 Good morning. I'd like to give you sort of a Vermont situational update and an update on Winooski. As you can see, just shy of 1,100 total cases, estimated 900 recovered. 55 deaths, I believe we're just about at the two week point that we have not seen any additional deaths. I do want to put this in context nationwide. I was a little astounded to see we're still having 1,000 deaths per day across our country and that there are almost 20 states that are showing increases in numbers of cases. So again, it's always easy to sort of slide into a little bit of comfort, feeling like we're thrilled with this, but the reality is it's going on here and around the world quite a bit. This is our curve of cases. And then I'd just like to show you that way back towards April, that was where our highest daily number of cases occurred. We've had a slight spike related to the outbreak I'm going to talk about and you can see the progression of that over the course of time in the short amount of time we've been discussing, Winooski. Just to fill in with the slides that I usually show, we are doing an incredible amount of testing in this state. We believe there are almost 8,700 tests done in a seven day period and many, many days well over 1,000 tests per day. In spite of having an outbreak in one portion of our state, the percent positivity rate of tests is still very, very low, clearly in the 2% or lower range. And then finally, as you'll learn, much of our recent outbreak, the individuals have no symptoms and that's actually shown here for the entire state very, very, very low level of individuals in the state reporting to urgent care settings or emergency rooms with COVID-19 symptoms and none of them reporting with influenza like illness. To get down to the specifics of the current outbreak, most recent data as of last night is 74 total cases associated with the outbreak. The majority of those in Winooski, about 80%. The remainder mostly in Burlington but a few scattered around the county. The median age continues to be very low at 20. The age range continues to start very low at one. Previously the oldest was in the low 60s. Currently the oldest has been 82 years of age. 56% of the cases adults, 44% children. Even as the outbreak evolves, only one in five are reporting symptoms. There are still no reports of hospitalizations or deaths related to this current outbreak. There's almost an equal number of contacts to the number of total cases. I have to warn you that that's a number that fluctuates all of the time, needless to say. People graduate out of their 14 day incubation period and don't remain in contact at that point in time and so it can fluctuate on a day to day basis. We've had tremendous, tremendous adherence to isolation and quarantine protocols by the population that's affected. And we've had wonderful, wonderful engagement of community partners, the leadership of both communities, the partners that we work with on a day to day basis to help us really do the hard work of public health and manage this outbreak. And I really want to call out our appreciation to all of them. Since I did mention, and it constantly gets people's curiosity up about the high amount of asymptomatic test positive people in this current outbreak. And since it just appeared in the news nationally again, I thought I would just spend one moment talking about this. The World Health Organization made the news at the beginning of the week when one of their spokespeople and actual authorities stated asymptomatic transmission was very rare in quotes. Yesterday they quickly walked back that position and said they didn't really know how often it occurred. This came really after many in the public health world pushed back saying that current best evidence is that this happens readily. The controversy, one controversy is the how often. The estimates are perhaps as often as 40% may be more realistically 20%. The truth may be in between. Another part of the controversy is in the terminology when a clinician says asymptomatic, it really means no symptoms, period. And a person who tested positive as a contact may never have known they were positive because they may have gone through the rest of their life never having a symptom from COVID and truly were asymptomatic. Early literature coming from a variety of places around the world didn't always reflect the testing capacity and enable people to be labeled as truly test positive and no symptoms. Then there's the term presymptomatic and that really refers to the 48 or so hours before somebody becomes symptomatic and are regarded as infectious. Sometimes regarded as highly infectious but nobody would know because they're not exhibiting symptoms during that period. And then a newer term has been introduced posse symptomatic which is really, some people get up in the morning and say, yeah, I'm not quite as energetic as I usually am but they wouldn't tell a doctor they were sick. So a subtle symptom, minor symptom, nothing that would be reported to anybody but the reality is that was their symptom of having been infected with COVID. The bottom line that I want to convey is that the virus can be spread by people without symptoms whether they ultimately develop symptoms or not. I'll turn this back to the governor now. Thank you, Dr. Levine. Will will continue to keep you updated on the situation in Manuski as new information becomes available. While it feels like we've been dealing with this public health emergency for quite some time, it's really only been about three months since I declared the state of emergency. So that shows a lot can change over a short period of time. As we continue to move in the right direction we'll be able to further reopen our economy and try to get back some of what life was like before before this began. A big part of that is getting our schools open again. So today we're here to talk about some of the preparations underway to get there by Labor Day. And Secretary French will provide more details shortly. Additionally, as we push forward, we can't forget about the class of 2020, which has endured a lot during what should have been an exciting time in their lives and all because of something they had no control over. This is a pivotal time for these young adults and it's been a lot more challenging than it was for most of us when we were graduating from high school. So we wanted to give them a little something to celebrate today. And Dan Smith, President and CEO of the Vermont Community Foundation is here to announce the McClure Foundation's gift to the class of 2020. As you will hear, this gift will help many next fall as they embark on their new adventure. As we've said in the past, we fully expect schools to open this fall. Secretary French, Dr. Levine and his team at the Department of Health, along with stakeholders across the pre-K to 12 spectrum have been working together on guidance to make sure we do this in a safe manner. Our approach will focus on the health and safety of kids, their families, as well as teachers, staff and anyone else working in schools and find ways to make the school day as normal as possible. That said, for students and teachers alike, it's going to look a little different than it did before COVID-19. But we need to get through these issues together because we know how vital it is for our kids and their development to move forward and reopen. In March, when we made the difficult decision to close schools, we acknowledged there's no perfect replacement for the learning that takes place in a school building. And while teachers and administrators adapted by getting creative and doing everything they could to make sure kids succeed, I think we can all agree this approach cannot continue without kids falling behind in their schoolwork and the social development that takes place in the physical structures of the schools. We're learning more every day and we know more about this virus now and have the tools to help prevent the spread today that we didn't have three months ago, which helps us prepare for this transition back to school. Secretary French and Dr. Levine will be issuing the guidance jointly next week and we anticipate some legislative changes may be needed as well, including to the school calendar, attendance policies, and others. And we know some funding may be required to help make this work as well. We look forward to working with the legislature, and with the education community on these issues sooner rather than later, so we're ready in the fall. Finally, before I turn it over to Secretary French, I wanna clarify that today's announcement is for our pre-K through 12 education system. But please know, we're working with Vermont's colleges and universities as well in order for them to reopen this fall too. Our decisions will still be based on the data as we get closer to September, but for our entire education system, it's critical. We finalize the plan now so we can reopen in the fall. Over the coming weeks, the restart Vermont team, led by former Norwich University President Rich Snyder, representatives from the University of Vermont to Vermont State College System and the Association of Vermont Independent Colleges will continue to develop guidelines for our colleges and universities and we'll share more as they are finalized. And with that, I'll turn it over to Secretary French for more on the pre-K to 12 planning. Secretary French. Good morning. We've been actively working on planning for the reopening of schools for the fall. Planning work has been focused on describing the public health considerations for in-person instruction so that districts can begin making the necessary preparations. A team led by the Department of Health staff including Commissioner Levine, Dr. Kelso, the State Epidemiologist, Dr. Brina Holmes, Director of the Maternal and Child team have been working with members of the various education associations in the state including Vermont NEA, Superintendents Association, Principles Association, the School Nurses Association, Special Education Administrators Association and the School Boards Association to develop this guidance. Also, Vermont Pediatricians and staff in the UVM Medical Center have also been involved. We will publish this guidance jointly from the Agency of Education and the Department of Health next week but today I thought I'd give you a preview of that guidance. Because we are continuing to learn more about COVID-19 and the conditions surrounding the crisis continually and it's evolving, it's likely we'll have to change, amend or add to this guidance in the coming months. Firstly, I would like to state that we're able to safely open our schools for in-person instruction in the fall. We recognize that as much as COVID-19 has been an unprecedented public health emergency, in many cases it has been an education emergency. And it's important that we work hard and endeavor to open our schools as a priority. We are committed to reopening our schools for in-person instruction so we can meet the educational needs of our students and begin to assess the impact this emergency has had on their learning. Our guidance will describe the precautions and safety measures schools will be required to implement in order to do so. The objectives of our guidance include decreasing the risk of coronavirus from entering the school building through effective public health prevention, decreasing the transmission of COVID-19 among staff and students through proven public health measures, quickly identifying cases and put mitigation procedures in place where there are COVID-19 cases among students or staff, ensuring that special needs students with physical, emotional and behavioral concerns are thoroughly addressed in a fair and equitable manner, communicating regularly with staff, students and families in the community to provide assurance that schools are working to keep students safe and healthy and ensuring that COVID-19 health guidance ensures an equitable educational experience for all of our students. Districts will be required to implement basic safety health measures related to health screenings, ensuring that staff are safe, provisions for ensuring sick students and staff stay home. These measures are in addition to the cleaning and disinfection protocols and hygiene guidance and considerations for school nurses and managing sick students that are also outlined in the guidance. In terms of health screenings, all students and staff will have a daily health check at first point of contact with the school. Schools will be able to determine the best method to conduct this daily health check. Students who are arriving by bus will have a screening prior to boarding the bus to reduce the potential spread of the virus. The daily health check consists of two components, a series of questions and a temperature screening. The questions ask students if they are had close contact with a person who has COVID-19 or if they have symptoms consistent with the disease. Students who answer these questions affirmatively or have a temperature will be sent home as soon as possible. Safety measures for staff include identifying and supporting staff who might be greater risk for severe illness from COVID-19. Staff members or teachers aged 65 or older or with serious underlying health conditions will be encouraged to talk with their healthcare provider to assess their risk for working in an environment where social distancing might be difficult to maintain. All staff will be required to wear facial coverings while in school. Students will be encouraged to wear face coverings when appropriate. A focus of this guidance will be on maintaining schools operation as outbreaks of the virus occur. When outbreaks do occur, public health staff will move swiftly to contain the outbreak and assess to what extent outbreak might impact school operations. This means in the fall we'll be entering a period of what the CDC terms reactive school closure, where the closure of a single school or a groups of schools in a region might be necessary as an outbreak in the virus. This means that as much as we are planning for in-person instruction in the fall, we're also preparing to improve our ability to provide remote learning as a contingency. In anticipation of the need for reactive school closures, our guidance describes several levels or steps districts will take depending on the public health circumstances in their communities. Under step one, schools are closed and utilizing remote learning. Under step two, schools are open for in-person instruction implementing fairly restrictive health measures. And under step three, schools are open for in-person instruction and implementing less restrictive measures. To give you a better idea of what this looks like, I use the example of school bus transportation. Under step two, the more restrictive level for in-person instruction, if school district might seat students one to a seat, implement extra bus routes or stops, or restructure the timing of pickups and drop offs to limit student contact. Under step three, the less restrictive step, bus runs and stops would happen as normal, but students would be seated on a bus as separated as possible. And we'll mention at this time, we believe we'll open all schools in the fall with busing being at step three, the least restrictive option. As I mentioned, we will publish this health guidance next week. We see this guidance as foundational for the other planning we need to undertake to open schools. Our next step will be to engage more broadly with students, parents, and community members about determining how the decisions of what step to follow or for how decisions for reactive school closure will be made. We know the public health information will be critical to making these decisions, but we also need to get greater clarity around decision-making so we can maintain a consistent public health strategy statewide. We are going to need to be able to strike a balance between being as responsive as possible to local conditions, while at the same time ensuring a statewide consistency, a consistency that has proven to be so successful for Vermont in managing our response to virus to date. In closing, I would just like to restate that we are confident we can open schools for in-person instruction in the fall. Our planning will enable schools to enact the necessary safety and health measures to do so. It is vital to the well-being of our students that we endeavor to reopen our schools so we can address their social, emotional, and educational needs, while at the same time getting back to the normal routines and community activities that characterize our way of life in Vermont. Thank you. Now I'll introduce Dan Smith, representing the McClure Foundation. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here and I want to thank the governor and his team for including us in this press availability for what I think is an exciting and a hopeful announcement regarding the class of 2020 and the experience that they'll see in the course of the next, in the coming years. I want to start with a direct message. As president and CEO of the Vermont Community Foundation, I have the privilege of serving on the board of the J. Warren and Lois McClure Foundation and this is a direct message from the J. Warren and Lois McClure Foundation to the class of 2020. We see you and we know you're graduating into an uncertain world. We believe that for all your hard work, you deserve something that you can count on. So on behalf of the McClure Foundation, we are pleased to announce today that every member of the Vermont High School class of 2020 will receive one free course of their choosing at the Community College of Vermont this fall, no matter your circumstances. So again, every member of the class of 2020 coming out of Vermont High Schools will receive one free course of their choosing at the Community College of Vermont this fall. The foundation's gift will cover tuition and fees associated with any CCV course. The hope is that the choice to continue learning and expanding your skills and talents is as easy as possible. Across the state, there are young people who woke up today wondering what comes next and to those young people you've worked so hard, you deserve this. We hope it sets you on the path of launching a career, becoming a nurse, flying planes, becoming a doctor, building websites, building buildings, making things, taking care of people or becoming governor. It is all wide open if you take this next step and you're not in this alone at a time when access to school counselors and trusted advisors is winding down under unprecedented conditions. Taking this course will connect you to supportive advisors who can help you chart a course in the context of today's reality. If you register for the course at CCV, you'll be assigned an academic advisor who will support you along the way and if you're just considering it, you can make an appointment with a CCV advisor to explore the options and consider your goals. As a state, let's remember that we need this too. We've been lagging behind our neighbors when it comes to college continuation and success and our workforce challenges have been a clear and direct constraint on our underlying economy. We can't afford to leave any talent on the table and we know that the class of 2020 has incredible talent. They have the potential to step into the range of high paying, high demand jobs projected for Vermont, jobs like nursing, healthcare, accountants, web developers and graphic designers, nearly all of which require education or training after high school. CCV offers degrees and short-term credentials that lead directly to these promising jobs. CCV is ready to serve the class of 2020. They have locations within 25 miles of 95% of Vermonters and they enroll the greatest number of Vermont students of any college in the state. They were also the first college in Vermont to offer online learning and currently offer more than 300 courses each semester. Becoming a CCV student is simple. So is transferring CCV credits. CCV requires no fees, no essays, no reference letters, no standardized test scores. It's part of the Vermont State College System and has long served as an entry point for students to enter the other colleges in the system. CCV also has longstanding transfer relationships with UVM, Champlain and other private institutions in Vermont. I wanna share a bit about the McClure's and the McClure Foundation. It's been such a privilege to get to know them and work with them. The Community Foundation has partnered with the McClure family on their philanthropy for more than 30 years and has served as home for the J. Warren and Lois McClure Foundation since its creation 25 years ago. Throughout that time, the McClure Foundation's work has been guided by the experience, values and visions of its remarkable founders, Mack and Lois McClure. The Foundation Board is currently chaired and led with incredible vision by their daughter Barbara Benedict. Even as its understandings of the needs and opportunities facing Vermonters and Vermont communities has evolved, the ethos of the McClure family's giving has remained constant to inspire hope, which I hope this gift does, and to invest in the potential of Vermont's greatest resource, its people. This gift to the graduating class of 2020 falls right in line with those values and gaps a decade of the Foundation's work to make college and career training more accessible and more affordable for more Vermonters. Lois McClure herself has long been a champion of lifelong learning. As someone who returned to school and completed a bachelor's degree as a mother with grown children, she helped decide early on that the McClure Foundation would focus its mission on approving access to lifelong learning. And so on their behalf, our message again to the class of 2020 is one of congratulations despite all of the challenges and uncertainties of the last several months, you made it. Celebrate this moment, but don't stop now. We hope this gift helps you take your best next step on the journey of lifelong learning. We're committed to you and believe you'll make Vermont, the country and the world a better place. We can't wait to see what you do and wherever your future takes you. Thank you very much. Again, thank you to the governor and his team for including us. And I hope this is a message of hope and optimism for the coming years and for the class of 2020. Thank you. Thank you, Dan, as well as the Vermont Community Foundation, as well as the McClure family for all you've done over the years for us. You're helping us through this crisis as well as many others. Vermont is very fortunate to have you here with us as a partner. So thank you again. With that, we'll open it up for questions. For everybody's awareness, we have 26 folks in the question queue today and it is 1135. So please bear that in mind and also remember there are opportunities to get questions answered from the health department and our office outside of the press conference. We'll start with Calvin. Thank you. So probably a question for maybe Dr. Levine or Secretary of French. So opening up schools in the fall, lots of people are going to be happy about it, but also at the same time, you say that asymptomatic people are still a real threat in terms of caring and spreading the COVID-19. So I'm wondering how that will work with asymptomatic students potentially and also how the spacing is going to work in 25 or 20 kids in a room at once. I think we'll leave that first of all to Dr. Levine. I think increase testing, tracing capacity that we've already shown that we're able to ramp up and we're going to continue to do over the summer is going to be essential as we get towards the fall, but then Dr. Levine and then possibly Secretary of French as well. I appreciate the question Calvin. The data I gave you today is in the context of an outbreak. That doesn't mean that the day to day data across Vermont reflects that level of asymptomatic carriage of the virus. And the reason I say that, you might say, well, how does he know that? And I don't know that precisely, but when we look at the incredibly expansive testing we're doing now, and specifically we've been testing asymptomatic people across the state for weeks now and we're seeing a percent positivity rate in the zero to 1% range on those tests. So that's to me very comforting that the phenomenon of suppression of the virus across the state is real. Obviously an outbreak is something that is, as we've spoken many times here, expected outbreaks will occur and they are in fact occurring everywhere in the world and in the country. But as long as you have a containment strategy to surround them, you're in good shape. So my belief is that though there will be asymptomatic carriers all the time, that's not gonna be the predominant number of people in our population. So just like we would go to a work site and engage in our activities there, go to a business and be the customer and engage in our activities there, the same thing we would hope would be true in the school set. And I do wanna emphasize that Secretary French talked about the process that we're going through. And this process, he named, I don't know how many organizations that are both public health and education focused. A lot of stakeholders in there and a lot of people with a lot of experience. From our side, not only do we have public health and all of our epidemiology expertise in that arena, we also have our maternal child health expertise. We have infectious disease clinicians who are quite familiar with all of these issues that span school as a both education site and a work site, we could call it that. We have general pediatricians, we have school psychologists, the list goes on. And we have the CDC with its wisdom and a lot of its guidance. Although to be frank, their guidance is not as specific as we need to get on the state level. So we're trying to put all of this brain trust together combined with our data to feel comforted by the fact that we can open schools in a safe manner. I didn't know if Secretary French had anything, but I'll thank you. Yeah, I think Dr. Levine summarized the process very well. I think it's important what I've learned listening to our health experts that we are shifting from a mitigation strategy to a containment phase. And it's important to acknowledge that there's important elements of our society, such as schools that have to be reopened in order to get back to normalcy. But obviously we need to do that in a safe way. And I think the issues, as you heard me talk about, I'll say the perimeter of the school environment, making sure that we have those safe and healthy checks in place and we have the ability to do the containment. And our public health officials are very confident that they have the capacity to do that. That allows us to do some things inside the school environment that I would say are fairly normal. So I don't expect your question about group size. I think the social learning environment of schools will be allowed to evolve as long as we can ensure that integrity of that outer perimeter of our environment and maintain good vigilance on that. But once again, from I think speaking on behalf of all the educators in the state, we're anxious to get back to the work and very appreciative of parents and their flexibility getting us through this very difficult time of continuity learning. But I feel increasingly confident that we're gonna be able to open school for in-person instruction and that we have the appropriate measures in place to our planning to do that. And I think a separate question maybe for the governor, maybe Secretary Smith. I wanted to ask about health care reform in the efforts that the state is doing in the age of COVID-19. So of course, we were in the middle, still are in the middle of switching to an all-payer model as opposed to fee-for-service. I'm just hoping to be number one, gather your thoughts on how reform is going amidst COVID-19. Then at the same time as well, the administration, you guys have issued a $375 million stabilization plan. A lot of it would be going to hospitals, dentists, providers, with so many hospitals across the state that were losing money even before COVID-19. I'm wondering how far the state expects this money to go. If it's going to be sustainable. Yeah, well, again, just to fill the gap, we're still moving forward with the all-payer model. We still believe that that's the right approach. The federal government is working with us on this pilot project and they think it's the right approach as well. I think telehealth will be essential as we move forward and be part of the plan as well as other initiatives along the way. But we need to have a sustainable, healthy healthcare system in order to provide for the most vulnerable in Vermont. And that's what we intend to do, Secretary Smith. One of the things that we discovered or learned through this process through the pandemic was the fact that with the all-payer model, we had a lot of flexibility in order to respond to particular situations. And what we found was that we could do things like prospective payments, those sort of things that allowed us to ease up the pressure. And the whole system was under enormous pressure during the height of the pandemic. So there's no backing away from the reforms that we've done. We're probably in negotiations with the federal government. When we get to those negotiations, we'll fine-tune things as we move forward. In terms of the financial package that we put together, again, you gotta remember that we put this package together in order to preserve access to healthcare services during and after the COVID-19 sort of emergency. And you've gotta remember what we did. In order to respond to the emergency, we virtually had to shut down all other aspects of healthcare, especially elective surgeries, those sort of things, which is the life and bread of the healthcare system in terms of revenue coming into this. So they are in fact struggling out there across the broad range. For dentists, for example, we shut down all dentists for an extended period of time for the designated agencies they were impacted. The whole healthcare system was impacted. So we have to help that. And remember that the healthcare spending in Vermont constitutes roughly 20% of the Vermont gross state product. That's an enormous impact to the economy. So not only did we, as I've mentioned before, we had two prime objectives here. One is to make sure it didn't collapse during the pandemic and we're still in it. I don't wanna say we're out of it yet, but at the height of the pandemic. And number two, making sure now that we put stability into this program. And we think for 20% of the Vermont economy, $375 million is the right number distributed among a wide array of healthcare providers. We're still working with the legislature to advance that package and we'll see where it goes, but we really do need to stabilize our healthcare system. As you mentioned, a lot of losses out there and we've got to stabilize this system for the health of our monitors and for the good of the economy. Governor D, there was a high-profile vandalism overnight in South Carolina for Black Lives Matter on display and I'm just wondering what are the demonstrations probably another one tonight. How do you feel about this movement and their push to defund or redirect law enforcement resources? You know, we've been working on taking a different approach for a while and I'll let Commissioner Sherling talk about that, but as you might recall, in our budget this year alone, we talked about after-school programs, early care and learning, mental health, mobile response teams, embedding more mental health counselors into our barracks and so forth. We've done a bit of a pilot project before that, found out that it was working well, so we wanted to enhance that and then home visits for newborns. So the bottom line is we think prevention, quality, having more access, building a solid foundation so everyone is on the same equal footing when they start life is important and some of the initiatives that we were advocating for are still needed today. So I think we have a lot of work to do. Obviously we don't have all the answers. We're putting the task force together to help address some of those, but again, we as a state, we as individuals all have a role to play in this. It's not enough anymore for us to just say because we consider ourselves, we're not racist in Vermont. I mean, I would say that about myself. I'm not a racist, but that's not enough anymore. What we need to do is be anti-racist and we need to take action and we need to, it's long overdue and this highlights that. So I think again, we're going to see a sea change. We're going to see different initiatives, but I'm not sure that defunding our public safety in some respects or law enforcement is the answer. Evolving, changing, that might be the answer, but defunding, I'm not sure is the answer. Black Lives Matter used to be a divisive thing to say. Is it any more, do you support, do you agree with Black Lives Matter? Yeah, I mean, again, they feel as though they're disenfranchised, they are. They haven't been having the amount of tension needed and this what we see across the country is a great example of we're turning the corner and this is a welcome change in some respects because we need more equality and we need to prove it, we need to show it and we need to practice it. Just a quick one on with Dan Smith. How many members of the class of 2020 and how much could this give them out to? To be really clear, the gift of the McClure Foundation is prepared to honor every student from the class of 2020 coming out of Vermont High Schools who takes one course at the Community College of Vermont. So they're prepared to honor that commitment no matter how many young people in the class participate. So it's a remarkable commitment on the part of the McClure Foundation. So we've modeled it in a number of different ways but we're hoping as many young people as possible take us up on the opportunity. Governor or probably, as you're making your plans of the known next week, given the World Health Organization and other various organizations that have put forth information and then pulled it back, confusing really parents and staff members and such, maybe making parents a little bit apprehensive as to whether they wanna send their gifts to school next year versus having them in their home and doing something distance learning. How do you get around that? Yeah, it's an important consideration as I mentioned in my comments. I think the primary strategy there is around communication and also involving people in the next phase of the iteration of the guidance. It's a very complex planning process we've been involved in and I think we increasingly acknowledge that the public health perspective is sort of the cornerstone of all the other planning that we have to do. So I think as much as possible we've tried to preserve the science, if you will, to inform the rest of the decision making that has to occur. But I think now it's more about the devil being in the details, so to speak. So yes, we will evolve our guidance, we will adapt it based on the public health circumstances but we also have a lot of practical decision making to engage in and one of the strengths of Vermont is that we can engage in that as a community with all our stakeholders. So I'm confident we'll be able to resolve that together. And Dr, I guess this latest thing with the World Health Organization, this is kind of obviously given some pause to folks, especially in your profession, they push back. How do you go about gathering that information and then making the judgment as to what is correct and what is probably false? Yeah, I think the problem this time around with the World Health Organization wasn't that the content experts didn't know what they were talking about, I think they chose words unfortunately. And using a term like very rare for something that even if we don't have our hands quite around, is it 20%, is it 40%? It was a poor choice of terminology. I don't think that we, they're under attack enough from the leadership of our country. I'm certainly in no position to attack the credibility of a lot of their information. And other organizations like the Centers for Disease Control are credible resources in our country that generally are aligned with what's going on worldwide. And sometimes worldwide relies on what's going on at our country's leadership like the CDC. So not so sure I'm too worried about that to be honest. Should people be worried though? You see some push, not pushback but questioning in social media and on the street, you see people saying well we don't know who's talking. Right, and I would actually encourage the person on the street to be a critical reasoner, critical thinker and to be skeptical because as the governor pointed out, we're talking three months ago, this all began. And the body of knowledge that has been gained in three months about something that wasn't even around is incredible and it keeps changing and it keeps moving and it keeps evolving. And sometimes part of the evolution process is we look back and go, we get it now. And so I showed you the graph of those huge spike in cases in the beginning and how we reacted to it and where things have gone now. But these numbers in our current testing context who knows what these numbers really would have been because we don't know what we could do in testing at this point in time. Our capabilities were so limited and now they are so vast. Maybe, you know, what's the truth on this graph? Truth has evolved because we've learned a lot about the virus, we've learned how to test, we've learned how to have the capability for testing stockpile of resources and use different platforms. So that's just an example of how everything about this pandemic is moving so fast. So I encourage people to be skeptical. And believe me, the number of emails I respond to every day about people who are skeptical either about what we're doing or just why are we doing it and they've read something here or they've seen something on a table news channel there. And they're trying to sort of put it all together and synthesize that in their mind and it's very challenging sometimes because it's not always all information going in one direction. So these are the circumstances we're in but I'd like to reassure people that we are in such a better place now with regard to being able to mostly rely on things that are coming out in the national news as informed and reasonably well supported. Three down, 23 to go. Yes, good math. Moving to the phones with number 23 in the queue, Elizabeth's group call. Elizabeth's BT Digger. There you are. Oh, sorry, I'm here, sorry. Hi, this question is also I believe for Dr. Levine. So some COVID-19 testing sites near areas where protests have happened, like the Barry testing site, appear to be filling up quickly. And given that the CDC director has said people should get tested three to seven days after going through a protest and you ask all protesters to get tested, how are you going to make sure that that can happen throughout the state? I think we're going to continue the policy we have right now, which is that we are continuing to stand up pop-ups where and whenever needed. If there's a specific event that revolved around a protest, we'll be aware of it and we'll be able to let people have access to testing. Plus people have the, I'll say in quotes, the usual channels of access. So calling their healthcare providers and saying I'm concerned because I was in this protest, can you schedule me for a test? Making sure that they kind of bring it to people's attention. I would not want to hear that somebody couldn't get tested because they couldn't access testing and they wanted to related to a protest. So obviously they need to let us be aware of that. The good news is we have not heard that to date and the fact of the matter is I've been worried sometimes that testing is being undersubscribed. Knowing the size of some of the gatherings that have occurred, we're not seeing that volume of testing necessarily. But also on a more reassuring note, we are also not seeing huge spikes in our data related to people who were in a protest, subsequently got tested and now we're finding them positive. And curiously in phone calls with other state health officials, so far they're not seeing that, which has been a little bit mystifying since most public health officials are predicting that there would be more cases seen around the country. I'll accept the fact that we're not seeing it. I'd rather have it that way than the opposite. But I do have to point out, we've never seen, maybe never is too strong a term, but rarely do we see a movement like has occurred in the last two weeks in this country where in a sustained way, protests are occurring throughout cities and across the country, literally every day or every night for this long a time period and they are still going on, as we all know. So that's wonderful regarding the cause and why people are out there and feel so passionate and strong about what they're doing. But the duration of this is, like the epidemic, somewhat unprecedented to have this many consecutive days. So we will continue to watch this very closely, both in Vermont and across the nation. And I do wanna not hear though that access to testing is an issue for people. So if it becomes one, we need to be looped in on that. Just a quick pause. Do you think then, if some of the testing appears to perhaps be under subscribed, do you think there needs to be more outreach to people who have attended protests or something like that? I think the major outreach we're doing is through conferences like this and through the media like yourself. It's always challenging to know who's actually at a protest. It's not like there's a sign up list and what have you and often it grows very organically. But I think we can keep getting the message out both locally and regionally and nationally. That would be my answer. And I'll do that again right now. So make sure that if you have been involved in a large gathering or a protest, please feel comfortable availing yourself of any of the options. Go to our website, healthvermont.gov, to see where different testing popups are located on what particular days and connect with your own healthcare providers as needed. Thank you. Do you part D. Lee Express? The other day, this question of remote learning, we already know the Northeast Kingdom remote learning didn't work because the lack of internet access. Knowing that in advance, to be able to ensure that students in rural communities have equal and equitable access to education, what steps are being taken now to ensure that those students will have access to remote learning this fall in the event that the school has to close? Yeah, that's a great question. I'm going to ask Secretary French to talk about that a little bit. But we are putting together an education package and we have an economic package we put together that will increase the amount of broadband capacity in order to anticipate what may happen in the fall for just this very purpose. Okay. Yes, thank you for the question. Does acknowledge once again that as much as we're planning for in-person instruction, we do have to improve our ability to do remote learning if nothing left as a contingency. I think there's two parts to that. One is certainly the broadband aspect. The connectivity aspects are the last mile issues that have been a perennial issue in Vermont. We are, as the governor mentioned, working as part of our economic package to dedicate some funding towards broadband, largely under a plan that's been developed with Department of Public Service and their ability to map out where people have access and so forth. The other issue we're working on is it's also a function of once you have the broadband, what do you do with it? So we have been working on building out some systems statewide, some platforms to allow improved or enhanced remote learning in the fall. One of those is an expansion of the Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative which allows us to offer courses online, offers our teachers the ability to teach online and provides access to a large catalog of courses. We've recently expanded that out to also include some elementary content. And then this morning, we announced a partnership with Ed Moto, it's an international platform to allow our teachers to connect online because we've had our teachers engaged in a lot of innovation. They've been working hard to develop new approaches and we wanted to create an ecosystem, if you will, a platform that allows our teachers to share their best practices more broadly across the state. And that'll be part of our response in the fall to provide, you know, certainly to work on the connectivity piece, but also to ensure that all of our students have access to high quality instructional materials online or in person inside our schools. Thank you. Katie, BT Digger. I've heard some follow-up and feedback regarding the March 10th UVM basketball playoff game. And it now appears that about at least a dozen people who were at the game later got the virus and three of that school died. I'm curious of what you see as the public health significance of that event and how does that change our understanding of the spread of the virus in Vermont? I'm not sure that changes anything about our perception of the spread. We know that it spread incredibly quick, especially in large gatherings inside. So that's why we closed down a lot of those opportunities. We've learned a lot over the last three months and increase our capacity to test and trace, which is going to be essential in the future until we come up with a vaccine. And that's why we're, you know, we've limited the gatherings, we're trying to limit them to 25, we're increasing all the time and trying to social distance. So we're physically distanced. So I think everything that we've talked about is still true today. And if we had had more tools at our disposal, possibly you could have traced further at that point in time, but that's exactly what we're doing today, just tracing as soon as we see an outbreak of any sort, we're able to trace it back to confine it so that it doesn't spread. So I'm not sure that we do anything different at this point in time. Mr. Malini. Yes, it's so hard to recall that that was, again, three short months ago, at a time when we could hardly test anybody in the state. But we did know the basic principles about how the virus is transmitted and the distancing behaviors. So that is important. This was a mass gathering and it was only a few days later, we actually said there are no more mass gatherings since our first case in Vermont was March 7th. And I think our second case was two to three days later, right around this time. So we reacted very fast in terms of the global nature of the reaction, but I do want to repeat that there's a lot of fundamental public health principles that actually we didn't need to learn anything new about. So everything that's being applied in the Winooski Burlington area right now would be applied at the time of that game, would be applied when the flu hits or when some norovirus epidemic hits from tainted food or what have you. The whole principles of contact tracing and interacting with those who are affected by the virus and those who might become affected by the virus, those are very solid. And the only issues with them would potentially be capacity as opposed to actually following any of those. And again, capacity wasn't an issue with that point in time, but clearly there would be people at a game who were very high risk, who were very modest risk or at no risk. And we're thinking at a basketball game there's a couple thousand people present. They are all breathing the air but it doesn't mean they are all at high risk from getting the virus. And indeed we saw this play out in the National Basketball Association where there was one player on one team who was able to infect some teammates and some opponents at the same time and potentially a official as well. But the entire spectator arena was relatively spared from any risk due to the lack of proximity to that player. So again, fundamental public health still works the same way and certainly would have worked the same way for that incident as well. Thank you. Mike, Donahue, the Islander. Good morning. I had a question for Commissioner Herrington and maybe a clarification from Tim Smith. Commissioner, congratulations on your new title. What is the deadline for those Vermonters that wanted to file for unemployment benefits or even the self-employed benefits but gave up in press raking when the state was unable to answer the phone calls and provide services and should they keep trying now and get to fill a lot of file for either or both whatever is there any efforts to sort of make that known or media campaign or to tell people that they still can get those benefits that they had given up in frustration? Thanks for the question, Mike, and thanks for the opportunity to answer and hopefully provide people with more information if they are one of those individuals that may have given up the out of frustration during the highest point of the pandemic. I think what I can say is they are still able to file if they were impacted either currently impacted, recently impacted or if they were impacted back at the start of the crisis and they are able to file for back weeks in terms of the length of time. For the most part, most people will have until the end of 2020 to file and the PUA program goes to the end of the calendar year but certainly now they would be in a position where they could file based on our recent data with the exception of Monday of this week which was an exceptionally high call volume day and for a number of reasons but Mondays are typically high call volume anyways. All calls have been able to be answered and we are seeing wait times of actually less than a minute in most cases. So again, I would say if they are able, if they are needing assistance they can certainly call to get assistance but they can still go on and file a claim electronically if they haven't done so already. Okay, great. Thank you. And Dan, just if I can get a clarification and that's thanks for a wonderful program by McClure. I believe you said this is for graduates of Vermont high schools only and I'm just trying to get clarification and we talking public, private, independent and what about those Vermont residents that graduate from a nearby high school that are in New Hampshire or New York says because they're part of a school district or just the way they're, of where they live so those people be considered for that program. The answer is yes, Mike and I appreciate the question and the opportunity to clarify, the free course is gonna be available to all Vermont students graduating high school this spring regardless of school type. So it's public high schools, tech centers, independent private high schools, home schoolers, our goal is to be as simple and inclusive as possible with this because the message for the entirety of the class of 2020 is that there's a way forward in all this uncertainty and that we believe in them. So that's the message we wanna get out there and I'm just grateful to be a part of it and I think the leadership of the J. Warren and Lois McClure Foundation in this moment is something remarkable. I hope that answers your question. If I could, yeah, go ahead. Well, I was just gonna add, you can visit CCV's website also for additional information, ccv.edu backslash 2020 grad gift, 2020 grad gift for more information as well. So did you have a follow up, Mike? And maybe Secretary Prince, I know you may not know that number, but I mean, how many high school graduates are we talking about? How many seniors are graduating this year, Secretary Prince, maybe potentially it might take advantage of this program. I know, Mike, I don't have the number with me, but generally we say there's about 75,000 students in Vermont and that's distributed pretty equally among the grade levels, so somewhere in the ballpark of 7,000 or so I would say. Well, okay, thank you very much, appreciate it. Sean, the Chester Telegraph. Thank you, this is for Secretary French. There seem to be some recent studies going that the learning loss from distance learning may be huge, especially among students who say don't have good internet or they don't have a kid's device or a quiet place to work and maybe it's not enough for them to cope. What's the agency's position on how schools and the learning loss in the fall and is there anything the state is doing to help schools limit learning losses over the summer? Yeah, thank you for highlighting that issue. I think for most educators, this is what really galvanize us into action to our interest in reopening for the fall. It's really, one of the key elements of opening in the fall is to begin to assess the impact of the emergency on student learning and it's gonna be really, it's frankly quite hard for us to do that assessment without reopening schools, so that's a priority for us. Right now, as I mentioned, our guidance is really focused, the public health guidance is focused on the conditions for learning. I will say there was pretty significant consensus among both the health and educators that we include social-emotional considerations inside the health guidance as we see that integral to physical health as well. But we will be working with school districts once we get these basic sort of health conditions established to our guidance to also work on assessment guidance and so forth. And I think, you know, one of the things we've been doing in the recent months was to talk also about starting to connect our data points to be able to do that. We announced a partnership with the Metametrics for Lexile Quantile Scores to allow us to start to connect some of the benchmark assessment tools that districts have at a local level to some of the state-level data, such as SBAC, so that we can start to see a data continuum for students. But, you know, I basically say your question just highlights the urgency by which, and one of the reasons why we really need to focus on opening schools in the fall, so we can begin to do that assessment. Lisa, the AP. Lisa, AP. Thanks, yeah. I'm wondering what type of public outreach, if any, was done about the coronavirus in new American communities, in Winooski, before the outbreak, and was the state involved, and do you think it was enough? Commissioner Levine, I think it would be best to answer that one. So, I think public health, one of its prime foundations it stands on is education and prevention. So, our belief is always we can never do enough, but we try our darnedest to do that. Your question is really trying to ask at getting to communities that may be harder to reach, may be harder to converse with, may require a lot of translation. We have most of our materials in many languages. One thing we've learned from this is that there are sometimes dialects of languages that actually we didn't cover and need to cover, and we've remedied that quickly. At the press conference I was involved in in Winooski, which was last week. It went very well, but there were a few members of various cultural communities and organizations that were present, and we heard their words. Their words weren't that we had botched everything up completely by any means. Their words were that they could have used more communication and communication in the appropriate linguistic manner for prevention, to explain some of those fundamental concepts that we explain all the time in our press conferences, in our website, in our literature that we distribute. So we hear that. I'll be the first to say that we need to be as nuanced as possible in understanding every aspect of our population and provide what they need. And with everything about this fast-moving pandemic, there's learning in progress all the time. And I think we've done a really good job overall, but the fact of the matter is if we need a few more things, we'll get them taken care of and it was really helpful to learn that at the press conference. Lisa? Yeah, that's good. Thank you. Kat, WCAX? I have a question for Mike Smith. The homeless plan that you referenced on Monday, do you have anything to release out on that? Thanks, Kat, for the question. As you had talked about on Monday, we said we were going to internalize and get approval for a housing program. We've done that. We're socializing it now with the legislature. Let me give you some of the specifics of the housing program. As you know, and let me just go back and reiterate what sort of transpired during the pandemic. During the height of the pandemic, and I've got to caution everybody because I keep saying this, the pandemic is still around. The virus is still around. We still have to be careful. We still have to wash our hands. We still have to wear a face mask and wear appropriate. During the height of the pandemic, most of the homeless shelters closed down. That required us to house people and where we housed them was in a motel hotel around the state. That system, as I mentioned on Monday, is unsustainable. In fact, if you annualize that cost, it's about $48 million a year if you annualize the cost of that program. It really doesn't meet the needs of the homeless. There's no services that are offered. There's no reason to sort of help in terms of making sure that people that are homeless get homes in those sort of programs. As I mentioned on Monday, we need to transition out of that. We can't transition all at once, but we need to do this gradually. So what we have proposed in terms of moving these people out of the motel system and making sure that A, we move them towards more permanent housing, but B, we have services for them. We are putting forth a $23 million program for FY21, which we'll start in a month. Basically, what we are using is about $16 million in coronavirus relief funds in that funding. It will be about $10 million in FY21 with a mix of funding, both general fund and other funds, in order to provide that funding as opposed to where we are now and the unsustainability of the program that we have now. About $10 million to provide motel voucher program with the hope that by July in going into FY22, we'll be able to transition that program to the local level and give the local level entities flexibility to help them house the various homeless that are out there. In addition, we'll provide immediately to every homeless family temporary rental assistance one year to bridge to public housing voucher. That's about $2.5 million. We also hope to expand the Vermont rental subsidy and use some federal money through the Housing Opportunity Grant program. We'll implement rapid resolution strategies focused on reducing trauma, including new pathways to housing, preserving scarce housing resources. And might I add, just let me back up for a second, might I add this is in addition to what the governor has proposed in his Housing Economic Development Housing package. There are two components here. There is the component that the governor had talked about in the Economic Development package, $50 million divided between making sure people don't become homeless with making sure on that aspect of it, and secondly, developing more housing opportunities. This is to move people out of the hotel system now. So in addition to what I have already mentioned, the $10 million in the GA Motel Voucher System, the $2.5 million into the rental assistance, we're going to provide one-time flexible financial assistance between $2,500 to $8,000 for 720 households to assist them in their time of need to find housing if they come up to a problem within their housing security deposits or something like that to help them. That's about $3.7 million. And provide housing navigation services to all households in motels right now. That's about $6 million to help them find permanent housing out there. We have this program in place, but we never envision the magnitude that the explosion that happened during the pandemic that we had to find ways now to move people out with this program. And also, we're going to expand capacity for partners to complete housing assessment support, housing search and placement, all of this through the $6 million. And then we're going to do something that I think is a little bit important. It's a small amount of money. It's about $250,000, but it capitalizes what is called a housing risk pool for landlords. So those people that they normally probably wouldn't rent to because of what they perceive as risk, we will backstop any sort of provisions that concern them in that. You know, we'll reinforce the emergency shelter network as well. And then, you know, our ultimate goal is to transition to a community-based model of housing support. And we'll have more on that for fiscal year 22. But I think for the short term, we're putting forward to move people out of this hotel motel system a pretty substantial and comprehensive package. So there you go, Kat. That was definitely a lot more than I thought I was going to get as an answer to that question. I'm going to ask the devil's advocate follow-up, though, which is what kind of data do we have that supports this work, or are we throwing money at the problem, you know, and are we not going to see some of the returns that we hope? Well, we came up with the best program. We had been on the verge of, before the pandemic hit, of trying to move these down to the community level because they know the population at the community level. You know, you've heard me say this before. The hotel motel system that we have in place isn't the right vehicle for this. So transitioning, we know transitioning out of this is the right way, and we know this because there's no support services in this program. It's basically housing people. And we're always probably going to have to emergency house people in an environment, domestic abuse, for example, those sort of things. We're going to have to house people. But we never, with this program, we don't have the opportunity to surround them with the services that they need, nor do we provide any permanent housing. So this, you can take all the data you want. If you have a permanent house, a house, as opposed to a temporary motel, if you have surrounding support services, as opposed to none, the data's pretty clear. Your success rate is going to be higher. Thank you. It also gives me the opportunity, again, as Secretary Smith had mentioned, there's $50 million within the economic package that we introduced to the legislature, $410 million total. $50 million of that is for housing. And if we don't get that in the hands of Vermonters, as soon as possible, we're going to see more homelessness. So we need more economic activity. We need to keep those businesses alive and all those entities and people who are in desperate need right now so that it doesn't exacerbate the problem later on. So this is essential that the legislature takes this up and moves it forward. Governor Scott and Dr. Levin, the question just pertains to you both. If we don't see a spike in cases from gatherings from Memorial Day or potentially from protests that have been happening, does that give you more confidence to up the mass gathering limit when it comes time to do that? From my standpoint, and I'll let Dr. Levin obviously weigh in on this, because everything we do is in consultation with the data and the science and Dr. Levin and Dr. Kelso. But again, from my standpoint, yes, every turn of this packet, every time we increase the numbers, every time we open up businesses or certain sectors and we don't see a significant spike, then I believe that we can move further along. And that's what we've been watching as slowly opening this up, methodically opening it up, so we don't make the wrong move. We don't take too far a step forward and then have to retreat. I want to make sure that we keep moving forward steadily so that Vermonters have something to count on. Dr. Levin. Yes, thank you for the question. Part A of my answer is going to be that I want to call out those who are going to protest and congratulate them, because every time I see footage on TV or pictures in a paper, I'm amazed at the number of masks that I see. And there are a lot of people in our population who think people are getting away without using masks, but certainly in protests I'm seeing a lot of them and I know that we've been actually helping with that for people who don't have them. A little hard at a socially distance, but at the same time if we are seeing such great results in terms of lack of infection maybe some of that is happening as well. My only cautionary note on the side of restraint is to keep in mind I'm not aware at this time of a protest that's been indoors. So we have a large mass gathering that we all know that outdoors is much more preferable than indoors when it comes to the ability to spread the virus to one another. And that's why indeed in something like restaurants we started outdoors and are now moving in a cautious but phased manner indoors. So I would just caution us to realize that a mass gathering of a thousand people in one of our towns or cities in Vermont that went well with regard to no spread of virus doesn't mean if you put all those people into Patrick gymnasium you would see the same thing happen. So we have to be careful as we apply what we learn in that way. Thank you. So just a quick follow up of people so do people hold an outdoor wedding and have their guests to wear masks? The question was if you're holding an outdoor wedding the guests should be wearing, should you ask the guests to wear masks? That is good for the health practice for sure. Obviously if it was a wedding and it was 20 people and they're all living in the same home anyways and they're all together all the time probably not necessary to the same degree if they're all trusting one another for the time that they've been away from the home. But yes. Thank you. I don't believe Greg is on the call from the county courier but just double checking. Greg county courier Maria, Washington Post. Thanks again for having these calls. I have a question about your modeling. You're talking about if we see a significant spike then you could possibly shift gear. What are your numbers showing? What is your threshold for that? How many numbers would you say of infections would you be going to start rolling things back? And what are you estimating you'll be seeing going forward in terms of infections as you open things up? Yeah, I'm not avoiding the question. We will be having a modeling discussion. We typically do that on Friday. So we'll have Mike Pichek, Commissioner Pichek here and showing that it might be more appropriate then but if Dr. Levine wants to try and answer part of that feel free. Yeah I think you should wait until Friday's presentation but I can tell you that some of the things we look at like the percent positivity rate we have set some very specific thresholds at where we feel comfortable where we feel less comfortable and you have to remember that we have developed the ability to be comfortable with an increase in something to not stop us in our tracks it just can't get to a certain level because again the principle at stake here is that as you open things up you will have increases but hopefully subtle increases and not dramatic increases. So that's probably as much as I'll say today and we'll let the data explain itself on Friday where we actually have a pictorial representation of each data point and where we would get more alarmed or not. Right, just a quick follow-up I definitely will listen to it on Friday but it seems like a very important number and I just wonder is there a number and is that something that you would think would be at the top of your head? Yeah, no. It's much more it's number but it's trend as well. So it really is looking at graphic representations of the data and percents of growth and seeing where the trends lie. Okay, and thank you I'm sorry I have a really quick question we're hearing so much about opening up and kids possibly going down to school and things like that, playing Little League do you have any specific instructions for people who are perhaps in their 60s, 70s or 80s and otherwise with health should they be participating in this should they go to dinner with their children or should they just keep going as they're going? Yeah No, we've been giving the same guidance and Dr. Levine will probably repeat this but anyone over the age of 65, especially those who have chronic conditions should avoid those gatherings in order to protect themselves and others. Dr. Levine? As things look better and better across the state this exact question comes up so frequently because more often than not in a given state you're going from a condition of lockdown as it's often called to all of a sudden I can go out and start doing things and the question is if you're in an age demographic that's whatever you want to call it 60 or above, 65 above it's a fairly arbitrary cut point can you come out if you're generally healthy otherwise and the answer is obviously yes but a very measured yes and we need to know that obviously having chronic disease conditions or immunocompromising conditions we would never say just yes that would be very concerning there are people who are aging but are generally very healthy but we need to know that age itself is from a science basis an immune compromising state I don't want people to get overreacting to that but the immune system as it ages does evolve and change so really when we tell people a measured yes we're trying to tell them that we want them to minimize their risk and sort of balance risk with benefit and understand there are tradeoffs and that they need to really think very clearly about this and take what I would term a harm reduction approach go very slow don't compromise on the basic principles we talk about all the time in terms of the mask and the social distancing and the hygiene issues look around yourself both at where you're going and where you are in your state and what your state is actually looking like at that point in time the kind of data you were just talking about think about the positivity rate of tests in the state think about the growth of new cases in the state see if there are outbreaks in the state or in the area that you're participating in some activity in and use good common sense by integrating all of that data into your decision there's sort of a concept of trusted households and having a low number of very responsible close contacts that I would advocate for anyone and then choosing your activities wisely outdoors always preferable to indoors you may actually be able to do something in the outdoor setting that you wouldn't dare do in the indoor setting but that would be much safer for you and obviously brief periods of contact compared to longer periods of contact I could go into many, many more details but that's that's this kind of philosophy I'd like people to use I actually want to take you out to a red rod could the answer be no at this point if it's indoors again it would be a measured no, yeah would be preferred it'd be preferred that you eat outdoors but you may know something about the setting you're going to and what it looks like and who else will be there etc that may say I'm willing to take that chance for myself but you have to be again very balanced about it and not make everything you do in your life with that level of risk alright and Maria all of our weekly modeling is posted at dfr.vermont.gov and that includes the four key trends as Commissioner Levine mentioned the four key trends we're watching so you can find last weeks there we're going to go back to Greg, let me just flag that it is 20 of 1 and we still have 15 colors in the queue Greg, the county career Hi Governor I'll try to make this as quick as possible I understand that USCIS better known as immigration is looking at a pretty drastic revenue reduction because borders are not filing for their citizenship in Franklin County where we've already seen a massive financial issue with farmers we could really see a massive layoff with USCIS it's the Department of Labor aware of this and so how are they preparing and second part of that question is would these layoffs qualify for the $600 bump in unemployment seems they're directly related to COVID and how long would those $600 payments continue for? Yeah I'll refer that to Commissioner Harrington from my standpoint this is the first I've heard of that reduction I'm in fact at one o'clock I'm on a call with the National Governors Association so maybe I'll find out more at that point but nothing that I've heard about at this point but it doesn't mean that it's not valid Commissioner Harrington Thank you Governor I just wanted to clarify the concern is around the immigration workers versus the folks working Yes the immigration workers Okay so I am not aware of that as well and can certainly follow up with that in terms of those individuals so I can let me find out what I can find out and we'll get back to you Okay thank you We do have a provision of the WARN Act if there's more than 50 layoffs in one organization they need to notify us Yeah and Governor I would also mention that in terms of what we've seen with other facilities most of the workers that work within those facilities is the contract is vendor and in many cases they're also unionized so they have some reassurance of re-employment but it really depends on the circumstances and we would have to follow up to find that out I think the next question is going to be around the WARN Act it depends on the percentage of the workforce so the number of people being laid off but in this case typically it's 45 days prior to any layoffs occurring that the employer needs to give notice to both the Department of Labor and the agency of commerce and to date I have not seen anything received by the Department Greg we'll look into it a little bit further Okay Thank you Governor, thank you Secretary All right moving to Greg at the Bennington Banner Well thank you My questions are for Secretary French with regards to the school reopening plan I have two One at a time The first is to screening students at the bus or in school while I was wondering if there is any provision for the age of appropriateness of screening younger children and whether there are plans to provide for daycare or for provisions where those kids might not have a parent or guardian at home to go home to they are screened at stake Yeah thank you Well this phase our guidance is really to establish the basic parameters under which we'll ensure the safety of the school perimeter as I call it I think what you allude to gets us to the next phase some of the detail and the challenges and the problems we'll have to solve with our leaders at the local level but in the initial guidance we don't address those specific issues we do lay out the protocols for the safe healthy check Okay and those protocols adjusted for sort of age appropriateness knowing that the first graders might not have the sophistication about public health that I would say high school students might have No in the plan it basically delineates what are the parameters for the safety check and it also gives schools the flexibility on how they do that The issues that you describe I would expect would emerge through some dialogue with local school officials and then that would probably cause us if they needed additional specificity on that issues additional guidance to address the issue Okay The second question You said that you were going to make masks mandatory for students for faculty and staff but optional for students if I understood correctly I was wondering about the thinking of that and how that lines up with it seems to be the generally accepted best practice being everyone wearing a mask in order to reduce transmission Yes once again I invite you to comment on that from a public health standpoint but you know the unique circumstances of the school environment obviously one of the rationales for in-person instruction is the need to provide instruction and that will necessitate a certain give and take in terms of the social environment so we think it's reasonable to require staff to comply with that it's probably going to be very challenging to have students comply with that but we think we can get better compliance by articulating this in our guidance now by using the support of both students families and teachers to engage in how to best implement the guidance Commissioner Levine doesn't have any comment on that I guess I did okay This concludes my questions Thank you very much Thank you Brittany Local 22 Kind of going off of that last question from Greg In the initial guidance do you know if bus drivers are going to have to be for kids as they get on the bus or is there going to be another staff member on buses that will be looking for that and kind of off the going our schools going to have to hire more staff to help with these health screen Thank you The specifics are not in the guidance I think districts will have the flexibility to approach how to implement the health and safety checks in many cases in our districts we have bus services are provided as a contracted service they're actually employees of the school district so I think you know those issues will be addressed as the guidance rolls out that being said your question about staffing I think are interested in getting this guidance out now points to that this will be one of the considerations districts will have to make some staffing decisions on how to implement this guidance which is one of the reasons we wanted to get this out as soon as possible Thank you so much Ann Wallace Allen, BT Digger Hi there are restaurant workers you know indoor dining opened this week for 25 to 20 capacity and there are restaurant workers who say that they feel they're being put at risk by their work because the diners don't have to wear masks and they do and some of the diners are probably coming from out of state and another element of this is that the restaurants have been instructed to keep everyone at a six foot distance but obviously the servers can't do that when they're serving food so a few have been sort of talking to each other about the government's priorities and wondering if the government is putting the restaurant's economic will for above the health and safety of the servers I was just wondering if you had anything to say to them about that I'm not sure what the what the answer is in terms of trying to dine and eat with a mask on that would be challenging at best what we've done is to try and open up this sector a little bit at a time to anticipate any problems at this point we have, again it's early but we haven't seen any spikes in those communities in those sectors but if we do we'll do whatever we can to contact trace and make sure that we can find that but I don't have any there's no easy answers to this one we're trying to keep people physically distance there is supposed to be six foot between patrons and I would say that the wait staff should do all they can they're wearing masks and as well as the masks being worn by the employees so I just don't know that we can have things perfect in this world and there are some risks and we have to contemplate that as we open up the economy until we get to a point where we have a vaccine but the the only choice we have at this point is not opening at all and we have to face again with our state seeing the low numbers that we have we felt it was safe to open up this sector Tim, Vermont Business Magazine Hi Governor, it appears that the legislature is moving pretty quickly on the emergency aid package but it also looks like it's going to come up well short of what your original package was is there any concern on your part that you would have to veto not necessarily the package they're about to pass but going down the road or is that just too much politics at this point? From my standpoint you bring up a good point Tim I'm very concerned about expediting this plan that we put forth I mean it wasn't done in a vacuum we had a number of people involved in putting this together specifically Phase 1 of the $410 million plan very well vetted from my standpoint and very inessential to those businesses and entities who we rely on in many many respects so I'm very concerned but at the same time I'm encouraged that they're moving forward I don't know what the dollar amount is but we'll take whatever they can pass at this point in time and with the expectation that they would go back to work on the the remaining piece whatever that is to get that out the door just as quick as we possibly can because again many of these businesses as you know are on the brink of bankruptcy and I'm not sure how much longer they can hold on alright great thanks Pete, VPR Pete Herschel, VPR Secretary French it sounds like as of now your best estimate for what it's going to cost schools to prepare for reopening is about $40 million in terms of related costs with following this new guidance can you talk specifically about the cost drivers that are driving that estimate yeah thanks Pete that estimate doesn't emerge from our guidance as much as what was published I believe on Monday it's a national sort of estimate from the American Association of School Administrators and the comparable organization of school business officials they did a calculation you can find online that was based on a district average size of about 500 students and we bring that down to per pupil cost that national estimate came down to about $490 per pupil and that's how we get to a potential $40 million cost in Vermont but their model is fairly comprehensive it includes everything from conditioning facilities to additional staffing cost transportation PPE supplies and so forth but that's it wasn't that estimate was not based on our guidance based on reflection of the national model that had been published on Monday and will CRF money be available to cover whatever costs schools do incur to prepare for the reopening yes potentially I think it's you know it's part of the conversation with the legislature I think it's important to know in education under the CARES Act we have basically three pots of money available one being the CRF which is arguably the most restrictive as the shortest time availability those funds I believe have to be spent by this December we also have what's called ESSER which is the elementary secondary education relief fund that's about $30 million 90% of which has to be allocated directly to school districts those funds are more flexible and have a longer time span basically a year there's also the governor's emergency education relief fund of $4.4 million which also has a longer time span part of the deliberations now are certainly focused on reopening in school and what those potential costs might be but as I'm sure you're aware we also have a potential significant deficit in the education fund and we have these federal funds that have different restrictions and different time spans so we're working with the legislature to definitely look at CRF since those funds have to go out the door sooner rather than later but also keeping an eye not only on the cost but also how to manage the potential significant deficit of the state level thank you Joe the Barton Chronicle as most of us know there are a lot of community organizations that raise money for their work by means of coin drops has the state issued any guidance on whether that kind of activity is safe whether there are precautions that need to be taken is there any information to give such organizations are you talking about like the fire departments and so forth along the highways yes sir I don't know if there's been any guidance but from my perspective they could be ongoing as long as the whoever is doing work on the ground so to speak is masked up taking precautions using hygiene as best possible and then again trying to keep as much distance as they can I think it could be accomplished you just have to think about what safety measures you can put into place to keep everyone safe time's our case yes this is a follow up on the discussion of the homeless population is there any timeline for shelter system to open back up is that something that is weeks or months away thanks area I don't have a specific time cable from that for that we will obviously work with our community partners in order to do that that's why we're taking the motel motel hotel program and gradually ramping it down over the next few months so I don't have a specific we're working with them to try to bring that system back up when it's safe but I don't have a time schedule for you right now we have about 5 minutes before the governor's call with other governor's start so we could just move through these as quickly as possible and we're always happy to help answer questions afterwards Aaron B.T. Digger terrifying question about can do free course offer at CCD does the offer only apply to courses in the fall that's right Aaron it's just for the fall semester at the community college of Vermont thank you very much my my other question is about the food sites activists and people who work in the the food security years warning that food sites collapse without more funding is Governor Scott looking into providing additional funding or assistance for the sites before they struggle financially? I'll let Secretary Smith answer part of that but suffice to say that we're going to protect the most vulnerable in any way we can so we'll contemplate that as we move forward but at this point in time we feel in terms of protecting that population and those who are vulnerable and insecure from a food standpoint Secretary Smith thank you very much for the question because one of the successes I think we had during this as the pandemic is ongoing is we've been very successful to make sure that the fundamentals of our system haven't collapsed whether it's the healthcare system whether it's the food supply system to get food to people in fact the state has reached out during this time to set up the systems that you currently see whether it's in collaboration with our partners in the food distribution network it's been a very collaborative effort and if you I read an article and it may have been yours Aaron that it was in a digger that had talked about that we're eliminating the farmative food program at the food distribution sites that we're doing we're going through the month doing those sites what we have said is let's put some sustainability into this program let's make sure that the people that need these are getting to the programs that will be sustainable for them to get the food that they need and the farmer farmers to food program I think is good for the Vermont economy it gets Vermont farms and businesses to Vermonters in need it's funded through a federal grant right now at the Abbey Group the state has been and will continue to collaborate with the food bank on this program but what I want to try to do is start moving this distribution back to the local food banks the local schools the schools who are in better position right now to connect individuals to more sustainable programs like Three Squares and I think the AHS and the Emergency Operations Center will continue to partner with the food banks by providing planning and logistics support including the Vermont National Guard staff and volunteers and refrigeration trucks to need to support this we also offered some planning I know we're short on time and I the things that we did during this at the height of the pandemic are something that the state should be very proud of in terms of moving our food distribution out there to make sure that those in need got what they needed and I won't go through all the list I did the other day but there's a ton of stuff that the state did and spent in terms of money to make sure that people got food what we're trying to do right now is making make sure that this is sustainable and the people that need food get food so if you're asking me do we want to increase people to go to Three Squares yes we do do we want to encourage people to use the EBT program yes we do those sort of things and if anybody's listening that feels sort of insecure in their food these are the programs that can really help and they're federally funded and we can use that those to expand our to a more sustainable system and by the way keep that farmers the family food program as we're moving forward so thank you I just want to add another reason to pass our economic relief package to keep people get them back to work keep these businesses going it's so essential in its entirety by the way Andrew, Caledonia record yes thank you Governor you mentioned the other day you anticipated extending the state of emergency that if I'm on the state knows due to 15 I'm wondering what needs to happen for you to consider the emergency over at this point is this the status quo until there's a vaccine or are there other cases in other states it won't be status quo until there's a vaccine but it might go on for a bit until we can open up all these sectors to close to 100% or to whatever the new normal is and say that it's going to take at least another cycle to do that but we're doing it as quick as we possibly can to get the economy open again and get people back to some sort of normalcy with schools and so forth so this is something that people should expect it will be on Monday and we'll extend it again probably for another month okay thank you alright I think we're just going to have time for one more question from Lisa at the valley reporter hello I think this question is for Lindsay Curley I drove through two different road utility construction projects yesterday and I had a question about those workers are those workers working in summer road work projects are they supposed to be wearing masks and maintaining social distancing or proper physical distancing I thought you're going to let me out the hook today that's my question I really would need to understand the situation generally we require mask wearing and social distancing but there are times where the business function won't allow that and there are certainly ways that employers can feel safely do those functions and work around so I really would have to understand the situation more if there is a concern that there is non-compliance I would encourage you to send me an email or go to our website and report the possible non-compliance and then we can make a visit and provide some education if somebody is out of compliance in this case it was people working in trenches together shoulder by shoulder with no mask I don't want to yeah without understanding the situation I wouldn't want to comment on that thank you how many more do we have let's take the last three okay three left again please if you can keep a quick hand this is a question from Mike Smith there's been a lot of a lot of comment about the all pair model and the my question is that Mike Smith has told both the press conference and the legislature that he would have that this money a large amount of money flows into the hospital system that there would be strings attached so to make sure that the money does not get in the way of the all pair model reform I'd like to know whether there are any such strings and whether we could get an example of one I've left this is Mike Smith obviously I did say that I would like to through the application process provide some strings attached so that I wouldn't surprise the legislature on some of the things that the application the review process would be looking at one was that they spend money for the purpose that's indicated in the application and because we're short of time you won't go through them one of them was what you said was to how the fund sort of current or future participation in payment reform what I what I want to make sure is that you don't take the money I'll give you an example although it's just an example you wouldn't take the money and then say we're not participating in the reform program I'd like to fee for service for example that would be an example thank you Steve any KTV can you hear me go ahead Steve yes governor very quickly a shoe on the other foot test what would you say if someone held a rally on the state house steps and they say excluded excluded black people from the rally yeah I'm not even I'm not sure even are you saying that the organizers wouldn't let certain people speak well from what I understand at a recent rally on the state house steps that only people over a certain color were allowed to speak I don't know I have no knowledge of that obviously we want people to be treated equitably with respect and civility and let all voices be heard but I'm just not aware of a situation like that any rallies that I've seen where people are speaking I see people of all at this city as well as race speaking at many of these forms and protests so I would say that the I think all voices should be heard because it's been done from what I've seen okay but that's not what I understood at the last BLM rally but I agree with you thank you very much Guy Page Governor just point of information I did ask the organizer of the rally on the state house steps and she did say yes only black people because they have been underrepresented and under heard and this was a time for black people to speak to the audience but my question is have you seen any positive tests stemming from the protests and if so how many and have you asked the rally leaders to allow them taking and contact tracing and if so what has been the response again give me the questions again well I'm sorry have you seen any positive tests stemming from the protests not at this point nothing that we've been able to contact trace back to any of these events at this point in time but it's still it's still early it could still happen as Dr. Levine had said earlier they're happening with such frequency it takes a while seven to fourteen days at times to to see a positive test and have you asked the rally leaders to allow temperature taking and contact tracing for people entering the rally and still what's been the response well there's no contact tracing until you have a positive case so once we have a positive case then you can start the contact tracing and you don't have to ask them but you would want to notify them so that everyone would come forward to have a test so we haven't had the case at this point in time but I'm assuming that everyone would be cooperative okay thank you thank you everyone thanks very much we'll see you on Friday