 Directing Vermonters to stay home as much as possible and businesses to operate remotely or to close with some exceptions. In order to provide for basic needs we know there are some things many things that need to be done away from home and we're working to provide the clearest guidance we can to help people understand what this order means to them or their businesses. So here's the bottom line. We've got to slow the spread of this virus by staying home and away from others as much as possible. This will help protect those at risk of serious illness and in too many cases, even death. It's also important to prevent our health care system from being overwhelmed, which keeps all Vermonters safe. Yesterday the Center for Disease Control issued new guidance asking those in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to refrain from non-essential travel for the next 14 days. In light of this, in my continued concern for the public health and safety of all those in Vermont, I've signed a new order today directing anyone who enters Vermont to self-quarantine for 14 days once they're here. And that means heading directly to where you're going with no stops in between. While it would be best for our friends and family from other states to follow the CDC guidance and stay where they are, I also understand some who have a home or family in Vermont may need to return. And it's not just our border states. This means those who have wintered across the country. We need everyone entering Vermont to be a good neighbor and abide by the self-isolation directive. And then to follow afterwards, my stay home stay safe order to be clear. This 14 day quarantine does not apply for those just going to the grocery store or an essential job across the border. To further support my stay home order and this travel guidance. We've also included clarifying language for the lodging industry. My order last week suspended lodging operations, except for specific needs to support our COVID 19 response. To provide more certainty on what this means. Today's order makes clear it applies to hotels, motels, bed and breakfast, short term rentals, meaning those booked through Airbnb and others and all campgrounds in RV parks. We're seeing some online booking and advertising is still occurring. This is a violation of the stay home order and to make that crystal clear, today's new restrictions suspend online reservations. I've also asked law enforcement and the Attorney General to help with these measures with a goal of full compliance through monitoring and education, but with the possibility of additional steps if necessary. Mr. Shirling and Attorney General Donovan will provide more details shortly and I want to thank them for their partnership. Here's what I want everyone to understand. If you don't need to come to Vermont, please don't. This is about public health and safety, which is our top priority. But having said that, we can't let this become an us versus them view with the world. That's not who we are as Americans and certainly not as for monitors and we shouldn't let anything change that. Our message is this. If you're entering the state, you're directed to isolate in order to protect those already here as well as the capacity of our health care system. This will help protect those currently in the state while allowing people who own a home or have a family to be here as well. We've got to remember as Americans, we're all in this together and we all have a role to play in keeping each other safe. So I'm asking everyone to join us in this effort to be united and to stay Vermont strong. I'll now turn it over to Commissioner Sherling for a brief update on the work of the Vermont State Police to assess lodging compliance over the weekend. Mr. Shirley. Good morning. Uh, over the weekend, uh, we directed law enforcement in Vermont to monitor compliance in particular with lodging properties here in Vermont. 318 properties are are known to exist in Vermont exclusive of the, uh, the Airbnb type properties of that. This is a running spreadsheet of those checks. Vermont State Police and local law enforcement were able to successfully check on all of those properties of them. 88 were open. Half of those 88 were in compliance. In other words, they were, uh, housing folks that were, um, involved in the response, visiting nurses, um, healthcare professionals, military folks, uh, flight crews that are flying in and out of Burlington International Airport and the like. Uh, 44 appear to be non-compliant for those non-compliant properties. Yesterday they received a letter, uh, from the Department of Health and the Department of Public Safety indicating that they need to bring their operations into compliance. Uh, and the Attorney General's office will be following up with that cross-section of apparent non-compliant properties today. Uh, after that, there will be regular, regular monitoring by law enforcement. Folks can expect to see, uh, troopers in law enforcement, uh, in the parking lots, checking in with staff there to ensure compliance. Again, this relates exclusively, uh, to the health, uh, of Vermonters and, uh, the capacity of our healthcare system. Um, to emphasize, we really expect voluntary compliance with the stepped up effort, uh, to do these cross checks, the letter, and subsequent phone calls by the Attorney General's office. Uh, we have every belief that these properties will, uh, become compliant and, uh, that we'll be able to, uh, to maintain health and safety as a result. Thank you. Good morning. I've always believed that the best way to enforce the law is to give people the opportunity to comply with it. And I want to thank the governor, uh, for his leadership during this crisis and his philosophy, uh, of that enforcement principle, that we work with Vermonters who need our help and we ask Vermonters to comply with the governor's executive order because we all have a role to play in this crisis. As Commissioner Shirling said, the Attorney General's office is reaching out to those 40 or so hotels and lodging establishments this morning. We're asking them to comply with the governor's order. We will work with you if you have questions. I do want to say that the governor's executive order does carry penalties. There are civil penalties that range from $1,000 to up to $10,000 per violation. There is also a criminal penalty that carries a $500 fine and a maximum penalty of six months imprisonment. I want to be very clear. The last thing any of us want to do is enforce these orders and seek those penalties. We're asking for your compliance. We're asking for your cooperation. That being said, we also know that we all have a role to play during this crisis. We're prepared to do our job. The Attorney General's office is prepared to do its job. We'll be reaching out to you today. If you have questions, talk with us. We will work with you and we are prepared to partner with the Mont State Police, the Department of Public Safety, and Governor Scott to do what's best for our State of Vermont. Thank you. Would that turn it over to Commissioner Levine? Thank you. This morning, I'd like to briefly put the executive orders in a public health context. Repeat some of what I've said previously about testing. Provide a bit of a situational report and wrap up with the website. If we're to succeed in flattening the curve and preserving the capacity of our healthcare system, it is essential for the health and safety of all Vermonters that everyone strictly comply with Governor Scott's executive orders. We can do it if everyone pulls together in the same direction. Social distancing, as I've said before, is not our natural state and it's difficult and challenging for everyone. I've done a lot of observation over the past weekend and was overall pretty pleased with what I saw, with some conscious distancing for people that I encountered. I've also been getting lots of emails and cards and letters though about Vermonters who are concerned about a hopefully minority of the state that doesn't take this as seriously and doesn't understand the importance of this as a true intervention strategy to really improve our performance against this virus. I just want you to listen to the comments I make later on regarding what's going on in Vermont now to put my concern into context and to really have everyone take this as seriously as possible. Now regarding the most recent executive order, because there are now so many hot spots around the country, asking Vermonters who are returning from other states to self isolate upon their return home and preventing travelers from other states from residing in lodging sites for prolonged periods is no different than policies that you may recall are just a few weeks old around the country that did the same for travelers coming back from China and Italy and other such places. This is just plain sound public health practice and it will protect us all. Regarding testing, this weekend in collaboration with the National Guard civil support team an additional COVID-19 patient test site at Landmark College in Putney was successfully stood up. This site will provide additional capacity for testing for people who have a referral from their healthcare provider. As I've said before, early and broad testing is a proven strategy to limit the spread of this virus. Vermont is still early enough on the curve of positive cases that we hope that increased testing can have a large impact on our ability to flatten the curve. I want to stress again though that you can't just show up and be tested. Mainly because if you do not have symptoms the virus might not be detected and you might actually be falsely reassured that you don't harbor the virus. And secondly because we continue to rely on your own physician's judgment about your illness and then we try to identify, counsel and isolate those who test positive, conduct contact tracing and quarantine as clinically appropriate. We're all counting on each other to do everything we can to meet this public health crisis head on. Now as our testing capacity increases you can expect to see an increase in the number of positive tests. This will reflect more tests and not necessarily more transmission of disease. We'll need to look closely at the proportion of tests that are positive and trends in our data, not just the absolute number of tests. In terms of what our status was as of last night with COVID-19 in the state there were 21 new cases yesterday, 256 total cases at this point in time, still 12 deaths, seven of them from the outbreak at Burlington Health and Rehab, five from patients that were hospitalized at various locations in the state. We continue to follow the outbreak at Burlington Health and Rehab quite closely. We are now also following another outbreak that you may have seen on the news just today at a facility in Essex Junction. This is a senior living facility. This facility is not a long-term care facility, not a nursing home. It is not a healthcare facility. It is essentially a building with over 50 apartments in it where people are independently living with the only criteria for being housed there is your age is 55 or greater. So needless to say there are some people that are in the greater category and some are more frail and may have chronic illnesses as you would expect. There are now two deaths associated with that facility, one not a person that was living there but that was a significant other of an employee there and the second occurring over the weekend someone who was actually living there. The health department has been very involved over the last five to six days with its basic work that it does in all of these outbreak situations which is making sure they're aware of all people who are in contact with that initial case that brought the disease in and making sure that we've done all the appropriate follow-up on them, made sure that they all are connected with their healthcare providers if they become symptomatic and make sure they are all isolating as is appropriate. This is ongoing and obviously it's more breaking news so I won't have a lot more details to provide you with there but we've been in constant contact and help the facility with its own communications to the residents there. In closing I want everyone to please stay safe, stay home and keep informed. Based on the number of hits I guess is the word to the healthcare website many of you are using that for information healthfermont.gov. It continues to have the latest information and answers to your questions. Last week we added an automated web bot to the page. With this tool you can type in a question and the bot will search a knowledge base that is updated daily from our extensive FAQs, frequently asked questions. We can use the questions people input to keep expanding our FAQs in a collapsible section called ask a question about COVID-19. Thank you. Well thank you very much. I just want to remind everyone we have Secretary Smith, the Agency of Human Services on the phone who will be answering questions any questions that might arise in his area of expertise and we have a lot of questions a lot of reporters media on the phone as well so we're going to do our best to get through those questions and if you can be prepared with a star six unmute yourself that would be very helpful. All right we're going to start with Lisa Lumis at the Valley Reporter, star six to unmute. Lisa Lumis, all right we're going to move to Joe Gresser at the Barton Chronicle. Star six to unmute Joe. Hi Joe. I'll let Dr. Levine answer that. Thanks. If we use Wuhan China as our guide and that was the most rigid of social distancing and mitigation strategies as you know there was about a 14-day period that elapsed for that so most people think it's in the several week range. I might add though that as we so and it's not really in the testing itself the testing helps provide greater precision to all of our modeling and all projections. The fact that we are now in the 200s range of cases is helping refine that modeling significantly but obviously we'll be watching very very closely over time and testing isn't the only outcome obviously to see if we've reached a plateau and cases we'll obviously be looking at other medical factors in the population in terms of you know illness and hospitalizations and things of that all right Sean Cunningham the Chester Telegraph. Thank you. I've just got a quick question about the difference in totals between the math and the graph the department website today. There's a difference between the math and the graph and I wondered if those totals represent the number of residents of other states. Dr. Levine. I'm going to have to check that out because I don't have it in front of me but it is true that we've had a number of positive tests of people who live in other states predominantly New Hampshire but other states as well that might explain that and we've had some Vermonters whose positive tests occurred in another state. So I'll get back with a more precise answer but I suspect it's one of those too. The county courier. Star states to unmute Greg county courier. Go ahead Greg. Greg you may need to unmute your phone or we're going to move to the next caller. All right moving to Andrew at the Caledonia. Go ahead Greg. Okay thank you governor. It's my understanding that's be located. Yeah thank you Greg. We are currently searching for trucks to just be prepared. We hope it doesn't come to that but considering the the number of people who are the morticians in the in the Vermont we have to be prepared for most anything and we'll be strategically placing those around the state if it becomes necessary but we want to make sure again that we're prepared for the worst. Thank you governor. Andrew, Caledonia record. Talk about more precise modeling as the numbers increase. The movement changed over the last several days and how is the state's efforts to increase the possible capacity of the PPE incentives things like that matching up with these new models. Yeah we're refining our modeling as we speak. We're hoping to make it more public as the week progresses because I think it it does highlight some of the challenges we face and why we're doing taking some of the steps that we're taking today. So at this point in time we uh I might ask Mr. Shirling to talk a little bit about our preparedness in terms of PPE and ventilators and so forth but we're trying to stay on top of that but we're watching the modeling as well and that's why again if we take the steps we're advocating for today and last week we hope to stay underneath the line the line of the capacity of the healthcare system and that's that's our goal. Mr. Shirling. Thank you governor. I think the governor covered the modeling component uh relative to PPE and ventilator and surge capacity there are teams continuing to work on those things. We have literally millions of uh of items on order in the PPE supply chains. We're working closely with the hospitals uh and the federal government to try to ensure that we get as many of those units as possible. The update on ventilators is we have over 400 that have been ordered and we're working daily to get delivery dates for those. There are parallel efforts also including efforts to explore whether Vermont manufacturers can produce certain types of PPE and there's a parallel effort actually to develop a ventilator that could be constructed here as quickly as possible and additional efforts to to ensure that if possible we can use a ventilator for more than one patient and important to note that we're working in support of the healthcare professionals the Department of Health and the hospitals on those efforts in particular. I might add and uh Commissioner Shirling unless I misstate this we did we did receive some uh some support from the federal government over the last couple of days a number of trucks have been brought in with some of the PPEs that equipment that we need. So that's uh that's good news but it doesn't mean that we relax in in some respects we we're pulling every lever we can using some of in-house and in searching throughout the country to be sure that we have all the available equipment that we need to fight this. It's a great point Governor. Six trucks arrived to the state's warehouse over the weekend. We anticipate additional trucks will be inbound. The state's storage warehouse for PPE actually can't handle the amount that it's storing at the moment which is partially a good sign so there's an additional warehouse space that the guard is assisting to set up and guard teams are now taking over some of the logistics and support of the Department of Health and the Department of Public Safety because of the volume that we anticipate needing to move. All right we're going to move to Chris Roy at the Newport Daily Express Star 6 to Unmute. Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, how is it felt like to leave? Admittedly Chris that's very difficult as you can well imagine someone coming in driving back home after wintering in let's say Florida coming back home and then we can only educate and advocate for them to do the right thing to protect their neighbors to protect their friends to protect their family members. This is the right thing to do. It's literally in your hands to do your part and we're asking that's why we're having all the message boards along the interstates in the airports and so forth to make sure the message gets across. If you're coming into the state make sure you you self-isolate for 14 days and again we are not going to be able to enforce our way through this but we can ask for monitors to do the right thing. Anything else Chris? Okay. Anne Galloway, B.T. Digger, Star 6 to Unmute. Anne Galloway, Star 6 to Unmute. Go ahead Anne. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you very much. Governor, when will hospitalization rates per day be released? The number of people in the hospitals at this point in time with the COVID-19. Yeah. It's a good question. I did talk about that over the weekend. I'm going to turn this over to Secretary Smith who probably has the answer. Sure Anne. Thank you very much. I did get that answer for you as I had said over the weekend. Right now in all our hospitals we have 19 COVID-19 inpatient. That's 19. There's one in Central Vermont. There's one in Mountain Cuttsies. There is two in Northwestern. There is zero in Ruffin Regional right now. There's Southwestern Vermont Regional. There's two UVM at 13 and quarter medical at zero. And here's how we're going to start doing that. Each night at eight o'clock the hospital will report the COVID-19 inpatient numbers. I will have those numbers each day for us to report going forward here. So we'll have those numbers each day now. Anything else Anne? No. Thank you. All right. Tim McQuiston, Vermont Business Magazine. Good morning Governor. The state of Vermont is the largest employer in the state and of course the budget is getting hit pretty hard here. Have we done the employees, you know, DMV workers on the front end? Has there any been layoffs or furloughs or what do you plan? Maybe they've been redeployed in some way. What is what is your plan for state workforce? Yeah we're redeploying as many as we can. For instance using some of the DMV employees to help with the Labor Department surge that we've seen in other areas of government as well. Obviously this is going to work trying to focus on the crisis itself today but our budget is going to be problematic obviously. So we are going to work alongside the the legislature, alongside our congressional delegation to provide for whatever relief we can knowing we have to provide essential services to Vermont but but we have to be realistic as well. So we'll work through again get through the next three to four weeks but ongoing. We're trying to dissect the federal bill to see what this means to Vermont and Vermonters and as well as our state budget and then and monitor what else is needed. The congressional delegation has been having ongoing support for us. I speak to Congressman Welch and probably Senator Leahy almost daily and they are they want to be a willing partner so as we move forward again we'll see where the challenges are and see what we can do to to mitigate that. Perfect so probably a question for commissioner we're being so regarding that facility in Essex how many people have tested positive for COVID-19? How many people are being monitored and is there a plan in place for widespread testing in the facility? So number one I'm aware of one that is tested positive we're currently aware of and have been in communication with 10 who we believe had the intense exposure and we're going to continue to abide by what I mentioned in my opening comments that testing is not treatment and testing will occur for those who become symptomatic in consultation with their health care providers. Everyone who has been identified as a significant contact is by definition doing what they would do if they were a positive test which is self-isolating assuming they were not so ill they had to be in a hospital and that is the basic rule of how public health works in this kind of a situation. So testing you know in a broader sense is really not indicated. Other places where you have health care workers in contact with people not just an independent living situation that becomes a bit of a different equation but in this situation that's really what's happened so there's no plan for wide-scale testing of every individual living in the building. And then I guess just to follow up so because it's an independent living as opposed to like insisted living so I guess is there any different guidance or support that's being offered to the residents there? Probably it's the same guidance no matter which setting to be honest because even if you're not a close contact you live in another apartment you're supposed to be abiding by all of the rules that came down in the executive order in terms of social distancing in terms of staying at home staying safe so that would be the advice that everyone would have anyways. The major issue in buildings like this as opposed to living in your own home are that there are now congregate settings in those buildings so there's a room where everybody goes for laundry there's a room where everybody goes to get their mail. There are card playing rooms and things of that sort for social activities so we have to be very direct about advising people to not be congregating in those particular parts of the building. Does that answer your question? I think what was also interesting in terms of what Dr. Levine had described to me earlier was that if you're not symptomatic and you're aced symptomatic the tests aren't as accurate and so you might get a false sense of security if you have the tests early and think you don't have it when you might so you have to just assume that you may have it to self-isolate and monitor your own symptoms take your temperature make sure you're taking care of yourself by staying away from others I mean it's very clear it's not any different than it's just a home and so stay away from others and make sure that you're taking care of yourself just like if you're traveling from a hot spot at your remote right oh yeah right I mean it's the same principle as if you're traveling from a hot spot outside the borders of Vermont into Vermont again we want you to make the assumption you may be harboring the virus and not symptomatic yet all right Mike Donahue, Vermont Press Association star six to unmute Mike we've got you hello okay thanks governor I have a two-part question dealing with the access to COVID-19 cases and full transparency as we've seen uh in Grand Isle and Epic County they continue to have no reported cases of course they have no hospitals either what I'm wondering in Grand Isle County we continue to hear reports of a few individuals with positive cases including at least one whose name was out on social media being in a St. August hospital so is it that the Grand Isle cases if there are any are actually being counted in other counties like this in Franklin County and presumably the same in Essex County that they're going to hospitals either in St. John'sbury or in Leicester yeah the second part about access information is I've been told by employees at two different hospitals that they are not told where the COVID-19 patients are on certain floors and this causes concerns by employees not to have full disclosure that they're working on floors is there anything the state but health department can do to encourage full transparency to the staff that are working at these hospitals I'm going to ask Secretary Smith if he has the answers to either one of those questions or both and then Dr. Levine to follow up yeah I don't like but let me my Donnie because it's Mike Smith I don't but let me check on those to get see if I can get some answers for you on that the first part of your question the second part of your question the medical question and I'll leave it to Dr. Levine thank you on the first question I would definitely hope that if there was a case in Grand Isle it would be listed as Grand Isle County because it would have to do with the place of residence not the place where the test was done because we definitely want that data as does everyone else so I would hope that is not the case with regard to the second you're actually speaking to basic infection control practices at various hospitals and I'm quite comfortable that our hospitals understand infection control practices have specific personnel in place that are that have expertise in that area and that they would be abiding by that so I would hate to think that there would be an employee that feels they're at risk because that fact and that knowledge is not known if you could provide us just to be clear there are other people in other departments that may not be dealing with a COVID-19 case that are on the same floor but haven't been told that the COVID-19 so yeah so you know I guess I'd need to hear more specific cases because clearly anybody who is either known COVID-19 or a person under investigation awaiting a test result is under a very strict isolation procedure so that those going in and out of the room specifically would be aware of what they need to be dawning in terms of the appropriate protective equipment every time that happened and they wouldn't just casually be going in the room to say clean the floor or get a a tray off the patient's tray table there would be knowledge of that so again I would need specifics but I I can't believe that the basic infection control practices and practices that are frankly protective for the employees wouldn't be happening there okay thank you and Mike that deal for the commissioner will check on the I think there's 126 cases presumably between like Franklin and Chittenden to see if any of those have residents County yeah Mike one of us will check but the doctoral dean is right what we see every day is the county of residence for those people but let us check to make sure Mike thank you steward governor your state state border expires in two weeks you know last night the president extended the national directive to all of April is there any doubt in your mind that you will have to extend the state state order through at least April and secondly what is your projection for when Vermont might peak yeah two parts to that question first of all I think everyone should expect that this will be extended April 15th and beyond just trying to determine how long that's going to be and what provisions will be in place as we do that and as we amend as we move forward in terms of how long that's a good question and I think it's up to all of us to make sure that we implement all the measures that we put into place in the executive order and all the amendments since the sooner we do that the sooner we'll get through this and we'll we'll continue to monitor and we'll again be sharing some of the modeling with you with with with vermoners over the next over the next few days because I think it really is important for you to understand the magnitude if we don't get this right what it could mean and how quickly it could overwhelm our health care system and that's what we want to prevent you know we need to make sure that we're increasing the capacity lift that line of the capacity of our health care system making sure that we have surge capacity there making sure we have all the equipment we need to to fight this but at the same time it's literally in our hands if we if we take this seriously we stay away from each other we self isolate and and this this will go a lot better than the alternative so it's really important that you pay attention tanya the islander star six to unmute tanya all right pat bradley wamc bradley wamc all right cliff cooper hi can you hear me okay go ahead pat hi how are you um you have mentioned earlier that um mandate that your order requires residents and non-residents coming from outside the state to self quarantine for 14 days is targeted for people coming in from hot spots um and that it doesn't necessarily impact people who are coming over who are working between northern new york and northern vermont can you clarify the types of businesses that that impact and secondarily have you consulted with the neighboring governors like governor quomo about this addendum and its potential uh impact um two two things i can give an example let's say someone who's living over in in platzberg uh is working at uvm medical center uh they're part of the covet 19 response so we understand they'll be going back and forth uh so that would be allowed uh if for instance uh someone uh is in the uh is dealing with national security uh working for border patrol or something of that nature uh that would be exempted as well um i have uh spoken to a number of governors uh have not spoken to governor uh quomo but our other neighbors uh governor sununu governor baker in particular uh i speak to on a regular basis um so we're all trying to deal with this uh understanding that we're we're individual states and have individual needs um but uh but there clearly uh should be some more coordination throughout the nation uh in some respects because we do this patchwork uh and and and i believe in states rights and i believe that we should be doing everything we can uh again individually to protect our our citizens protect our our vermonters in this case but uh but when we have a difference in uh what we're we're implementing it does have an effect on other states uh for instance if someone was in vermont uh a company in vermont that was closed down we closed them down uh to to prevent the spread here in vermont but they can work over in new york uh and then they start commuting back and forth uh that's problematic uh and so my uh my guidance is for any one or any company uh going to another state to work for something that's not essential uh that they stay there and uh if they're going to work there stay there and uh and if you come back isolate for 14 days once you return and is this order going to pretty much mirror your stay at home order the length of time if you you know extend the stay at home order this will also be extended along with it it's tough to say at this point pat uh you know we're some of the considerations that's why I haven't extended it at this point although you can expect that the order will be extended but we'll determine at that point what what we need to include what we don't um if there's any you know we can only hope that we we peak before them but our modeling doesn't show that to be honest and um so i i expect it'll be extended uh but for how long i'm not sure at this point thank you sir all right clif cooper north avenue news clif star six on you yeah this is clif cooper from the north avenue this paper i've just got a question about the u.s mail and um the carriers don't have gloves masks need to do the tellers um what what i can you know i'm going to let dr levine answer part of this but i see a number of people wearing gloves for instance that doesn't necessarily provide relief and and it doesn't insulate you from either transmitting this to others or transmitting it to yourself because the glove itself could be contaminated with the virus and then you could touch your face with the glove so that's the point is not to touch your face uh to remind remain at a safe distance from others um you know masks and shields i've seen where convenience stores and other entities in vermont that remain open have put shields in themselves make shift shift lexan type shields that will do the job and i think that that's what they should do and i believe the post offices should do that as well and for those who are delivering mail they should they should take that precaution on their own to make sure they're protecting themselves and others during this crisis wilson ring eight courtney lambden seven days oh wait somebody's on there now is that you wilson yes it is sorry i had to do the star six three times to get through i had two questions here one about the the hotels that you found and other lodging facilities that were not in compliance with 40 something how responsive were they presumably you pointed out that they were not in compliance and how responsive were they to that and just to to that being pointed out to them and then secondly um is there any estimate yet on when vermont expects to see a piece let commissure shirling answer the first part in terms of responsivity the initial contact on saturday was just reconnaissance to see what levels of compliance yesterday they were delivered letters as i indicated and then there'll be follow-up calls that begin today so i don't think we have a full gauge of the responsivity at this point but we expect that folks will largely be compliant with the 44 properties that again to be clear appeared to be out of compliance this was not an in-depth detailed investigation okay thank you um in terms of the second part of your question wilson i don't want to get ahead of the what we're doing with the modeling trying to refine that but but suffice it to say it's sometime we feel sometime in april but we'll be sharing that as the days go on here this week thank you all right just we have still have several collars that we're trying to get through so just a reminder for everybody for for clarity we will be having a separate briefing on the modeling and projections this week so there will be more details in a in a briefing scheduled specifically for that later this week we're going to go in in the room to fox 44 um just wondering if you have any information or know anything about a staff member at pinecrest senior living in s6 junction who has COVID-19 and went to work still you're making it sound like currently as opposed to previously yeah so we believe previously there was a staff member who was unaware of their status who may have been infectious for a couple of days uh we're not aware of anyone currently for you might probably but uh i received several calls over the weekend uh from people in the valley who are in that uh danger zone as far as medical and uh and age um and they were concerned about the b and b still operating and they've seen them constantly running back and forth and they they were worried that uh they either a weren't part of it and governor you already gave us the answer to that but is there any anything in the works to to hit the air b and bs at all yeah again uh we're doing the same thing uh this approach uh pertains to them we saw the same thing we heard from the same people uh and we're trying to make sure that they comply uh mr shirling anything to add on that sure uh with the additional clarity that was issued uh today we fully expect air b operators if you know them if you're listening you need to shut down your operations we will begin monitoring for online postings uh this week and we'll make banking referrals for contact the attorney general's office thereafter and just to add to that uh we we are part of the order is to to close the online reservation uh portion so i know that uh i think uh commissioner shirling you told me earlier that uh on the on the page the air b and b page that there is a already a notice that's going up uh at this point in time there is uh we expect that there'll be additional clarity after today some you know you know let's let's be honest some didn't uh know or uh didn't know that they it pertain to them uh that's why part of the education a part of what we did uh to try and get the word out and that's why it's important that we do and we hope all of you will carry that as well Courtney Landon seven days hi governor um this actually this question might actually be for commission commissioner shirling i'm wondering if someone could detail what kind of supplies vermont has requested from the federal government and how much of that uh equipment we have received versus how much we're still waiting on thank you just to be clear we're not waiting on anything from the federal government in some respects we're going and we're pulling every lever we possibly can and finding a lot on our own we should be able to share some of that information with you again this week we we hope but uh i'll let commissioner shirling answer the rest of that we have standing requests for millions of personal protective items from the federal government uh over i think our request is for 600 ventilators and we've received a cross-section of n95 mass surgical mass gowns and face shields hundreds of thousands of those items have come into the warehouse i don't have the exact counts in front of me uh the again as the governor indicated that is one avenue of exploration to bolster these supplies it is not by any means the exclusive avenue also thank you very much ethan burlington free press ethan burlington free press star sticks hi thank you um so i was just wondering uh is there any indication so far at least that the new expanded testing policy is working and uh in addition is our congressional delegation helping to secure more test kits um i'm going to let uh commissioner levine answer the the testing portion but i just would add uh that it's not instantaneous it takes a bit of time in terms of extraction uh then turning it over to the lab and depending on whether it's done in in-house in the state lab versus us sending it to an outside lab let's say mail clinic it takes a little bit more time for us to get it to them and to return but uh but i would also add in the terms of in terms of mail uh we are not waiting we're not shipping it by uh by ups or fedex or us mail uh we're flying it there and we're doing this uh twice a day uh starting today i believe tomorrow morning uh so uh we're uh we're being aggressive with this uh we want to get the results back just as quick as we possibly can and our testing in-house uh we can we can have results within 24 hours but again we're not going to see this for a day or two but the putney uh testing uh i've uh i've heard back uh that it was a successful start yesterday and continues to be today dr labine not a lot not a lot to add to that but um any strategy that you begin in terms of combating COVID-19 you have to maintain at least 10 14 or longer day period of time to see the impact uh so certainly will not be instantaneous especially if you understand that the incubation period of the virus can be as few as two days or as long as 14 days michelle minnow st albin's messenger star six to unmute michelle minnow hello hello can you hear me now great i was just wondering what steps are being taken to protect the um prison population and the staff who work in the prison i'm going to uh refer to secretary smith on that if you're still on the line i sure am governor michelle like i said the other day there's been an extensive uh sort of precautions that i've never seen before in the prison population in terms of what we're doing first of all we have suspended all in-person visitation rights for the prison population we have done that now and substituted video conferencing for the evade for for visitation rights secondly uh we have uh we we have established uh sort of spacing and as you know right now our prison population is at some of the lowest that it's been in quite a while we're just under 1500 i think a year ago we were at 1600 so that allows us to get some spacing we are monitoring employees coming in in terms of temperature check as we move forward and we have onsite supplies for testing for inmates and right now we have no positive tests that have occurred in the inmate population we've also ramped up our supplies to make sure that we don't run out of supplies in the uh in the prison population so we we're in in our wrecking facility and we'll continue to be aggressive as we move forward okay thank you uh i had a question that you can hear me okay great uh this is uh about infrastructure after i read um i'm sure you'll recall that we refilled um culverts and bridges and everything to the stands of future right now our infrastructure for the internet is is inadequate for many people working at home or trying to learn at home i wonder if there's any effort underway to maybe use the bully pulpit to talk to consolidated to and other internet providers to beef up servers in some cases i understand it's just a matter of installing a new switch um in neighborhoods so uh this is a need i've heard from people pretty much all over the state um and i'm wondering if there's any effort in that regard uh thank you john uh as you can as you may recall after Irene there were less a lot of lessons learned and we uh and we did things better after that we built bridges differently uh we uh we dealt with obstructions differently we did we did many things uh in a in a different manner we'll do the same thing in the aftermath of this crisis as well and i think uh the um accessibility to broadband is one area that is uh certainly something we knew about before but it's going to take resources in order to do that but if there's anything we can do easily obviously we'll do them but this is another area i've talked with the congressional delegation already about uh you know in the recovery we're still dealing with a crisis today but in the recovery uh this might be an area that we could all use and help across the united states in terms of making sure that we have accessible broadband so that when we go to online learning and in other areas where we're we're isolating ourselves that we have the capacity to do this but i but i will say i mean we're we're learning as we go uh and uh and i i take my hat off to all vermonters for finding their way through this i mean i mean even in our own office even myself uh where we're doing a lot of video conferencing a lot of calls like we're doing today i think the silver lining again i was remarking after a press conference on friday the silver lining to this is so many people are calling in and we're hearing from all parts of the state we're typically in a press conference we have at the state house uh there's just a handful of local reporters there uh but now we're we're getting from all different regions and their ability to ask questions and and be able to communicate uh is something that i think is really important so uh in the aftermath of this we'll learn from the best practices and be able to do better any immediate efforts to talk to the providers i think i would say our public service department um commissioner tyranny is uh is constantly uh asking them to expand and we're providing whatever help we can guidance uh to to do so so yes i would say it's an ongoing effort to make sure that we're we're dealing with a crisis at hand right now and part of that is making sure that there's capacity so anything we can do we're doing if you if there's anything that you think we should be doing please offer that up and let us know uh so that we can we can make sure that we go uh to them if we haven't seen it highlighted already all right i'll set john okay uh patricia labouf at bennington banner patricia at bennington banner all right norah at the valley news hi patricia yes okay go ahead sorry star six have given me some trouble um so i i was just noticed actually just earlier today testing seems to be a large part of mitigating the spread of the virus and preventing deaths i know they mentioned specifically germany and i believe south korea have extended some sort of testing and it has been reported the us lies behind other countries in testing i saw a new test was just granted emergency use author authorization by the sda and is expected to roll out this week it provides results in approximately 15 minutes and it said that of that particular test can the company that makes that particular test can do about 50 000 per day and i'm wondering if roman is aware of this possible new test and if so if you guys are seeking to use any capacity yeah i've seen that on the national news as well and suffice it to say if it's available to us and we would we'd be utilizing it but at this point in time i don't believe that we have seen that and the availability is not has not been known to me um commissioner levy and it all depends on which kind of test you're talking about there's the test that's actually looking for the active virus in a secretion and then there's the test that's looking at your blood to see if you have an antibody response to the virus so i'm not sure if you're aware of which one you're you're talking about but um i know the maker is um the maker is called abit the maker of the test and sure it would be results in uh 15 minutes so it's very very very rapid test and i believe that says all that i but it's like a it's like a swap test my understanding is the patients could actually swap themselves right so you know things are happening in a very rapid timeline with uh emergency use authorizations and the fda so obviously if this becomes a prime time thing that's accessible to us and can help in our efforts we'll certainly pursue that avenue right now we literally have a bunch of irons in the fire for a variety of test regimens some of which will give us even greater improved over the 24 hour turnaround even if it's not in 15 minutes and those are going to be standing up in the very near future so we're using everything that we know that's existing and what you're describing is evolving and emerging and so we'll have to evaluate it and see if it's accessible and it's worth pursuing thanks noro valley news noro valley news keys digger nor are you on we're going to move on to allen keys at digger go ahead can you hear me weekend okay yes hi this is nora um so yes i was wondering um is there i guess to your temporary housing for health care workers who may you know want to live separately from their families during this time i believe there are accommodations uh being uh contemplating at this very moment but uh i don't have the specifics on that uh secretary smith thank you very much nor there there are a lot of things we will handle in the state of vermont there we're looking at hospitals for them to determine the maximum capacity for things such things as that bedside view vent PPE uh within sort of their hospital uh health service area and this might include that they have to do additional beds within the hospital facility as well to establish a local service at the same time the state is looking at using their modeling that we've been talking about medical search for beds ips and vents and that's about if it if the response goes above the hospital sort of maximum capacity and we you know think we'll be working with our hospital state establishes you know targeted alternative care sites you've seen some of those for example and then you're talking about this uh special population search the thing that um well there's there's this category the special population search and those are areas a wide array of areas like mental health and social service and long-term care and homeless and uh prisoner population that may need special needs consideration for COVID-19 and then there's isolation sites for people like uh plus uh COVID-19 exposed healthcare workers who do not want to return home as close as spread there is these various steps are ongoing right now in order to address any potential increase or surge that may happen as the governor said in the month of April uh with this particular virus just a quick follow-up yes sorry um and so how does that work is that led by the hospitals or by the state you know is it a local sort of discussion or is it a statewide in terms of special population surge we're doing that right now at the base level in terms of finding maximum levels over the the hospitals are responsible for the initial surge and and their hospital service area if it goes beyond that hospital surge area then the state would would bring its resources in what i would call a state medical maximum helping the surge there with the special population what i was talking about social services the state is handling that right now looking at various sites i think i saw a news story on that this weekend and then the isolation sites would be a partnership with the state and the municipalities and community partners that are out thank you all right allen keys bt digger allen star six right that's our last question oh allen go ahead allen yeah didn't get all that can you try it again allen i had no knowledge of that at this point in time allen we'll we'll look into that but i i'm not aware yeah yeah we'll we'll look into it and get back to you all right again i want to oh go ahead i'm curious if there's been any change in your assessment that 80 of the cases that are diagnosed would not become hugely serious could be handled by stay-at-home isolation any any adjustment in those percentages based on the experience that we've had not to this time again i want to thank everyone for tuning in this is extremely important and if we can just self-isolate follow some of the procedures and some of the order that we put have put into place we'll get through this quicker and i want to thank the Attorney General for participating today in his partnership in this effort as well thank you