 Good morning everyone. As many of you know, we continue to see a rise in cases, which is concerning to all of us. Going from an average of 25 per day last week to 72 cases reported Wednesday, 109 reported Thursday, and 84 reported today. We're definitely moving in the wrong direction. While we've taken steps to slow the spread over the last few weeks, including an advisory to limit social gatherings and requiring quarantine for any out of state travel, cases continue to rise. I want to be clear. We're in a new phase of this pandemic. The days of very low risk are over. So unfortunately, I'm announcing several new measures to slow the spread so we can protect the vulnerable. These steps are data driven, meaning they're targeted directly at the areas driving our current case growth. As we've seen recently, many of our clusters and outbreaks are tracing back to private social gatherings like baby showers, tailgate parties, dear camps and other small gatherings like barbecues where multiple households are getting together and not wearing masks or staying physically separated for long periods of time. It's no coincidence that we're seeing these increases 12 days after we know many gathered for Halloween parties. And though we've been warning against these activities for weeks, they still happening. Given our recent case growth, we have no choice but to restrict social gatherings, whether at a home, a bar or in a parking lot after a game. So starting today, multiple or multi household gatherings, both inside and out, whether in public or private spaces are prohibited. I know this is incredibly discouraging, especially because many of you have worked so hard and we've had much success for so long. But the fact is, people getting getting together, not being careful and letting their guard down is why we're in this position today. Our data shows these multi household interactions are also taking place at bars and clubs. So effective tomorrow at 10 p.m. Bars and social clubs be closed to in person service. Restaurants, however, can remain open, but are required to close in person service at 10 p.m. Each night, though they will be able to offer to go service after 10. To assist with contact tracing, which helps us prevent and contain outbreaks, we're also requiring restaurants, museums, gyms and other customer facing establishments to keep a daily log of all who enter their facilities. We've also directed, we're going to be directing, for monitors to comply with requests made by the VDH contact tracing team because we need people to be cooperative and honest when they call. And as college students start to return home for the holiday break, whether from a Vermont school or out of state, they are required to quarantine for 14 days or seven days and a negative test. Please note, we are strongly encouraging these students to get tested after seven days. We've also seen some who are going back to our pre-pandemic ways. So we're requiring telework for those who can do so in discouraging in-person meetings. Essential workers and schools can continue to in, it can continue in-person operations, but things like staff meetings that can be done by video conference should do so. Finally, we're pausing recreational sports leagues, those outside of the BPA, BPA sanctioned sports. Admittedly, this one is hard for me because our kids are trying so hard, but it continues to be another opportunity for gathering and can spread the virus amongst multiple counties and multiple schools. As we move forward, we'll be looking at this every week and I hope youth sports will be one of the first things to reopen. And I hope these adults out there who haven't followed our guidance recognize the responsibility they have to help us slow the spread and get our cases down. I'm sure you all know we're at a tipping point. We still have an opportunity to get our arms around this alarming case growth and return to what we've grown accustomed to. But we all have to step up and commit to following the health guidance including these new measures and limit our contacts as much as possible. Now at the same time, we're expanding testing and contact tracing protocols so we're better positioned to hunt this virus down and stop it in its tracks. As I've said before, the good news is we've proven these steps are effective and that we can change our trajectory. And I want to thank those for monitors who've done their part, wear their masks, who skipped the Halloween party, canceled travel, and kept their social circles small. It's this type of commitment that will get us through this sooner. I know how hard it is to keep this up, but if we dig deep and double our efforts, we can get this under control. And we must because this is about making sure we don't overwhelm our hospitals and save lives. It's about keeping our kids in school and our workers working. I know these are goals we all share. And we all have a role to play in order to stop the growing wave of infections which is leading to more hospitalizations and sadly will lead to more deaths. So please do your part so we can get things back to where we were before. And with that I'll now turn it over to Dr. Levine. Thank you Governor. You all know that we rely on data to guide each and every decision we make. And that data has shown us a clear picture of a rising tide that could have serious consequences. We've now seen transmission accelerate as reported cases have gone from 42 at the beginning of the week to 72 to 109 hitting new highs of the pandemic in Vermont. Last evening there were additional 84 recorded. Hospitalizations too are on the rise with a total reported today of 21. You can see our total case count is 2,743 and our deaths remains stable fortunately at 59. Every Tuesday we present to you a lot of the modeling data and projections. I want us to focus today on the real time data and you can make your own projections because you'll notice that the slope of the curve has markedly changed from where it has been for so long a time. This is the number of cases per day which I've already stated to you. This is a pictorial representation. Clearly we had some days that exceeded our early experience way back in March after this long, long period of small outbreaks containment moving on. The percent positivity rate we have continued to be noteworthy in the country regarding how we are doing. We've often been below 1%. We'll see now that the seven day average actually isn't listed on the slide. I'm sorry but the positivity rate on November 10th was 1.76. I believe the seven day average is between 1.3 and 1.5. Regarding syndromic surveillance, which is on the next slide, not a market uptick but you can already see that there is a change in the most recent days on the graph. Still at a lower level but in some of our counties the emergency departments have become exceedingly busy so we anticipate those numbers will change. Then on my last slide just to show you the nature of the really the outbreak that began this entire progression, the ice sports team outbreak way back here in October, things have really settled down a little bit with regard to that but they have not been extinguished completely and we need to keep watching that but I use this not to necessarily focus on that particular outbreak but to focus on the natural history of an outbreak and what can happen with very innocent events that then lead to community transmission in ways that people may never have imagined. As you'll see we've gone from what we call the primary grouping to the secondary to now the tertiary infections that are still petering out so to speak. So just like we've had an increase in the number of cases, the same goes for the number of new situations our contact tracers are following. That can be a range of things that require more investigation and outreach than just a single case. These situations we label them that way because they impact usually a kind of a facility whether the facility be a work site, whether it be a long-term care or a health care setting, whether it be a school or child care. Earlier this week eight new situations were identified in one day. The following day it was up to 16. The current total is now well over 80. The current total of outbreaks is 17. Too many to go into one at a time for you here during the press conference. Our teams, our data teams analysis also shows a rising number of gatherings leading to further spread and outbreaks. These gatherings can be parties, meetings, cookouts, get-togethers with family or friends. Since October 1st, 71% of the cases that are associated with an outbreak are associated with an outbreak from a private party or a social gathering. 71%. So I'm giving you the data. I want to translate the data into a story. It's not one complete real story. I'm going to, as the way I'm going to tell it, but what it does because every single component of the story is from real actual scenarios that we've encountered just this past week in Vermont. It tells the kind of story everyone needs to hear. So let's start with a Vermonter. I'll name him Max. Max goes to his friend's house for dinner. He has a small group of old friends there, a couple of new acquaintances. He doesn't know where they come from even, but there's a couple of new acquaintances. And everybody's having a good time. No one really feels sick or seems sick to Max. What he doesn't know, of course, is that one person in that party was infectious at the time, probably in the 48 hour period before they might become symptomatic. And of course Max is at a dinner party. What do you do at a dinner party? You eat, you drink, you socialize. So there are long periods of time when there's nobody wearing a mask because how do you do those things when they're mask on? And it's your friend's house, so you're not actually paying attention about how many inches or feet I am from a person. So Max comes home to his family, had a great time, but a few days later he's not feeling perfect, but he kind of feels okay. Hasn't really noticed any major changes, but what he doesn't know is that he is actually infected now. And it's during this time, before he really realizes he's sick, that he can be infectious and infect somebody else and transmit the virus. But he feels well, so he goes to work. He owns an auto service shop. He's pretty good about wearing a mask and all that, but he and his three other employees take the same coffee break every day. And what do you do in a coffee break? Well, these three guys, these four guys drink coffee, eat some snacks, and lament about the Patriots. However, during that coffee break, those three other coworkers are potentially infected. They're certainly close contacts, but they're potentially infected. The four of them are the entire workforce, so Max has no choice but to close his business for a number of days. Let's talk about his wife, Nicole, who he lives with of course. She lives at home with him, doesn't know he brought the virus home from their friend's house when he was at the dinner party. The only problem is Nicole's a teacher. So Nicole goes to school feeling well as well, but has now exposed her fifth graders and some staff at the school to the coronavirus. Eventually she actually develops a cough, so she has to get tested, and her test comes back positive. Now there's a pod of fifth graders and two staff members in the school that have to stay out of the school. Their lives are disrupted for those two weeks. Potentially the school's operation is disrupted if there's an impact on staffing that becomes significant. So that's how that works, but I didn't tell you one other thing. Max and Nicole have a daughter, Vanessa. Vanessa works as a nurse's aide at a local nursing home. We know ultimately from our experience in Vermont how devastating an outbreak among patients there could be. Vanessa knows that too. She hasn't lived a life in the fast lane. She has been very careful, but why would she imagine just coming home and living in her own home would put her at risk of coronavirus? I won't play it out any further, but you can imagine the impacts if the nursing home has an outbreak. So my story is all about one social gathering with a very modest number of people, and I'm not exaggerating this story at all. This is exactly what the governor talked about and what I've talked about that we are seeing every day in our reports in Vermont. And unfortunately when the virus is increasing in levels in our communities, this is what happens. We want to be together. We want to have some sense of normalcy, but I don't want this to be your story or any of our stories. Both the numbers and the information contact tracers collect. Tell us where the solutions are. Limiting contact among households in gatherings and following the travel and quarantine guidance. Period. Whether it's friends or our own family members, we need to limit any social activities to our own households to protect all those people that we can't even know we've put at risk. Where we work, where we learn, where people live in situations that might make them more vulnerable. And unfortunately we need to make these sacrifices now. You may recall that on Tuesday I told you that we were on the threshold and that the decisions we make now will truly determine our future as we head indoors in these colder months. If we can act at this critical moment in time our actions will still make a difference. Remember our very basic priorities and goals. Keep people working, keep kids in school and save lives and hospitalizations by decreasing the number of cases. I want to add that as much as we talk about protecting each other from COVID-19 it's a good time to really think about protecting yourself. We hear about some people having no symptoms and most people recovering but there is still a range of outcomes from COVID-19. Some with long-term effects even for healthy people and you just won't know how COVID will affect you until you get it. So please don't make assumptions with this disease. Take it seriously. I'm going to conclude now with just a few essential points. Know when you need to quarantine and what that means. Travelers close contacts of a positive case must stay home and away from others for 14 days or seven days with a negative test assuming you have no symptoms. It's especially critical now with college students coming home for the holiday. We strongly encourage them to get tested as well. And they must quarantine. I've received a lot of mail about this and had to explain a lot of times about what quarantine really means. So please go to our Health4Month.gov website under COVID-19. There's very explicit instructions about what quarantine is and isn't. Second point, get tested. If you have COVID symptoms or you're a close contact of a positive case or as we've already said this week if you've attended social gatherings get tested. It's an essential tool to finding and containing COVID. We appreciate your patience as our teams work hard to make testing even more available than it is now when and where you need it. Thirdly, know how to prevent further spread. Testing is not prevention. You still need to wear a mask stay six feet away and stay home if you're sick. That includes even a mild symptom like a headache or a runny nose and avoid non-essential travel. Fourth, answer any call from the health department and be forthcoming with information. The more cases and situations we have the more we need your help so contact tracers can do their work. The quicker and more complete the information the more likely we are to stop transmission and prevent an outbreak. Our experience these past many months and I showed you on the graph has taught us that Vermont knows how to contain this virus. There's no question we're facing real challenges as cases surge in Vermont and around the country. We want to get back to where we were but we need your help. Accepting our situation and following the guidance the governor and I have described today is what we must do now. We may need to be a part more but I know we're that we are up to the challenge together. I'll turn it back to the governor. With that we'll open up to questions. All right we have 25 in the queue so please limit your questions. We'll start with Calvin. Thanks governor. I'd imagine a lot of bars and restaurants probably aren't too keen to hear the news today. I know your administration's in the process of securing a few more million dollars for business grants. I guess do you think that that will be enough and I mean if this if people I guess especially with small gatherings if they don't comply or we continue to see cases go up I guess what what help will be there for those restaurants and bars? Yeah well first of all the restaurants aren't are not impacted. The bars will be closed. The clubs will be closed. The restaurants will be closed at 10 p.m. so they can still continue. But I have a lot of sympathy for the bar owners in particular. They're another business and they have a lot of employees who count on them for their income as well. So this wasn't done lightly and that's why I'm fighting so hard to take whatever remaining CRF funds we have left over and we have about we've set aside 75 million for that sector in particular and businesses at large because we know they need it right now just to get through that maybe in the next next month or so but it's not anywhere near enough not anywhere near. We need just for the hospitality sector alone I would say we need five to ten times the 75 million that we have today we just simply don't have enough to help and we're under the same restrictions the guidelines we had from before everything has to be expended by December 31st so the the clock is ticking so we need to make sure that we get that out the door just as quick as possible it's my understanding the Joint Fiscal Committee will take this up tomorrow morning or tomorrow at some point and either give us a red light or a green light in terms of whether we can use that money for these businesses that are in desperate need and again I just want to reiterate this is nowhere near enough we're going to need some more help from from Congress I spoke into our congressional delegation about this I fact text out of text exchange with congressman Welch today and he's obviously on board he understands our needs and is doing everything he can to get them to act even in the lame duck session and I guess just a question for Dr. Levine dealing with college students returning you said that every college student needs to be quarantining when they come back but a lot of schools have been doing their own testing so let's just say I'm a student I go to school in North Carolina I get a negative test there I come straight here I take a test as soon as I arrive I test negative do I still have to quarantine I wish I had an answer that you wanted here but the answer is you must still quarantine because you've come from a place that has even a higher positivity rate than anywhere here in the northeast and the day you test negative is just the day you test negative it doesn't imply that your body is not incubating virus and that you won't become infectious so that seven day period followed by the next test is really critical it sounds like it's still possible with contact tracing to to try and go after certain outbreaks and try to keep it from getting out of hand but with the positivity rate increasing how close is it to getting out of control is it possible to say how thin the margin is between being able to contain outbreaks with contact tracing and having the rate of spread get beyond our capacity to to catch it yeah our contact tracers are busy no doubt about it and we've increased our capacity we're going to continue to increase our capacity so that we can meet the demand and make sure that we protect for monitors as best we can but that's why we put some of these other measures in place to cut down on the number of cases so that we can so that we do have the capacity to contact trace because that's part of the answer the testing contact tracing is part of the mitigation so again everything has to work at the same time but but our contact tracers the epi team is very busy these days and we need to all do our part to give them a break so they can catch back up anything either one of you want to add to that and yesterday it sounded like Washington County was a bit startling with the number of positive cases that came out as we look at the upcropping are there geographic locations that appear worst and others for example is it washington county central romant is it chitin county what's the geographic layout yeah again i don't know how specific we can get because it is widespread throughout washington county even in the orange county in the chitin county but as you remember as we laid out maybe a week ago with the outbreak at the skating facility alone the largest outbreak that we we've had in vermont i think it's uh it's gone into over 150 cases at this point that was that impacted st michaels college so that impacted chitin county so that one event that one one action had a huge ripple effect and and it's my belief and i don't have anything to back this up with but i would say the number of cases we're seeing in washington county today is this is a result of what happened about a month ago at that skating facility because it's still having this first and second generations of the infections that we saw throughout but i have nothing to back that up with just my own personal feeling and finally will there be at what kind of so of enforcement with the new provision on multifamily gatherings um yeah again this isn't a perfect system it's not as though we're going to have someone out trying to to find people or to to enforce we're asking vermonters to do the right thing here they've done it before that's that's what's so promising about all of this in the initial stages of the pandemic vermont has stepped up they did the right thing they stayed home stayed safe wore their masks as we as we changed the guidelines along the way and we had this under control but what we're seeing as a region what we're seeing as a country this is exploded and it's coming to our doorstep and we have to do all we can again to take this on and protect ourselves and protect our neighbors protect our families because i know again we saw it we proved it we can do this but it's going to take all of us all of us pulling the right in the same direction in order to be successful so again it's not perfect no enforcement system in in some respects but i'm confident that vermonters will do the right thing as long as they understand what the mission is thank you oh what kind of statement or or or action can you take given the feds the current situation with the incoming president elect who should be taking getting things going and up to speed and a president who's stayed behind the scenes and really hasn't been seen other than one time since the election and what seems to be in action on on the federal front on covids since the election how does that play into your you know you're saying we need money now yeah well again i just want to remind everyone from the start we as individual states we as vermont we took things on ourselves we didn't have a lot of help in the beginning a lot we didn't have a lot of guidance but we did a lot of the right things for the right reasons we listened to the data the science and dr levine and everyone else and we did what we thought was right for vermont and we continued to do that throughout the last nine months or so so we'll continue to do that we do need money in the future for our economy and i'm confident that they will come to some agreement eventually i don't know if it's going to be in this lame duck session in december or whether we have to wait until the new president is sworn in but i'm confident that republicans democrats alike will come together eventually to provide relief because we all need all states need this but i also want to remind everyone that just because the president is enacting and the president elect isn't been briefed on a lot of issues who should be by the way but but the bureaucracy is still working i'm sure dr levine is still in contact with his others around the country as i am with other governors but the bureaucracy still works the cdc cdc is still there and they're still doing that part so i just want for monitors to understand that just because the president might not be acting at the the bureaucracy itself is but our elected officials in washington both on the congressional side and on the administration side are pretty much still made it nothing's happening you guys are on the front lines dealing with this stuff i was in a diner in southern vermont yesterday and the owner of the diner was doing the waitressing the screening the cooking and the serving and she's down to just herself now running this small diner and she's saying geez you know i it's tough it's really tough on these people yeah my heart goes out to all of those particularly in in businesses and that's why i keep saying we need to provide some relief if uh if they need to shut down during this and we're asking buyers are going to be shutting down they need some help financial help to make sure that they survive for another day so that when we the vaccine comes into fruition and it's widely safely distributed that that those businesses are protected so they can get there so they can survive until we have some certainty on that front so we'll continue again we we've done a lot of good work here in vermont we know how to do this and if we continue to to rely on our our team you know across the state government and our team across all vermont of vermonters we'll we'll beat this we'll we'll survive but we're again we're all going to have to work together in order to do that and we're doing we're doing just what we did from the beginning again we didn't have a lot of help from the federal government in the first few months and we we learned how to you know me and our way through this uh successfully and uh we'll continue to to do that just just that and try and protect vermonters and that's why we had to take the steps we did today thank you governor um do you anticipate bringing this back a little bit more and at what point would you do that um I know some governors are considering you know stay at home order yeah at what point might you can go to that we'll continue this is data driven um it has been since the beginning and again as I said before we've learned a lot over the last nine months and so the measures the steps we're taking today are because of the data that we're seeing and and we we're targeting the areas that we see are problematic and we'll continue to to restrict in those areas and trying to to be strategic in the way we do it it's more surgical in some respects so um you know nothing's off the table we'll react accordingly based on what we see and unfortunately uh it's not all our doing here in vermont um we are susceptible to what happens outside our borders as we're seeing in new york and new yapshire and massachusetts and so forth so um but but again the steps we've taken uh over the last uh even the last week has been because of what we're seeing uh what we're facing and uh we'll continue to do that but but we'll see what happens again we meet multiple times a day uh and we are really uh data driven in this regard okay and then one other thing um you talked about the importance you and dr labina from monsters stepping out and doing their part you know it just happened to be in two stores in washington town yesterday where the only people other people in there were not wearing that how do you reach those people who maybe are not paying attention to the news is there any other way to get this information out there yeah i mean that's uh that's difficult and some are just so reluctant uh to to wearing a mask and doing the right thing um we that's why we tell the stories that we do uh we try and uh make sure that people understand how this how we got into the position we're in today by people being lacks not doing their part a one individual or two or three and then it and then it multiplies in the story that dr levine told you know that that could have come right out of an epi report that was that was what that's what happens um so uh it's not all um by someone not doing the right thing but at the same time we need to make sure that everyone calls them out and and you know we're we're going to tighten the screws uh over the next uh over the next couple of weeks we're going to do everything we can to communicate and make sure the message gets out and we're counting on all of you all the media all those listeners today to send the message because again if we are able to put these prevention measures in place now will benefit uh a month from now dr levine okay thank you i just wanted to add on to this science on the masks because that was in the news yesterday um one of the blessings of the administration in washington not being very active right now on on the pandemic is there's not politicization of things like mask that's in the news but what is in the news and again this is a sorry state because it's the cdc again coming a little later to the table but they're at the table is that they have basically affirmed something i've been saying for a long time here in vermont that the mask is indeed altruistic it protects the person you're talking to or in the room with from your droplets but they also say now that it protects the wearer from aerosols and those fine particles that don't just drop to the ground but hang around in the air so that's important reaffirmation of science with a huge list of references um that pretty much says masking is important and masking will protect others and yourself so i want everybody to have that message once again thank you eric the times are good yes what are the latest numbers from rutherland health and rehab we heard that there might be 20 residents there and five staff groups and such a positive yeah secretary smith i believe has those numbers this is uh just eric this is just as i left my office this morning so we have 19 uh residents who have tested positive five who are negative uh four who are hospitalized now those four are part of the 19 he called yesterday from an older very resident saying that she had her oil fuel tank of spectrums that needs a part replaced the contractor's zoom network was booked up in the earliest she could get employment within the december she said her fuel tank has about a third of a tank left and she's not going to last that long she asked her fuel company to drop off some kind of fuel just to get her through and they said they can't get this against the law what did she do in a situation like this yeah again i think julie might be on the line secretary moore um we do have provisions for getting some fuel too that uh ever moderate exactly we are able to make uh work with individual homeowners and fuel dealers and can typically make arrangements for um a small amount of fuel to be delivered we understand that there are our contractors right now in effecting some of these repairs um but i encourage uh whoever reached out to you take me there contact me um or i should reach out to our wage management prevention division then there's contact information on the website and they are happy to work with individuals to develop a site specific solution we don't want anyone going home and i think what we can do what we can do eric from our end is uh i'm sure that we can get a another bulletin reminder out to the distributors the fuel oil distributors making sure they understand that there is a way to accomplish this so we'll do our part as well as it's a good reminder one seven days um i don't have any questions for but can we just speak to um in any way this current spike is different from what we saw in the spring um are there other notable things that are thinking out to you that are markedly different from our first wave that's me dr zine i think first off just looking at the graph i showed the magnitude um and if you listen to the news every day you learn that we've surpassed 150 thousand cases a day as a country we've surpassed something in the high 60 thousands for hospitalizations as a country so what we're seeing is we're on the trailing edge um in vermont of that phenomenon but our data still shows we already have a higher peak than we did in the beginning so there is all that to contend with but i don't want it to be looked at all negative because there's a lot of positive where we've entered this spike with adequate ppe abundant testing that we're actually expanding even further and adequate contact tracing which we're expanding even further uh to contend with the truly uh high rise of the number of cases on a daily basis so the preparedness part and the kind of understanding where this leads is much more clear uh than it was in that first uh part of spike in march and again we're being driven by current data but being driven by current data we know what the outcome will be if we just sat back and said numbers aren't going so well but you know the whole country is not doing so well so we're just going to have to go along for the ride um and we're not doing that because we know from early experience with this virus and that first spike exactly what you will expect and what will happen and how rapidly things can go out of control in a virus that grows exponentially in the population so do you have any other things to add secretary spitz going to add a couple Colin that's that's a great question we were discussing it earlier this morning we are much more prepared than we were in march you've got to remember that there hadn't been a pandemic in a hundred years so when we entered into march we were building the airplane as we're flying it in this instance and in this spike we've got the infrastructure in place we've got the airplane bill what we have to do is make sure we fly through this turbulence in in the best method that we can and i think some of the steps that we take we've taken today real in the surgical approach that we've taken today really show us what we've learned in the past few months thanks for that i know our numbers are currently higher but i also know that we are testing a lot more um do we i mean if there any sense of there's a virus there's a lot more prevalence throughout the state right now that we maybe we're not catching it based on the amount we were testing in the spring or do you i mean is there any data on that or anything you could say as if you were trying to compare the two spikes yeah i do think there are differences in the prevalence in the state and if we use the color analogy about half of our counties are what we would consider red now but class last half full half of our counties are green and yellow okay so your question is really asking are the green and yellow just being under tested and we don't really know how much disease is there but i think our testing is pretty uniform and though it has been strategic where we pop things up in areas of uh high activity we still are testing adequately around the state and our percent positivity being a little higher if i could use that as a glass half full as well the reality is if you're only testing the people who are sick your numbers are really high you'll be 10 percent 20 percent 50 percent positivity but if you're testing the people who are really sick and we know they're presenting uh just conversations with the central Vermont medical center emergency department where you know we have one of the highest levels of activity uh people are presenting when they need to present and they get tested but we also have a lot of people who are getting tested either for symptoms or for contact that are not testing positive and so we know that the whole population is kind of being sampled reasonably well so i i feel comfortable with that Joe the Barton Chronicle and said that he had recently learned that both iphone and android phones have a built-in app that is intended to facilitate i think contact tracing um but both of these require the states that the uh phone users resided and have a corresponding app for month doesn't is there a reason for that or is it something that you're contemplating yeah we i think we went over this on tuesday uh commissure p-check is much more articulate than i will be on the subject i'm not sure if he's on the line but possibly if you could hold that question Joe until Tuesday um we we have a better answer because uh as commissure p-check has it but it um we're in the early stages as i recall um it's not um everyone has to agree to it um it's not uh it has to be done on a volunteer basis so it's not something that we're we're working on right now but but it could be something in the future i think that's where we somewhat left it but but um if you could um you could hold that until tuesday or we can have commissure p-check uh contact you if you'd like it would be fine if you spoke about it yeah i'll have uh i'll see if he can do that another question which is um you're talking about restaurants for in-person service at npm what is the significance of npm i mean why does that um why would that have uh lower transmission rates well again i think we're just trying to uh make sure that we we have a end date so to speak um and we're consistent uh with others i listened to other governors throughout the last few months and the let's say um i remember Governor Ducey from arizona and they imposed some restrictions early on and they wish they had had those uh in the beginning and some of them were closing the bars and and having a close date or a time that um that would help them so that it wouldn't go last longer you know the longer some folks are at a gathering or at a restaurant um let's be honest the the more they might partake in having a a few more drinks and the louder it gets and the more people are there so we're just trying to um you know put some parameters around this uh and uh and we think this is a strategic way of of doing so erin bt digger i uh i noticed that you said that there's been uh rise in the number of individual outbreaks and the number of situations that are affected um what does the health department think its capacity is for contact tracing as the number of not just cases rise but individual situations rise i imagine that for each one you kind of have to unload your own separate um contact tracing effort uh dr levine yeah we've looked at this uh long and hard and uh our original estimate was that the standard contact tracing workforce that we have dedicated to this effort should be able to handle in the range of 90 new uh cases per day so uh we don't do it by situations or outbreaks because we do it by cases the thing we've learned is that the cases are growing a little faster than anyone would have anticipated but more importantly the work of contact tracing in addition to the case is connecting with all the contacts and over the the time curve of the pandemic the number of contacts per case has increased and so there are a few more contacts per case every time now that have to be factored into the equation of how much work that's going to be for an individual contact tracer that's why we've activated sort of our reserve contact tracing work contact tracing workforce at the health department and have additional resources coming in from around the state and people who have somewhat been trained already and others who will need to be newly trained because we do want to keep up with this demand yeah um so does that also have an effect on not just outbreaks and situations but also kind of the broader community spread set to see and say Washington County where it's not traceable to any one particular outbreak I guess what I'm saying is that even more challenging cases doesn't have like a clear connection it's not actually no it's not any more challenging because um there are actually more cases than you would realize where it's impossible to tell where that came from and and that's just the nature of this beast dealing with the SARS-CoV-2 virus is when it's in a community sometimes it's very hard to pin your culprit case down but I want to emphasize the words contact tracing they're really not designed around tracing back to where the virus came though that's a core function the contact tracing is really making sure that other people who are traced back to the person you already know is a case can be quarantined so that they will not endanger the health of anyone else around them so you can snuff things out right there because the pathways of infection are being stopped to the best of your knowledge because anyone who was in contact with the case that you're doing the contact tracing on has been identified and appropriately guided appropriate guidance has been provided so for a couple months ago I'm known for the treatment of the person in exposure I've used specifically and have traced through that upon a future um but it was a tough offering uh thank you Liz? Liz the Burlington Free Press? I have a few questions the first is through the governor um I know governor that you said that you're hoping that um you know Vermonters will do the right thing and follow these new guidelines or new new rules very closely um I'm wondering you know now that you've banned um multiple house gathering um if there are any consequences for outbreaks after the ban that can be traced back to um a multi-house gathering? Well well certainly I'm not sure what the question is but the contact tracing hopefully people would be forthright and honest about uh when someone from the state from the epi team contacts them uh that they'll will leave any details out because if they do it'll have a detrimental effect on someone's at some point then the ripple effect is Dr. Levine talked about in his story is dramatic so first of all just make sure you answer truthfully honestly forthright and don't leave those details out because that's important um we don't have an enforcement mechanism if that's what you're asking um but um but again we're not uh I don't believe we're at that point but what we need to do is just make sure people do the right thing and uh and give us all the information we need because again just that one little piece of information that you might have left out I could slow everything down and and could lead to an outbreak somewhere else uh you know a week or two down the road so it spreads so quick so just be just be honest I'm I'm sure they'll do it uh I'm sure that they will do the right thing because again it can affect their family their friends their neighbors uh and uh all across Vermont yeah and just to clarify it was um kind of pointing to the enforcement mechanism but kind of after um a contact tracer has has traced back to multi-health gatherings that happened after disaster um if there's any enforcement there yeah again there there could be in the future we haven't contemplated that at this point in time um I might ask maybe commissioner shirling if he wants to weigh in on any of this at this point thanks governor uh really not much more to add than that okay well uh again if we uh if we see um multiple violations obviously we'll do what we can uh to make sure there's guidance and uh an education that's involved and we can always resort to something more stringent in the future but uh but right now it's really about getting that information because we're we have to stay ahead of this that's that's the point and if we you know if there's a governor yes go ahead I'm sorry uh it does strike me it's an opportunity to re-emphasize that we are uh starting today going on doing compliance assessment uh the variety of businesses and I think uh the future posture will be informed by uh what we find over the next several days as we do that we're certainly hopeful again that we'll find a broad compliance especially in the wake of the experience that Vermont is having right now thank you um my second question has to do is um the uh I guess urging for monitors to give complete information to contact tracers um has that not been happening you know again from my standpoint and um I don't have any direct knowledge other than anecdotal and I know people who have been contacted uh who haven't given all the exact information or I have left something out so I think it's happening I don't know if we can point to anything in particular um but I might ask secretary smith to comment further obviously through the last um eight or nine months we've had instances where people have not been cooperative uh have not provided us the right information or in some cases the wrong information if you the most recent cases is we we had a halloween event where people were not answering the phone um and and not getting back to the contact tracers and we and and in some cases not providing info that was fully truthful to be honest so uh I think you know the executive order mentions that to please when somebody when the health department calls answer the phone provide information that's uh that's truthful um and as as the governor said is as much information as you can give to that contact tracer and then comply with the recommendations from the health department in particular when they at when they ask you to quarantine so um these are you know this this is bill on things that we've experienced over the over the several months but um we've seen it just recently with some of the halloween parties thank you Newport Daily Express recently uh announced um funding to go towards building a new courthouse in downtown Newport to give a little comment about that also gives an idea of what kind of timing you anticipate from uh studying the process when the building moving completed and the third thing is please make a comment on the commitment to make sure that the old building doesn't just get empty a lot um it's actually going to be a plan for future years yeah we have a whole plan in place obviously we're looking for um any types of uh of interest in providing for that space um but maybe uh what we can do Ed is uh I can have somebody from bgs get in touch with you directly buildings general services or um maybe secretary young just so you can go through that we can go through the process with you I don't have everything all the details here and it'd be unfair to to mislead you in any way so uh in the you know talking about some of the COVID related items today I'd like to stick to that if I could okay that's fine we'll have somebody get a hold of you okay thank you Hadley the valley reporter hi governor my first question is related to contact tracing and the fact that many people aren't answering contact tracing calls because they come from unknown numbers so do contact tracers call from vermont area codes only and would you recommend that people pick up the phone if they receive an unknown call from an 802 number yeah good question Dr. Levine yeah with the enhanced volume of all the cases and the need for multiple people on the phone all the time they no longer come from one 802 number that is more identifiable as the health department so they all come from 802 numbers but you may not recognize the number they'll leave a message and you know most of the time they will leave a message it won't be very specific message but it'll let you know that it's the health department so please pick up the message if you don't pick up the phone thank you and my next question is for Dan French and it's about the state current music education guidelines which don't allow students to sing or play instruments together inside even while socially distanced with masks on so for a little bit of context I spoke with a local music educator who happens to sit on the council of the national association for music education and she said she was appalled at the hypocrisy in state guidelines which let students practice forwards indoors for hours at a time while those same students can't take this curricular music class for credit indoors if it involves singing or playing instruments together and she was also upset to see that no one from the arts was actually involved in writing the state guidance on music so my question is will the state revisit music education guidelines or consider giving music educators to see that the table when it comes to writing those guidelines thank you yeah I mean music has been very challenging for us you know clear point about hypocrisy we do look at each activity separately so it's not like if we found a path forward with one activity we would automatically allow another activity and there's been quite a bit of research on music that makes it really challenging to provide accommodation to school and we've been struggling with that with our team and with music educators all summer long most recently we reached out the music association educators reached out to us as well and we're meeting we form a little work group to see what we can do but it is a very challenging area for us to find a way to do it all right thank you Kat WCAS hi this question is for Dr. Labine and likely in a kind of a similar vein to a question that was asked earlier but I'm curious whether we actually have more COVID-19 virus in our communities right now versus we when we did earlier in the pandemic because as you talked about earlier we do have more testing capacity right now to catch cases that are out there but do we actually think that there is more cases we're catching and the virus load is actually lower right now or do we have more virus now we're getting better at catching it can I always count on you for a challenging question Kat this one doesn't have a straightforward answer but I can give you my best estimate of the answer there clearly is more virus prevalent in our communities a lot of that related to the fact that as we've said many times it's been encroaching on our state both nationally and more recently regionally for a while so more virus has entered the state however I wouldn't want people to mistake that for we never had the virus in the state the virus has been here since March it hasn't gone anywhere it's waiting to do its thing it's always been here and now that the weather got colder even before the recent warm snap the weather got colder people are more indoors and there were more gatherings and as the governor's calendar told him the dates were right for halloween parties people are in the time frame that is much more opportunistic for them to be able to give the virus to somebody else so part of it is more came into the state but there was always a bunch of it in the state it's still here and it's now no longer summer people are indoors giving it to each other because the conditions that are right for that to happen don't think that it was you know we had exactly this much virus in the community earlier in the pandemic and we just didn't have the testing capacity to catch it all no I think that in the very very early March April yes that was a definite problem that you know was not our problem it was a national problem in a crisis but since the late spring through the summer up until a month or two ago testing was always on our radar testing was being done really frequently it's spiked even higher with the college students but the fact is we still have a lot of testing of non-college student for monitors so it's not because of testing that we're seeing more cases now and I think based on what I'm hearing about emergency rooms and things that were starting to see more people who have symptoms leading to them getting tested not just people who might need to be tested to get out of quarantine or because they've been in contact with someone and I think what we ask people to do which is if you've been in a social gathering but we don't care how you feel you should get yourself tested because you put yourself in a higher risk situation so I see I think we're seeing the impact of that as well so very multifactorial but the fact of the matter is there's more virus around and the virus that was always around is getting transmitted person to person. I appreciate adding the context to kind of some of the numbers that we report where we go well we kind of hit a record number of cases and said well what does that mean and how does that compare earlier in the pandemic so I appreciate that. My second question is because I know we're going to get this one in an email to people today they're going to say you know these new rules are punishing people who are already following the rules you know and the people who weren't listening to you to begin with weren't aren't going to listen to you now just because there's a mandate. Do you feel though that this mandate will actually get the message across to people? We certainly hope so. We're going to count on peer pressure as well and the more we get this information out the more where I articulate what the problem is I think the quicker we solve it and it's going to take each and every one of us to do that but we're going to have to educate each other as well. You know again when I said I don't take this lightly shutting down businesses isn't something that I look forward to doing. Taking away youth sports is not something that I look forward to doing but I think it's necessary at this point in time and again the quicker we comply the quicker we get this under control the quicker we can get back to what we experienced before. Thank you I appreciate it. Courtney, local 22. Hi my question and your reaction is to a number of large businesses companies with essential employees opting not to apply to the state hazard tag grant program that would impact thousands of remote frontline workers. Yeah obviously we're urging them to apply so that they their employees can benefit. I did have some correspondence with Walmart in particular sent them a letter and I think some of our administration has heard back from them but we've seen this week where other larger entities have said that they are going to take a second look they didn't think it applied to them and we're trying to to make sure they have all the information needed so that they can take advantage of this for their employers employees not for themselves but for the employees so we're we're still working this through we've extended the date as well as there's money available so that we want them to take advantage of this. Thank you. We just a quick time check here it's 12 22 we're about 50 minutes into the questions and we are just over halfway through the queue. Mike Donahue the islander Thanks Rebecca. Governor first just a quick point of clarification does the halt of recreational sports mean that commercial bowling alleys need to shut down and in this order an extension of your state of emergency order? Yeah two parts that I believe I believe it does affect bowling alleys and I also and it is part of the executive order. But that was due to the virus isn't it tomorrow or something? Yeah I think it's Sunday or maybe it's tomorrow but I think it's this weekend so this is an extension of the executive order that I'm I'll sign today. And for Dr. Levine wanted to ask about COVID-19 we received several inquiries and I know other reporters and editors were baffled at the end of the last news conference when the last questioner asked about an unpublicized outbreak in a rough and senior facility. There were seven or eight seniors and a staff member I think at the time and it was just wondering why was it COVID fatigue for not disclosing that outbreak unlike what the state did earlier with the broken facilities or was it a planned decision by the state not to inform for monitors about the rough and outbreak? Certainly was none of the above. As I've kind of pointed out today there are so many outbreaks so many situations and they're developing moment to moment we couldn't possibly stand here and go through them all. And we have no interest in not being transparent about the rough and outbreak and Secretary Smith just presented the numbers on it again today when he got questioned about it and we obviously consider it quite significant and watching it very closely and providing as much support as we can. The health outbreak prevention response team has been doing everything it always does in such situations and we always check with these facilities about PPE adequacy at the time so nothing nothing in the area of not being transparent and certainly pandemic fatigue is not accounting for anything we do or don't say to people just we can only provide so much information at a given press conference. I think Secretary Smith wants to add to that. But could I just ask you a clarification last Tuesday that the large uptick and everything like that had not happened and after two plus hours and all the charts and wraps and everything it wasn't disclosed so can we be asking for the top five outbreaks each day maybe take them at all but please ask for the top five. Hey Mike this is Mike Smith I did disclose it on last Tuesday I talked about the number of people that were affected at the time I can't remember what numbers I used during that that period but I gave the numbers of both positives at that facility and of residents and of staff and I believe I actually mentioned the hospitalizations as well. No you were forthcoming once the question was asked no question about it but it was the last questioner of the day more than two hours in the press before it was an after confirmation and you were kind enough to confirm and give the numbers but what I'm getting at it was no disclosure early on. Yeah it was a breaking situation at the time I wanted to make sure that we had all the numbers and it was happening as we were at the press conference that I was getting these numbers. Okay thank you all very Liam VPR. Hi I had a question just kind of clarifying a little bit about the ban on multiple household social gatherings you know just trying to get a sense for people you know what that actually looks like I mean should they be thinking about this as sort of similar to the way they had home order with structured where people were really supposed to hunker down and stay in their you know their place where they live and not interact with anyone else I guess it's a little different now since people could still theoretically go out to a restaurant I guess or you know go to school and I'm just trying to clarify a little bit of what this should look like and how people should be behaving since people might have some questions about whether they can go for a walk with somebody or see the people in the trusted household that they have been potting with during this time. Yeah this is obviously different than the beginning this is not stay home stay safe this is make sure this is really about socially isolating separating in some respect so unless it's in your your current household you shouldn't interact with anyone you shouldn't interact with your neighbor you shouldn't get together for you know horseshoes or having a beer or coffee or anything like that you should you need to stay away from each other so this is exactly you know the predicament we're in at this point we don't you can go out for a walk but you can't go out for a walk with your neighbor if that makes sense so this is different than stay home stay safe because you can still go out you can still go out to you can get your groceries you can do everything that you need to do but you can't interact socially with with others around you that you aren't connected with within your household as of that moment if that makes sense it does i think it kind of raises some questions of you know if a gym is still open if our restaurants are still open i mean if these are activities that inherently involve some degree of social interaction even if you're just going with say like you know that you're someone that you're in your own household with um and in the past you you and dr levina said just because something in the loudest i mean you should do it um so i'm just sort of wondering what your message to to vermont dress is that you're going to kind of continue out on activities but say not to do other things yeah we want everyone to to just be careful those are structured environments whether it's a gym or whether it's a restaurant their structure their guidelines in place they are there isn't much for you know the interactions with your with your neighbor so i would you know i would want to and i'll ask dr levine to add to this but if it were me i would ask myself um you know some of the questions that you you're asked when you go to the dentist or something else they ask you whether you've been uh sick whether you've been in contact with anyone else who's been sick have you been on public transportation ask these questions of anyone you come in contact with and are you willing uh you know for that a half hour of interaction with with another person uh someone um maybe a neighbor or a friend uh that you uh don't know where they've been are you willing to uh to quarantine for 14 days as a result of of having that interaction with them you know ask yourself are you willing to sacrifice that because you could be getting a call the very next day because that person who was in contact with a positive case so um it's just that simple dr levine yeah i mean the bottom line is nobody knows who's got what who harbors virus who doesn't have a virus who's in a pre-symptomatic infectious stage who's not but everything is laid out very clearly as the governor said when you go to a restaurant that's as a household not as multiple households when you go to the gym there's very clear guidance to the gyms about how to distance people and it's not a social experience it's individual exercise experience when you go to work um you don't have coffee breaks like in my story with everybody who you work with uh if you all have a reason to be there and you need to be there in person at work you do your job but you don't necessarily create the situations where you'll expose yourself to each other those are kind of the things we're telling people right now so it doesn't mean stay home by any means we have noticed just on another topic that um there are times that people are teleworking which is fine and we recommend that but then when they need to have a larger meeting of getting everybody together they choose to not do it online but they choose to do it in a conference room that's probably not the behavior that we're recommending at this point in time that's uh really going to be conducive to work site transmission of virus so we would encourage that environment to be on zoom or some other platform and not in person so it takes a great deal of you know unfortunate thinking about what you're doing every day which um i think will become very natural but at the same time um we're recommending that you try to live your lives in as full a way as possible but without that that dimension of that socialization uh getting together with those who aren't in your household thank you greg the county courier i got her uh just a quick clarification to start with uh with the order that was released today um it might under the understanding that on the eve of break-all season those who are attending a deer camp with maybe two families that split a deer camp that would be restricted yeah technically it would um so when someone is going to deer camp now and they're they're going to be interconnected with others from another household be prepared to to quarantine when you get home and we're hearing from some employers that uh are having trouble committing their application for the hazard pay program uh that deadline is today if employers are having trouble getting through and have been having trouble most of the week getting through will the state work with them into next week or if they don't get through by the end of the day today are they done i i believe there's an extension in place but um maybe i can have uh commissioner p check reach out to you or uh maybe secretary curly has that information on the hazard pay yes yeah i do not i think that uh commissioner p check would be better asked about that i'll have commissioner p check again touch with you great okay and uh lastly um when it comes to setting public policy the world health organization sets the value of the human life of 10 million dollars uh with the 1.25 billion that vermont received that that means that vermont should have saved at least 125 vermonters lives uh do you believe that we saved at least that many to date and when you as you're moving forward uh what kind of value do you set on human life with you uh decide to restrict or not restrict i think this will be economy i would say we don't put a value like that not a numerical value on someone's life it's it's like priceless so every light life is important from my perspective and um so we don't look at it in in those terms i will say that uh i believe vermont's done fairly well uh we have the lowest number of deaths uh in uh in the us we have m per capita um so um we've done we've done fairly well in that regard but but again we've lost 59 59 lives have been lost due to the pandemic and that's uh that's not something i take lightly if every life was priceless the entire economy would be shut down well yeah i'm not at what i'm saying is i'm not putting a i can't put a dollar figure on that i'm not going to put a dollar figure on that if that's what you're getting at that's it thank you avery wcax so very you've mentioned taking this week by week so with these new restrictions what is your buy super monsters for Thanksgiving not not to travel obviously but for just like in vermont do you just recommend they do it in their median household just with them yes yeah that's what i'm saying i know this is going to be unusual this is going to be difficult this is something that most of us have not experienced we want to see our families you know again with my my own mom i haven't seen her physically for a year i have a daughter who lives in rhoda island i haven't seen her since this pandemic started probably almost a year as well so this is difficult on all of us but it's really important that you don't have Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family that are not part of the household you currently have today because it's just that important maybe put it off maybe we can have Thanksgiving at another time with the rest of the family when we get this under control but it's not right now we're at a critical time here in vermont and asking you vermonters to sacrifice one more time don't get together as a as a family or with friends house out of the normal household and a quick question for dr levine as the ubm cyber attack has an impact on test results getting back to some people getting tested for further the question was does the cyber attack have an impact on test results getting back timely so so yes the answer is yes we are aware of cases that that pertains to however i believe at the tuesday press conference secretary smith talked about the numbers of fax machines and the teens i believe so again because they've had to resort to paper and more outdated technology i'll use that word they've been able to become effective with using that as a surrogate for their usual information systems and are now caught up with the backlog of what they had previously so i think that's an important point so my hope is i won't be hearing into the future that people still find that the results aren't getting back to them in a timely way but one caveat there is that some of the results have been sent to not some of the results some of the specimens have been sent to a lab that has had a longer than expected turnaround time out of state which we have no control over but we've tried to divert those specimens from going there in the future if they can go to other places with a faster turnaround time i also want i also want to just reinforce one other point that came up in your first question uh because i don't want to set unrealistic expectations while i would love to see our cases get back to 20 cases in the next five to seven days because we've done this we know that that is not scientifically valid reasoning one has to realize that the cases will continue to go up just because of people getting infected as we speak even before the implementation of the plans you've heard about today so one needs to give several weeks time duration to go by to begin to see the kind of impact that you'd want to see but i do want to remind people that we did see that back in march in april and so again setting your expectations realistically but not feeling that oh Thanksgiving will come and this will have accomplished its task so we can then back off because that's not enough days gone by yet when you think that this is the 13th of November thank you who would have thought fax machines would make a comeback drive-ins don't throw those a tracks away either governor will you answer the question about deer camp um you said if people are going to do that they're going to go to deer camp with people outside their household they need to be prepared to quarantine if they do is that is that allowable behavior under this order the tube issue again unfortunately unfortunately uh peter some are heading out are there right now i mean deer season starts on sunday when i used to go to deer camp i might leave on thursday so i would anticipate many of them have already gone are not going to get this information uh before uh before well actually this goes into effect on at 10 p.m on saturday so um you know it's just we have to be practical about this not everybody's going to to hear this but if uh if they're listening to to it right now and they want to prevent uh a corne hume period or another test seven days on a test uh they should rethink uh going to deer camp with this group of people outside of their households so is it an option for people to get together with people outside their household again i i think this is not this is not perfect uh peter um this is something again that's breaking today uh and for someone who's already there and or is there it's not going to hear this until until next week sometime i'm just saying no this isn't preferable i don't want people to to get together with their family and friends from outside their household that's not the message and i think we should be very clear about that that's not what we're we're trying to to do uh here we're trying to get people to prevent this from happening prevent the spread from from getting together in the first place but if they do for whatever reason and and i would say we're in a transition period especially this weekend um be prepared to to um to uh quarantine when you're when you come back and traditionally the uh the modeling that was issued as recently as tuesday um did not forecast the spike that we've seen um has that at all called into question the effectiveness of the formula you're using and are you revisiting the variables that go into that forecast given the fact that it did not predict what we're seeing right now i'm going to let commissioner peachy answer most of that on tuesday but i will say the modeling has predicted the increases i think what you're referring to is maybe the magnitude of the increase especially on the day that we had over 100 which you're right we need to see how these trends play out and where they settle out if they're going to be consistently over 100 or less it's hard to know but the fact is the modeling has been accurate in telling us this month and next month and into the winter are going to be much different than what we've had in the summer and we've been gearing up and trying to uh adhere to that guidance all along tim from our business magazine hi governor just be clear bowling alleys there's still both of you just can't go with anybody but someone in your household that just in that way i didn't i searched the uh second order to anything specific to that maybe um commissioner shirling or secretary curly could answer this yeah i i can help governor yes we um bowling alleys uh we continue to fall under what we refer to as section 8.1 we have not hit pause on that rather it's the section that talks about organized board replay so yes if you were going to only have bowling alley with members of your state household you could do that so we have um pause please play it okay and as far as the um thank you for that and as far as the the 75 million could that change governor if all of a sudden you had to open up all these search sites you have to redirect that money or is or is that money already set aside for the search site no i think we're in we're all set in terms of the search sites but we know that uh what businesses are facing today they they need the money and we need to disperse it before the end of december so i think we're we're okay we're in good shape at least for the near future but we're going to need congress to act to help both economically and from a health standpoint uh in the very near future you know after the first of the year and that's sure and as for the hazard uh pay a lot of people running who i don't i don't need to be company uh just do the what's the hold up on their side it sounds like what you're saying is that they didn't realize they they could be that the case is i think there's it is a multitude of reasons tim and i don't know all of them probably better if you call them and ask them their reasoning but from what i've heard again some didn't think that they qualified because they were a large corporation just didn't understand the program so they needed some education there others uh wanted to i think they were thinking they were being altruistic because they they thought that there were other smaller companies that were more impacted than they were and they've done a lot for their own employees so they didn't feel as though um they just wanted the money to go to others uh in greater need but again this isn't about the companies it's about the employees so we are advocating asking them to um to come to the aid of their employees this money is available uh we have some um that we've extended the date we have some that uh more money available now and uh we just want them to apply on behalf of their employees handwallis allen bt digger hi can you hear me we can hi governor so um i'm i'm curious about this um these restrictions on social behavior how is it not going for a walk with my neighbor square with my ability to continue eating in a restaurant yeah i think we just went through that in i mean is the restaurants are more structured we're not saying you can go to a restaurant with your neighbor we're saying you can go to the restaurant with your your family your immediate family your household members and your there are guidelines in place once you get there um so much different than you going out with your neighbor for an hour or two walk side by side where you don't know what your neighbor has done so again you might know more about what your own family has done uh than you do your neighbor does that make sense right but it it does but the people at the next table i don't know what they've done right but you're not within you know you're supposed to be six feet apart from them you're not walking side by side with them uh for any extended period of time any any change in the rules for how the areas operate and attract people from other states yeah well again the travel policy yeah the travel policy in itself is going to to restrict many at this point right today but thankfully in some respects we don't have any snow today we're going to have to monitor the situation you know i can't predict where we're going to be in another month month and a half but my hope is that if we take the steps we're talking about today that we mitigate the spread of the virus that will work our way through this over the next month month and a half and that there will be brighter days ahead and maybe at that point things will look much better and we can have the conversation about ski areas at that point is there also a possibility that you might end up making some other decisions like with so long for gyms which are also that you closed in March yeah again we've learned a lot about the virus and where it's spreading that's why I said this is really based on this is data driven and we looked at strategically at where are we seeing the outbreaks today what is it that we're seeing that that was the root of the cause so to speak and that's why we're we're taking the steps we are today to to have a positive impact on the on the spread so it doesn't spread any further so obviously all of those are on the table but at this point in time we're just not seeing the spread as a result of some of the hair salons and barbershops that's not where it's happening and what about jim we're not seeing it in any great to any great extent there either anything that we've seen thus far I believe has been the result of somebody bringing it in from another another outbreak but they've shut down and and and taken care of it so we're not seeing the spread there either you know well again you know playing Monday morning quarterback it's pretty easy to go back and maybe see something but I I can't nothing comes to mind we've been reacting accordingly all along the way the rise in cases has come quickly and when you see New Hampshire for instance had over 300 cases yesterday and we had averaging 25 cases last week so we we tried to do what we could in terms of the halloween parties I'm sure you reported it maybe in your at bt digger maybe you had a story about not participating in halloween parties and so forth we were very specific about that about two or three weeks ago unfortunately not everybody either read your article or heard us so as a result of that we saw a break an outbreak so again it's people letting their guard down not adhering to some of the guidance that were we're putting forward and and now we're we're experiencing the results of that so again if you can help us out get the message out you know kind of suck it up for a while dig deep we'll get through this but we're asking you to to socially separate at this point just physically separate socially separate to get through this latest uptick commissure shirling wanted to add something to the restaurant guidance I believe yeah thanks governor I think you covered a piece of it there at the end but I was just going to add that the data does not show that if you go and enable household to a restaurant that there's a risk as long as that restaurant's following the rest of the guidance and I would add and then them to the answer on anything that could have been done differently I think what we saw was a pivot from large wide-scale compliance with guidance to unfortunately some hesitancy and some missteps so if the guidance invented here too our numbers would not look like this right now is there any possibility especially with things like the contact tracers and been acknowledged that people don't seem to always cooperate with those is there any possibility of penalties to bring people into compliance with this guidance if that's for me again we're just beginning a short duration process to do compliance assessments but as the governor has indicated nothing's off the table depending on what our evolving experience looks like by page chronicle the romant state house new restrictions apply to you this weekend scheduled religious services no it doesn't good to hear a question perhaps for the doctor are these new restrictions at all prompted by your concern about hospitals reduced efficiency due to having to cope with the cyber attack there a connection there yeah thanks for that question the answer is absolutely not the hospital is functioning very efficiently as much as they can all the hospitals in that system are continuing to deliver quality care to people it's our concern about hospitals in general just like we had in march not letting the number of cases get so high that the capacity of the health care system itself is challenged but again we laid out today our three priorities keep people at work keep kids in school and keep people safe from severe illness so reducing the number of hospitalizations and the number of deaths potentially by reducing the number of cases through human behavior change those are all priorities that i would dare say they stand on equal footing it's not that we were concerned that one health care system had challenges due to a cyber attack and we had to do all this nothing could be farther from the truth and it wasn't even mentioned in all of our deliberations over many days thank you and secretary french so obviously there are more outbreaks people are being pulled not to gather important if they go out of state but it seems many people think if they visit extended families for the holidays be it in state or out of state at their state because it's just their family so will there be a mandate for schools to move to a remote method after Thanksgiving either for a few weeks or even through winter holidays just as a precaution uh this is secretary french no currently we are not planning such a pre-emptive decision but we'll certainly monitor the trends in the data but we don't take a pre-emptive decision like that from the best interest students right now but would it make it easier for teachers that way they can plan remote classes and not have the downing skills those learning remotely and in person well i think just you know the theme of the press conference today we're hoping i'm expecting that educators in particular will follow the travel guidance and not travel out of state precisely so we can expect the opportunities for in-person instruction okay and then also in the beginning of the press conference governor scott said that schools can stay open but meetings that can be held virtually should be done that way so i guess the big question is what will it take to move back into a remote phase for schools yeah i mean the the issue of meetings is something we've been encouraging on a whole lot but it's just something that needs to be emphasized now more so than ever you know we we probably haven't said a ton that our messaging of a lot of meetings that occur as a part of the ministry and schools particularly if people have been back inside their buildings we just want to make sure that even when there's a building that they're taking advantage of it we're both technology to hold administrative meetings but the issue with remote you know we're looking at the broader educators that are going on i think you know to make the point the lesson we learned from the spring first day is that we we're going after sort of the root cause of this which is the group gathering right now everything we're seeing in the case the schools are operating very safely so as long as we can continue to do that we're going to seek to protect that and then try to have a sort of a surgical basis to after the cause of the increase in cases all right thank you gray the bennington banner gray the bennington banner okay we'll move to austin the burlington free press hi there thanks for sticking this out with us the reason to today's session i i think my first question is for governor scott or dr labine and it i know there's some families out there that have formed pods for either remote teaching purposes to share resources and i was hoping you could educate folks maybe explain if you differentiate between a pod and a household and why like if you know these families have created a pod do they now have to break up that pod because they live in different different physical home you know i'm not i'm not as familiar with what a pod represents dr labine might be able to answer that a pod goes along the theme of a trusted household and i would dare say that it's hard to be a trusted household in an environment where the virus is more prevalent in your community has nothing to do with being the best of friends being the people you would trust with your life at any other time in your existence it just has to do with the reality of virus prevalence in our communities so that makes it very very challenging i do understand the concept but even potted households they're restricting their social interactions in other ways i understand that but they still have other lives that they live apart from the household that they're potted with whether that's in their own work life in their spouse's work life in their kids work life etc so it's very very challenging to recreate that at this kind of time just the reality of the data that we have and i guess the second question here is a little less direct and i've been trying to work through where i'm worked through some things mentally but the the research into the last week that you guys have unveiled has left me wondering like what specifically about the until now acceptable protocol like maintaining distance masking staying outside are suddenly you know less effective in you know camping down transmission of the virus like if you're to walk along the road you know with a you know a friend or a parent on opposite sides of the dirt road you know one of the back roads you know a nice small walk how is that suddenly less you know effective at avoiding transmission yeah i i get where you're coming from the the whole thesis for what we're talking about though is there are certain environments that are more structured and we've talked about those through the last several questions but the small gatherings of people tend to be unstructured tend to not follow any specific guidance go beyond distancing and masking because they're usually in circumstances of food and drink and that does not allow people to abide by the kind of guidance they might abide by in any any other circumstance in their life and these are prevalent enough that they're worthy of comment today and policy changes that you've heard it's as simple as that and though i didn't want to recite the 100 plus outbreaks and situations we're dealing with every single one of them resonates around that theme for the most part 70 plus percent so we're just doing what we need to do based on what we know to carry your question further i do not want for monitor saying i guess this means i don't need to wear a mask or stay distanced from someone because it didn't work that's far from true it's very effective it works but when your inhibitions are down or your social circumstances mandate avoiding those pieces of guidance because you're eating and drinking with others that's when things happen that's all i can say fair to consider this perhaps uh like if folks are folks can be comfortable with their actions as strict as they can take them like i mean if you know you're going to stay you know 10 to 12 15 feet away from someone that you need to talk to want to see in some form and you're going to stay maxed and you're strict with that with yourself i mean can you be confident in doing that i think that's just taking our usual guidance and being confident that the usual guidance will hold you in good stead so i would say yes um you're taking your solo walk and you may encounter another person and you'll clearly want to be on the opposite side of the street and having your mask on at that time too just like if you were on a trail climbing a mountain um and somebody was coming down you would have to react to that so again do all of the things you've always have done but in addition the crowds and here the small gatherings are what we're talking about uh that's completely got to be considered every time you act have one questioner steve from any ktv but it is 104 steve so please keep it short go ahead steve hello can you hear me we can um yeah i was wondering about keeping it short and i see that one outlet had four uh four questioners um four others had two questioners but i guess that's neither here nor there governor one for the governor one for the doctor if i may um governor on your uh executive order about the new uh policing stuff um you said that you uh actively engaged with communities particularly those communities that have been historically marginalized or harmed by policing as we develop and deploy the best policing practices um as you know since 1937 marijuana and hashish were wrongly classified as a narcotic and uh you know uh every august our state police would gleefully go up with uh the national guard and helicopters and arrest people for growing outdoors and i've seen people who now have police records for for having stuff as simple as you know an empty pipe will will be are these people considered marginalized and will they be included in in this uh in this new panel and get input um yeah i i have no idea steve um well are they would you consider them to be marginalized or harmed by these policing practices maybe of the last few decades before any current times but i just don't i wouldn't even know how to answer that if i may governor it's a then opportunity to say that uh all the monitors of all communities are certainly encouraged to participate in this process if you go to our website cps.permont.gov.com slash modernization you can review some existing drafts of new work and there are feedback tools available for all the monitors there oh thanks commissioner shirling that's it's very reassuring i'm glad to hear it would you consider these people to be marginalized or harmed by former policing practices uh i don't exactly know how to answer that question i'd need to contemplate a little further and know a little bit more steve can we move to do you say i had a question for dr levine yes uh dr levine um we uh we keep referring to uh the pcr method as a test and um i've been reading up on the inventor of this method uh dr carry bank smallest and um uh from what i can see it's uh he was actually quoted as saying that the it's not to be used as a diagnostic tool and the pcr was expressly not approved for diagnostic purposes and it says all on the leaflets and it's simply incapable of diagnosing any disease and it does not mean that an infection is present isn't the pcr method more of an amplification method rather than a testing procedure yeah so um without getting uh two into the weeds with regard to how we assay a specimen from somebody's nasal passages there are several steps that have to occur there's a amplification first of all there's an extraction process the extraction process extracts the viral nucleic acid the second part is the amplification which is so you can try to measure that in the assay that you're performing so it's a two part affair if you will the simplest answer to your question so people don't come away too confused is that the procedure is used to be exquisitely sensitive at finding particles of the viruses nucleic acid viral RNA so it does just that and the person you noted a wonderful invention wonderful methodology the intent of the comments that you were quoting i believe is consonant with what i've said at other times which is just because you detect something doesn't mean that person is actively infected and the way we've learned that is in this pandemic there are people who get tested that are symptomatic have an infection resolve the infection and you go back three months later and test them again and they're positive and it causes all kinds of trouble in their lives and in everybody else's lives as to what does that mean and what the scientific community believes now is that means that there's still some residual viral RNA that's detectable in that person probably fragments almost certainly not viable in terms of being able to infect someone so for us to call that person infected with covid-19 would be a problem so that's what you're driving at is not every time you find the virus are you finding a person who's actively infected but the flip side of that is there are people who have no symptoms who have a very high load of virus and we would hate to use that logic on them because those people are acutely infected and capable of infecting others even though they don't have any symptoms at the time so it has to do with how do we define a disease in all the clinical circumstances surrounding it and then integrate what the test showed into our decision making so let's leave it at that so we won't complicate life for everybody too much but you raise a very valid point thank you oh great well thank you thank you all very much as always I appreciate it thank you all for tuning in and for those going out hunting this weekend make sure you be safe and good luck