 Thank you all for coming. We're deeply honored and pleased today to host Ambassador Dr. Deborah Birx at the University of Vermont as part of her national tour of information gathering on best practices in higher education regarding the coronavirus response. We thank her for this visit and for the validation of the very careful and comprehensive planning that has led to our success at this point. As a reminder to you all, we've received over 70,000 test results as of this morning since August 7th and we've had only 25 positives and lately we've had, for the weekly testing of about 10,000 to 11,000, there's been one, two or zero positives. Dr. Birx needs no introduction. I will call your attention to the scarf she's wearing in her very active role as the nation's coronavirus response coordinator. She's a world-renowned global health expert and physician. She is coordinator for the U.S. government's activities to combat HIV-AIDS as U.S. special representative for global health diplomacy. She's been an untiring public servant for three decades contributing to HIV-AIDS immunology, vaccine research and global health. Thank you Dr. Birx for your service and please come on up. Thank you. It's been a real pleasure to be here in the Northeast. We've been traveling since late Monday up through the Northeast and where this is our 36th state but our 26th university. And what we have learned from universities that have done well through this fall season is they spent the spring planning and they brought the people together in a multi-sectorial approach as the president did, working with the governor, working with his health team, working with the mayor, working with the community and working with the staff, faculty and students and creating an environment of transparency and data sharing and also creating the sense that the data would be used for decision-making and any changes that needed to occur based on that data. Core to every university that has done extraordinarily well and has taught us greatly has been the universities that mandated testing. The reason this has been so critically important is we have learned that weekly testing changes behavior and it keeps as a constant reinforcement how important our behaviors are in ensuring that we remain negative and ensuring that we're not spreading the virus to others. It also illustrates why testing is so critically important when you're working with an age group where most of the illnesses are not visible. Most of the people in this age group that get infected do not have symptoms but are highly infectious to others. So this weekly testing is not only providing an assurance that there's not spread on this campus, there's not spread to the faculty, other students and not spread to the community. And so planning combined with actions like weekly testing is leading to the success. We just want to also acknowledge yesterday we were at the Broad, many of the samples from this university also go to the Broad and just really thanking the Broad Institute for I think they're providing supportive testing to over 100 universities and colleges across the Upper Northwest and across the United States to really support institutions of higher education. But in addition to the testing they were prepared for isolating students who became infected, they were prepared to quarantining students who became exposed and they were prepared to do contact tracing and partnership with the state public health. I think all of those pieces together become critically important. I want to talk just a minute about the facilities that we were able to see and I want to thank the provost who's been taking me throughout the campus to really see how they used every bit of space that they had to provide additional learning experiences for students so that 50% of the students could be in person or in a hybrid manner model so that people really could have that in person learning experience but creating physical spaces. And for the facility staff, thank you. It really makes a difference. You've created welcoming spaces. We always like it when it says this is where you can sit versus this is where you can't sit. I know that seems like something so small but it's really important and empowers the people to understand and the students to understand that I can still do specific things. It's not all about a lot of red X's. There's either green dots or a clear thing that you can sit here and I think creating physical distance but social engagement is really critical as we all work through this together. It was really important to meet with the students to be able to talk to nursing students and medical students and undergraduates and to really see the leadership of the Greek life group here. I think you can see by the test positivity this university has some of the lowest test positivity of any university that we have been to is providing a significant number of their coursework in person. Finally, I wanted to really conclude is we've been to universities to understand how they're keeping their faculty, staff, students and communities safe but research institutions have a greater role than education. There's certainly their educational role is critical but they have a critical role in research and losing some of our research researchers during the spring because of many of the universities shutting down created a real gap in our science and our understanding. Yes, COVID research and critical pathway research was ongoing but not really understanding how to better work with individuals to understand these issues around physical distancing, understanding how we really get people to take care of themselves and their families and these are the fundamentals that these university research that they can do. Behavioral science research, mental health research, universities themselves are reflection of this great land and the communities around this land and really understanding how we remain socially engaged but physically distance will become critical. How we understand the stressors and the anxieties that people face with this virus and then how we mitigate those just like we're mitigating viral spread. How do we mitigate the impact of this virus and its anxiety and in its stress that it's creating across this country. And finally trying to get people to understand how you can look and feel well but still be transmitting that virus. And I think really being able to get out that message what we're seeing across the country is what we experienced in the spring is not way this virus is going to spread in the fall. We've learned from the south that virus spreads primarily in small gatherings of friends and family and being able to get that message out and what it really will have to take of us all as a community to make sure that we protect one another that we wear our masks that we physically distance that we bring those same great behaviors that we have conducted in public into our private lives and into our households as we move into the fall and to critical family interactions that we know will need to occur in Thanksgiving but how to make those safe and how to really understand how to keep those safe. And I think universities can really help us in understanding how to really protect others during this fall and into the holiday seasons as they approach. So I will stop there. It's been a terrific trip. It's been really terrific here. Again, planning, testing, data for decision making, and then creating an environment that promotes not only safety and good health but does it in a positive way to show people what they can do and those great tents outside. Thank you for doing that. It shows how you can do and you can be together even though it's a difficult time for all of us as we try to prevent spread of this virus. So I'll take a few questions. Thank you, Dr. Birx. We're going to open up the questions now from the media. I'm going to start with reporters who are in person here in the ballroom starting with asking everybody to please limit yourselves to one question due to the time constraints that we have. Erin from WCEX, you can go first. Thank you so much for being here. Just wanted to know what steps should students and universities be taking as we get closer to the winter, the holiday season, next semester in January, assuming that the virus is still potent and it's still a threat to us. What steps should students and universities be taking when that time of year rolls around? Great and great question. I think first I think universities can help us somewhat that research to really understand how to reach people. How do you understand what comorbidities you have and whether you should be first in line for that vaccine because we do hope to have vaccine available. We know it will be available. We hope to have the data showing its efficacy and safety so that in that December, January, November, January timeframe, many of the most vulnerable in this country can be immunized. But really, they're already planning for the spring as I thought they would because they're in the middle of the winter and the fall and they're learning from the fall semester and I think I was very struck talking to the students because the students represent their families and where they come from. They come from across this country and they also are conveying those messages of physical distancing, mask wearing, protecting one another back to their households that they come from and I think that also is critically important. But universities can also help us do YouTube videos on how to have a safe Thanksgiving. What does it mean? Are the grandparents in a separate room? Do we always mask when we interact with our grandparents? Probably yes. How do we provide a safe zone of significant physical distancing during dinner, which may mean that they instead of there, there would be the mature table rather than the kids table to really provide those opportunities and then really ensuring that we've understood what our pods are because we, we have a habit. If I know you, you couldn't have COVID and what we've learned is we know you and you could and you do and that's how spread is occurring. And so all of this kind of communication, these are the kind of research and behavioral scientists that are here that will help us do that better to make it real, to make it understandable so that all the American public can really understand how to have a safe Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday and come back together. I'm sure they will test on entry again. I will tell you every student knows how to be safe because the lowest testing we've ever seen among 18 to 22 year olds were entry test results. So, but here they've learned how to stay safe during that fall semester. And I think we really need to learn from universities that have kept their, their rates of, of spread very low because it shows all of us it can be done. Very nice. Thank you so much. Thank you. Lauren from NBC5. Hi Dr. Birx. Hi Lauren. What are your thoughts on the president resuming in-person campaigning events and has he tested negative? Well, I can't answer the second question because I've been on the road. For the first question, public health advice doesn't change to any individual. We give the same advice to the president, to the vice president, to the task force members. And I think it's important we give the same advice to the American people. We know how to prevent the spread of this virus. It requires us to all change our behaviors, to protect one another, to wear a mask, to physically distance, to wash our hands. And critically, when we're having gatherings, to making sure that we, in public and in private, go through that same checklist in our mind to ensure others are protected. Thank you. Jolie, Local 2244. Hi Dr. Birx. Thank you so much for your time. Yesterday, Governor Phil Scott talked about schools across the state returning to four days of in-person learning and some schools returning to five days of in-person learning. I wanted to know what must the state do and schools do to ensure in-person instruction lasts? Great question. And that's our job as a community to ensure that children are in school. And the way you ensure that they can stay in school is do what every student has done here. That has gone out of their way to prevent any spread of the virus on the campus. Yes, they've had a few positives, but they've not had a cluster. They've not had a giant outbreak. If they can do it here, it tells us that we can do it in our communities. And if we do it in our communities, I know you know right now Vermont is 51 out of 51. The only time you want to be at the very bottom for cases and test positivity for the entire country. But there were other states that shared that spot with Vermont, Montana, Wyoming. And you can see how quickly the virus can spread when the community doesn't prevent the spread of that virus. And so it does take all of us making that personal sacrifice of wearing masks and physical distancing. And taking that same philosophy just like the students do into their dorm rooms and into their apartments, we need to take them into our households. Thank you. We'll move on to our remote participants. Tim Quiston from Vermont Business Magazine. Hi, welcome to Vermont. Thank you. In, you know, we're here, we have some hope. But I'm wondering, you know, we have vaccinations coming and there's good treatments, but we also have the flu season coming. When can we expect not necessarily to be back to normal, but at least back to out of the woods, something like that? Well, it's a very interesting question because one of the reasons Asia adapted so well to the COVID-19 prevention is because they had dealt with SARS and they had dealt with MERS. And they developed a mask-wearing culture where, so I hate to think that we may become mask-wearing cultures during time of infectious diseases and spread. And so I'm never willing to say that we're going to abandon all of our public health interventions in the future because the fact that Asia had SARS and MERS, they were able to immediately move to a mask-wearing universal mandated. They didn't have to mandate MERS. They just knew that that's the way you prevent and spread of infectious diseases. I think what will be very important, like with the gating criteria that we put out in the middle of April that were very clear about gates that each state needed to go through in order to open up again safely. Every state should be looking at the percentage of individuals vaccinated before they determine relaxation of any of their public health measures. And that will be in a state by state. I know most of the states are in the midst of submitting their vaccine delivery plans. That will be very critical. I haven't seen any of those plans yet. But that will determine how fast as a country and how fast as each state we come back to whatever that new normal is. And it will depend very much on developing that level of immunity across the population. And so each state will need to keep track of their immunization rates. And remember, many of these immunizations are two doses. And so through that time period of immunization, before you developed effective immunity, you need to still continue to take all of those precautions. And we need to continue taking those precautions until the states tell us that a significant number of the population has been immunized and so that we've achieved relative herd immunity but through immunization. Thank you. Andra Zwozo from Seven Days. Hi there. Thanks a lot. I'm hoping to find out a little bit about what the role of rapid testing might be in monitoring close living situations, like college campuses, with that advantage of capturing potential cases a little earlier. And I'm asking particularly in light of some of the concerns around false positives that led Nevada to the use of two of those tests the other day. Yeah, great question related. So each of these tests have a different profile. There is point of clear nucleic acid testing that you see in the Abbott ID Now platform. And then there is antigen testing. One of the best comparators of antigen testing has been done by the University of Arizona, where they've been comparing the Quidel antigen test to nucleic acid testing to antibody development and bringing those all together to really understand where the best utility of these antigen tests are. And the antigen tests may correlate with the infectious period, because it requires active replication and protein production by the virus. And so each of these tests have a different advantage. But I believe that one of the critical use of the antigen test, which increases what you just described, what we call the positive predictive value and the negative predictive value of a test, becomes more useful if you're retesting individuals. So it becomes particularly useful in what we call surveillance testing. So in the nursing homes, repetitive testing of the same staff member sometimes as often as twice a week, depending on whether there's virus in the community. You could use it to test K through 12 teachers two and three times a week, more as a reflection of what's going on in the community. Because the more police you could ask them to be tested weekly, the more insight we have into early community spread, just as you described. Not just at the individual level, but understanding if it exists in a particular community is very helpful in getting early control of the virus before people start to get sick and go to the emergency room. Stopping this silent spread early is the key to preventing hospitalizations and fatalities. Thank you. I think that wraps it up then. Great. I just want to thank you all. I know it's a three-day weekend. I know you have a lot of people coming into Vermont. This is the time to increase your surveillance testing into the community as you have many people coming to visit your incredible state and your beautiful landscapes and your incredible leaf color, which we don't have in the Mid-Atlantic states. So thank you. And thank you for the time. And thank you, Mr. President. Really want to thank your staff. As you can see that there's real a coalition of the willing to really ensure that students, staff, and faculty and communities remain safe but engaged. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Burks. It was just wonderful to have you visit. And I think it gives us a boost in what we're trying to do. I join you in thanking our team. One of somebody's called it a team of teams and how well they work together. And I, again, would just like to emphasize how much I'm impressed with our students. They didn't have to be this way. Please continue that way. But I'm so glad they chose to be this way. And I've taken every chance possible to thank them. And I hope that our community will keep that up, too. So thank you for your visit. And we hope for that vaccine and that out of the woods thing soon. OK, thanks. Thanks all for coming.