you asked between 12 and 17 years old. Is that right? 12 and 15. 12 and 15. So I know, you know, for basically for those under 18 years old, 12 to 17 were about 77%. We're probably, you know, pretty similar to that for 12 to 15, but I just don't know that off the top of my head. But the uptake in those younger age groups has been really strong. And that 77% is the highest in the country. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you very much. And we'll see you again next week on Tuesday.