 Good morning, everyone. Before we get to our modeling and health updates today, Commissioner Goldstein is also here with us to talk about the latest economic recovery grant programs. I'm pleased the legislature worked with us to fund an additional $76 million for another round of grants to support our struggling businesses. Commissioner Goldstein will share the details in a few minutes, but these grants will be structured a little differently than the last round. We'll focus on those with the greatest need as we continue to face this once-in-a-century pandemic. We've talked a lot about Vermont's success in suppressing this virus, and that's important because keeping people safe is our top priority. But we can't forget that this continues to take a tremendous toll on many of our businesses, especially in the hospitality sector, which is so dependent on tourism. These are businesses that provide jobs to more than 30,000 Vermonters, generate billions in revenue to support our economy, and are a huge part of our communities, which makes Vermont such a great place to live, work, and visit. It's critical we do what we can to help our hardest hit employers during these times so they can survive this pandemic. Because the fact is, we're going to need them in order to have a strong recovery. And we also know what we've done thus far won't be enough. What we need is for Congress and the White House to put politics aside, come together, and provide another stimulus package just as soon as possible to help the state survive and recover. In the meantime, our team will work to get this money out the door, along with many other programs, including a second round of health and stabilization grants launched yesterday, and another round of hazard pay grants, which will be ready within the next two weeks. I want to thank the legislature again, including House and Senate Commerce and Economic Development Committees, for working with us to help get this funding to Vermont businesses in need, and the teams at the tax department in the Agency of Commerce and Community Development for their ongoing efforts as well. So with that, I'll now turn it over to Commissioner Goldstein. Thank you, Governor. The Agency of Commerce and Community Development and the Department of Economic Development, the Department of Taxes, and the Agency of Digital Services have been working diligently over the last several weeks since Act 154 came into being to stand up the next round of economic development recovery grants to support our business community. In setting up this program, we took the lessons we learned from the first time of round and worked to develop a program that would address the financial needs of those sectors that are still suffering greatly and make it more possible for other entities that were closed out the first time around. For example, we are including sole proprietorships and new businesses that did not have a full 2019 revenue in which to compare their 2020 revenue. I'll outline a few of the major differences, but all the details will be on our site. One of the major differences are the differences that it is not a first come first serve program. What we will do is have the application window open for a two week period. In this way, we will give people an opportunity to apply. We will aggregate the demand and then be able to distribute grants to those who applied with awards being adjusted just based on how much has been subscribed for versus how much we have in the appropriation. Another big difference is that we're looking at more than one month of loss. Last time around, as you may recall, there was a 50% loss requirement. This time around, it's really about what the earnings have been marched through September of this year versus the same period last year to come up with what the revenue impact is. And then from there, we will subtract out the economic assistance that's been received so far through ACCD, TAX, and other federal and state grant programs to come up with unmet need. The legislature gave us broad discretion in designing these. The only parameter that we have is the $300,000 maximum grant size. So in total, if you receive grants from us before plus this grant, cannot exceed $300,000. Like our previous grant programs, businesses and nonprofits that collect meals and rooms and sales and use tax will apply through Department of Tax through the MyVTax portal. Their portal is open right now and will close on October 30. ACCD will anticipate opening next Monday and will be open for two weeks. The application, everyone outside of those meals and rooms sales and use tax will come to ACCD for their application. New businesses will come to ACCD. We will, the website will have every last detail on eligibility and process. And in addition, tomorrow, we will hold a webinar from noon to 1 and on Friday from 10 to 11. And please go to accd.vermont.gov to find out those details. I'd like to thank the legislature, as the governor did, and its leadership for working with us on this program. In the spirit of collaboration, we were given fairly broad discretion in its design, and particularly to representatives Kimball and Markott and Senators Sorotkin and Brock, who were very, very diligent in their review of what we had done the first time around, as well as the outlook for the second. We really sincerely hope that these grants will help give temporary relief. And we continue to work to find ways to continue to support businesses in need. Businesses are really interwoven into the fabric of our communities around the state. And their survival and the ability to thrive is key to our future. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. This week, as we have the past few weeks, we will start with an overview of some of the national trends that we're seeing across the country, then turn back to our regional data, focusing specifically on Vermont data from the past week and modeling and forecast projections that we have for the weeks ahead, a few other data updates about higher ed and flu vaccine, and then close with an update to our travel map as well. As always, our presentations are available at dfr.vermont.gov for those that are watching at home. If we turn to our first slide, this is really showing a number of different things about what is happening across the country with case growth. First, we want to call out the fact that we have passed that 8 million case mark as of last week. The time that it took to get from 7 million to 8 million sped up compared to the previous million, that was a 20-day period compared to 27 days previously. You see that in the middle of the summer, we were adding a million cases at about a 15-day period clip. So it is slower than that over the summertime, but it has, again, sped up as cases are growing across the country. I also want to point out these peaks that we have talked about in the past, the first peak that was sometime in early to mid-April, that second peak that was right about the middle part of July, and now what is appearing to be a developing third peak across the country. The next three slides break those peaks down a little bit more because they are different both geographically and in the scope of where cases are developing across the country. You see from that first slide, the peak that occurred in April, that was really focused on the northeast, as we've talked about a lot. There were a few other spots around the country, primarily in New Orleans and Louisiana, but really it was focused on the northeast and that was the area that was hit the hardest. Looking at that second peak, when we look again at per capita cases by county here in July, you see that cases were much more spread out across the south, into the west, into Texas, to some degree, out to California as well, but the northeast really was not part of the second wave, fortunately. If we go down to this developing third peak, this is data that shows basically from that second peak to now, you can see that cases are really starting to tick up obviously in places we've highlighted previously, but they're much more geographically diverse. They're spread out throughout the country. They're in parts of the country that weren't necessarily hit hard in those first two waves and parts of the Great Plains and the Midwest, even down into the south, and as you can see, cropping back up even into the northeast, which we'll talk about in greater detail next. So talking about the northeast and the regional update, you'll see that cases again did go up. They went up about 5.35% week over week, just under 27,000 cases. If you look at the individual jurisdictions, you'll see that pretty much everywhere, cases were up slightly across the board, maybe except for a jurisdiction or two. So it is again indicative of case growth that we have seen for the last two to three weeks. Moving ahead to the next slide, again, you'll see how those cases compare through the entire pandemic. Obviously the slope continues to be much slower, much steadier, which is certainly a good thing compared to that slope that we saw in the early part of the pandemic when things took off quite quickly across the region and also in Vermont. Turning to the next slide, we updated this regional heat map to show not only per capita how many cases exist over the last 14 days in a particular county, but the different coloration between blue and red tells you whether cases are growing or whether cases are decreasing across the region. So you can see clearly that cases are on the rise in western part of New York, the capital area in New York as well, the New York metro area, Connecticut, Rhode Island, up into Boston, and even parts of more rural states like upstate New York, upstate New Hampshire, and Maine as well. So again, cases are rising in the region, some of them are close to our borders and something for us to pay particularly close attention to. Turning to specifically Vermont data, you'll see that we added 71 cases since the last time we provided an update. If you look at the last three weeks as a cumulative, that is a higher case count than any point from the middle part of April. We had 201 cases over the last three weeks. When you look at them combined, that is certainly elevated. When you compare any particular week over the summer, there's not really a relatively big change or difference, but certainly there has been stable increased case growth over the last three weeks. Looking at this week compared to last week across Vermont, you'll see those cases have been relatively spread out throughout the state, with obviously a number of cases reported in Washington County connected to the hockey outbreak. On the restart metrics, we'll basically just mention that these are all trending favorably. There's nothing really to call out here. As they have been in the past, even with cases on the rise regionally and cases at a more elevated level in Vermont, all these restart metrics still trending favorably. We still have the lowest seven-day infection rate in the country, one of the lowest positivity rates in the country. Our cases are not doing anything differently than the region or the rest of the United States. Looking at our forecast, you'll see here again, the forecast has changed slightly. It does show an anticipation of more cases and increasing cases in the November to mid-November time period. Not many, but slightly an increase in forecasted cases through the rest of the next five to six weeks. Also important to point out that all of the other seven jurisdictions around us that we monitor closely, each one of them is having a forecast that projects increased case growth as well. So this is not unique to Vermont, all of the count, all of the states in the province of Quebec, all anticipating increased case growth over the next four to six weeks. Switching now to, again, some Vermont data, but related more to the topic that Commissioner Goldstein mentioned, which was in-state travel into Vermont. This is an update from the last time we presented on September 18th. This now covers most of the fall foliage tourism season. You will see on this slide that we are down compared to 2019, that 2020 fall foliage season, still down compared to 2019. But there was an increase compared to different parts of the summer and different parts of the spring as well. If we go to the next slide, you'll see that relative change where at the height of the pandemic, the numbers were down as much as 60% throughout the summer, trending around 40%. And then during the last couple of weekends, it got up close to down 20%. So there was some improvement, although certainly down compared to previous years. And the summer generally a busier time, certainly for Vermont. Turning now to the update relating to flu vaccination data, again, good news here. 90,000 plus Vermonters have received their flu vaccine to date. That's up 13.8% compared to this time last year. So again, we are up compared to this time last year. So Vermonters doing a good job getting their flu vaccine. If you go to the next slide, you'll see that among many age categories, the numbers are trending favorably. Even among that 20 to 30 year old category, they're trending better than last week, which is a good sign, but still down compared to 2019. So definitely some more work to be done there. But important reminder again for everyone to get their flu shot this year. Briefly on the higher education update, you'll see that Vermont compares very favorably still to New Hampshire, where they have about 230 cases reported in schools. 125 of those are active within New Hampshire. Maine similarly has seen an increase this past week up about 60 cases to 128 cases in their school system. Vermont has 13 reported cases, only two of which are active. And there are a number that are under investigation that Dr. Levine can certainly expand upon. As it relates to higher education, the numbers again still very favorable here. We added only two cases this past week. We had about 15,000 additional new tests that were recorded. And we did also, I should note, take off from this count six early cases that were connected to UVM. It turned out that three of them were actually pre-arrival tests and the other three were before they started their college campus restart. So we did get that figured out and the count is now updated accordingly. So throughout the entire college restart, there have been 51 reported higher ed cases in Vermont. And then lastly, turning to the travel map, you'll see probably no surprise based on what was happening in the region, that there is a lot of red and yellow on our travel map. Additional counties were added to the travel map. Now, the number of eligible individuals that can come to Vermont without a quarantine stands at about 1.6 million. So that's down from 1.8 million last week. You'll see on the slide that shows where those counties stand. Some of them are close to Vermont's border. So mindful for Vermonters that are traveling across border to take a look at the travel map. And then lastly, we just provided an overview of what our travel methodology would look like if applied to the entire country. Obviously our travel map applies to those states in the Northeast, but to illustrate the point of what is happening across the country, you can see that there are basically almost no counties that would meet our travel requirement, our travel standard, only about 3.3% of counties across the entire country are green compared to our travel methodology. So we have to obviously keep a close eye on the cases across the US, but also within our region in the days and weeks ahead. And with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Levine. I want to start out actually talking about something different. I want to make sure everyone knows that this Saturday, October 24th, is prescription drug take-back day. That, to remind everybody, is the day when you can dispose of leftover prescription and over-the-counter drugs safely at any collection site near you. The take-back day that was originally scheduled for last April was canceled due to the pandemic. So this is a great opportunity to make up for lost time. More than half of people who misuse prescription medication get it from a friend or relative, often straight out of their medicine cabinet. We already know COVID-19 is taking a toll on Vermonters with substance use disorder. And unfortunately, we've seen an increase in opioid fatalities this year compared to last year. By disposing of medication safely, especially prescription pain killers, you can do your part to keep anyone from ever using them. So this coming weekend, grab your unused medications and, of course, your mask before heading to a drop-off location. You can get more information on the locations at healthvermont.gov-doyourpart. And remember, you don't have to wait for a take-back day. Many drug disposal sites in Vermont are permanent. Or you can request a free mail-back envelope from the health department through our website. Take-back day is a high-profile event, but you can safely get rid of drugs every day of the year. Now, health department is working on numerous situations, as we call them, reflected in the case count that Commissioner Pichak just told you of. But of course, the biggest activity right now happens to be the hockey outbreak. If you notice the graph while I talk, there are a total of 34 cases Half of those we call primary infections, meaning related to the events at the hockey arena. The other half are either second or third generations, so that means infections quite often in households or other places that people connect with others at. The cases, of course, were originally associated with an adult and youth hockey league and broom ball league. These are all considered one outbreak at this point in time. Cases now involve an elementary school and a high school and a work site. We always try to think of sports, and we're thinking about this frequently now as we're talking about winter sports guidance for schools, as perhaps the sporting event itself being the high-risk activity, being in close proximity to others, on a hockey rink, on a court, indoors, et cetera. Recently, the CDC had a report in their morbidity and mortality weekly reports that cited an event in Florida at a hockey rink where there were numerous infections, and they were directly related, they think, to the play of hockey at the time with regards to players not able to keep six feet apart, with absence of masking, and then some places absence of facial guards, with humidity factors on the ice, and with the fact that a rink is surrounded by 10-foot-high plexiglass, creating a little more of an indoor environment within the rink environment than, say, a basketball court would. So I want you to keep those in mind, but I'd also like to say that it appears that the outbreak we're talking about in central Vermont was most likely due to the kinds of activities teams may do together that don't always occur on the ice. They occur at the time of practices and games, but they involve things like carpooling, like being in proximity to one another at social events, both before and after the game. So these are the things that we think played a role here in addition to possibly travel. So you'll see the blue are the primary infections, and this is what we would call an epi-curve, and then the green are more the secondary following in time. I'd like to tell you that they had just decayed off and stopped, but obviously you can see that there are still cases, although keep in mind the y-axis is zero, two, four, six. It's not 20, 40, 60 or anything of that sort. So we will continue to watch this over time. There are abundant testing opportunities that have already been made available and that continue to be made available through our district health office, through the collaborative work of Central Vermont Medical Center and through some of the commercial pharmacy enterprises as well. I did mention that there had been some spread to school as well as a high school and a government work site in Burlington who on their own came out with a public announcement about the impacts on public-facing operations. The ice rink itself has been closed to date, although we've provided guidance for them in the event they would wish to open as early as today. Moving on from that, I did wanna speak about one of the most significant challenges we're all going to face in the coming weeks and it's now a new term in our lexicon that you're probably hearing through the media and that is pandemic fatigue. This is more serious than it might sound at first blush. For nearly eight straight months, we've had to really dial back our lives to protect ourselves, to protect each other, adjusting our routines, foregoing many of the basic social and family activities that we all enjoy and we've been relentlessly reminded to wear a mask and keep a distance from one another. Not that we've been alone here in Vermont, this is a global event, but it is exhausting, both physically and mentally. I'm hopeful that the next months, we'll see a COVID-19 vaccine become available and we'll be ready to distribute the doses as quickly as we get them. However, we all know that a vaccine is still a little ways off and when one is ready, it will take time to produce and for the states to receive enough for everyone. Which brings me back to my point. In the months since COVID-19 first appeared, we've learned a lot about it, probably something new nearly every day. The virus, new to humans, is very good at finding ways to spread and we're starting to learn that it may pose more of a risk to young people than first thought. Not only can they get the rather uncommon multi-system inflammatory syndrome, but student-athletes can also have cardiac issues, preventing a rapid return to sports and as more young adults in this country contract COVID, which is characteristic of these current waves, we find that they too are susceptible to more serious illness, including requiring hospitalization. As Commissioner Pechak made clear, Vermont is still doing well, but we are surrounded by places that are seeing increases in their cases. And as we mentioned, our case numbers are consistently higher than they were just a couple of weeks ago. Not that this should be a surprise as we've been forewarning of this for many weeks. As we start to head into the holiday season, I'm asking us all to join together to take a moment to recenter, to step back from pandemic fatigue and rededicate to doing everything we can to keep the virus from spreading. Contact tracing shows that each case may lead to another and then that one to yet others. That's how the virus spreads and it can easily get out of control. But fortunately, we have a containment strategy that has helped prevent this from happening, but we still have to be very careful. Based on the scientific and public health considerations, we have been restarting Vermont steps at a time, but, and this is important, just because something is allowed doesn't mean it may be a good idea for you yourself at the time. So this means that even if you can get together in a group to hold an event or a gathering, because we allow it, it doesn't mean that you need to or should. We'll find a balance, but right now the scale is tipped steeply to the side of continuing our prevention efforts. One thing to do is to have a plan. If you're going to travel for the holidays, look at the cross-state travel map that you just saw and know that based on what we just looked at, you will most likely have to quarantine upon your return. And this is not the best time for large gatherings or for others to visit from out of state, though we would pray for that to happen. Difficult news as the holidays approach. And if you do have guests, even if they are relatives or close friends, plan to protect each other. Travelers to Vermont must quarantine, even possibly your own college student returning for winter break if they come from the wrong color zone. And that is most of the country, apparently based on the map we just saw. And any gathering should be small and ensure people can keep a safe distance. Especially because the gatherings will most likely be indoors. We know each other well, but we cannot know for certain each other's possible unintended exposure to the virus. And finally, take a hard line if you're not feeling well. Even a headache or a runny nose, things you wouldn't commonly think of as symptoms could be a sign of the virus. I say this based upon our epi-teams experience. Multiple instances where people have continued their daily activities while symptomatic, unaware that they would eventually test positive. That explains why kids might be sent home from school and daycare and why you should stay home from work if you have even these mild symptoms. Because it's easy to let our guard down to let things slide because we don't see the virus all around us. But it is there, and that explains why cases have crept up. But we already know what to do. We just need to double down on prevention and not roll the dice on risk. Because one thing we do know is that when gambling with health, the virus might really win. We've been a model for the nation and if together we can stay Vermont strong, we can keep it that way. I'll turn it back to the governor. Thank you, Dr. Levine. We'll now open it up to questions. Now, large good news. I guess I'm just wondering on your thoughts on how we're holding the state of the sort of deep travel map that we're going to look at right now. How do you see that playing out in the next three, four months if we can't continue what people have to work? Yeah, it's problematic when you look at the travel map and you're seeing the outbreaks around us, surrounding us in other states. The map that Mr. Pichek provided backs that up. Most of the majority of those is still on unemployment. We have probably 27,000, 28,000 people still on some sort of unemployment at this point in time. The majority of them are from the hospitality sector. We've opened up lodging a hundred percent. We could, I mean, if we opened everything up to a hundred percent, I don't believe all of those people would go back to work necessarily because there's so much hesitation in travel and it should be because of the quarantining and so forth and what we're seeing again in other states. So opening up the spigot isn't going to necessarily bring all those jobs or put all those people back to work. We are going to have to ride this out. Hope that there's a vaccine that will come into place sometime in the very near future that is safe, reliable, and available for wide distribution. But we're not talking weeks here, we're talking months. So that's why the grants that we have put forth that I have said that we need more help from Congress and the administration is so necessary because we're going to have to protect these businesses. We need them to survive this so they can help in our recovery when this is mitigated in some respects so that we can get back to normal. But I don't see that in the any time in the near future, but certainly in the months to come. I just want to follow up maybe for Commissioner and Mr. Herrington, how is our trust going to be like that? I think I can answer that actually. We started out with about a half a billion dollars. So that is down to somewhere below if I and Commissioner Herrington can verify the exact number, but somewhere around the 225, 235 million dollars, we're doing pretty well. I remember about a month into the month and a half into the pandemic, I believe California had to take a loan out to back up their unemployment trust fund. And we have maintained that again with the help of the federal government. We have issued over a billion dollars in benefits since the pandemic started in March, which is an incredible milestone when you think about that. But a lot of that has been federal money. So, and at the same time that we've had the trust fund being depleted in some respects, employers who are working are continuing to add to that. So again, relatively speaking, we're in pretty good shape, pretty solid with the unemployment trust fund. Commissioner Herrington, anything I've missed that you should clear up? Governor, you pretty much hit the nail in the head. I believe the last report I had was 242.8 million dollars in our trust fund and that was at the October 15th. I just have one last follow-up as well. Maybe it's for Commissioner Bolio, if he's on the line. As you may have heard, the state of Massachusetts is suing, or excuse me, New Hampshire is suing Massachusetts for its taxing people who are working remotely for Massachusetts companies. I'm wondering if, Vermont, if we're doing the same, we're taxing people who are working remotely. Commissioner Bolio, did you hear the question? I think so, is the question about the lawsuit with New Hampshire and Massachusetts? Yes, is there anything similar that we have to be concerned of with in Vermont? So we're monitoring that lawsuit, generally speaking, the guidance that we've put out is that people don't need to change their withholding at this point, but it's really a case-by-case basis. There are a lot of factors that go into what the tax situation of any individual is. So I don't have a general rule to provide, but we are monitoring that litigation. Thank you. Ross? Yes, Governor, I'm wondering if you could speak to it. There's gonna be any additional health going into processing some of the applications for that grant program. I know we've got a few months to go, especially when there was that initial surge of unemployment, a backlog was created that was eventually worked through, but I'm sure there will be a lot of people chopping at the bid to get to this as well, so is that something prepared for in advance? Just maybe you could narrow down the question just a little bit, and maybe it's for... Has work been put in, or are actually people being brought on to process some of those applications to make sure that process is up? Got it. Yes, thanks for the question. Yes, indeed. Last time around, we had Vermont Economic Development Authority and members of Department of Finance Regulation, and we will have those same two parties, but we will also have the Regional Development Corporations all around the state also assisting, because of that expected onslaught of applications. Thanks. Again, just the silver lining of a lot of this has been the cross-agency participation and help that we receive, whether it's from DFR or it's from TAX and so forth in trying to distribute these grants and look at the applications. That's been gratifying to watch, and I think that has given Vermonters a better experience by breaking down some of those silos, so I'm very proud of the fact that our agencies and departments have worked together and tried to provide relief for Vermonters. Steve? Governor, on those employment numbers, or employment numbers, a decent growth in jobs over the last month anyway, is there any optimism to be had here as we go into the winter months? You know, again, typically we see an uptick in unemployment in the winter months, construction starts to shut down, the frost comes into the ground and precludes a lot of the construction activities, so with the travel issues that we talked about in a previous question, I don't see that there's going to be increased labor force participation over the next two or three months. I mean, we depend so much on tourism and again, while we hope to have a little bit of an uptick in a safe manner, it won't be to the extreme or magnitude that we've seen in previous years, so I wouldn't set my expectations too high on increased labor force participation. So really tough, especially for the ski industry. Yeah, I mean, it's, again, we saw on the travel maps and what we've seen over even throughout the summer, people just aren't traveling as much and when you're surrounded by this virus and the virus dictates what's going to happen and how much, how mobile you can be and we see some of the red that's there to creep into the northeast and, you know, right to our borders and that's problematic for us and so this is a time to be more vigilant, not to let our guard down. I know it's going to be difficult. Commissioner Levine talked about this fatigue, this pandemic fatigue, battle fatigue, so to speak, is creeping in, it's becoming an issue and I get it, you know? I mean, I see it on the national level and when you bring politics into play and people are getting discouraged and they have a candidate saying there's no problem here, not, you know, it's going to be okay and you want to reinforce that eventually we'll work our way through it, but it's not now, not until there's a vaccine that's widely distributed. Do you see any sort of optimism that we can look at coming into, as they say? Yeah, you know, I believe that we are going to have guidelines in place that will make it safe for people to enjoy the outdoors and the skiing and so forth, but it's not going to be normal. You know, it's not going to be the same as it has been in the past. It's the social gatherings that are the problem. It's not the activity, the skiing is fine, the hockey's fine, all of these, the sports are fine in some respects. It's always the social aspect. It's the fans or the getting together afterwards or the carpooling to different events or staying over and so forth. That's when I believe it will have the problems if we have them. So that's why we have to be vigilant, be careful, wear a mask, stay apart and don't gather if you don't have to. And finally, Dr. B, actually, depression's a tough thing and we're coming into that season where depression can creep in to the psyche every day and is the health, are you guys gearing up for that as far as any, any information you can get out to the public as to how to break that or to, you know, combat? Yeah, there's a lot of information available both on our website and the Department of Mental Health's website. And easy for people to access. And I have to repeat, even when the whole healthcare system was sort of shut down and what have you, even through telemedicine and telepsychiatry, there were opportunities for people who were already engaged in helping their mental health continue to do that and for new people to engage freshly. And now, of course, there's more opportunity for in-person as well. So no shortage of opportunities. Okay, moving to the phones now. Sean Cunningham, with Chester Telegraph. Thanks, I have two quick questions. The first is for Commissioner Pichett. We're hearing yesterday that John Hopkins and COVID-19 have changed their methodology for computing positivity rates and apparently rates, some of those rates are dropping. A COVID act now opposed to the Bay has moved to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. And we're wondering if those changes, how those changes affect the way Vermont looks at other state infections, great. Yeah, so great question, Sean. Hopefully the analysis in the future will be closer to apples to apples than apples to oranges. We always obviously know all of our data. We know all of the tests we've done, what tests they are and who was positive on which days. So I think we've been always very confident in our positivity rates at the health department and others calculate. But as it relates to other states, some states include antigen positive, some don't. Some include antigen tests in their total tests, some don't. Some do it by individual, some do it by specimen. So there's a lot of different ways to calculate it. The CDC is the source that we've been using for tests recently because they are more apples to apples comparison. So COVID Act now and Johns Hopkins are moving, sounds like in that direction and that's definitely gonna be a good thing for uniformity of these numbers. It seems like they're moving in the opposite direction that they're moving toward HHS numbers. Yeah, so I mean, if I presume that they're the H... Well, if the HHS numbers are different than the CDC then that definitely would be an issue. But if they're using CDC numbers, then those numbers we have found to be reliable and verifiable. Okay, so the second question is for Secretary French and I'm just wondering, will the AOE have guidance anytime soon for schools on how to handle the possibility of staff shortages that might result from quarantining after holiday travel? Thank you, you know, not guidance per se, but we are interested in looking at the holiday season and we've been actively engaging in conversations with our leadership team about that eventuality. But there wouldn't be any actual guidance being sent out to the schools? Too early to tell. We're definitely actively taking a look at it, so. I'll send Sean. Do you see schools going to remote learning during that period? No, as I mentioned, we're gonna look at it. We are aware of the issues that school districts have brought those forward. But notice that we heard the modeling. We are increasingly concerned about what's happening around us on a regional basis. But we're gonna review that and have some recommendation in the coming weeks. Thank you. Mike Donahue, the Islander. Mike, star six. All right, moving on. Greg from the County Courier. Hi, Governor. I'm under the understanding through the grapevine that the state is looking at weird sports starting after the holidays in order to prevent any spikes from holiday travel interfering. I've also heard that there's been discussion about schools going to complete remote models during the holiday season. I'm hoping that you can shine a little light on at least what the discussions are, knowing that nothing's set in stone, but at least people can be aware of what some of the discussions are and know that everything's being looked at and certainly what would be being looked at. Yeah, I think it could be summed up in that everything is being considered. When you look at, in particular, if we went to strictly remote learning after the holidays, so to speak, that could exacerbate the situation in some respects because that might green light some families saying, well, if we're going to be off for two weeks, for instance, and there's going to be remote learning, we might as well head to another state and take some time to see the family. So we're taking all that in and trying to determine a path forward that will recognize that we want to keep everyone safe, but at the same time, and not add to the issue that we're trying to prevent. So everything's on the table. We're having these very robust conversations. We should have something in terms of winter sports guidance fairly soon. I would say in the next maybe week or so. So we'll be able to talk about that more probably next week. Do you expect that winter sports would start at a typical time or are you into the feeling that it's probably going to start mid-January to avoid holiday travel or? Again, everything's on the table. We just want to make sure that we're contemplating every action so that it doesn't exacerbate the issue on the other side. So again, everything's on the table and we'll have more to add in the next week or so. Okay, and I saw this morning that New York has released a preliminary plan on how to roll out a vaccine when it becomes available. I'm wondering how far Ramon is away from publishing a preliminary plan on how a vaccine would be rolled out. And I guess more important for a lot of people is have you had any discussion with the federal government on a timeframe when the state expects to see its first round of vaccines coming in? Yeah, I may have Dr. Levine answer part of that, but let me just be clear. I mean, I read some of the report from New York and rest assured, Vermont is prepared where we've been meeting on this since early summer in terms of a vaccination plan. We've answered the questions that were asked by the federal government. We are ready, willing, and able, but there's so many variables and so many unknowns about what's the vaccination going to look like? Who's going to be the one coming out first? What means do we have to store it? Because there's all kinds of different ways. Some are sub-zero temperatures where that's necessary to store the vaccine. And so there's too many variables to be exact about what we would do, but again, we are prepared when and if, and there's more guidance by the federal government. I think Governor Cuomo even said, we don't know what it's going to look like. We just need more information from the federal government to determine how we would react, but I think we're in the somewhat the same situation. We're ready to do this, but we don't have enough information even to know what it's going to look like. I'll let Dr. Levine answer further. You've done a really good job so far, Governor. The fact is our high-level plan and specific responses to questions that the CDC asked all states went in on time late last week. And within the next week, we will have our specific operational implementation plans available for review by the governor and the leadership team here. This will be very different than last March and April with PPE, with testing. It's not going to be every state for itself and competing with one another. So we are going to be, I'll use the words at the mercy of the federal government in some sense, just because of the fact that they have a nationwide distribution strategy to work through. And indeed, many of their questions to each of the states has to do with our prioritization groups and streams and things of that sort, so they can understand best where the initial sets of doses will go. Because there will be priority groups and there will be the ones people expect in terms of trying to protect the healthcare workers early on, the more vulnerable parts of the population with a fairly broad definition of what vulnerable is and then the more general parts of the population. So that's very important. But clearly our plans involve a whole set of logistic concerns which the governor's alluded to already talking about the temperature sensitivity of the various vaccines, the storage requirements, how you deliver that to the population and distribute it in an equitable fashion. There's also a tremendous amount of a communication effort and a information technology effort so people can be tracked appropriately, especially when multi-dose vaccines are needed. And except for one of the candidates, most of them are multi-dose vaccines. So it's be very important to be understanding of who's gotten which drug, what dose and do they need another dose. Federal government also recently indicated it was going to be working with some of the commercial pharmacies for long-term care vaccination. And that obviously has to be better unfolded for us all to understand and play out as well. But the state of Vermont next week will certainly have its plan as best it can do barring more news from the federal government. And based on a lot of experience, obviously, of our immunization section and the rest of state government when it came to H1N1, annual flu vaccines, et cetera. So based on that experience, but in a whole different mechanism because we're now talking about hundreds of thousands of doses of something very novel. Thank you, Dr. Levin. Thank you, Governor. All right. I think Mike is back in the line. Mike Downingham. Mr. P-Shack, one of the most telling regular clients is the state of Vermont, the breakdown of pools and everything and I was wondering where that was today and can we get the... Yeah, thanks, Mike. You're talking about the higher ed breakdown? It's been higher ed, but... And K through 12. ...in a general chart, I guess. Yes, we... It goes through 12 and I don't know, the numbers don't add up to me, but I'm not great at math because they're 13 cases who are active in eight or under investigation. So there's three somewhere else and try to figure those out. Yeah, sure. So Mike, we have both the public slides that we presented today as well as the public slides that are in our fuller presentation and the fuller presentation does include, you know, institution by institution, higher ed breakdown for each of the students, faculty and a number of tests performed. In terms of the K through 12, maybe Dr. Levine can talk more about that, but I think the 13 is the total that's on the dashboard and that there are two active and that the rest are under investigation. But it said for two active eight under investigation, 13 cases... Yeah, so those are... Yeah, so that would add up, Mike, if you added them together, it'd add up to 21. There's the 13, 11 are recovered, two are active, and then additionally, they're the eight that are under investigation. Okay. I think that... Anything else, Mike? I think that sort of covers it. I didn't know that Dr. Levine was going to tell me that and I thought he was going to. He's signaling that he doesn't have anything to add. All right. Oh, sorry. One question for the governor. I'll be talking about stability and campaign through the political process and just wondering your reaction to the threats that the various legislators say they've received and possibly they've done causing fire outside the home of Anita Ferdig, a legislator. I'm just wondering your general reaction. I understand now that you've directed or somebody's directed to take leave, to take charge instead of the Capitol, please, something you're just wondering why that happened. Well, again, I think first of all, this is just problematic throughout our society at this point in time. We're seeing so much division, so much polarization throughout our country and we have candidates that are using this as a way to further their cause, which really is concerning and it's dangerous in a lot of respects. So we all have an obligation to tone this down and it starts right at the top from my perspective. In terms of the state police involvement, I think all along, law enforcement tries to work together while some of these complaints first came in through the Capitol Police because of the legislature's involvement. Quickly, they have engaged with the state police. We want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to try and investigate this and sort it out so that we can first determine who's doing it but also to stop it from happening in the future. So again, I think we're, it's a joint effort amongst many, not just the state police, but we're engaged with our federal partners as well, trying to work as one team again to prevent this from happening or something catastrophic happening in the future. The Capitol Police have the resources to be able to do that investigation. Well, again, I think having everyone engaged is more beneficial. And I don't know what resources the Capitol Police have available to them, although it's certainly with the state police involvement in the information center that we have. This is, and the resources we have beyond that is important for all of us again. Common goal, trying to keep people safe. And one last thing, have you heard any reports of flu vaccines not being available in some part, are they from on that we had a complaint from one of our readers that when they went for the flu shot, it was not available? Yeah, I think Dr. Kelso might have spoken about that on Friday, but I don't think it's widespread. I think we have a lot of the vaccines, flu vaccines available. It just may mean that your pharmacy has run out on that particular day, but they have reinforced that they have more supplies coming in. So I don't believe that we have a system-wide problem. It just may be isolated to your pharmacy that you might happen to be using for that particular day. So I think those supplies in inventory have been replenished. And from what I understand, and I'll look to Dr. Levine, unless there's something different, do you wanna add anything to that? Yeah, I think people's fear is that there's a nationwide shortage of something and they may never see the vaccine that they wanted in the first place, and that is far from true. And it is, as the governor stated, a sporadic event at a pharmacy here or there. And of course, if that event coincides with the time the person really made themselves available and wanted to get the vaccine, that's unfortunate. I will ask that if anyone who's had any difficulty in a persistent way, we can help guide them if they call the health department because we do get communications periodically like this. But I would also ask people to be patient because what is not present in your pharmacy on one week will almost inevitably be present in the next week or two. All right, Mike, I gotta move on. Thanks to all of you, camera. Thank you. Erin Potenko, BT Digger. All right, previous question. There are 13 cases in the modeling presentation and 13 cases on the department health website as of Friday. Have there been any confirmed cases announced on Friday or known about from Friday? Are you talking about in the schools, Erin? In school, yeah. Okay, we're searching that out. We don't believe so, but. Maybe, hello. Yeah, if you've got another question, we can come back to that one. Yeah, I heard you mention some of the Trump rally. I was wondering if you were specifically referring to Springfield's Vermont kind of campaign rally without Trump in it, where people were complaining about photos and people without masks. I wasn't aware of that rally in Springfield, Erin, but I have obviously what we've been trying to promote is the use of masks. We believe that that's part of what will be beneficial in terms of mitigating the spread of the virus. We'd advocate to anyone who is out in public or is within range of someone else to put on a mask. It's pretty simple to do, and it really is maybe the best method we have right now available to prevent the spread of the virus. Erin, I think we have an answer to your first question as well. Oh, yeah, thanks. Hi, Dr. Levine here. There are three cases since Friday that we could add. There are also five other cases that are still being investigated. And where are those three cases, the confirmed cases? We can get back to you with the location of those. Okay, okay. And that's also, does that include the additional cases reported at Union Elementary School, or are you talking about three different schools? Three different schools. Okay, okay. Thank you. Just with the disparate children rally, if there's a business in town that isn't combined with COVID restrictions, people can report it to the state. Is there something like that for like, informal gatherings, like political rallies, or things like that, that people can report to state or report to their town, so that they're aware of the issue? That may be a question for Commissioner Shirling. I know I'm governor, but I didn't hear the entire question. I heard some cut out there, could you repeat it? Yeah, if someone sees like a large gathering of for a party or a local rally in this case, you know, these things that don't necessarily go through businesses, they're just kind of ensemble social events where people are not combined with COVID restrictions. Where can they report that? Because my understanding is that the general COVID reporting system is for businesses. They could use the general COVID reporting system, although the timeliness of that would be the factor because the event is fleeting. I think we would encourage them to contact local officials if it's during the weekday or contact the town office or something of that nature, or if there is a local law enforcement agency to contact them to do an educational visit and check in with the group that's assembled. I know, Erin, in terms of some of the protests that we saw during the summer, we tried to be proactive. I think the health department actually passed out mass for those who didn't have them because we were convinced that this is part of the answer. So we wanted to be as helpful as possible. If we know of another rally where it's, it's where they're not mass available, we would try and do the same thing. So if anyone out there has an event that they're anticipating and needs mass, please reach out to us and we'll make, we'll try and make mass available to them. Thank you very much. Eric, the time's our guess. Yes, this is for Dr. Levine. The outbreak regarding the Taki rake in Montpelier, is that considered contained or are the numbers of positive cases expected to increase? So I can say it's not officially considered contained. I can't tell you though that that means the numbers will increase because that doesn't mean that. But we have to still watch as you saw the curve on the graph that I had up earlier it's certainly as plateaued and hasn't come down to zero by any means. And we do have these alternate testing events that are available this week. So I don't want people to get the idea that not contained means out of control though because it's far from that. So what do the containment efforts look like in a situation like this? Oh, exactly what's going on now. Encouraging testing, responding to the test results with interviews of those who are positive, contact tracing those who are positive and making sure that appropriate contacts of them are in quarantine. And so all that's happened, that's happened with regard to members of the teams, members of the school population that were potentially at risk at the work site population. So all those efforts are ongoing and have occurred with good cooperation. And that is really the definition of containment. Just as you may have seen though with the now distant in the past when you ski Burlington outbreak, that didn't exactly evolve over a week or two and then we were done talking about it. It takes time for these events to totally play out. And of course we never consider anything resolved until we've had two full incubation periods go by which would be two 14 day periods. So that's why we will not be very liberal with the use of the word containment this early on when really I think the health department was first aware of anything on the 11th which is just nine days ago. There's a high school and an elementary school connected to this. Did you say what those schools are or where they are? Yeah, so the elementary school is Union and the high school is Oxbow. Thank you very much. Leigh-Anne, I'll apologize. Eric, it would be great to fit in your story. You could mention that we do have these alternate testing sites this week. I think CVMC is doing one on an ongoing basis but also there's a pop-up test and I think Secretary Smith can provide the details. Eric, thank you. The Department of Health is providing a second pop-up clinic in response to this outbreak and that will be Thursday, October 22nd at the Berry Auditorium from nine a.m. to three p.m. and Central Vermont Medical Center will conduct special testing clinics this Tuesday through Friday from two to four p.m. The clinics will be at the Medical Center's acute respiratory clinic. So we've added, we added a weekend pop-up. We had a Monday pop-up. There's a Thursday pop-up and then augmenting that will be Central Vermont Medical Center. So there's a lot of testing. Anybody associated with this event, we urge them to get tested. Leigh-Anne, Elder Connors, VPR. It is the follow-up based on the last question. You mentioned, I think the elementary school connected to the monthly outbreak was union and I remember, maybe it was last week, the health departments that the cases weren't connected. So I just was wondering, and just wanted to clarify that that now has changed. Yeah, I believe the contact tracing was further developed and came to the conclusion that they were connected. I would take this opportunity to make sure that whenever we have an outbreak, people should be forthright about the information and if the health department is trying to contact them, please answer because this will control mitigate the amount of spread that we'll see in the future. A day or two would make a lot of difference in someone's life if we can have that information. Dr. Levine. I really have nothing to add. And I think, though I wasn't here, Dr. Kelso on Friday may have indicated the connection with the union or not. But nothing to add to the- I don't think it was clear. Okay. I mean, kind of based on what the governor just sort of mentioned there about people not being forthright. Have you been having difficulty doing contact tracing with this outbreak and people not being forthright about who they've been in contact with? I would say the highest proportion answers not. Maybe very small proportion. How would you do that? No, just because- I mean, it's pretty characteristic of what we've experienced in Vermont all along that the vast proportion of people that we're in contact with not only answer the phone, but they're actually work with us very closely. And then I just wanted to circle back to what you said at the opening about that based on sort of the contact tracing, this outbreak was perhaps connected more to social activities outside of the game or travel. Could you offer a little bit more specifics about the travel component? Have you confirmed that there was travel involved with the origin of this outbreak? No, we've not confirmed that any team, for instance, went to a non-green zone or anything of that sort. Carpooling. Carpooling is travel. Thank you. Avery Powell, WCAX. Dr. Levine, I asked Dr. Kelso about this on Friday, but I just wanted to get your perspective as well about the study on remdesivir and how it's down with the little no effect on mortality. Just want you to take on it and how it will be used in Vermont in the future. Yeah, remdesivir is becoming all of a sudden one of the most studied drugs in just a very, very short period of time. So the study that I think you're referring to as a more recent publication in the New England Journal of Medicine. So it did not indicate that there was the mortality benefit, which of course we'd love to see with any drug. That's sort of the ultimate test, but it didn't mean it failed. It certainly had a benefit in terms of symptoms and hospital stays, things of that sort. And I would not say that the medical community has lost any faith in the drug or anything because of that. It's still an effective drug and it's probably going to be used earlier even in the course of illness if any change occurs in practice resulting from recent studies. But it's still part of the armamentarium for sure. And the study also looked at a few other ones, hydrochloroquine, I'm probably not going to say it was right, and locinivir and interferon. Did, and it sounds kind of the same thing as from decivir, are those, what's the status of those three, if you can judge what they are right now? Yeah, yeah. So my understanding is the other drugs really are not highly beneficial and not part of the sort of prime thrust of what we would use and save people. It's funny. Thank you. Sure. Tim McQuiston from Office Magazine. Thank you, Ethan. Governor, for the economic recovery grant, it sounds like the vast majority of the new money is going to go to the hospitality industry. Within that industry, is it you anticipated targeting towards specific lodging versus restaurant versus something else? How do you anticipate it to be done? I'm going to let Commissioner Goldstein answer that one. Hi, Tim. Thanks for the question. We do not do a specific targeting, but since this is based on unmet need and revenue impact, being that hospitality, travel and tourism related businesses are still at a very limited capacity, not necessarily because of any order, but just because of the travel restrictions. So it stands to reason that they would get, they still have the most unmet need. And as a result, they would end up getting the most in terms of award grants. So rather than just pointing out the sector, it's really just based on the need. Within the sector, have you seen which element has been hit the hardest? You've been able to narrow it down. Yeah, when we looked at the first version of grants, it really is the lodging properties, performing arts venues. Those are really the hardest hit. Transportation is also hit and some educational services. So really anybody where there's gatherings and crowds and people traveling from places that may not be green counties. So it's quite a lot. Governor, the Congress and the President are trying to work through a recovery of themselves, the Milos plan, but it's frankly, we're anticipating it will happen, but it might not happen. You've done a lot of contingency on the health side. Is there an economic contingency? Or is it sort of like we're really, really counting on? Well, again, Tim, we're using any excess capacity we might have to put towards the hospitality sector in particular, but businesses, because we know this is going to be essential to our recovery, we have to help them survive. And again, when we looked at the number of people who are unemployed right now, the vast majority of them are in the hospitality sector. So it would be reasonable for us to concentrate in that area. We'll be looking over, again, waiting for an anticipation of whatever the Congress and the administration do or don't do will dictate what we do. We are looking, again, for any unmet, if we have grants that are out there that have excess capacity, if there's dollars available, we're going to work over the next three to four weeks to try and determine how much we have available. And then we will redirect those to businesses if we come up with some excess funding. So again, a lot will depend on what they do or don't do and the flexibility they might provide as well would be important because we have to, again, we're under the clock here because we have to spend all this money by the end of December. So again, our hands are tied in some respects. We have to follow through on the guidelines that have been put in place by Congress and by the feds. We don't have a lot of flexibility at this point. So we'll continue to work under the rules and regulations that are in place right now but end with the dollars that we have right now. But again, we're going to try and determine whether there's any excess funding that we can redirect to businesses over the next three to four weeks. And there could be something that could be like an 11th hour kind of moving money around to get it to spend at least to do something with it. Exactly. We're going to try and determine again what is available but we have to be nimble and we have to be creative and we'll consider both of those as we move forward with something because we know it's necessary for us again as a state to have those businesses still viable when we recover from this. Thank you very much. And you have a record, the Caledonian record. Good afternoon. Quick one for Secretary Smith. I'm wondering if the results from the second round of facility-wide testing at the Caledonia County Nursing Facility are available? I'll have to get back to you on that. I don't have that with me right at the moment on where that second round is. It probably will be today. It probably will be today sometime. Okay. I think they were being administered on Sunday. Yes, if you could email them back. Yeah. Then for Dr. Levine, how comfortable are you with the case trends of the last three weeks and the state's ability to manage testing and tracing to keep tabs on this? And when you set back to evaluate the general risk of the virus spread and look into your crystal ball if you will, do you focus more on regions in the state or do you tend to think about certain activities like schooling, sports, or occupations? Sure, thanks. So yeah, I do notice that on weekends generally, we've had lower case counts, three or four cases in a day. Most recent weekends, nine, 10, 11 cases in a day. So there's clearly a trend in the direction, but it's not an unexpected trend because we've been sort of gearing up for this, knowing with schools and colleges reopening, foliage activities, coolness in the air and people staying indoors more, et cetera, that these kind of things would happen. So I think I'd be even more concerned if there was doubling or quadrupling of what we have, but this is kind of the way the modeling has gone as well. So we're kind of following the trend that we expected and it's not an out of control trend by any means. We have, you mentioned containment and I'm extremely confident in our containment strategy and in our staff who do that hard work. They are doing more work than ever, but at the same time, we haven't gone beyond our limits and we haven't exceeded our capacity by any means to do that work. When it comes to regions versus activities, I frankly don't worry too much about regions because we've got very populated regions of the state, but we've also got other regions that are very contiguous with other states. So each region presents its own set of risks and that's why my comments today were really much more tailored to the what we're doing with our time aspect of things than where you happen to live or anything of that sort. It's really, again, focusing people on these gatherings and as Dr. Birx, when she visited, referred to people that you would normally have trusted and just sort of been able to engage in social activities with without thinking twice, you should think twice and it doesn't mean don't engage in the social activity but certainly continue to be masked and physically distanced and don't engage in a crowded, crowded activity because all those, that's a formula for super high risk taking. So it's again, just reminding people to be careful, be cautious, not that we can't trust people that we normally would trust but unwittingly, the people we trust, including ourselves, may have been exposed in ways that we're not aware. So unless we all practice these habits, we may find ourselves in trouble. So again, it's not really where we live in the state of Vermont, it's what we're doing during the time we're there. And I guess if I may, I have a very quick one for Commissioner PCA in reference to the modeling that Commissioner Levine just brought up. Does that get more granular than the statewide totals you present each week? They're underlying predictions based on counting or... Yeah, so that's a great question. Certainly now there are county specific forecasts as well and we do look at those on a weekly basis. Obviously with counties being much smaller population than the state as a whole and even our state having a small population, it's less reliable than if you had larger sample size. But we do look at county specific forecasts as well. Is that anything we could be shared about? Yeah, again, we have issues sometimes with our reliability but certainly we can figure a way to include that in our update. Thanks everyone. Andrew, I just want to again put this in perspective. I think I might have mentioned this is a previous press conference but we become accustomed to having single digits. We see three, four, five number of positive cases a day and then we get to a point when we have 11, 12, 13, 15 and we think we're in trouble and it's not to say that we shouldn't pay attention because we should. But when you look at other states, Wyoming for instance, still they were at the bottom at one point in time, lowest positivity rate, lowest number of cases and so forth, less population than Vermont. I took a look at where they are today. They had 300 positive cases yesterday. That would say to me if they have a problem and when we have 10 or 11 or 12 and yesterday, I think it was nine for instance, it may seem like a lot but in comparison to other states, we don't have the problem they do because of what Vermonters are doing. You're paying attention, you're wearing your mask, you're not congregating but I do worry a bit about this pandemic fatigue that Dr. Levine talked about that we start letting our guard down because we're tired of it and I get that, I get tired of it myself but this isn't a time to give up because we're halfway through this and we just have to maintain that vigilance if we want to continue to be strong and come out of this stronger than we were before. So again, I just wanted to make sure that that perspective was in place. Again, I've talked about Hawaii who has gone, they now have probably six, seven times the number of cases we do and they were lower than us at one point. So we've done a lot of good things. We'll continue to maintain this but I don't want people to feel that this is out of control in Vermont because we expected that there would be cases as we open schools, as we opened up to speak a little bit more we said there would be more cases and there are, but not that many. And Barbara, Newport Daily Express. My understanding of the state has received an additional batch of antigen tests that the faculty, I saw that it's necessary and it's gonna be stopped. They can't be moved to other areas of our country where they might have a need for that particular type of testing. Let Dr. Levine answer that. Obviously, we wanna help any other states that may be in trouble and may need that but I just wanna make sure that we're keeping this in perspective as well. More starting to inventory this. We may be utilizing some of the antigen testing in the near future but we have to have a stockpile that will make it beneficial because it's not like it's a one and done kind of thing. We need to continue to test to oversee this surveillance type of testing. Requires multiple testing on a weekly basis to get some sort of rhythm and some sort of basis. So if we're stockpiling to make sure that we have what we need when we do enroll some other type of testing. Dr. Levine. Okay. Yes, and just to piggyback on that. All the other states are receiving what we're receiving for these antigen tests. So they don't need our help immediately. Anyways, they're all getting some supply. The supply was initially directed to and targeting long-term care facilities where we just happened to have an alternate testing plan in place right now that's working just fine. And we'll continue to work fine through the rest of this calendar year. We will use these antigen tests just not now. And as the governor said, stockpiling them is a good strategy right now because when they get used in a surveillance capacity, testing people who are not having symptoms but maybe at risk or be working with risky populations, we really need to be able to do that repetitively. And the grand hope is that the federal government is actually going to do something similar to what it just did, which is coordinate a large-scale purchase with the manufacturer so that they continue to churn these out and the government can continue to distribute them to the states. Baring that happening, we have concerns about the supply chain in general for some of these tests. So we don't want to start a testing strategy that's working and have to interrupt it because there's a breakdown in the supply chain. But they will get used, I can assure you. Okay, thank you very much. Just to add a little bit to our testing, I know this has come up in previous press conferences but about our inventory of the PCR tests. We're in good shape here in Vermont every single week. Again, I monitor this on a weekly basis and every single week, we start, we're building our inventory. We're in better shape than we have been since the start. So we have enough supply. If we stopped being resupplied tomorrow, I believe we have enough to go the next two or three months. So again, we're in good shape in terms of the inventory of the gold standard as Dr. Levine refers to it, the PCR tests as well. Just to go back to putting this into perspective, we had 71 cases last week here in Vermont. Our next door neighbor in New Hampshire had 71 for the whole week. Our next door neighbors had one day when they had 71 cases in one day. So again, put that in perspective as to where we are in the good work that you all from Honors are doing to make sure that they keep this in check. Julie Sherman. Julie, local 22, local 44. Hi, it seems as though there are conflicting reports on the national level about case numbers. One statement that Vermont has seen more than a 25% increase in COVID cases in the last two weeks compared to the two weeks before. And then the Johns Hopkins report showed that we've seen a 10% improvement in cases over the last week. Would maybe Commissioner Pichak or Dr. Levine be able to clarify where we stand as a state? Yeah, I like the Johns Hopkins better from my perspective. But this is a source of frustration. I'll let Commissioner Pichak answer this, but it is somewhat of a source of frustration for all of us as we see, if I see on CNN where all of a sudden Vermont is in the red, bright red, we have a problem here. And we went from having four cases to eight cases in one day. So we had this dramatic rise unseen across the country, but such low numbers. So just be wary of some of those numbers and their ability to keep up as well because it's not real time. For some, they might be collecting information that was last week and then this week and it could be two days ago and just different time periods will, and because of our low number of cases, we'll make that fluctuate and cause some differential between the two. Commissioner Pichak. I think the governor nailed both points, both the low number of cases, which can make percentage swings go pretty dramatic. And then also the timing. If you're even off by a day or two in terms of the time period that you're measuring by, you might pick up, for example, the day where we had 33 cases due to the outbreak in Addison County. And if that falls off of your time period, then all of a sudden our cases have gone way down relative to previous weeks. So you wanna be mindful of the time period that they're looking at as the governor pointed out. Kat. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I just wanted to ask that, thank you. I just wanted to have a quick follow-up. I know last week it was mentioned that must tell your mainstream school with the burst to show transmission of the virus within the school. I just wanted to know what's been done for that school for students, teachers, considering that it's the first case of transmission within the school. Thank you so much. That's a great question. And it's actually nothing different than we do in any other school because the same strategy works. It was noteworthy that there was transmission within the school. However, because of the way they arranged students and pods and with specific teachers, it was very easy to understand who was most at risk and what that meant for the school at large and make sure that the appropriate population in the school was quarantined. So it's still the same strategy. It sounds more dramatic when we talk about transmission within the school, but the reality is the underlying strategy to use knowing that is no different. Thank you. Cat, WCAX? We can. Wonderful. Governor, when you look ahead to the forecast for mid-November with the potential of 20 or more new cases a day, do you foresee any new restrictions in place? You know, we'll get more strategic. Obviously, we want to be nimble if we see that there's a problem area that can be rectified with more guidance and more restrictions, we'll do it. But I don't see anything widespread. We just want to again acknowledge where the areas are that are problems and react accordingly. So nothing I'm considering at this point in time, but we'll be talking again on a daily basis as a team as to what approach we should be taking in anticipation of this. And the follow-up question I have is actually for Dr. Levine. Coming back to your comments from earlier, when people are trying to figure out how wide their social bubble should extend as we head into winter, is there kind of a rough number that you can give on how many close contacts people should stop at and say, okay, you know, that's my limit? That's a really tough question. So, you know, what we have noticed when we do contact tracing now, originally contact tracing, there were maybe two contacts. Then as we started dealing with colleges and schools, they got up to like four contacts, five contacts. Most recently, it's been in the higher single digits number of contacts or even a little beyond that for some, though that may have quieted down a little. So, you know, it's very challenging because, you know, a definition of a close contact for the virus standpoint has to do with how much time you spend with a person in a space that's too confined, if you will. So, that's different than maybe people would consider our close contacts in a different realm like who's our friends or our social connections, that we might actually be able to have a fair number of as long as we're not breaking the rules, if you will, all about being physically distanced and making sure that we have masks on and aren't in a crowded indoor space. So, it's hard to really put a number on things, unfortunately, but I would really like people to continue to think of things in terms of the phrase physically distanced, but socially connected, because we can stay socially connected so well with people and still not put ourselves or them at risk of transmission of virus. Okay, thank you. Stuart Ledbetter. Thanks. Governor, can you interpret the drop in the unemployment rate this morning? I mean, 4.2 cents is pretty good compared to the U.S. average, but obviously a lot of people dropped out of the workforce as well. Yeah, you know, it isn't clear in some respects because to those 26, 27,000 people who are still on unemployment, you know, you're 100% unemployed at that point, but as well when, you know, it's problematic because some benefits have run out as well. It's not as lucrative in some respects with the additional money that was provided by the federal government. And so I don't know, I don't have a quick answer for you. Certainly we could look into it a little bit further, but I don't think it's real in a lot of respects. I think that there's still a lot of struggling of people out there, a lot of people who aren't employed that aren't necessarily on unemployment at this point in time. If there's no additional stimulus or backstop, when will our trust fund run out of money? You know, it's been healthy, and I went through this a little bit earlier in the press conference, you know, going from about a half a billion dollars down to just, you know, 242 million at this point, we've done really well in a lot of respects and we had a lot of help from the federal government in doing so, paying out a billion dollars in benefits. So I would say, based on what we've seen, again, if you consider that we've only depleted about half of it in the last seven months, that, you know, we'd probably go another six or seven months without a problem, but I believe that we'll have, you know, a vaccine in place, we'll be able to get back to work, we'll have an economy that's picking back up sometime maybe in the winter or spring, and then we'll start backfilling the unemployment fund. So I don't see that we're going to run out if we continue along this path is what we're seeing. And I do believe that the Congress and the administration will come together at some point, whether it's before or after the election, and we'll get through this. I'm confident of that. All right, finally, I asked you a while back whether anybody in the administration was aware yet of any data about, you know, these anecdotes we hear about an influx of residents moving here, buying houses, sight unseen, et cetera, et cetera, to escape COVID. And do we have any, is the administration have any data on numbers yet that might explain this? Yeah, I don't know if we have any specific numbers, but we're hearing now obviously the same thing. The real estate sector is doing very well in Vermont and anecdotally what we're hearing from realtors is that about 30% of those who have bought homes in Vermont are considering making Vermont their home, which is good news, that's what we need. We have an issue with, we need more population. We need more youth in the state. We need to fill our schools, so this is all good news, but we don't have, I'm not aware of the data that we need at this point in time, but we are mindful of that. And if there is information available, I will, we will make sure that you get that, Stuart, because it is, you know, that's maybe the silver lining of this as well for Vermont, that we are able to get more people to live in the state and to be part of the workforce as we come out of this in recovery. Thank you. Joseph Bresser, Department Chronicle. This is to follow on first about the unemployment rate. I recall being told the problem with the way it has to do with the way the Census Bureau computes the figures and that our congressional delegation has pointed this out to the Secretary of Labor some time ago. Have we received any kind of reply? Is there any consideration being given to finding a new way to calculate unemployment given the current situation? Joe, I'm not aware that we've received any response, but I'll ask the Commissioner Harrington. Have we received any response from the Secretary of Labor? Thank you, Governor. No, we have not. And I have not heard from our congressional delegation that they have received a response either. The comment is correct and that may attribute to why we continue to see the unemployment rate go down, but not necessarily at the rate people are going back to work and that is because of the types of questions that are asked as part of the Household Survey, which is, are you actively looking for work or have you looked for work in the past four weeks and are you able to return to work if awkward work? And that question becomes a little tricky during COVID time. Do you, we know what the rate would have to drop to to fully eliminate some of the federal extended benefits that some people are now relying on? Yeah, go ahead, Commissioner. I was just gonna say we are tracking that at the actual specific data point in terms of when we trigger off, we know it is coming if we continue. It may even be based on most current numbers. There is typically a notice period and then a future sunset date. So we'll be able to grab that and get back to you, but we are letting folks know as a near the end of extended benefits and if that changes, we will be letting folks know as well. We haven't received any final word yet that we have triggered off, but it is coming if we continue down this path for sure. Thank you. I had a question that I suspect is for Dr. Levine. I'm, you know, being with the Chronicle, I'm kind of a homer and I noticed that there've been an unusual number of cases in Orleans County. I recall the last time this happened, it appeared that they were unrelated and it was just essentially one of those things. Is that the case now or has tracking shown some kind of connection between the cases and should we expect more? So thus far, I can't give you any information that would indicate that there's some connection, but obviously we look at this every day. But nothing to tell you at this point in time and should you expect more, hopefully at the rate you usually are comfortable seeing them at and not at a higher rate. Okay, I guess I'll have to look at that. Thank you. Guy H. Governor of Oregon Commissioner Levine, Grafton County, New Hampshire, right across the Connecticut River from the St. Johnsbury area, clear down the Warrant River junction, is green onto New Hampshire's map like yellow on Vermont. Five months with my daughter in Littleton or shop in West Lebanon, do I need to do a 14 day quarantine when I come home? If it's unnecessary travel guy, the answer is yes. We have a stricter standard in Vermont, 400 case per million. I don't believe New Hampshire has the same, but if you shop, if you normally shop for groceries, let's say in Grafton County in Littleton, because you live nearby and right across the border, that's okay. If you work in New Hampshire, you can continue to work without quarantine. But if it's unnecessary, if you don't have to go to Grafton, you don't have to go to New Hampshire, you shouldn't. I think that's basically, it's nothing perfect about the system, but use some common sense, I would say. Thank you. Thank you. Guy, I don't think Dr. Lagin's gonna follow up. Is that your question? Yes, I do have another question. Go ahead. Okay, thank you. Governor, a few days after you and four other governors throughout the New England State Committee on Energy asked ICO New England to decarbonize the grid, the same group recommended that ICO funds more infrastructure to support big wind projects on ridge lines and offshore, and suggested that ICO look at a carbon credits market, which is a form of carbon pricing that benefits zero carbon power generators at the expense of fossil fuel power generators. Do you think that New England's governors should be supporting more big wind projects and an ICO carbon credit market? Well, as long as the big wind isn't in Vermont, that's okay with me. I think that I have, there's nothing from my standpoint, nothing against wind generation. I just don't want it to see it on our ridge lines here in Vermont. Tourism is an important aspect of our economy. And so again, there are a number of large scale wind sources in Canada and Maine, I believe. I'm not sure about New Hampshire and New York for sure. So utilizing those sources, I think would be beneficial in terms of our renewable energy goals. I'll be suggesting a carbon credit market. Yeah, I mean, we have something of that nature now. And I can't say that I would have anything to offer at this point in time, but again, I'm not looking to impact the affordability of Vermont in any way, but more to enhance it. And we've been part of Reggie for a long time and that's been beneficial for Vermont. Thank you. Lola, V.T. Digger. Hi, can you hear me? We can. So I, I think it's a clarifying question, probably for Dr. Levine. So if I understand correctly, we had 13 confirmed cases in schools, K to 12 schools as of Friday. Another three have been confirmed and another five are under investigation. So we're probably correct. Is that correct? That is correct. And the only, the school cases that are linked to the hockey outbreak are at Oxford High School and at Union Elementary. That is correct. All right. And then Union Elementary is, I'm correct, is so far the only case of within school transmission that we know about. They've reported six cases so far. They, that's after they reported an additional four on Monday. I imagine some of those are some of the probable, but not yet confirmed cases. I guess since this is the first example of within school transmission, I know you said earlier that, you know, this is also so far evidence that the pod structure works. We have seen no cases outside of the pod, but are there other lessons learned about how to further mitigate within school transmission because I think a lot of people would agree that, you know, six cases is still a lot of cases within a single school. Sure. So, you know, a lot of our very early cases in the times since school has reopened were cases that people came to school on a day they were infectious. They didn't know they were ill yet and they were actually sort of left over from the summer if you will. So, activities they were engaged in in the summertime and then they got to school and happened to come up as a case at that point in time. So that's not, you know, acquired within the school. And most of the cases we were seeing early on were kind of like that. And they're just reflective, you know, of the community that the person is coming from, whether it's a student, whether it's a teacher, a staff member, or anybody, they're coming to school representing the community that they're part of. So think of this one as sort of similar to that as well, but that for the first time, transmission did occur within the school. Now, it doesn't mean the school was not doing what a school should do in terms of all of the guidance that the schools are doing a wonderful job with at this point in time, whether that be guidance on the distance between students, on their hygiene practices throughout the school or on the buses, or as we get into this phase three, how they utilize cafeterias, gym classes, et cetera. I mean, everybody's very, very conscientious and well-versed in all of the guidance that we provided them. So I'm not sure there's going to be a tremendous amount of learning that any specific school could do when this happens to them because of the fact that, again, we're trying to just say that this represents what's going on in the community at large and sometimes that's going to be unavoidable. Just like one of the workplaces that gets impacted might have a case that wasn't connected to the original outbreak but was connected to one person who was connected to that outbreak. It doesn't mean they were necessarily falling down on their practices. This is just the way the virus behaves. Right, and I didn't mean to imply that the school was in any way negligent but given that, I think it is a goal of the state to have as little transmission within schools as possible. Has this one case taught us anything about how we can better refine our protocols to mitigate transmission within school? No, that is a really valid and great question. And the answer right now is I don't think it has but obviously we're very early in this game having just learned about this school within the last week and we're going to have to sit down and take a hard look. But again, even when we opened schools we said this was a possibility. This is one of the risks you take as you reopen any sector in our society whether it's an education sector or a business sector or what have you, this can happen. So we will evaluate because obviously you're right. We need to make sure that if there are lessons to be learned we understand them early and disseminate the learning widely. All right, that's all for me, thank you. All right, that's it. All right, thank you very much for tuning in and we'll see you again on Friday for the education update. Thank you.