 I want to start by talking about the current situation of the state and nation. Most of us are tired of talking about COVID-19. And many of us thought that once people were vaccinated, most of the problems would go away. But unfortunately, it's become clear that this isn't going away anytime soon. COVID will be part of our lives for quite some time. The good news is, because of our highest in the nation vaccination rate, as the country has endured Delta, we've maintained one of the lowest hospitalization and death rates in the nation while leading in testing. But the virus is crafty and persistent. And it keeps spreading and mostly amongst the unvaccinated. If you're still unvaccinated, I want to be clear, you'll be infected sooner or later. It's just a matter of time. And if you're unvaccinated and you get it, the data is clear. Over the last several weeks in Vermont, you're about 30 times more likely to be hospitalized if you're not vaccinated and boosted. But it's important to remember, though vaccines are good at preventing disease. In the first place, their primary function is to prevent severe illness. And if you're six months from your initial doses, it's important to get your booster to keep this protection as strong as possible. From the very beginning, protecting our healthcare system has been our top priority. The fact is, unvaccinated adults are undermining that objective. Because even though there are about 5% of the population, they account for about 75% of the hospitalizations. And last week, there were days the unvaccinated made up 90% of the ICU. Let me repeat that. Just 5% of adults are creating over 75% of our problem in hospitals. The unvaccinated also account for over 70% of cases. While kids are a large percentage of this, fortunately, for the most part, they aren't ending up in the hospital. And many more are now eligible for vaccination. You've probably heard, and the press has certainly reported on, the demands of some to move back to the mandates of 2020, which would impact all Vermonters. You've heard me talk at length over the last several weeks about why I don't think we should reinstate mandates and continue to live under a perpetual state of emergency, more than 20 months into this, while we approach 90% of our total population having at least one dose. And we're not alone here, as President Biden and most other states have taken similar positions, including those with governors who are Democrats. But there's another important reason why I'm not going to put broad restrictions back in place, and that's because the vast majority of Vermonters have stepped up, done the right thing, and gotten vaccinated. And as a result, they're not the problem. I simply can't justify going back into a state of emergency, putting restrictions on the 95% of Vermont adults who have done the right thing and gotten vaccinated when the problem is being driven by less than 5% of that population, meaning unvaccinated adults, who by now have had every opportunity to get vaccinated and have decided not to. The reality is vaccines work, which allowed those who are unvaccinated to do many of the things we had to leave behind in 2020 in the first half of 2021. And let's not forget, many restrictions, like mandatory distancing, gathering, and visitation limits, had a negative impact on physical and mental health. The hundreds of thousands of people who did the right thing and are therefore not the problem should not be punished to protect the people who have chosen not to protect themselves. A few months ago, Vermont became one of the first states to implement a vaccine or test and masking requirement for state employees. The policy has worked and helped increase our vaccination rate. I've encouraged other employers in the public and private sector to use this as a model, and we're going to increase that effort. In the coming weeks, my team will meet with trade associations, employers, and other organizations who talk through the benefits of requiring vaccination or testing for employees where we continue to see transmission. The science tells us that virus spread is much more likely to occur in settings where you're with someone for over 15 minutes, as opposed to brief interactions in places like convenience stores. In addition, restaurants, bars, and clubs are places where these types of longer interactions occur, and masking is obviously much less practical there as well. But vaccines have made it safe to go to places like these again, and that's a good thing. And we're also seeing a number of them require proof vaccination at the door as a way to help keep everyone protected, which I think is a good idea, at least for right now. As a reminder, 18 to 29-year-olds have a lower vaccination rate than any other age band. Putting in place vaccine or test requirements will help prevent virus spread and keep employees from missing work, and we'll have more on this soon. But in order to make this strategy more successful, we're continuing our work to secure tens of thousands of rapid tests to give out to Vermonters at no charge. As we've said, securing this supply is a challenge, but we're getting closer. Last week, we announced a rule that requires commercial insurance companies to reimburse for these tests, but that doesn't cover everyone, and it's important we provide these tests to all. Because this is the future, and rapid tests will be much more prevalent in our lives, and we hope to have more information on this effort in the coming days. Lastly, we're going to step up our efforts to get more boosters into our arms. While Vermont is the national leader for boosters, we still have much more work to do. Over the weekend, Dr. Fauci was asked whether the definition of fully vaccinated would change to include someone who has received their booster. He said, it's more likely a matter of when, not if. We want Vermonters to get ahead of this and think of it that way right now. If it's been six months since your second dose of Pfizer or Moderna, or two months since J&J, don't consider yourself fully protected unless you've gotten a booster. Waning immunity on top of whatever impacts Omicron could have makes getting your booster essential. While the initial doses worked well at preventing severe disease and illness for Delta, a booster will greatly reduce the chance of getting it in the first place. So we're going to launch booster campaigns similar to our aggressive approach with vaccines a year ago. The goal is to make it easy and accessible for all people to get maximum protection. If you get boosted right now, you'll be much more protected by Christmas and New Year's. I'll now turn it over to Commissioner Pichek for his update. Thank you very much, Governor, and good afternoon, everybody. Taking a look here first at Vermont's case counts for the past week, you can see that we did experience a reprieve from the surge following Thanksgiving. Cases were down in Vermont, 15%, while at the same time cases were up across New England, 19%. So Vermont stood out this week in terms of the direction of our cases with 350 fewer cases this week than what we reported last week. And when you look at the numbers relative to the amount of testing and the positivity rate, you will see that testing was down over the last seven days, about 10%. So maybe some of that decrease was attributable to testing, but at the same time Vermont continues to lead the nation in the number of tests conducted for any jurisdiction. And you can see there that the positivity rate decreased a bit this week as well. So while testing did go down, it appears that cases were down as a result of lower virus infection as well. And when you look at the next slide, one that we've been showing regularly, you can again see the difference in that fully vaccinated and not fully vaccinated rate, about 5.1 times greater for those who are not fully vaccinated. And you'll also see that the biggest decrease came in that fully vaccinated rate as well, decreasing about 16% over the last week. As the governor mentioned, there is new analysis here relating to how effective boosters have been in Vermont to protect those from the most severe outcomes, including hospitalization and death. This analysis here that we'll show, this is looking at Vermonters 18 and older and comparing these populations that are not vaccinated, populations that are fully vaccinated but not boosted, and then those who are fully vaccinated with a booster shot. And as you'll see, those who are not fully vaccinated were 30 times more likely to require hospitalization over the last six weeks compared to those who were fully vaccinated and boosted. Similarly, on the next slide, you'll see a comparable analysis but looking at fatalities. Again, this is looking at the 18 and older population and similarly looking at the last six weeks. And here you'll see a similar dramatic difference. Those not fully vaccinated were 34 times more likely to die from COVID-19 over the last six weeks compared to those who were fully vaccinated and boosted as well. So that data is really clear for Vermont. It matches data that we're seeing across the country as well, that the effectiveness of the booster particularly to keep people out of the hospital and those from dying is highly effective. Also, tomorrow is the anniversary from the first dose of the vaccine being delivered in Vermont. An analysis that we have done, that we refreshed from earlier this year, estimates that in Vermont alone, 930 lives have been saved from the vaccine being available to Vermonters over the past year. So again, something else to be proud about in terms of Vermont's ability to go out and get vaccinated but we need to continue to do that and particularly do it as it relates to the boosters as well. Looking at the case rate slide, you'll see that the ages that are the most vaccinated and most boosted, that's 65 and older, continues to have the lowest case rates here compared to the other age groups. You will see all of the age groups are generally down this week as cases are down but again that big difference between the 65 and older are most vulnerable population which is important to see. Looking geographically at the cases, you'll see some improvement in the worst hit areas of the state from last week particularly Bennington County but at the same time cases are elevated in southern Vermont and that's where we're seeing hospitalizations as well in Rutland, Bennington and a few hospitalizations now in Wyndham County at Brattaburl as well. Looking at the next slide, we're looking at our modeling slide that basically is the same story that we've seen over the last month or so. We're not anticipating cases will go down over the next four weeks. In addition to that, there's some uncertainty that comes with the Christmas and New Year's holiday relating to the gatherings that will occur and in fact we do anticipate that cases will rise following those holidays probably on the upper end of our projections over the next two or three weeks following those holidays and you'll see that on the next slide as well. We track very closely to last year when we saw an increase when colder weather set in a decrease following Thanksgiving because of a testing decrease then a slow gradual decline leading up to Christmas and New Year's. Again, we're following a similar pattern as last year we just saw a larger surge after Thanksgiving but we still anticipate cases will increase after Christmas and New Year's so do everything that you can to prevent that or to make it as unimpactful as possible by getting boosted, wearing a mask, staying home if you're sick and all of the other health precautions. Looking across the higher education campuses you'll see we had 104 cases this week that is the most that we've reported in a single week. Just by a single case we had 103 earlier in the semester. Many of those cases are attributable to the outbreak that's been reported at Middlebury College. Elsewise the colleges in higher education was pretty quiet this week. Looking at long-term care facility you'll see that the numbers are down again. Just 29 active cases associated with an outbreak that are shown here on the slide and a relatively small number of total outbreaks as well. Moving over to hospitalizations you'll see similarly here some improvement over what we have been seeing the last few weeks. The overall hospitalization numbers remain flat this week. Also 72% of those in the hospital have been those not vaccinated over the last seven days. On the ICU side you see that we are declining about 8% over the last week and again about 77% of those requiring ICU over the last seven days not vaccinated. Looking at the next slide you'll see the availability of both hospital beds and ICU beds. The hospital bed availability stayed relatively flat as the numbers stayed relatively flat but ICU availability did tick up this week providing some additional rooms but again still only with 11 rooms I think available today or yesterday still something to be mindful of and cautious and look at very closely. Looking at the COVID-19 deaths so far for the month of December we are now at 20 deaths for the month. I mentioned earlier the difference between those that are fully vaccinated and boosted compared to those who are not fully vaccinated. Another trend that we're seeing in the fatality data is just when you look at the raw number of individuals dying more recently the number of people dying who are not vaccinated is greater than the number of people who are fully vaccinated or fully vaccinated with a booster. So again it just supports that data from earlier. It just shows the importance of getting vaccinated because it is protecting people from the worst COVID-19 outcomes. Looking at our vaccination data you can see number one across the board on most of these metrics and then flipping on the next page one that we've been watching closely 5 to 11 year olds. You can see Vermont is just under 50% for those that have a single dose and about 25% for those who are fully vaccinated so making good progress there but again we'd like to see that tick up a little bit more. And then finally looking at the booster data similarly Vermont near or at the top on most of these metrics we did cross the 70% of those 65 and older or fully vaccinated that have received a booster. So that's great. We're seeing that impact in the hospitalizations and our fatality numbers so we definitely want to keep that up for anyone that's over 65 or anyone that's over 18 that's eligible for their booster to go and get it today. So with that I'll now turn it over to Secretary French. Thank you. Commissioner Pichek, good afternoon. There are three mitigation strategies that we're implementing to prevent COVID-19 from disrupting the education of our children. Those three strategies are vaccination testing and the in school recommendations for mitigation. Of these three, vaccination is by far and away the most important. In the 12 and older school population more than 75% of the students are now fully vaccinated and last week the CDC extended its recommendation for boosters to 16 and 17 year olds. We strongly encourage all 16 and 17 year olds to get the booster when they're at least six months past the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Just reminder that the Pfizer vaccine is the only authorized vaccine for the students in this age band. Vermont's success in adolescent vaccination will no doubt be pointed at the major variable that explains the difference we're seeing in the relative stability in our schools. In particular our high schools this year are operating in a much more stable manner than our elementary schools. I think that's something we should be proud of compared to where we were last year with the amount of hybrid learning we saw in high schools this year. High schools are operating very continuously, relatively speaking. And we're confident as the elementary level of vaccination rolls out that we will see improved stability at the elementary level. To date as Commissioner Pichek highlighted we're around 50% of the 5 through 11 population have received at least one dose or registered in the system to get the first dose. It were about 25% of completed both doses. And Secretary Smith will highlight some more of this information in his report. We do expect 5 through 11 vaccination to make an impact on elementary school operations around mid-January. We do anticipate that this impact will be uneven across the state due to the differences in vaccination rates. Some elementary schools will have higher student vaccination rates than others. So we are working on plans to support those schools that have lower vaccination rates. Our response testing, including Test to Stay, continues to roll out steadily across the state and is contributing, I think, significantly to keeping more kids in school when we do have cases. For the last three weeks or so, we've seen about a 20 to 30% increase in the number of schools conducting Test to Stay antigen testing on a weekly basis. Last week, 172 schools conducted antigen testing under Test to Stay. Last week, we also saw the largest number of antigen chests being administered in schools in a single week. Last week, we had 5,194 tests administered under Test to Stay. We are starting to see enough data now that our Health Department's EPI team is starting to do some preliminary analysis of the EPI data from the antigen testing. The data seemed to indicate a 0.9% average positivity rate. This includes tests administered for both students and staff, and we do have a few schools that have higher positivity rates in the 5% to 6% range. We can't make a direct comparison between the antigen test positivity rate and the broader state positivity rate as a result of the PCR testing, but the low positivity rate from the antigen chest does confirm our perception that Test to Stay allows us to focus with some more precision on identifying cases in schools and certainly helps us enabling students to stay in school as a result. So again, preliminary data, but it confirms our perception that Test to Stay is a really important strategy. Last week, we did expand Test to Stay to include pre-K sites in the public schools. We are working on implementing it in the private pre-K and the childcare centers and hope to announce that expansion after the first of the year. On a related note, we're working on an issue related to expiring antigen test kits. We knew some of the testing kits would expire soon, so we're working with schools to help prioritize the use of those kits and get them used up prior to their expiring dates, expiration dates. One strategy we are suggesting for schools is that they conduct broader antigen testing before the holiday break. We are recommending schools offer one or more days of mass antigen tests to all the students and staff who are signed up for the response testing. This will help us identify additional cases prior to the holiday vacation and give families some additional peace of mind as they gather for the holidays. Vaccination and testing will remain the cornerstones of our school mitigation strategy, but we'll continue to provide recommendations on the mitigation measures for schools to use their operations as conditions evolve, particularly as we monitor the spread of the Omicron variant. We have a recommendation on wearing masks in schools that has been adopted by all schools in the state but one. In our recommendation on masking, we suggest also that masks are not necessary in schools when student vaccination rates reach 80%. However, we've delayed the implementation of that recommendation on two occasions this fall based on changing conditions of the virus. And currently, the go live date for this recommendation is January 18th. The last time we adjusted the date for this recommendation was at the end of October. We set the date to mid-January in anticipation of meeting to reassess conditions after the holiday vacation. I wanted to highlight today that our recommendations for schools like this one continue to evolve based on the conditions and if conditions change, we'll make adjustments to those recommendations accordingly. That concludes my update. I'll turn it over to Secretary Smith. Thank you, Secretary French. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll start off with an update on boosters as well as vaccines for children 5 to 11. Then I'll provide an update on hospital capacity and some changes in hospital reporting. 197,883 Vermonters have received a booster shot. That's over 46% of the state's population that are ages 18 and over. 16 and 17-year-olds can now get a booster. 22,436 children ages 5 to 11 have received their first dose of COVID vaccine or they have made an appointment to get their shot. That's roughly 51% of all Vermont children ages 5 to 11 years old. If you have a child who is 5 years or older, please get them vaccinated. You can make an appointment by going to healthvermont.gov. Or you can simply call 855-722-7878. Now shifting to hospital capacity. As I've mentioned before, we have a three-pronged strategy to reduce stress on our hospitals. Number one, prevent hospitalizations in the first place. Number two, transfer those from hospitals who still need care but not necessarily hospital care. And number three, expand the capacity of ICU beds in the state. So now let's talk about what we're doing for prevention. As you know, we continue to have a robust vaccination program, the best in the nation. It combines the capabilities and resources of the state, the National Guard, our healthcare providers, EMS, and our network of retail pharmacies. We are supplementing the vaccination effort with an expanded monoclonal treatment program. We've added FEMA-contracted paramedics and EMS personnel to support monoclonal treatment sites. EMS and FEMA teams will provide additional monoclonal antibody capabilities at hospitals across the state with mobile capacity to serve long-term care facilities with cases and wherever else needed. As of now, EMS teams are delivering monoclonal antibodies at Rutland Regional Medical Center and Northwestern Medical Center. Beginning as early as Friday, they will be at UVMMC. They'll also respond to outbreaks at long-term care facilities. We expect the FEMA teams to arrive late this week. Their work will focus on additional capacity at hospitals across the state. As for transferring patients out of hospitals back in October, anticipating a hospital surge, we opened up 80 subacute beds. Recently, we've made an additional agreement for a total of 39 more beds in three long-term care facilities. So far, 19 of the 39 subacute beds have come online. We have the ability to add more beds as needed. In terms of ICU beds, the UVMM Medical Center now has five additional ICU beds online and Northwestern Medical Center added two additional ICU beds. One additional ICU bed is now available at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center with another one expected to be operational soon. As you remember, 10 is our number that we're looking for. We're getting towards there, but we still are going to be trying to open up more ICU beds. As Commissioner Pichek has pointed out, 42% of those hospitalized with COVID are unvaccinated. The numbers are higher, 77% for those that are in the ICU and unvaccinated. Every morning, every single morning I get a report, and so does everyone up on this stage, get a report on the positive cases in Vermont, and consistently, as the governor said, over 70% are unvaccinated, with the bulk of the unvaccinated people being capable of being vaccinated. We are spending considerable amounts of money and resources to accommodate those that are not vaccinated and end up in our hospitals. It puts a stress on the system and takes away a hospital bed that may be needed for other hospitalizations that are not COVID related. And frankly, it's unfair to those that have done the right thing and gotten vaccinated, but now must pay for the actions of those that aren't vaccinated. I realize that Vermonters have a choice, but some choices have consequences. In this case, refusing to get the vaccine results in higher hospitalizations and stress on the healthcare system at significant cost. I'm asking Vermonters, I'm trying everything to convince Vermonters to please get vaccinated. It is simple and easy in this state. It is the most effective tool to fight the virus and protect your community. Turning to hospital reporting, we are making a change in the facilities that are included in our COVID hospitalization reporting after identifying an issue that was giving us an inaccurate count of people hospitalized for COVID. The Brattleville Retreat in the Vermont Psychiatric Hospital currently report COVID cases in their hospitals. However, that does not give an accurate picture to make a hospital capacity decision. In reality, patients are hospitalized at these locations for reasons unrelated to COVID. And if they need hospitalization because of COVID, they are transferred to a hospital for treatment. Put simply, even though they're not being treated for COVID, they're being counted simply because they are COVID in one of, COVID positive in one of these facilities. Therefore, to more accurately reflect our COVID hospitalizations, these two facilities will be treated like other congregate living facilities for reporting purposes. Just a few quick updates, as Commissioner Pichek talked about in his hospital update, his higher education update, there was an outbreak at Middlebury College. Within a day, the state set up four additional testing clinics in the town of Middlebury. This accounted for more than 500 additional appointments for people to get tested over the weekend. We also distributed around 400 rapid at-home tests within the community. And finally, I just want to continue to talk a little bit about testing here. We continue working to get Vermonters access to at-home rapid tests. We expect more rapid tests to be delivered to this state and used throughout the holidays. All the information about what to do if you test positive for COVID-19, including reporting your status, especially with some of these take-home tests, is on the Health Department's website. Go to healthvermont.gov.covid-19-positive. You can also, like I said, call the hotline at 855-722-7878. As always, thank you for doing your part to keep Vermont safe. I'll now turn it over to Dr. Levine for a health update. Thank you. Heard a lot of numbers this morning. I'm going to focus on what I want to help you accomplish what you should do as we approach these next few weeks. Obviously, we're still in a very challenging stage of the pandemic, seeing high levels of virus spreading through our communities and more people in the hospital with COVID-19. But vaccination continues to protect the majority of Vermonters from severe outcomes. But older people and those with underlying conditions still remain at risk. At the same time, we've also been living with COVID-19 for so long now that I know that many of you are just playing over it, trying to live your lives once again. And I get it. The strains on our mental and emotional well-being are far beyond anything many of us have ever experienced before. However, there is a balance to how we live with this virus. The more we can reduce the risk of spreading the virus as a regular part of our daily lives, the less we need to worry about it. We'll be healthier, we'll keep the most vulnerable safe, lower the burden on healthcare workers and others who are simply burned out with this relentless response work. So remember the basic steps to protect one another as we plan ahead for the next holiday gatherings. First, have the talk before you go. Find out whether people will be vaccinated, boosted, or if extra precautions need to be taken for anyone who may be sitting around the table at higher risk, such as wearing a mask when you're not eating. Keep it small. The more people in households, the higher the chance that someone could have the virus and expose others. Have a strategy for testing get tested before you gather to protect everyone. You can use a rapid at home test kit which typically calls for one test one day or two before the gathering and the other the same day you will be gathering. That helps make sure that if you have a negative result, it is accurate. And of course, if you have symptoms, even mild ones, choose to skip the event and stay home. While this decision can be hard, the flexibility is key to keeping others safe. Finally, plan to test once again five to seven days after such a gathering, even if you're fully vaccinated, even if you don't have any symptoms. As you've heard, we are continuing to transition testing opportunities to having more free rapid testing options for Vermonters. And these kinds of self tests are critical risk reduction measure along with vaccination, masking and other strategies. Not only do they produce quick same day results, they're also more convenient and easy to use. As I've said before, the most important step you can take right now is to get your booster shut if you haven't already. This includes the fact that 16 and 17-year-olds who are now approved to receive a Pfizer booster following federal authorization last week, we lead the nation in boosters, but that's clearly not enough at this point in time. We need to be well above a 50% threshold with Delta and knowing all we know about it and with Omicron on the horizon. Because as I said last week, you are not fully protected until you've gotten that booster if it's been six months since your mRNA vaccine or two months since J&J. And I base this on all the evidence we have with the Delta variant, which currently makes up 100% of cases in Vermont. In addition, there's now emerging data from the UK and Israel regarding the Omicron variant. And it shows that there is loss of protection from infection if you've only had a two-dose series and that a third vaccine dose will provide considerable defense against the new variant. There are also early indications based on the relatively few cases we have in the United States that the rate of breakthrough infection will be higher, but the vaccines will still protect us against more serious outcomes if you've had the third dose. Now, while the data around this new variant is new and emerging, it currently supports what we've been saying all along. Vaccines are the most effective protection against bad outcome, serious illness, hospitalization, death. This protection depends on you being up-to-date and fully protected. It means a three-dose series, whether you call the third dose a booster or something else. Now, as scientists are gathering more information on this variant and Delta cases continue to surge, the time to protect ourselves is now today. We have still not found Omicron in Vermont, but it's been found in many U.S. states, including now all of our border states and our border country. We're continuing our genetic sequencing work with Broad Institute and our own public health lab. Burlington continues to do wastewater sampling, and it has not been detected there yet. We'll certainly inform Vermonters when, not if, Omicron is identified in our state. You can find a clinic including walk-in opportunities at healthvermont.gov. We consider the third dose so essential to our future success in Vermont that we are now still one of the few states where state-run clinic opportunities are in abundance. Last week, I had a special message for the unvaccinated Vermonter. Get a COVID test as soon as you have symptoms so that you can avail yourself of monoclonal antibodies which could save your life, could prevent a hospitalization, but you need to test yourself and recognize these symptoms before you require hospitalization. I have another message for you today. Look at the data that you've seen presented, especially the percentages of ICU admissions and deaths among those who are unvaccinated. Let that data speak to you as you think about your own risk. And if someone that you know is not yet vaccinated, help them understand this data. Or if someone has not yet vaccinated their child, help them understand the data and think about how you can help them with their decision. Talking to them about the benefits of vaccination, listening to their concerns with empathy, helping them find their own reason to get vaccinated, helping them find a trusted source of information. These are always we can influence our friends and loved ones without blaming or shaming. Getting vaccinated can even be a gift to your loved ones this season, a time when we try to think of others. In closing, we need to respect and protect one another right now. Respect the highly contagious nature of the virus and respect one another by staying home when you're sick, putting on your mask in public places and sometimes even in private indoor settings. What does protect really mean? Protect one another. Think of the most vulnerable person in your life. What could happen to them if they got COVID-19? If we all work to protect that person, we protect our families, our friends, our coworkers, our hospitals, indeed our whole community. Thank you, Dr. Levine. I'll now open it up to questions. Governor, you're obviously sticking to your guns on the masking idea, but we haven't seen Omicron here yet and that's supposed to be even more rapidly, more contagious than Delta is. I mean, when that presumably is going to arrive sometime, could that change your mind? Well, obviously, we'll continue to evaluate as conditions change or don't change. We're hearing a lot of different opinions about Omicron, but I think the jury is still out in some respects. We don't know, I've heard some reports that it's highly transmissible, but not as severe in terms of illness like Delta has, but time will tell. But obviously, we will continue to evaluate on a daily basis and if something changes, as we've done in the past, we'll make those decisions to protect our monitors. Governor, you mentioned the 5% of unvaccinated for monitors that are having an effect on all of the monitors, that 95%. Do you know, maybe this is Commissioner Peachette's question, how many people pick up that 5%? I think it's somewhere between 30 and 50,000, but yeah, I think that's right, 40,000. 40,000? 40,000. How about we need to deliver shots and deliver boosters? I mean, what more can be done? I know you said that you're working with trade associations, but should there be harder steps taken? Well, you know, we've seen some restaurants that have made vaccinations mandatory or you don't get in. It's like a vaccine passport and that's up to the individual business. I attended a trade association dinner last week. I didn't stay for the dinner, but I spoke at it and they had a policy as well. There were over 200 people there, but you had to be vaccinated in order to attend. So we're seeing signs of this throughout Vermont and I think that it's a step in the right direction. And if you don't, like we've done with vaccine requirements or testing, masking and testing requirements for state employees, we'd like to see more businesses take that approach as well, but we're working on that. You said more information is to come in the next couple of days about the more robust booster program you hinted at, but I think a lot of Vermonters are impressed at the availability of shots. So what are some areas that you're looking to improve upon upon what we already have today? I think there is a certain population that is tired again, frustrated, just don't want to talk about COVID any longer. So they think of themselves as being fully vaccinated when the data clearly shows that those vaccines have waned, the efficacy has waned, and the booster is necessary in order to be fully protected. And I'm not sure that message is getting out and we need to be more direct and make sure that we give the statistics in order for them to better protect themselves and their families. So we just want to make sure they have all the information because it's clear. It's clear as day that the boosters are part of the answer. There's more messaging campaign rather than the way that the shots are done, Mr. That's correct. More of a messaging campaign, and we have some ideas on how to do that, but we'll have more in the days to come. Governor, a question on a completely different topic. Next year's shaping up is a pretty interesting political year in Vermont. Have you given any thought yet to whether you're going to run for reelection next year? Obviously, it's on my mind every now and then. Some days it's more on my mind than others, but I'm focused on COVID at this point, developing policies for the state of the state address as well as for our budget address in January. So I'm going to focus on that and then make a decision. When you say it's on your mind, are you getting how to put it politely, fed up with the job? No, no, no. You know, it's obviously this isn't the optimum time to be governor, but it has its rewards. And we have done some amazing things. I have a great team. And I thank my lucky stars that I have the team surrounding me that I do because we've done a lot of good for Vermont. And we want to continue to do so. So again, I'm not tired of the responsibility or the position, but I have to just weigh things out and make sure it's best for Vermont and for myself. So unrelated to COVID question for you, and Secretary Smith, too, if you can jump in afterwards. What is your response to the lawsuit against the state regarding claims of abuse at the Woodside Juvenile Center? Yeah, obviously, there's not much I can say. It's in the hands of lawyers at this point. But we shut down that facility a number of months ago and are looking in a different direction for it wasn't as effective. It wasn't moving in the right direction. It wasn't the treatment that we wanted to give and we wanted to use a different setting. And it cost a lot of money in terms of the program that existed. So we made a change and we closed it down. Secretary Smith. Yeah, I'm not going to add too much more other than, you know, it wasn't meeting the needs of the children in that particular group. And so we've made the decision to close it down and really push that decision. We have decided to go in a more therapeutic direction and that's one of the things that we would like to do in Newberry is develop a therapeutic setting for these type of individuals, these type of kids, as we're moving forward. And what this is about now is how we're going to move forward in a therapeutic sort of environment. Has the state filed its appeal for Newberry's facility? I believe we have, Calvin. I'll double check, but I believe we have. A messaging campaign. One of the things that caught my ear from Commissioner Pijek is this number about the 930 lives that very likely were saved by vaccines. I think that's quite impressive. Commissioner Pijek, if you wouldn't mind sort of explaining how you've arrived at that number and then Governor, reflect on that figure because I do think it's impressive. Again, we lead the nation in the lowest number of deaths in gross numbers as well as per capita and have continued to do so over quite a period of time. So we're pleased with that, but any death is unfortunate and we strive every day to try and protect people and that's why we want to make sure that we provide the boosters and the protection needed to prevent loss of lives. Yeah, thank you, Governor. So there's really two parts to that analysis, Jack. One is to look at what were the fatality rates by age prior to the vaccine being available and then taking a look at how many people in those age groups are being infected once the vaccine did become widely available and what's that difference in the fatality rate? You also need to anticipate what's the difference in the infection rate as well. Without the vaccine you would anticipate there would be more infections in Vermont starting from last winter all the way through today, particularly with Delta. So that reduction in infections and then that reduction in fatalities brought on by the greater protection, particularly in those 65 or older. So that's really the sort of highlights of how that analysis is put together. Are you impressed with that number? Yeah, certainly. You think of how many deaths we've had to date in Vermont and it's unfortunate, as the Governor said, of every death and having 436 is, you know, it's the lowest or one of the lowest in the country. So Vermonters have that to be proud of. It's still unfortunate that we've had those deaths. But it is impressive when you think about Vermonters stepping up to protect nearly a thousand people, you know, from also succumbing to the virus in our state. Governor, how strong is the state supply of those at-home tests at this point? Do we have enough heading into Christmas as people get tested, you know, and after gathering? Yeah. I don't have the numbers at my fingertips. Maybe Secretary Smith does. But we feel okay at this point, but we're working on a number of different initiatives to provide more. If everything holds true, knock on wood, we should have 10,000 lamp tests and 50,000 engine tests for the holiday season. So that's what we're gearing to. They should be coming in this week and the first part of the next week. Yeah, as well as our ongoing PCR testing that you asked about the rapid tests, so those are the rapid tests. It appears as though this year, this coming session, the Ed Fund is going to have some $90 million surplus. How do you envision pitching to the legislature to have that money spent? Well, again, I put that in the message in the letter. I think half of it should be given back to taxpayers and utilize the other portion to further the other crisis we're facing, which is a workforce shortage. And if it means putting more into our CTE programs in school and education to give the desired result of training more people for our workforce, I'd like to see the rest of it. I'm sure the legislature might have some of their own ideas. Why not for pensions or for school repairs or others? Well, again, if it's an excess payment, I think you might want to ask a few taxpayers what they think. I would say that taxpayers might say, why don't you just give it back to me if I overpaid? So I would like to at least meet them halfway and give them back a rebate but also to put it in areas, again, education-wise where we can get the desired results of having more being introduced to the workforce because we have a tremendous, tremendous need, a shortage of workers in this state and the training opportunities are going to be immense but also attracting more people to come to the state is going to be equally as important. Starting with Chris Roy, Newport Daily Express. Yes, good afternoon, Governor. I have no questions today. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. You get a gold star today. Thank you. Greg Lamaroe, the County Courier. Good afternoon, Governor. I don't think I'm going to get that same gold star from you. You've gotten very few. Very few. Governor, we keep hearing at these news conferences that the statistics show that people who are being infected, many, many, many of them are unvaccinated. We don't hear what the numbers are between the fully vaccinated and the fully protected, as Dr. Levine would put it, with a booster. Why is the state not presenting the numbers of people that are getting infected that have been vaccinated of that percentage? You know, how many are boosted and how many are not? Yeah, I think you make a good point because we're going to have to provide, I think that would help the booster program if we were able to provide that information. Obviously, there's still going to be breakthroughs whether you're fully vaccinated, fully boosted. There are breakthroughs in that regard because nothing is 100% effective. But it's the vast majority of those who are fully vaccinated and fully boosted are not in the hospital. I mean, you just see the data. I went through over the weekend and I saw, I took Saturday's numbers as a snapshot in time. We had 532 cases on Saturday. 81.5% of them were unvaccinated. And then when you look at the numbers of the cases themselves, I broke it out into thirds. So a third of the population, 0 to 19-year-olds, were made up a third of those cases that were positive cases. Then 20 to 39 made up another third. And then 40 and over was another third. But when you broke that down and looked at who was hospitalized, the 0 to 19-year-olds, which is a third of the cases, there was one case that was hospitalized. When you took the 20 to 39, another third of the cases, there were five who were in the hospital. You take the 40 and over, which is the third of the cases, 62 were in the hospital as a result. So I think it tells you a lot. The data drives some of the decision-making. And I think that maybe Commissioner Peachette can elaborate on the boosters and other information. Yeah, thank you, Governor. And thanks, Greg, for the question. Just wanted to point out that when it comes to hospitalization data and fatality data, we are providing that breakdown and that difference between those that are not fully vaccinated. Those are fully vaccinated without a booster shot and those who are fully vaccinated with a booster shot. So as we said, you know, if you're fully vaccinated with a booster shot, you're significantly less likely to end up in the hospital. Same is true if you're fully vaccinated. It's just a magnitude of difference. Those that are not fully vaccinated were 30 times more likely to end up in the hospital than those fully vaccinated with a booster. And the difference is about seven times for those that are fully vaccinated alone. And on the fatality side, you know, we said 34 times difference between those not fully vaccinated and those fully vaccinated with a booster and about five times difference for those just fully vaccinated. So still protection obviously there, but to maximize the protection, it's important to get your booster as well. And I think Dr. Levine wanted to add something. Yeah, the only thing I wanted to add is that that is the important data. Again, the promise of vaccines to the public is you will not have the serious outcome, whether it be hospitalization or death. And the promise of boosting is similarly you will be much less likely to have those serious outcomes. We currently have around a 2% breakthrough case rate. So your chance of becoming a case if you've been vaccinated 2%. Haven't done that with the boosters, but the point is those aren't the numbers that matter. Every time people get a flu shot, we don't promise them they won't get the flu, but we would love to be able to promise them with high certainty that they won't have a serious outcome from the flu. That is what the vaccines are to do and that's what we should be focusing on mostly. Even if it's just a case for transparency, shouldn't people know like a breakdown of overall cases, how many people are vaccinated, unvaccinated, boosted, etc.? Yeah, I think part of the dilemma has been the CDC classification. And as I said, my remarks, Dr. Fauci was asked over the weekend about this and he said it's not a question of when it's just a question or if it's a question of when this is going to be changed. So it will be changed and I would expect that being fully vaccinated, that designation would include the booster at that point. And that will clear things up a little bit more. Thank you, Governor. And finally, Governor, you probably heard of a case here in Franklin County, a well-known elementary school teacher, former varsity basketball coach, caught sexual assault with a student over like a half-dozen-year period. In that investigation, there were at least two DCF reports that came up that teachers reported two DCF their concerns with the student and teacher over a two-school-year period. I'm wondering if that worries you a bit with DCF and if they can really protect Vermont's children, if they're not investigating the reports that are coming in. And I heard from a reader this morning that, you know, why would teachers want to continue reporting beyond those two first initial reports that DCF didn't act? Yeah, obviously. I don't have anything to add at this point in time. There is an active investigation. We'll get the facts eventually. And I would agree that our duty is to protect those kids, and we all have an obligation to make that happen. So we'll find out more as the investigation unfolds, but hopefully we'll all learn more about what happened. Is DCF investigating internally as to what went wrong? Secretary Smith. Greg, as soon as I saw the report in the newspaper, I asked DCF to start an internal investigation through Sean Brown, who had actually already started it himself with what precisely happened. It just started. I don't have the information about anything yet. Thank you. When those results come out, I hope they're public. Sure. I would imagine they would be. Thank you. That's it for me. Thank you, Rebecca. Stuart Lundbitter and VC5. Thanks, Jason. Governor, in light of those 40,000 people who could be, but have chosen not to get vaccinated, you know, this is an old expression, hit him where it hurts. Should they face diminished insurance coverage at the pain more if they require hospitalization for COVID? It's a good question. I mean, we're, we're looking at every avenue in terms of encouraging coach, coaching them to do the right thing. I mean, it should be a consideration, I guess, but we haven't talked about that in particular. We're still trying to show them the data to educate them in hopes that they will arrive at the right conclusion, which is you will be helping yourself and your families a great deal more if you're vaccinated. Have you seen any resignations or has HR taken disciplinary action against state employees over the vaccination rule? Not that I'm aware of. Maybe is Secretary Clouser on at this point in time? Do you have any information on that? Thanks, Governor. I can certainly get some updated information from the Department of Human Resources and get back to you. Okay, that'd be great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Michael, BT Digger. Hi, thank you. Governor, I wanted to ask, based on your opening remarks, I noticed lately when we talk about mitigation measures that we tend to hear about these all as one, masking, lockdowns, gathering bans. You tend to put these all in the same category. Whereas it seems as though a lot of health experts we've been hearing from draw a clear distinction between masking and all of these other types of policies. And I wonder why now do you consider these all to be sort of one of the same? Some of the letters we've received from some of the legislative officials have said that everything was on the table, masking and other measures, lockdowns and so forth. So that's why I go back to that being said though, the way that local officials have had to deal with this in terms of considering local mask mandates that have been put through, it seems to have had to kind of face this conversation specifically around masking. And I wonder still when you're discussing this, we hear hearing about things like lockdowns and gathering bans that no one has put on the table in terms of a serious proposal, whether that was mentioned in that legislative resolution or not. So I wonder why do you see a distinction between masking and lockdowns? Or do you see them as one? I think it's all in one package in some respects because one fails, which I believe a mass mandate mandate. And I want to be clear about this. I've tried to be clear. It's not always reported that way. But I don't think the mandate itself is effective. I think masking is effective. But mandating the masking is not effective. And I don't think it's effective at this point. So my fear is this. So we go and we let's say the legislature decides to institute a mass mandate and does so legislatively. And it's in and they have the votes to do so. They can override any veto that I have because they have the numbers. So let's just say they implement that and it doesn't work. It fails. So what are they going to do next? They're going to go on and move on to something more, which would be closing of businesses or maybe distancing or eliminating gatherings and so forth. So there's a whole list of things that we've done since the beginning of the pandemic. And it's just that would be from my perspective. That might be where they would go when they find out that masking a mass mandate isn't going to get them the results that they're hoping for. So far they've said the opposite though. I mean, in this current moment that we are in, they have been absolutely clear that lockdowns are not on the table from their perspective. And so all they've really focused on so far is a statewide mask mandate. So I wonder, you know, if that has not been proposed, it's been something they've been clear about avoiding. Then why are those still... You must be reading different things than I am. I guess we, I don't know. I've read where some had proposed other initiatives. So I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree because I've seen other things that have been written about that and different ideas. So again, we'll see what they do. But I want to be clear about what my thoughts are on this issue. And we'll continue to try and protect the health care system as we have been. And we believe that encouraging masking is important, as well as other mitigation measures, but certainly we don't want to take the focus off from vaccines and boosters because that's the most effective, long-term, most effective. Thank you. Tim, for my business magazine. Thank you, Jason. Governor, seven days and BPR have done several stories recently on the human toll on the health care system. And of course, now we're talking about the need to add hospital beds and ICU beds. Omicron is surrounding us. Delta is still alive and well, it appears. How are you going to... How do we take pressure off the human beings that are still fighting the good fight after almost two years? Yeah, no, that's a good question. And a lot of it is because of our labor shortage or workforce challenges, as you well know, in every sector across the state, but certainly in health care. We had a nursing shortage before the pandemic. And we are certainly seeing that evolve and not in a positive way. So we are well aware of that. We're trying to do everything we can to alleviate the pressure and get back to some sort of normalcy. Secretary Smith. Tim, you asked a really great question. And I said this last week, and I do want to say to the health care workforce out there, thank you. Thank you for everything that you've done. And what we're trying to do is relieve that workforce by moving beds out of hospitals a little bit and not really creating a crowding situation. We are trying to provide extra help in terms of monoclonal and testing and vaccinations as well, where those would normally fall on the health provider system as they do in other states or as they do into the retail pharmacy program. We have, you know, a fairly strong, fairly strong, one of the strongest in the nation, vaccination program, testing programs that can't be beat. So we are trying to relieve the pressure that they are feeling in this state, but they're feeling it all over the United States right now. And hopefully, you know, what we're doing is providing a relief valve until what the governor just said, until we can get a long-term strategy to get more nurses here in the state. Okay, thank you. Mike Donahue, the Islander. Thanks very much. Governor wanted to follow up some more on the lawsuit filed yesterday against those 22 current and former DCF employees for reportedly abusing children at the old Woodside Center as was noted, it went on for apparently five years according to the lawsuit. And it appears that it is a real hot potato because DCF's own investigators reported in 2018 that the employees were violating state law according to the lawsuit, and it's still continued on. DCF has apparently gone into hiding. Commissioner John Brown has not called back for two days with any comment. I was told your office reached out to DCF to urge a comment when no comment was forthcoming. They were going to reach out again, still nothing from DCF. I don't know if it's a point for mentality or what. The assistant AG for DCF also is missing in action, and T.J. Donovan wanted to DCF only acknowledging that he's mandated to defend these people. It's impossible to reach anybody at DCF. The state's online staff directory still lists 10 shats as the DCF commissioner, and he's been retired since June of 2020. The phone numbers listed are unreliable. The phone number for the lawyer DCF has just been unused numbered IBM and Essex, and as the problems were mentioned about Franklin County and the student and the teacher, there's ongoing problems everywhere with DCF, and they always point to confidentiality. Greg asked, and I guess it's an internal investigation, I'm wondering, is it really time for a real external investigation at DCF? I mean, you can have all the internal investigations you want, and if the lawsuit is correct, there were internal investigations at Woodside that showed ongoing state violations of state law. Nothing was done, so, I mean, can DCF release itself? It's a question, and can you get to DCF and update their names and phone numbers on the state directories, so for monitors, they actually reach out to them? Secretary Smith. We'll have that update done within the next 24 hours, Mike. This is Mike Smith. You know, one of the things I just want to make sure that the record is clear, when one of the things that we did when we first came in, when I first came in at the agency, was to look at Woodside and made the decision within the first month that I was there that we were going to close that facility down. And the reason we were going to close that facility down is because it wasn't meeting the needs of the kids that were going, and we were going to go in a different direction, and we did go in a different direction. Now, I will get the website updated. I'll make sure you get some contacts back, but it is an ongoing litigation right now. There's not a lot that we can say when we're being sued. You will see our response to it at some point. And I suspect that Sean Brown, the commissioner, will tell you that it's an ongoing litigation that we're going to present the facts on our side as well. But again, we shut that place down because it wasn't meeting the needs of the kids, and today it's leveled. But I guess the question is, should it be an external investigation? There's been these internals. You identified, apparently, within a month of arriving on the job that the place ought to be shut down, the DCF internal affairs, whatever it's called, the team found all sorts of violations, and yet nothing is done. I mean, should there be a real external investigation done and not state employees protecting other state employees? As you know, I'm not afraid of external investigations. I've done one with DOC. Exactly. Let's see what we have right at the moment. And if it calls for an external investigation, I will call for an external investigation. It could be you're going away present to the state. It could be in the next two weeks, Mike. My other question is for Dr. Levine. From the health department, I have a record request last month and I appealed to your office on November 19. I was wondering when you might get a response. Under the law, you have five days business days to respond. I think we're on day 15. Any progress on that one? Mike, you're going to have to allow me to get hold of the information and understand it better, because I don't have eyes on that right now. We'll check into it and get back to you. Okay, thank you very much. I'm Davis of Vermont Journal. Hi, can you hear me? We can. I've got two questions. Speaking of investigations, at the end of August, early September, both the AHS and then backed up by Greenmont Care Board began an investigation into the access problems they had at UVMMC with the idea that there would be possibly proposed legislation to the legislature. When are we going to see that report? Is there any results from that investigation? When will we see it? Secretary Smith. I think the timeframe for releasing the preliminary report is January of 2022, and it is on track to be released during the first part of the legislative session, the first month of the legislative session, which is what we had planned to do. Thank you. My second question is for Mike Pichek. There's been some speculation in the press within the last couple of days that when looking at the whole COVID, monitoring the whole COVID progress, that the real issue is the number of hospitalizations. Now, that doesn't mean that they've never been reported before they have, but what I'm curious about is that some places where they're shifting their monitoring process to focus almost entirely on hospitalizations rather than the simple number of cases. What I'm curious about is whether you've looked at that, whether you've already done it, it sounds like the governor did some of it on his own over the weekend. I wonder if you could say whether the focus on hospitalization, as opposed to just cases of COVID, is a good idea, what you think of it, and where you think it might go. Yeah, and I'll thank Sam for the question. You know, hospitalizations, obviously, are critical. They're a good indicator. They allow you to compare jurisdictions, sort of apples to apples, because some of the differences in testing get melted away when you look at hospitalizations. But at the same time, cases still do matter, and they do matter toward hospitalizations. You know, we look at not just what the total number of cases are. We look at what's the mixture of cases by age and vulnerability and vaccination status. So if you have a lot of cases in people that are 65, unvaccinated and vulnerable, you know your hospitalizations are going to go up. There's just no doubt about it. If your cases are among people under 18 years old, fully vaccinated, no vulnerabilities, you can anticipate you'll have very few hospitalizations over the next few weeks. So the cases still do matter in terms of informing the trends and what are likely to be seen in the hospitals. But obviously, you know, fortunately for us, we have such a high percentage of the vulnerable vaccinated and boosted that we are seeing some improvement in that age segment's hospitalization rate. Just one final question. One more loop on the question of hospitalizations. Let me ask the question this way. What are you seeing for hospitalization rate in critical access hospitals, which have 25 beds of fewer, may not have an ICU at all? That is more than half of our system. How much hospital pressure is there in the critical access hospitals for COVID? Yeah, so I mean, when you look at our hospital numbers over the last two months, let's say, you know, they tend to fluctuate primarily where there are a lot of cases in the community, the exception to that being UVM, which generally has had a lot of cases because they take a lot of patients from across the state. But at this moment, you know, when we look at our hospitalizations, Rutland, Bennington, Bradaburl and Central Vermont, and UVM are the ones with most of the cases, the other hospitals will infrequently have more than five cases if, you know, usually zero or single digits. So I think some of that's about transferring them to other hospitals because there have been instances where those communities have seen elevated case rates. Thank you. That's illuminating. I'm done. Ham, I just wanted to add one comment on your previous question because you sort of foreshadowed what's going to be happening in the future. You're really talking about going from pandemic to endemic. Pandemic, we really care about these cases. We care about every piece of data we present to you. When things are endemic, whether it be the common cold or the flu or now COVID in the near future, we hope, cases are not really what you're measuring. You're measuring the serious outcomes and trying to use that data to influence your own policies and interventions along the way. And as we transition from a PCR-based, state-run testing center-based testing strategy to a do-it-yourself-at-home or a rapid antigen test strategy, we will lose a lot of the data about cases unless every person who ever tested themself reports into us that they had a positive test. So cases will become less of a reliable indicator. Percent positivity of tests will become unmeasurable and we will be in a situation where we really are measuring those more serious outcomes. Thanks. Thank you very much for that. Dr. Lagina, I just wondered if you could just give me your gut reaction to whether you have a sense of how close we are to what you might call the endemic, pandemic node where we fundamentally change. You asked the question better than I did, so I'd just like to ask you that. How close do you think we are? Before Omicron appeared on the scene, I would have said March. Now it's plus-minus. Could be longer than that because Omicron could be another wave that really takes over everything in the country but we don't know that yet. Or maybe it could be less than that because actually Omicron infects a whole bunch of people because it's supposed to be even more infectious than Delta. And if it gives a lot more people a milder infection but doesn't cause the serious outcomes and it sort of races through the population, maybe we'll get to endemic even quicker. So far be it from me to put a date or a specific timeline, but those are the scenarios that are possible. Thank you for that. Lisa Loomis, did I report it? Good afternoon. Secretary Smith said the state is getting 10,000 lamp rapid tests and 50,000 rapid antigen tests by Christmas. How will these tests be distributed? We'll still be, we're still working on that Lisa at various locations, but you know these are the lamp tests will be done at a location within one of our testing sites in terms of the lamp tests. We'll hand out the antigen tests as we did in Middlebury over the weekend. We'll hand out those tests to be used at home or you can just do them right there but at home and we will probably use the same locations to hand out sites at our testing sites. All the details haven't been worked out. We're going to announce that next week of all the details. And when can people expect to be able to go to a pharmacy and pick up a couple of tests and have their insurance be billed? At Kinney Drug and Waterbury last week the pharmacist said there was no process for distributing rapid tests and or billing insurance companies for those tests. I'll turn it over to Commissioner Peachek for that answer. Yeah, thank you Secretary Smith. So there has been good progress just in the first week since the program was announced in terms of getting some of the pharmacy benefit managers and down to the pharmacies online. There was some technical paperwork and things of that nature that had to get sorted out which is in place. So Blue Cross Blue Shield in particular has made good progress and hopeful that it will be very short. Shortly that those covered under Blue Cross Blue Shield will have availability. We're hopeful that all of the 140,000 Vermonters will have it before the holidays as well. So like we said, we'll need a little bit of patience. We anticipated a couple of weeks. We're sort of a week into it now. But certainly want to remind those that are covered that they can still seek reimbursement and that's retroactive to December 1st. Thank you. And then just one quick follow-up on rapid testing. Yesterday, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker announced the purchase of 2.1 million homes at home rapid antigen tests for $5 per kit. Those tests will be delivered to 102 towns with the most families at poverty level. Towns will and distribute those tests free of charge to people. And the state's also making that price available for towns to purchase the test kits and pay for them using DARPA funds. Is that something Vermont might pursue or at a minimum might Vermont ask Charlie Baker if we can have that price? Yeah, we would take all that Charlie Baker would give us at $5 a piece. But we're working on an initiative ourselves along the same lines. So, as I said in my remarks, stay tuned. We hope to have some more information on that the next week. And would Vermont follow the model of distributing the test to towns to pass out to residents and then off towns to pay for their own tests with DARPA funds? We haven't determined that at this point in time, but we'll be able to talk about that when we know we have the tests available and then we'll have a distribution plan as well. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thanks. Joseph Gresser, Barton Chronicle. We'll try Henry F. BPR and move to Guy Page from Ontario Chronicle. Hello, Governor. I hope you can hear me. We can. Oh, very good. So, sorry, just finding my questions. Didn't expect to be out in those things. So, there's been a lot of concern among some of my readers who think that your administration is really not taking seriously the the various data. We're also doing much to promote alternative treatments. I remectant until recently the monoclonal antibody treatment. Would you say that that's true? And if so, are you maybe a little bit more open than you have in the past to promoting a vaccination and alternative treatments? We certainly have talked a lot about monoclonal over the last number of weeks and been successful in doing that. So, we want to continue. In fact, I mentioned that in some of my remarks as well that we want to make sure that we continue to advocate for that. But, as you know, timing is everything. We need to make sure that those who are infected and have those compromised conditions seek out the medical advice in order to take advantage of that. Secretary Smith talked about some of the initiatives we have using emergency management services to become more mobile, going to long-term care facilities and other approaches so that we are able to utilize what we think is just another tool in the toolbox that's been quite effective. I don't know about the others. I have heard again. I think I heard that the CDC is considering the other prescription or the drug form, the pills that are somewhat effective. But I don't know much about that but that would fall into the same category as the monoclonal, I believe. So, time will tell. Dr. Levine, anything you can add to that? Yeah, I don't think there's any question that for months now we've been advocating for monoclonals and we get even stronger and stronger with it all the time. And our interactions with the healthcare system have been very positive in that regard and created even more healthcare practitioners who are interested in having this therapy for their patient. You used the word alternative before and I'm wondering if you had other treatments in mind because the ones the governor is referring to aren't yet available but will be in the month of December I'm pretty confident and will also be important game changers for treating active COVID infection. I'm going to be very clear because I know this comes up with some of your readers treatments are not a substitute for vaccination. The primary mitigation strategy is vaccine. The best way a person can help themselves is to prevent the infection from ever occurring they won't deal with chronic symptoms, long haul or anything of that sort. But did you have other things to say? Well, definitely to the point of the vaccines of primary treatment a lot of my readers say no one is really seriously addressing your administration their concerns about the their status. There are so many more cases of serious problems coming out of that and they don't really believe the idea that the vaccine is going to happen. And I understand that and we've addressed the VAERS data many times before. That's the adverse events reporting system for vaccines. Any person can self report into that as can a health practitioner report into that. It is meant to be an all encompassing sort of a canvassing of anything that could possibly happen. If you had a stomach ache you may think that's related to the vaccine and you can report that on the system and then it will be independently vetted and looked at in the context of all the other thousands of reports coming in from states around the country. So I would just caution people again that this system is not a verified vaccine was received clearly related to the vaccine. It's a method for the CDC to accumulate as many reports as possible and then try to make some sense out of them and use science to examine them and be able to report to the public what's going on. But again hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine in this country and even more around the world and we're just not hearing people saying long standing significant adverse effects from them. Governor the joint rules committee tomorrow will consider requiring legislators and staff and possibly everyone else to show proof of vaccination or take a PCR test before being allowed into the statehouse come January. What do you think of this recommendation? I think that's for them to decide. And they are performing their duties like a think of them as an employer performing their duties in the statehouse. So we'll see what comes out of that. I hadn't heard of the recommendations to be honest with you and I did not know that they were voting on this tomorrow. So I guess we'll all learn more tomorrow. Thank you. I'm going to go back to Henry have PCR. I'm going to go back to Henry. Hi governor. At the beginning of press conference you touted the vaccine and testing mandate for state employees that you implemented back in September. Since it appears that boosters are the best protection against Omicron right now. Will you mandate booster shots for state employees as well? Well that would be part of the fully vaccinated portion that we were talking about and some of the other things that we talked about earlier. I don't know if he says but again we haven't fully contemplated that but as I said I think to be fully vaccinated you need the booster. So it may be one of one of the strategies that we utilize but we haven't come to any conclusion on that at this point. There's no timeline for when sooner rather than later. I mean we're again looking at all different types of approaches to make sure that we're advocating for and concentrating on the boosters because we think they're so effective. I also wanted to ask about the move to put patients in subacute care. Perhaps this is a question for Secretary Smith but what are the ways to move to subacute care? Do you know has anyone died of COVID-19 after being moved to that setting? Again I'll let Secretary Smith answer this but for those the listeners so they understand the subacute beds are for those who are not sick enough to be in the hospital but sick enough so they shouldn't go home and they need something in between so that's why we have this opportunity and made more space in some of the long-term care facilities so that they could get the help they needed to transition back to health and self-sufficiency. Thanks for the question. Typically these aren't necessarily COVID patients. They are patients that would be typically in the hospital. They could be COVID patients and I don't have the outcome numbers but I'll try to find that out. Typically what this is during a normal flow you would find these type of patients going to either a rehab facility or a long-term care facility with the staffing shortages that have impacted long-term care and rehab facilities. What we found is that we needed to help those facilities find staffing which we did in terms of finance the staffing and then move that flow that usually has happened in the past and that's where we are most effective. Typically they wouldn't be COVID patients. They could be COVID patients but they would be all types of patients with different needs in terms of rehab or longer-term care facilities. So this is essentially opening up space within the hospitals essentially bolstering an existing sort of path for many patients who leave hospital care at a certain point. That's right. It's putting back the flow that normally was there that got interrupted because of staff's shortages. Thank you. Thank you. Secretary Smith, you might want to come back. I want to ask a question about our temporary staff. I wanted to know how much we've spent to date on hiring and assisting hospitals with travel nurses and then how many travel nurses we have sort of hired thus far through the state of health hospitals hire and where are they in our system? We have used travelers in our system through a contract with Dale which is called the TLC contract. I mentioned it here quite a while ago when we were having staffing issues at long-term care facilities and that contract is ongoing and we do hire travelers through that contract in order to help supplement those long-term care facilities through an outbreak lose some of their staff and we supplement their staff through their contract. We've expanded that in a couple of occasions where we've used it. I'm not aware where we have supplemented it yet for hospitals. We have talked about hospitals using some of the FEMA requesting some of the FEMA personnel for monoclonal which I discussed today as well as helping out in terms of very, very small amount of EMS and paramedics in order to help out in those COVID situations within a hospital at some of the harder hospitals. We were looking at Southwest excuse me Southern Vermont Rutland Regional and UVM in particular with a small workforce. What we found from FEMA is that they're pretty stretched thin. There are other states that are much worse off than Vermont. Matter of fact, we're in pretty good shape when you look at the New England data that Commissioner Pichek just presented. Our requests are way low on the totem pole and as I said last week I don't know if we'll get those requests fulfilled or not. We'll have to see. On the monoclonal, they are fulfilling the request to have smaller teams to help with administration of monoclonals. Did I get all your Did I give you all you needed? I wanted to ask one quick follow up. I think that a while ago we talked about you guys assisting with bonuses and stuff like that for hospitals that didn't have enough staffing and needed assistance. And so I was hoping that in your answer for the travel nurses you might be able to talk about the whole cost for staffing that the state has fed so far. There's a lot of buckets that are out there that we've spent in this regard. That's why I was so insistent that people that have not been vaccinated get vaccinated because we've spent a lot of money. About $185 million when you put in the healthcare stabilization fund that we've funded which helped bolster the financial position of several healthcare organizations when we were basically when we were in a shutdown capacity for the healthcare system that helped get a lot of facilities through the crisis as well as paying for I have paid $2 million out of the AHS I've paid $2 million to two designated agencies to help with their staffing as well and that's just recent as well as other monies that have happened. That $185 million has broken down in several buckets but the biggest bucket of that is the healthcare stabilization fund which you applied for and you got money through that or you were in such a distressed situation that we gave you money in order to get you through that situation. Just a quick point of clarification, the $2 million as of when did you guys spend that and for how long? What's the time frame? That was just recent and it goes out this week I think. Gotcha. Thank you. But I just want to make sure that isn't the only money that went out to designated agencies out of the healthcare stabilization fund there was a considerable amount of money that went out through there as well as prospective payments through Medicaid payments that we did prospectively meaning that we paid without the necessarily billing coming in would reconcile later. Thank you. Andrew? Yes, thank you. Good afternoon. Governor, apologies for the amount of background in this question but here goes. There was an incident last week in which man is accused vandalizing nearly four dozen vehicles in downtown St. John'sbury smashing windshields gouging paint. Turns out this individual has been accused of similar behavior all over Vermont and reportedly smashing windshields of six police cruisers in Burlington. All told he's been accused of damaging over 200 vehicles since spring and in some instances causing well over $1,000 in damage per vehicle. He's been arrested repeatedly several times prosecutors and judges have called for inpatient psychiatric evaluation only to be rebuffed by mental health saying he didn't meet the criteria. He arrived in St. John'sbury last week from Vermont with a motel voucher placement and caused the damage the first day he was here. Police are frustrated because they had no warning that an alleged serial vandal was being placed in town. Clearly the dozens of area residents are frustrated because their vehicles have been damaged with little hope for compensation. This situation seems to highlight a huge hole in the intersection between law enforcement, public safety and mental health. What can be done to better protect Vermonters? What do you say to the victims in St. John'sbury who believe the state placed this man here with no warning and no consideration of his alleged criminal past and what needs to change so the system doesn't continue to fail to provide the services that this individual pretty clearly needs? I'm not sure if I'd classify it as a big hole but certainly there's a crack in the system and I've read the account myself I hadn't heard of this previous to what happened in St. John'sbury but obviously frustrating for everyone involved so we need better communication we'll be working within our umbrella you know from the administration standpoint to see what we can do to prevent this from happening in the future. Secretary Smith would like to add something to that. Yeah there was a bill that passed the legislature last year called S2 that sort of helps with this communication aspect of it but it still is not sufficient enough. I read about this case as well this is a situation where we need to have better communications between law enforcement, the judicial system and mental health and just sending a person to a mental health evaluation doesn't mean that person meets the requirement of mental health so we need to figure out a location whether it's a forensic mental health facility or anything else that we need to move forward on in this state. We've seen more and more cases like this where people are sent to a mental health facility that don't exist but may qualify for a forensic mental health facility. We've seen people in EDs for example strike medical providers in the EDs and yet we don't have a facility where we could put these individuals. There's ongoing discussions right now between the three judiciary, law enforcement and mental health I'm hoping out of that discussion we can have really significant progress in where we put individuals like the individual that you talked about and really have serious conversations about our forensic facility in the future. Okay, thank you very much for that and if I may for Secretary French you said earlier we was working on plans to support schools with lower vaccination rates what might that support include and when would it be implemented? Yeah, thank you for the question we're organizing a meeting between the agency of human services and the agency of education here in the near future to start contemplating those issues and I think specifically looking at some of the communities that are likely to have lower vaccination rates so it's too early to tell but I think it is something we're moving towards after the first of the year and I think you know in a general way we're moving towards is a very targeted way of supporting those communities so looking specifically where are the areas that they need support relative to improving vaccination rates? Is it a question of accessibility? Is it a question of communications? How can we help them implement mitigation approaches like test to stay or is it symptom checking at the door and so forth so I think we're acknowledging that we need to be prepared as a team to look at those for those districts that are going to have lower student vaccination rates because our guess is they're going to have a substantially different operating environment to those that have higher student vaccination rates and still too soon to know which districts are going to require that additional support? That's correct we still have as we mentioned about 50% of this eligible population is either has their first dose or schedule but there's still a number of clinics that haven't been held yet in some communities so those trends play out here after the first of the year. Okay thanks everyone for your time. Lola, VT Digger. Hi can you guys hear me? We can. Great thank you. I just want to ask a quick follow-up actually about student vaccination and then I'll move on to my other question but have you guys given any thought as to whether VDH will be including the COVID vaccine on the list of mandatory vaccinations for K-12 students particularly once we have full authorization? That would be a Michelle Levine question. It's actually not a question for any of us on the stage because the current vaccine requirements are through legislative rulemaking process and we have not been asked input on that at this point in time. Around the country most are reserving judgment on this right now while we're in the midst of the pandemic and I'm not seeing school districts or states add this to their list of mandated vaccines at this point. I guess I just want to push back on that my understanding of the process is that traditionally the legislature has legislated about exemptions but not which vaccine to include on the list. That's maintained by VDH rule and regulation because usually it's the experts at the health department that are supposed to decide what exactly we should be vaccinating children with. We have not. Sorry, let me just phrase my question. Is the administration expecting the legislature to make the first move on this then? No, I didn't want to imply that at all but we have not had discussions about mandating vaccines for school children. Okay. All right, well my second question and this is for the governor is that last week your chief of staff went after a policy fellow at Dartmouth College on social media on Twitter actually he called her desperate to prove a false narrative when she pointed to figures from Nevada which has put in place a statewide math mandate now this public health expert has been pretty critical of your administration although she's also sometimes giving you kudos but she's been right where you have been wrong on a few occasions for example she was really skeptical that Delta would burn itself out even at the same time as your officials were predicting relatively confidently that that would happen. She predicted schools would experience widespread dysfunction given the lack of planning that went into the year you know I heard Dan French say the other couple weeks ago no one predicted that this was going to happen and you know now some kids are missing 20-30 days of school within the first semester meanwhile our hospitals are bursting at the scenes your own team is predicting that cases will end and Antonin is not alone in asking you to do more over the summer nearly 100 VDH staffers begged the health commissioner to take a stronger stance she's been echoed by two former health commissioners Jan Carney and Terry Chen the Vermont chapter of the American College of Physicians is also calling on you to do more including a math mandate so what I'm wondering is why your administration is dismissing critics for example Antonin and accusing them of operating in bad faith instead of listening to potentially new ideas because Vermont is on a pretty scary trajectory right now well that's that's your opinion Lola and I'm sure we'll read about your assessment of this issue tomorrow but from our standpoint you know I I look at our overall response to the pandemic and I think that most would agree across the country that we've been more right than wrong it's not to say that we've done everything right admittedly none of us have this is a new phenomena it's a new pandemic it's something that there was no playbook but again I would say we've made a lot of the right decisions to put us in a position where we lead the nation in a number of categories we still have the lowest number of deaths in the U.S. per capita and overall and so we have a lot to be proud of and a lot of that is because of ideas we receive from individuals we don't have all the ideas we listen to other people we watch other states we learn from them and then we glean whatever good information they have to make decisions that we think are in the best interests of Vermont so I would disagree that we don't listen to others because we've done a great deal of listening that's been part of our success but at the same time we have our own I have my own team of experts and they advise me we have very robust and robust debates about where we go and what we should do and again I would just I would have to I respectfully disagree that we've been more wrong than right because if that's the case there's a lot of states are in trouble because we've done a lot of things right here in this state and a lot to be proud of I didn't say that you had been more wrong than right I'm saying this is a person who your own chief of staff is flashing out at who has been right in instances where you have been wrong and I guess I'm wondering like do you not think that Vermont is on a pretty scary trajectory right now given the state of our hospitals and the fact that you are predicting that cases will rise? I think we have been really stable of late we are concerned about the direction particularly with this variant but I again would say we have been reactive to the needs of Vermonters I mean look at their you know vaccination rates for instance some of what I've said in my remarks what this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated at this point 100% are the problem from my perspective and so we need to continue to work on getting them vaccinated or and boosted for the rest of the population so we have we have our own strategy that I think is working we're still we're seeing some promising trends I think Mr. Pichek had shown where we're back in terms of hospitalizations where the lowest in New England I believe at this point are pretty near the lowest so again we're seeing a surge here in the northeast we don't get it all right and never have professed that we get it all right but we do more right than wrong and in terms of the issue as you beam lashing out I think that was you know again as part of this press briefing where I stand up here we stand up here for two hours plus every single week and I think the question was about there was something about Nevada Nevada being because they have a mass band-aid that their hospitalizations were lower than ours we disagree and we are the chief had a graph and pointed that out so I think we have to in some respects provide what we think is accurate information when we see that an expert your expert is saying something different that is not true so I think we have an obligation to set the record right and in this case with the Nevada situation we have a lower hospitalization rate in Nevada and she was and she was wrong and she was wrong I don't think her numbers were wrong but the point is that you guys were accusing her of operating from a place of bad faith right well I think again it seemed pretty obvious to me that they were inaccurate at best so I think we have an obligation to make sure that the public is and vice versa I mean if we are saying something that is not true you have an obligation and you have proven that you are willing to do that you point out that we are not right so we have an obligation to do the same do you think you have an obligation to do so with civility absolutely do you think your chief of staff was being civil I didn't see anything civil with what he said but I do think I think to put this in and this is a lot of inside baseball I think you would agree Lola most of the people listening to this probably have no idea what we are talking about but I think you should present the entire feed all of the back and forth of the twitter response I guess and let show it in its entirety so that Vermonters can make their own decision I think those are all of my questions but I appreciate your time thank you Tom Davis Thomas Vermont Tom Davis to Colin Flanders seven days I had a couple questions about our ICU capacity first could I just get a confirmation on how many ICU beds we have available across the state as of today it sounded like I said it might be 11 but it didn't sound too confident about that I think we have a total of about 100 102 ICU beds and I believe there are 11 available today so we have a very small number across the state the total number of ICU beds is fairly small in Vermont so about 102 I believe so I think this is the third straight week we've been hovering right around that 10-11 area and then Commissioner Pechett could also mention that based on the data the case data that we're seeing you're able to pull some projections out of that based on how many people are getting sick and just wondering what the data is telling you for the next couple of weeks when we think about hospitalization do you expect us to go back up to the level we were at a week ago or do you expect those to hold steady go down do you have any projections you know tough tough to say because it really does depend on the circumstances in different areas of the state we have more vulnerable populations we have areas where we have an older population and areas that are unvaccinated so it really depends on where this this virus goes and to understand the implications of that so again I'll let maybe Dr. Levine or Commissioner Pechett answer just just quickly we continue to be heartened by the fact that the number of cases on a daily basis that are in the 60 years of age an older group are in the 10-13% of all cases that's very different than earlier in the pandemic and we continue to have ongoing progress in boosters so the more that we can diminish that age range's experience using boosters less hospitalization will be required now as the governor said two hours ago I think there were you know perhaps a third cases that are under age 60 in the 20s 30s 40s years of age range unfortunately many of those are in the unvaccinated group so if we can succeed in improving the vaccination rate for those that will be helpful in predicting sort of future experience but as you know the major serious outcomes are occurring in the older age ranges and we continue to have excellent progress and hopefully continued progress with vaccination and boosters in those age groups which should temper any holiday surges that might occur and then one other quick question on a totally different topic are 2021 unemployment benefits going to be 2020 benefits for I don't believe so but I wonder if Mr. Harrington might be still on Hi thank you Governor could you repeat the question it just kind of broke up on my end sure I'm just wondering if 2021 unemployment benefits will be excluded from income tax the way the previous years were I haven't heard anything to that but I'm happy to follow any legislation coming out that would support that but not to my knowledge at this time but let me do some follow up and get back to you that's it thank you all for enduring this longer than I thought it was going to be a press briefing but we'll see you again next week