 One, thanks for joining us. Welcome, Megan Tuttle, who is our COVID-19 response leader for the city of Browntown, as well as our newly appointed planning director. We also have Dr. Stephen Lefler, the president and COO for UVM Medical Center, who we will hear from both of them in a moment. We've got a lot to cover. I would like to just start by sharing my perspective on how to understand the complicated moment that we're in now after more than 20 months of battling the virus. We are having this briefing at a time when we're seeing community transmission at a level that is surprising and disappointing, especially after a summer, which included many days in which we saw essentially no virus in Chattanooga County. In recent days, the new Omicron variant has introduced even more uncertainty into this challenging time. The news about high numbers of hospitalizations, a record number of infections, and classrooms closing in Vermont is concerning. And as we will get into in considerable detail on this briefing, it does, from my perspective, warrant further local action. And we are proposing more action today. However, as we consider further action, we should not lose sight. I think it's a critical that we don't lose sight on the progress that we've made over 2021 because of widespread adoption of vaccines. And we should stay focused on achieving even higher levels of vaccination as our top public health goal with respect to COVID. And here's why I say I want to go over the stats on this because I think sometime in all the new headlines, we lose sight of just how effective vaccines continue to be to this day. Vaccinated individuals of all age categories in the US are vastly safer than they were at the beginning of 2021. According to the CDC, and we'll have graphs on this later on, unvaccinated individuals currently are almost five times more likely to be infected and 13 times more likely to die from COVID, just an enormous difference. While COVID deaths continue to be a leading cause of death in the United States right now, a recent study has found that as many as 87% of those deaths, ones in September, could have been prevented if individuals had been vaccinated. And further putting this in perspective, according to the CDC, the risk of death is significantly reduced for those who are vaccinated to this point. In early October, the rate of COVID deaths among vaccinated individuals was just 0.55 per 100,000 people. And when looking at that very low number, it's important to remember that that is an overall total for all unvaccinated, sorry, for all vaccinated people who die. And we know that within that small universe, a dramatically disproportionate share are individuals that have some kind of underlying health condition that compromises their immune system so that for otherwise healthy individuals, the chance of death with vaccination is even lower for vaccinated individuals, substantially lower than that 0.55 per 100,000. It really gets down to the levels that are at or lower than other risks that we accept as part of our life. So it's also critical that we acknowledge that COVID risks no longer warrant the sweeping public health measures that it did prior to the vaccines. Here in Burlington, before St. Patrick's Day in 2020, I enacted one of the state's first shutdowns of the pandemic. And then here in Burlington in the weeks that followed, we pursued masking more aggressively and earlier than I believe any other community in the state and perhaps in the country. Those were the right steps to take, the right measures to take early on in 2020 and 2021, throughout 2020 and early on in 2021. But there were negative consequences of those actions on our economy and also on critical social issues like education, social isolation, substance abuse, mental health, and access to housing. So now at the end of 2021, with the risk of COVID much reduced for people who have a great majority of Vermonters and Burlingtonians who have chosen to be vaccinated. It's our responsibility to, as government officials, as a local government, I believe it's our responsibility as a city to continue to manage the disruptions and risks of COVID, but to do so in a strategic targeted manner that maximizes public health impact while minimizing setbacks for our communities. And as we get deeper into the proposed masking ordinance, I think we'll get into more detail about how we're trying to do that. But before hearing further from me, let me welcome in Dr. Steven Leffler and Megan Tunnell is with us here and maybe I'll pause there. Dr. Leffler, it's always very much appreciated you being part of these conversations. Any overarching thoughts you want to kick us off with? Yeah, first off, we have to stop meeting like this, right? I mean, 20 months is enough, you know. So- We had, hopefully we had, but here we are and I appreciate you coming back. Yeah, so we are in a particularly challenging time for the COVID pandemic right now. Hospitals are dealing with high numbers of not only COVID patients, other patients who have acute care issues that they delayed because of the pandemic, we have a mental health crisis and we have a hard time getting people back to nursing homes as quickly as they should go because they're having challenges with staffing and COVID. But if you look at the numbers, I know you have some data on this to show, hospitalizations from COVID right now are as high as they've been throughout the pandemic. People ask, how could that be? You know, Vermont is so well vaccinated and at least my answer to that is, you know, if we have an 83% vaccination rate in Vermont, that means that 17% of Vermonters aren't vaccinated. That's 107,000 Vermonters. And we know that the people who aren't vaccinated have a much higher risk of getting very sick from COVID and ending up in the hospital. So 100,000 people who have the potential to get very sick can really stress our small state in our 14 hospitals. At the medical center right now, we have 25 people with COVID in the hospital. We have seven in our ICU. Many of them are very sick and our projections over the next couple of weeks because of Thanksgiving and the trends that we're seeing for COVID right now, looks like it's gonna get busier. So we've made the difficult decision to add some ICU beds and take those beds out of our operating rooms. So to unfortunately decrease some operating room cases for some elective cases over the next month. So we have enough ICU capacity to care for everybody. We're also adding 10 other COVID specific beds onto our floors to make sure that we can care for all the COVID patients that we unfortunately expect to show up over the next two to three weeks. Usually after a holiday, the real spike in admissions to the hospitals about 10 to 14 days later, that's next week. And so we were opening these beds on Monday to be ready for further increase. But we've had a pretty steady increase now over the past month on a day-to-day basis to where I said we're at 25 today. In the state of Vermont, I think there's 85 patients in the hospital today with COVID, which is I think the highest it's been since the pandemic started. Thank you, Dr. Leffler. Let's, you know, I think Samantha, you may have had it up a couple of moments ago, but let's maybe while we have Dr. Leffler on the line, let's walk through some of these graphs, which I think tells them that are, I think really hammer home the points we've both been making so far. So let's go back one slide. So here, this is a graphic we've taken from the New York Times, which in both cases, the graph shows the difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. On the left, we have average daily cases. On the right, average daily deaths. And you can see that through this Delta-driven surge in July, August, September, into October, as there was some impact on the vaccinated population, but the impact was just dramatically higher on the unvaccinated population. And so right now we're at a place where it's 13 times as high, I believe was even higher when there was, you know, back in the peak of this surge. So a little hard to do the math in your head there, but I believe it was even higher. It was at least at one point, just was 14 times as high, just as recently as yesterday, last time we checked the scrap. I think that really tells the story, Dr. Leffler, you were just referencing. And so how are we doing with vaccinations? Let's go to the next slide here in Vermont and if we could advance that. So here this is, I think it's a while since we just looked at just how well Vermont was doing and just how well Chittenden County was doing. So Chittenden County for the now five-and-up population has achieved 83%, I'm sorry, 89% overall vaccination. And that compares to 83% statewide in terms of the five to 11 year olds. And I think this is a stat on the first dose. Vermont is doing very well better than any other state as the governor's office announced earlier in the week within the state of Vermont, Chittenden County is also is leading the pack again with 54% vaccination for two 4% of five to 11 year olds having gotten a first dose, which compares to statewide average of 40%. And then we're starting to track boosters there as well. Now that it's become clear that booster shots are an important part of the strategy in Chittenden County is doing well there as well. Although there are a couple of counties that are ahead of us and there are a lot of people have not yet gotten their boosters. I'm one of them. I'm just hit my six month mark being fully vaccinated. Recently I'm going in Friday and encourage so that I encourage everyone to be considering that as well. It is pretty widely established now that there is some modest but real waning effect of the vaccine vaccination without a booster. So that is something that is being free unambiguously recommended now. Looking at these graphs, Dr. Leffler, any thoughts about them? I mean, once again, Vermont continues to do extremely well on vaccinations, but really what's driving our hospital surge right now is the Vermonters who are not vaccinated. We do have some people who are vaccinated in the hospital. It's not 100% only non-vaccinated, but it's about 75 plus percent on any given day of the people who are in the hospital have not been vaccinated yet. So getting vaccinated, getting your booster, there's good data that shows now that getting your booster, there's two parts to immunity. There's the first part when the virus comes into your body. Getting your booster really seems to drive that part back down to zero or very, very low. Once the virus has made it into your body, the vaccine you've already gotten does a really good job of making sure you don't get very sick from it, but the way to not actually even catch COVID is to get the booster. That should really help us a lot to shut it down again like we did and add our nice spring and summer. Let's advance to the next slide now. And I think it really further brings home the point of just how impactful, even within the Vermont data, you can see that differences in vaccination rates seem to be driving substantial different experience in terms of the spread, transmission of the virus. The bold green line there is Chittenden County through the beginning of October. So through the kind of heart of this statewide surge. And what you can really see is that we've had some rise in recent weeks in Chittenden County, but generally much greater stability and stability at a lower level than the lower vaccinated counties from Vermont are experiencing. And there may be other factors as well, but you got to believe Dr. Leffler that the single biggest factor is the vaccination rates. I think it's without question, the single biggest factor is vaccination rates. So let's advance and by the same principle that that is on infections we're showing there. So if we were able, and I don't think we've generated it, but we were able to do a comparable, I've not seen it actually in Vermont, but one would expect that there would be even more dramatic differences given, that's basically showing the five times greater rate of transmission on that slide. And remember at the top, we pointed out that deaths are 13 times greater for the unvaccinated populations. You see similar differences in the county performance there. County, now so that said, sort of shifting gears, we are clearly still in what the CDC refers to as a high transmission period right now. This is the Chittenden County data and it shows the trajectory of the virus, I think going all the way back, I think that's going all the way back to the beginning of the pandemic. I'm not sure where the left side of the screen is there exactly, but you see the drop to almost very low levels of transmission during the summer of 2021. And then us jumping back up as we got into the liar part of August and early September and we've stayed there, we've had some ups and downs, but we basically stayed above the high transmission standard. And that's significant because the CDC guidance for months now has been for people to mask, when in public, in areas that are at substantial or high level of transmission. And we're clearly there. And my recommendations, I think Dr. Leffler, you and I, we've talked about this before, I think you supported this has been to encourage people regardless of their vaccination status to follow the CDC guidance and to mask when in public since, I believe we issued that recommendation in August. And we're still in a place where we are recommending that and I'm pleased to say, I think there has been quite a high level of acceptance of that recommendation in Chinden County. However, it has not been mandated until now, it's not been lawful for municipalities to mandated until now. And as one of the reasons for this briefing is to talk through the fact that last week, the state gave municipalities the ability to not just recommend masking in public, but to make it a part of ordinance. And that is what we're proposing at the city council tonight. And you can see this is a major part of the justification for that. While we are still clearly above that red line. I think just let's go to the next slide too, which gives us some more data saying a similar story, but it is reinforcing to see that this new system we've created to track the existence, the prevalence of the virus in the community through our wastewater system is giving us a lot of data that tracks with these infection levels and that gives us some actionable information. And you can see there that similar drop in the prevalence of the virus over the course of the summer, and then it jumped back up as in late July and August. And you can almost see how we were starting to see some rise in July before you started to see the cases, the PCR tests confirming this. And that's the value of wastewater testing. It gives us an early look into what's going on. We've got a Megan tunnel here, our COVID-19 response leader. Megan, do you wanna say a little bit more about this system and how it's working, what it's telling us right now? Yeah, I think I'll just reiterate the point that you just shared, Mayor, about the use of looking at our wastewater and the presence of the virus in our wastewater as a complementary tool to testing. Vermont continues to be one of the highest states in terms of the rate of people getting tested, still getting tested for COVID, which is an excellent thing for us in terms of actually finding the virus and being able to stop transmission. This is another tool that helps us. In the absence of people getting tested, we can see if the virus is growing or receding within our community, regardless of whether or not people are getting tested. So this helps us as another piece of information. But as the mayor said, one of the things that we did see is at the beginning of our Delta-driven surge at the end of the summer, we did see the levels of the viral prevalence increase again in all of the city's wastewater treatment plants. And it has stayed pretty stable since that time. While it's at a high level, we are seeing the presence of the virus stay pretty stable compared to other periods of time where it has fluctuated more. So this is helpful for us in understanding that we're not seeing major surges in parts of our community. One of the other things that we have been able to use this for is to monitor for the presence of variants. We detected the presence of the Delta variant in Burlington very early on. And we're able to understand, you know, how that might be impacting what was to come. We have been in communication with the lab that helps us to sample our wastewater. And we do expect to be able to test for the Omicron variant very soon in order to help us as an extra layer of surveillance with this new kind of unknown challenge that we just learned about last week. One other thing that I'll just mention here is that this wastewater program is also a helpful tool for us, not only to look at the presence of COVID in the community, but also other viruses. And beginning this fall, we began testing for the flu and RSV as well in our wastewater. We have started to detect both of those viruses at very low levels in our community. And I think it's a helpful point to just remind folks that as much as we're talking about the importance and value of COVID vaccinations and COVID boosters, it's also important to remember to get your flu vaccination if you haven't. And this is another helpful tool for us to be able to monitor the spread of those viruses as well. Great, thank you, Megan. And we maybe come back and have some, I think it's really exciting and interesting how we're gonna start in to expand the use of this tool. We're gonna lose Dr. Leffler in a moment. And before we do, if you just wanna go back to Dr. Leffler and kind of the important decision for the city, for the administration of the city council today is about whether or not to put in place a mass mandate and the council will be deliberating on that tonight. The ordinance that we have proposed does something that is not unprecedented, but is somewhat unusual. We've only found a few other, a couple other cities that have done this, which is we are creating and we are basically saying that for organizations that are managing a public space that if they take steps to guarantee that everyone that is in that space is vaccinated and shows a proof of vaccination, that if they take that step masking within that, that area is not required under our ordinance. It's essentially an exception for businesses and organizations. It's not all for-profit business. Sometimes, you know, it's like the flan and non-profit organization for organizations that achieve that kind of higher level standard ensuring that everyone in there is vaccinated, they're no longer subject to the masking requirement. I see that as a further incentivization for businesses to put in place vaccination policies and for individuals who maybe have been reluctant up until now for some reason to get vaccinated as something else they will need to consider knowing that many places in Burlington have a policy like this. I think we're gonna have some debate tonight about whether this is a, I think some people see the word, you know, see exception and think that that is somehow a lesser public health standard. My perspective is this is actually going to drive, this is something that will both allow, it will allow these businesses to operate the underlying activities in these spaces to have less constriction, restrictions on them. But it also I think will forward, you know, perhaps our most important public health goals here by increasing vaccinations or further incentivizing that. Do you have a perspective on that debate? I do, I'll have to be brief, unfortunately I have to jump to a different meeting, but let me start with really where we just talked about. The hospital system in Vermont right now is really strained under many issues, but one of them is COVID. So right now we need Vermonters to do everything they can like they did early on in the pandemic to keep each other safe and try to not catch COVID or need to come in the hospital for COVID. So I want to be clear that right now, I support people masking and being vaccinated and anything that can increase vaccination rates is a good thing. So in general, I have to tell you that I really want to keep people as safe as possible and we believe the guidance right now that we're still following the hospital is masks and vaccine, but I understand why a policy like that could drive up vaccination rates. So I'll finish with anything that gets more people vaccinated in Vermont in general is a good thing. And I really have to jump so I can't really have further conversation, but we can follow up with the next meeting, if necessary, okay? Okay, thanks a lot, Dr. Lefter. I appreciate you joining us. And good luck up there with the pressures that you're facing. Thank you. So let's now, let's keep going and next slide here does sort of summarize despite the high levels of vaccination and the progress we've made that there are continuing to be COVID-created disruptions as we've just heard from Dr. Lefler that warned local action. We just heard a lot about the pressures on the hospitals and the ICU, not entirely driven by COVID but that is definitely one of the drivers. Five to 11 year old vaccinations are well underway and as we just saw, Vermont is once again leading the nation, Chittenden County is leading the state but it will be some time before the five to 11 year old population is fully vaccinated. And we have seen here in Burlington and elsewhere around the state there's certainly been an impact on education with classroom closures as a result of infection. So even though the five to 11 year olds are gratefully much less impacted in terms of serious health impacts than older populations, there's still disruptions being created by new infections there. Locally, while we have seen a great rebound in activity in downtown Burlington and with visitors coming here, many residents certainly as we are in the indoor season now have expressed hesitation to return to public indoor activities during this current period of high transmission. That's another negative impact of the high transmission rates. And we have been seeing those rates rise from the beginning of October. They're down again over the last week or so. It's still a little early to say whether that is something about the data gap with the holiday break. But perhaps, we'd like to think we've reached the peak and are now down from but at the peak a couple of weeks ago we were about 65% above the stable level that we had been at for most of August, September and October. Last week, and adding on top of all this we have this new concern about the Omicron variant which we'll talk about a little bit further in a moment. And the next graphic shows what Dr. Leffler was just talking about the increased pressure on the hospitals. Good advance to that through additional statewide hospitalizations, COVID hospitalizations. You can see just the most, even yesterday and a new spike there. Yeah, and the red at the bottom is the ICU spike. And so we are recommending further new local actions and let's summarize what these local actions are. First of all, we are proposing a mass mandate ordinance and there will be deliberation and hopefully action on this from the city council tonight. We are, as we touched on, we are working with the lab that has been our wastewater testing lab to begin wastewater monitoring for Omicron as soon as possible. We picked up the arrival of Delta here through our wastewater system considerably earlier than the first genetically sequenced confirmation of the Delta variant. And we think that this has the potential to give us an early indication of Omicron's arrival as well. And Megan, do you wanna say more about the timing of when we think that wastewater, when we're gonna have that capacity because it's not something the lab can do yet? Yeah, it's not fully available today. We hope within the next week or so that the samples that we're sending will be able to be monitored for the presence of this variant. Say a little bit more about Omicron in a moment. The Burlington School District has initiated a test-to-stay program. It's took a lot of work from the district to launch this capacity. I talked to a superintendent planning in yesterday and on Monday and Tuesday of this week, there had not been a need to implement the test-to-stay program yet, all classrooms in the, there had not been a new case after the holiday break yet but it is likely we will face that again. Now, unlike prior to Monday, this test-to-stay program will mean that kids that do not test positive in these rapid antigen tests can stay in the classroom and the whole classroom doesn't have to stop function, go to go remote as soon as there is one confirmed positive in a classroom. And again, the district, we appreciate the district prioritizing this and making a major push. I want to thank, it's also you Megan, Tuttle was involved in some of those conversations and I want to acknowledge that, I've had direct conversations with Secretary French and Commissioner Levine about this and this is a priority at the state level as well and that state partnership was critical in getting this capacity started at the beginning of this week. We haven't had to implement it yet, there could still be some bumps in the road and I've offered any support that the city can offer to the district because I think it's a really critical community strategy. And then finally, and we'll review this at the end, we do have a number of recommendations that we urge Berlin-Tonians to consider as additional protections so that everyone can enjoy the holiday season, to have really a traditional holiday season in many ways and to do so safely and with a much higher degree of confidence than we had last year. So we have, let's, let's do this. So the, with respect to the Omicron variant, you know, this is a lot of, this information, let's not spend a ton of time on this, this is available to people from other sources. Basically pointing out we are, it's a lot we don't know about this yet, but we have the analytics team headed by Megan that is watching this and as it becomes more clear what the impacts of this variant are, we will consider taking further action accordingly. And again, we are, we are testing for it. We will begin testing for it as soon as we can. Anything quick, I wanna get to the mass mandate, but Megan, is there anything you wanna expand on here? I think one thing to share is, you know, we had been monitoring the reporting of where this variant had been detected and we just learned right before this briefing of a starting that it has been detected in California. But I think one of the things that is important to note is that, you know, we are taking this very seriously, but there are many things that we don't know yet about the variant and I am feeling very grateful that public health authorities in South Africa and around the world have taken a lot of action and learned lessons from earlier in the pandemic about the importance of immediately studying the impact of variants on transmissibility, severity and immunity. And we hope to know more about what this variant means for our public health response in the near term. Great, thank you. Let's now let's talk about the mass mandate. So last night, we've been working hard on this since the legislature granted municipalities this authority and we have a special meeting that is called for tonight to review our proposed ordinance, which was published. We kind of laid out the principles of it last week and then published the detailed ordinance late yesterday with a memo. There are really three objectives that we're trying to achieve with this policy at this time. We are trying to reduce community transmission of the virus. The vaccine masking has certainly been shown to do that throughout the pandemic and that is a major objective. We also think that there is an opportunity here by crafting this policy right to promote the adoption of vaccine policies by Burlington organizations and to further elevate our vaccination rates. As Dr. Leffler pointed out, even at the very high level of vaccination we've already achieved, there's still something like 100,000 Vermonters who have not yet gotten vaccinated. We know that mandates in the workplace have had a positive impact. We know that basically the story again and again through the recent months has been that vaccine incentives and requirements work. This is another one that can push some, it may be able to push some people and organizations in that direction. There are already numerous Burlington organizations that are requiring vaccination, proof of vaccination for all patrons that enter restaurants and a flin, for example. This may and I think is likely from the feedback we've gotten from numerous organizations, it is likely to result in more organizations adopting that policy, which we think will lead to higher levels of vaccination. And finally, we're trying to do this mass mandate in a way that supports the recovery of the Burlington community, certainly the economic recovery, but also the social recovery that this community is making after this long pandemic. We can get into some of the details about how this has achieved on the next slide. Again, this is a mass mandate for all public spaces in Burlington, all areas of the city, whether it's a public building or a privately owned building where the public regularly accesses that space, the mass mandate will apply to all of those spaces. In the... Mayor, could I just interject really quickly to clarify that it applies to all those spaces indoors? Yes, thank you. An important distinction. That is where we... Indoors is where we think that we should be regulating. We all know that the principal remains that outdoor spaces are vastly safer and even indoor, well-ventilated spaces are safer. This is something that's focused on indoor public spaces. Organizations can earn an exemption from the mask requirement within those spaces if they affirmatively verify the vaccination of all patrons and require all employees interacting with the public in those spaces to be vaccinated. This, their residences, houses of worship, schools within the Burlington School District, which are under a different regulatory guidance from the one agency of education are exempted from the standard. Houses of worship are not included because of legal action that has taken place over the course of the pandemic and residences are not public places. Public transportation vehicles are included. Buses, trains, taxis, rideshares, ride-sourcing like Uber and Lyft is covered by the ordinance. This ordinance, if enacted by the council, by statute needs to be reconsidered every 30 days. The council has to vote again whether or not to extend or rescind the ordinance every 30 days. And in addition, since this policy is grounded in this CDC recommendation, that masking be recommended in areas of high and substantial transmission, if we drop back for an extended period of time in 10 days into a moderate level of transmission or lower, at that point, the proposed ordinance will give us, may be rescinded if we drop back to that lower level. And per the state statute, this will sunset, even regardless of the extensions by the city council, by state statute, this will expire at the end of April of next year. Okay, I expect there might be, if there are questions, there might be about that. So I wanna get to that quickly. Let us just quickly finish with a reiteration of our recommendations for enjoying this holiday season. This, because of the progress we've made over the last year, it is possible to enjoy the holidays this year in a way that just wasn't possible last year, had a great reunion with our family after just last week. And I hope many of you did as well. We think that should be possible again for the upcoming holidays. If you're, that is only the case, however, for vaccinated folks, unvaccinated folks, as we've said again and again, remain at significant risk. If you're over 18 and it's been six months since you became fully vaccinated, we strongly urge you to go out and get the free vaccine booster. If you're the parent or the guardian of a child, five or 11 years old who has not been vaccinated, you should know the vaccine is safe for children and you should know that there are many different options, different settings that you can get your child vaccinated in, you can go to pharmacies, you can go to your pediatrician. I think there are still potentially some additional school-based clinics being held. There are a number of different ways to get the test and that variety seems to be driving a high level of adoption here at Vermont. If you are traveling, if you're going to large gatherings, consider getting a COVID test before and after those gatherings, especially, and this is really especially important if there are going to be vulnerable individuals in the gathering and that really includes anybody with a compromised immune system and certainly all people over age 80 are at additional risks, is what the data has shown quite clearly. There continues to be free state testing and widely available. If you're attempting to do that here in Burlington and elsewhere and then there is this new option that I think a lot of people don't fully know about yet and that really adds a lot of convenience and flexibility. These are these rapid tests that can be purchased in local pharmacies and they are really, they're very accurate, they're especially accurate when you're testing someone who is symptomatic. So when we were with my in-laws at one point, one of my daughters had mild symptoms but it made us all very nervous. We were able to use one of these rapid tests at no one 15 minutes that with a high level of certainty that she was not, she did not have COVID. And that is an example of the way in which these new tests really allow a lot of flexibility and actionable information. If she had tested positive, of course we would have immediately isolated her and kept her away from her grandparents, but we didn't need to do that because we had that information. The science is clear that asymptomatic transmission by vaccinated individuals, so vaccinated individuals who are not showing symptoms is very rare. And that is something that can be reassuring if you're not symptomatic and something to be concerned about if you enact on through the testing if you do become symptomatic, especially again around vulnerable individuals. Wear a mask indoor in public spaces and improve ventilation when gathering indoors if that's something impossible to open windows and that is shown to have a major difference. So with that, I think we can open up, we can drop down the PowerPoint and if there are questions, you're happy to try to answer them. Okay, the first question is from Jack Lyons. Hello Jack. And you should be able to go ahead. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can, go ahead Jack, yeah. All right, thank you. My first question is about, it was meant for Dr. Leffler, but perhaps Director Tuttle, excuse me, could answer this. Do we have any data about the settings in which the virus is being transmitted right now? You mean contact tracing data about where we're seeing outbreaks? Yeah. We know that this is something that the Vermont Department of Health has typically reported on as part of their weekly data summaries. They suspended that reporting because they're making some changes to that reporting just before at the around mid-October, I think it was. But we know that definitely in kind of community-based settings where people are gathering in smaller social groups, that was one of the areas that we were seeing transmission. And the other outbreaks, I think were kind of spread between the different categories that they review. Gotcha, thank you. I had another question for the mayor. I've heard from businesses that are worried given the constraints they're facing right now around the number of staff they have available, especially retail places that they're not gonna be able to easily check people's vaccination status as they enter the business. Is that something that you've heard and do you have any response to that? Yeah, we certainly have heard a range of opinions from the business community. We had a forum just after this authority was granted to by the legislature last week and about three dozen organizations participated in that. And there were opinions expressed across the board. Certainly I've heard numerous organizations express support for the exemption for businesses that do take that extra effort and check for vaccinations at the door. Some businesses are very much set up to do that and already either because they have kind of a host greeting all people who are entering already or in the case of bars you have other people bouncers monitoring the door. Gymnasiums can achieve this because they know they're members and can require proof of vaccination that way and restrict access to memberships. So we definitely have heard support from many. We definitely have also heard that concern that it will be an additional burden for some. The option is available to those businesses if this is not something that we're requiring businesses to do. They will though in that case then need to inform their customers and have their employees following a mask requirement. So there is some which has its trade-offs as well. So that I've heard that full range of opinion. Let me just take this for opportunity Jack having to come back to you in a second. One thing I've heard a lot of confusion about with respect to how this mask mandate has been is being proposed. I think there's some misunderstanding that this mask mandate only applies to unvaccinated individuals. So we're only requiring masking of unvaccinated individuals. I think because we are creating this exception for places that are 100% vaccinated I think that somehow as people it's been a quickly moving debate. I think that some people are not understanding what this proposal is. In areas and public spaces everyone will be required to wear a mask regardless of vaccination status unless that business takes the step of monitoring at the door whether or not all people in that public space are vaccinated and in that case only vaccinated people will be allowed in those that fully vaccinated group will not be required to wear masks. I hope that's clarifying to some. Did you have further questions Jack? Yeah, I had another question about how the city plans to communicate this ordinance. Does it have any strategies for how it's gonna inform people of what the new rules will be if this gets enacted? Yeah, I mean, we're gonna use all the tools we have for communicating with people and a couple of additional ones specific to this. So first of all where we've been sharing plans about this for over a week. We had this forum that involved dozens of the impacted businesses or has been communications to those businesses and organizations already by Kara Al-Nasrawi who is our chief liaison with small businesses in the community. We will be, we have been using, we have an extensive email list that we will be further utilizing. See, I mean, some, I think an additional thing that we're doing here that we don't tailor to this specific situation is that the city will be printing and distributing if this ordinance passes a signage to help the impacted organizations communicate to their patrons what the policy is. So for the businesses that are requiring the masking, the signage will make it clear that this is something required by the ordinance. And for the, I believe we are publishing a separate sign for businesses that are choosing to go through the vaccination option instead. And then just one more question, if I may, is a consideration in this mass mandate, a proposed mass mandate, is there a consideration at all of what other towns in Chinden County might do with this new authority that's been given by the governor and how that might affect retail businesses heading into the holiday shopping season? So Jack, yeah, and perhaps I have heard some concern I've heard some concern that a requirement could have some kind of negative impact on businesses either through keeping potential customers away or perhaps worsening the employment challenge that our businesses are facing right now at a time when it's really hard to hire folks. And those possible trade-offs definitely weigh on me in coming forward with this proposal. As I noted, I think that this is a challenging time. We have serious disruptions that we need to try to act to address. We just heard from Dr. Loeffler, the hospital basically being under greater pressure than at any earlier point in this pandemic. And the other disruptions have gone over. At the same time, I'm very mindful of the fact that many of our businesses, organizations have just gone through some of the most challenging periods in their history. There's been enormous uncertainty and disruption to those organizations for the last 20 months. Many of them are just beginning to recover and I think it does need to be on our minds that it is also a goal of ours to one of things make downtown Burlington great is that we are a thriving downtown business community and we need to be thinking about them as we make these decisions. And frankly, I think it's a much tougher call now than it was at earlier points in this pandemic where the risks were much greater. And so this is definitely weighed on and we've tried to get it right through this targeted, I think really strategic way in which we are implementing this mass mandate and doing so in a more surgical way than the prior mandates. All that said, I am not convinced that, it's just not known whether having a mass mandate as opposed to just a risk recommendation is going to have a negative impact on business. I know some business owners feel that it will. There are others who have remarks to me that the earlier mass mandates actually led to more traffic because choppers had a higher level of confidence in the safety of shopping in Burlington. I certainly think it is likely that I'm confident that some number of diners, gym patrons, people going to theaters, knowing that everyone else, if there is a vaccination requirement to be in there, that may bring people out willing to enter those spaces that have been hesitant to do so up until now. So I think that economic impacts are unknown and whether or not South Burlington or Essex or Colchester puts in place similar policies that don't think should drive this decision by city government. Thank you. Okay, thanks, Jack. Next we have Catherine Huntley. Hi, Catherine. Can you hear me? Yes, we can, go ahead. Great, thanks. Yesterday, Dr. Levine said in the press conference that it's much more likely to get sick with gatherings at home. Is there going to be messaging going out from the administration to make sure people know they should also be wearing masks in these kinds of settings and being careful? So I guess in other words, will this be effective? The current proposed mask mandate be effective in curbing COVID or will extra messaging be going out about gathering and masking in those situations maybe as well? So Catherine, yeah, I mean, I absolutely think that people should be, especially if they are going to be gathering with vulnerable family members or friends. There are other steps they should be considering. I don't think necessarily masking in an extended family gathering is a meaningful strategy, but that list of things at the end of our presentation, I really think can give the people the ability to gather with their loved ones and do so safely through, again, making sure everyone there has gotten a vaccination, gotten boosted, that five and 11 year olds, if they're going to be there, that you haven't gotten your vaccination for them yet. Yes, that's a key thing to go out and do the testing before and after the event. I'm not sure why we're getting this kind of feedback now. I apologize for that. I don't think it's, I'm not sure what's causing that, but that kind of the testing can really help ensure the safety of those gatherings and quick action. If someone that is there becomes symptomatic is important. Those are the tools that we didn't have a year ago that we think can't allow people to gather safely this year and we are, in terms of the messaging, yes, it was part of today's presentation. It's been part of our communications to Berlin-Tonians for some time and we will continue to make those recommendations. It's not something that I think we have the ability to require or kind of mandate in some additional way. We'll certainly continue to communicate about this. Great, may I do an off-topic question or should I say that to the end? No, go ahead. All right, great. So I'm hearing that people that live in Sears Lane, say there's still half a dozen people still living there. How are they still there if the city shut it down over five weeks and I guess what are the next steps? Yeah, thanks, Catherine. So half a dozen, I believe that's accurate that we are seeing a small number of people that have either stayed at, in case of one individual or returned to the site. We are continuing to work with those individuals through our social workers and through our partnership with CBOEO. At some point, we will take further enforcement actions beyond the ones that we have taken to keep that, to address the public safety and public health issues that are there. We do continue to have concern for the conditions that existed the site, although they are much better than they were before we took the action that we did. And we did not take further action last week during the Thanksgiving holiday week, but the same concerns that caused us to act at the beginning to a lesser degree, but still exist and we will. It is our hope that people will be able to find housing through the supports that we are offering as more than 25, 20 dozens of others already have. We're continuing to work with those folks and we're hopeful that we can continue to present some options to those folks. And what does further action look like on this? Yeah, Catherine, we're gonna continue to encourage people to find better housing options, support them in doing that. And ultimately, we have taken a number of steps to restrict the ability of people to live there and we will continue with that if that's required. It's our hope that we can, again, work with folks and find better options instead of having to take additional actions ourselves. Our hope is that they can find better options, better options on their own, working with CBOEO and our social workers. Great, and just a quick one. Have people come to pick up stuff that they left in storage there? Yeah, some have and that's been an important part of how we've tried to address the situation is provide storage options for people that are leaving and it's something that we've agreed to do in this part for some period of time, for at least a month, we're now beyond that for some individuals, but we're continuing to provide that service for individuals. And there are at least a few that have been taking advantage of that ability to come back and retrieve loans. Great, and on the mask mandate, so I don't forget, the enforcement is that going to go back to the police department again, where I guess the store owner should call the police department if they're having an issue with somebody not wearing a mask or something like that. There are enforcement provisions of the ordinance, violations of the ordinance are civil offenses that can potentially be defined and escalating level of fines. I think first offense is $50, the second one is $100 and then it goes high as $500. Yes, ultimately the police department does have enforcement authority and it is our hope that as with earlier ordinances and with many of our laws that there will be a high degree of compliance without the need for active enforcement by the police. But if that is required, it's something that is enabled by the passage of this ordinance. Great, thanks so much Mayor. Great, thank you, Kathy. Okay, that's all we had for folks in the queue. We could do a last call. And if anyone had a question, a member of the media, if you want to use the raise hand function at this time. Well, just as we're waiting to see if anyone else raises their hand, there is a question in the chat about whether this applies to employees as well as patrons and the answer to that is yes, certainly a business seeking the exemption. Everyone in that space will need to be vaccinated, including the employees. All right, if there are no further questions, I think we'll wrap it up there. There'll be more discussion of this in just a couple hours at the city council. And I appreciate, again, thank you, Megan, for your hard work and leadership on this issue on top of all your other responsibilities. And we thank you again, Dr. Leffler for the continued partnership with these communications. And I wish everyone, hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving and an enjoyable holiday season ahead. Take care, everybody.