 Good morning, everyone. Yesterday, August 13 marked five months since I first declared a state of emergency. So we could respond to this once in a century global pandemic. Under that order, we took significant action to avoid huge surges of COVID-19, which are impacting the healthcare systems of neighboring states like New York and Massachusetts. What's important for us to remember is that we're in a different place then than we are now. Today, we have a lot more testing and contact tracing capacity to contain the virus. And we've increased inventory of PPE. We still have health and safety measures statewide. And our individual behavior is also much different today. And businesses have taken steps to help reduce the risk of spreading the virus like working remotely, separating workstations, changing schedules, wearing masks, improving ventilation and helping customers stay six feet apart. Five months ago, when cases and deaths were first biking, we weren't wearing masks. No one knew what social distancing meant. Many weren't thinking about washing their hands multiple times a day, much less for a full 20 seconds. And sadly, folks were much more likely to go out or go to work, even if they felt sick. My point is this, we know so much more about the virus now, have more tools and have taken many steps to slow the spread. With all that we learn and with your hard work, we suppress the virus here in Vermont. And this has allowed us to methodically reopen all sectors of the economy to some degree since late April. We consistently been able to move forward. While many other states have had to scale back, or even worse, have had to close down sectors they once reopened. But because we've been disciplined, respectful, informed, and smart, we're safer as a result. And because we're safer, we've been able to put large numbers of our monitors back to work, including from sectors like manufacturing, retail, health care, childcare, construction, and those in salons, restaurants, hotels and more joining essential workers who never left the front lines. And because we've been methodical about it, even as we've reopened, we've seen our case counts and positivity rates stay amongst the lowest in the country. Again, this approach has allowed us to consistently move forward. It's important to note that we still had clusters and outbreaks, but we've been able to contain each of them so it hasn't spread broadly into the community. And Dr. Levine is going to talk about that more in a moment. Importantly, for many months, we've seen minimal hospitalizations. And while sadly, we've seen 58 COVID deaths since March. 52 of those came before we really started reopening the economy. We should be proud of what we've done. But at the same time, given what the rest of the country is facing, every one of us must stay vigilant. This means wearing a mask when around others staying six feet apart, washing your hands a lot staying home when sick or been exposed to someone with COVID and following our travel guidance. These steps are more important than ever as college students return. And our K through 12 schools begin to offer some level of in person instruction. Because as we've heard from Dr. Levine, Dr. Calso and Dr. Bell, we all have a role to play to keep the numbers in our community as low as possible. This is the most important thing we can do for our kids, families and school employees. So it should come as no surprise that today I'm extending the state of emergency for another month. Again, this is a vehicle that allows us to manage it continue to suppress this virus. And as college students return to school, there are some additional tools for municipalities included in this order as well. To start, it gives cities and towns the ability to lower the limit on gathering size. And it lets them limit hours for the sale of alcohol, meaning they could set a curfew for bars and clubs. Looking at case growth growth in other states and hearing from other governors about what they saw and what they did. It appears uncontrolled parties and crowds of bars and clubs are a big part of the problem. So I believe giving our towns, especially the college towns, some additional mitigation measures to work with is the right thing to do. Now, based on some of the questions we've been getting in some of how our approach is being characterized, I'm going to address some anticipated concerns up front. As I said at the beginning, we've learned and we've done a lot since March and April. Our response has been one of the most effective in the country. And we continue to adapt our approach based on new facts and the data we track in real time with the input of our world-class health experts. With this approach, we have a proven strategy for taking steps to prevent spread and reopen Vermont. We always have and always will, but the health of Vermont is first. Always. So working closely with our health experts, we found ways to open to the greatest extent possible while keeping community infections low. In fact, as of today, we have the lowest number of cases per capita in the country. We've achieved this balance by prioritizing openings based on what we need to be open in person for public health, safety and economic security. This includes hospitals, doctors, offices, dentists, childcare, manufacturing and yes, now our schools to some extent, though they were just beginning the process of opening and many of them have taken a hybrid approach. The unfortunate reality is in order to manage the reopening of these priority areas and monitor the rate of spread, we continue to ask other sectors like lodging and hospitality to make enormous sacrifices. It's why we encourage workers who can continue to work remotely to do so because just like Dr. Levine tells us to keep track of the number of contacts we have each day, our reopening strategy has to consider the same thing across all sectors. For example, that's why I directed state employees who can work remotely to continue to do so until the end of the year. It's not because it's unsafe for them to come into work. It's because it's an opportunity to significantly reduce the number of person to person contacts, which will keep the risk lower for sectors where they need to have in person activities. This is part of the measured, strategic, and scientific approach we've taken throughout this crisis. It's why I'm giving our communities, especially the college towns, the ability to further limit some high contact and activities as we increase the number of people in those areas. Again, it's about prioritizing where contact must occur versus where we may not need it. Our proven approach has also meant we'll be methodical and watch the data closely, never let our guard down and be flexible and quick to respond to changes. So I'm going to continue to watch the data and ask the experts how we're doing every single day to make sure we're on the right track. And as we've proven over the last five months, if we if the data or the expert advice changes, we'll have the courage to act in the interest of the public health, regardless of the political ramifications. So if we're monitoring wondering if we'll act quickly, if the situation on the ground changes, the answer is yes, absolutely. So with that, I'll now turn it over to Dr. Levine for a health update. Good morning. I'm going to be talking today about colleges, about contact tracing, and about outbreaks. Let's start with colleges and universities, many of which are already having students returning to their campuses. We've been preparing with these institutions for months now to answer questions, think about what in person learning looks like and develop reopening guidance tailored to their needs. It's been a complicated effort to bring together students from many different places to figure out how to educate, house and feed them safely, while also keeping faculty, staff and the community healthy. We've said many times in all of our conversations about restarting Vermont that we expect to see cases of COVID-19, and colleges and universities are no exception. Because of the unique nature of the campus setting, our guidance asks for colleges to come up with a plan to test students at entry. This testing has already begun with many hundreds of results reported so far. We already know a few students have indeed tested positive, and at least one positive result came back before the student even left their home state delaying their intended arrival date. While we understand hearing about new cases of COVID-19 is cause for concern, these positive tests mean the system is working. We want to find these so we know who needs to stay inside and away from other people so we can prevent the virus from spreading any further. The combined early testing and quarantine protocols that colleges have all put into place will enable them to protect the health and safety of students, staff and community as the fall semester gets underway. Because of the testing protocols and other steps our colleges and universities have already taken to protect their community, a positive case will not put in a motion a large college-wide testing effort or community-wide testing. We'll use our proven method of contact tracing to make sure we quickly identify those who need to isolate or quarantine in order to contain any potential spread within the school and the community. We will strategically target testing to each situation so we can be on the ready for any future needs. I want to thank the colleges and universities for their partnership and finding ways to develop a high quality educational experience while keeping us all safe and healthy. Since I just mentioned contact tracing, let's talk about that next. Today NPR ran a piece on contact tracing and the transparency of states with their contact tracing data. I want to point out that on July 10th in our weekly update on the VDH website, we highlighted contact tracing. I'd like to present a few facts and bullet points to you all regarding this. First of all, just to review what it is, obviously a case of COVID-19 is interviewed and contact tracers obtain information on closed contacts during the case's period of being infectious. Those contacts are then notified and provided with public health guidance. Both contacts and cases are asked to participate in the automated symptom monitoring tool that we call Sarah Alert. Since April 1st, two thousand and thirty-one contacts have been named. Some of these twice. Fifteen hundred twenty-three individual people have been named as contacts. A hundred eighty-four named contacts have gone on to be cases. The average number of cases, sorry, the average number of closed contacts per infected person is three contacts per case. Twenty-eight percent of contacts have been tested in their eligible period, which is within 14 days of their exposure. This does not mean they've been tested at another time. And keep in mind, it is the actual quarantining and not the testing that is preventive here. Cumulatively, the majority of cases, ninety percent are interviewed within twenty-four hours, ninety-six percent within forty-eight hours. And in the last fourteen days, ninety-seven percent of cases have been interviewed in the last twenty-four hours and ninety-nine percent in the last forty-eight hours. Since June 1st, eleven percent of contacts have gone on to become cases. And in the past two weeks, only two point one percent of contacts have become cases. For those who've been identified through contact tracing, these numbers should be somewhat reassuring. Now let me move on finally to the topic of outbreak. On Wednesday of this week, at a press conference with Winooski Mayor Christine Lott in Burlington Mayor Murrow Weinberger, we announced the formal end of the state's first significant outbreak and community spread of COVID-19. This was the state's first and largest outbreak and community spread of virus. Now, after two full incubation periods, which means twenty-eight days total, with no new cases, this outbreak is considered resolved. I'm really pleased to report this, but at the same time, we know the pandemic is far from over. In the course of this outbreak, we should remember that 117 of our neighbors, friends, and family members were test positive or actually sick and several were hospitalized. And Vermont has new cases each day, though fortunately far fewer than most other states. And another outbreak can happen at any moment, so we must all continue to take precautions to prevent the spread of virus. But nonetheless, this is a success story on many levels, in a good example and a precedent for managing outbreaks. I encourage Vermonters to make note of this broad-based and successful response. It's not that it's government coming in to fix everything. This pandemic requires individual, community, and state partnership. Key to our success here has been the ability to have effective community engagement, to reach the various populations where they are, and to share actionable information in timely and in culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate ways. With partners like Association of Africans Living in Vermont and the U.S. Committee on Refugees and Immigrants who make all the difference and help us reach people where they are. Only by being there will help that matters for every Vermonter who will be able to keep cases low, stamp out any outbreaks, and work together to navigate our way through this pandemic. And I want to talk for a moment about your everyday actions. Behavior change is the hardest thing to do, whether it's quitting smoking, changing eating habits, or any of the day to day actions that we're used to. But here's what I see around the state. Most people in the state understand that it does take hard work and sacrifice to keep our loved ones safe from this potentially dangerous and very contagious virus. And we don't know how long it will go. Many of us are experiencing COVID fatigue. At the same time, we can see what happens when we let our guard down and move too quickly to get back to normal. In states that have done this, the virus roars back up when we let up. We want our kids to be safe at school, learning from teachers who don't also have to fear for their health and that of their families. We want to gather with friends. We want to visit with loved ones. And we can and we will. It will just take time and commitment to do everything possible to get through this as fast as possible without the risk of losing the fragile gains we've made. I think someone else on this stage has said before this is a marathon, but informed by the science and everyone doing their part, physical distancing, wearing masks, you know the drill, then we will get to the point where we won't have to do it any longer. And we'll get there all the much sooner. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Dr. Levine. First as a reminder for those who are watching at home today's presentation, as always can be found on our department's website, dfr.vermont.gov. We'll begin today again with an overview of our national and regional data before returning to a review of the data this past week in Vermont and finally close with an update to our travel map. This past week, the United States again surpassed a grim milestone recording its five millionth COVID-19 case. But for the first time, the United States did see a slowdown in how quickly we added an additional one million cases. As discussed previously, it took us nearly 100 days to record our first one million COVID cases. That was shortened to 43 days for the second. It was shortened to 28 days for the third, 15 for the fourth. And now, as cases have slowed and plateaued across the country, it took the U.S. 17 days to record its next million, now surpassing a total of five million cases. Looking at the four U.S. census regions in the country, we see that the most significant declines have come in the South, with the West, the Midwest and the Northeast largely plateauing at their recently reported case levels. Again, this is good news that cases are not growing at the moment. But as we've said many times in the past, the United States is still reporting an extremely high number of daily cases, which unfortunately will mean that more severe illness and more deaths are likely across the country in the weeks to come. As a Harvard public health expert explained this week, we really need to figure out how to deal with the pandemic as a whole country because cases anywhere elevate the risk of spread across the entirety of the United States. We did see some good news with a continued reduction in hospital needs across the U.S. with the 15th consecutive day of less people in the hospital with COVID-19. Similarly, the number of people with ICU needs decreased for the last seven days. But unfortunately, we see that new deaths just continue to stay high and stay steady. Over 1,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus each of the last 17 days. Further, the reported death toll on Wednesday of this week was just over 1,500 deaths, which was the highest reported death count since May 15. Again, as we mentioned, we're likely to see these numbers stay high and steady as death is unfortunately a lagging indicator. And we see our cases still remain quite high across the country. Turning now to better news closer to home in the Northeast, we see that we saw just over a 7% drop in weekly cases compared to last week. This marks the second consecutive week of case decline in the Northeast and is, in fact, our largest percent decline in over seven weeks. Looking more specifically at Vermont, we continue to see very steady trends in our own numbers. New case growth was roughly flat this week at 39 new cases. Vermont continues to hold the distinction of having the lowest total case count in the US. And as the governor mentioned, now this week, we also have the lowest case count on a per capita basis as well, a rather impressive achievement for our state. The rest of our restart metrics remain stable this week and don't present any current risk at the moment. Syndromeic surveillance continues to show that very few people are visiting the emergency room, urgent care facilities, well below our guardrail. And this number has really remained quite stable and quite low throughout the entirety of the summer. Vermont's three- and seven-day rival growth rates, again, continue very low this week, below 1% and nowhere near the type of sustained growth that would give us concern. On test positivity, again, our seven-day rolling average is trending very favorably and is low at 0.7%, again, safely below and well below, in fact, our 5% guardrail on that metric. And then last and finally, we see that ICU availability continues to trend favorably below the 30% buffer and that there are currently two individuals in the hospital, one in the ICU, and we wish them a full and speedy recovery. Turning now to the Vermont forecast, we can see that our model is predicting a very slight uptick in cases over the next few weeks. However, I do want to emphasize that these predicted case counts are still very low, well under 10 new cases a day on average. However, something that we do need to consider, and as Dr. Levine mentioned, is the fact that Vermont has a very robust testing requirement for colleges and universities as their students return to campus over the next three weeks. Many of these students are returning from areas of the country with a higher disease prevalence than Vermont. This combined with the robust testing program means that we are likely to see spikes in our case counts over the next three weeks as these cases are identified, their contacts are traced, and the students are safely isolated. So that, as Dr. Levine said, is really a success of the protocols that are put in place to safely reopen higher ed when we do see those college-related spikes over the weeks ahead. Turning now to our travel map update, again, we saw another week of decreases across the Northeast, which means that more people are eligible to travel to Vermont quarantine-free. This week, approximately 5.9 million individuals from 93 counties across our travel region can travel to Vermont without a quarantine. This is an increase of about 700,000 compared to last week. And looking most closely at the map, we can see that the improvement is largely in the Northeast with Maine and New Hampshire, combined only having three counties that require a quarantine, while other parts of the travel map like Rhode Island, Delaware, and Maryland don't have a single county that's eligible for quarantine-free travel to Vermont and Ohio, New Jersey, and Virginia, each having only one or two quarantine-free counties. So again, much of the gains have been focused in the Northeast. Of ending here on a question from last week about how our travel metrics compare to the standards employed by others around us, particularly New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, I wanted to just emphasize that New York and Connecticut and New Jersey require a seven-day rolling average of fewer than 10 positive cases per 100,000, while another metric that we've measured ourselves against the European Union mandates a two-week total below 14 positive cases per 100,000. So all of these numbers can be quite complex and difficult to understand. So I think we just wanted to visualize this difference with the map that we see on the screen. We can see this difference in the fact that by evaluating ourselves on a county-by-county basis to New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and the EU, that New York employs a much less conservative standard when determining their quarantine requirements, much of the Northeast, much of the Mid-Atlantic would be allowed to travel to Vermont without a 14-day quarantine. The European Union does impose more strict standards than Vermont. As you can see, under their system, many states would have no green counties at all, even areas that are seeing pretty low case counts across the Northeast. However, again, when comparing these three standards together, we see that Vermont really does strike a balance and has a more conservative approach, certainly than New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and approach that is functionally similar to the EU rather than to New York. We're confident, again, that this standard will help protect the Vermont economy while keeping Vermonters safe and healthy. Last, I just also want to mention that this new travel map has been updated for now 30 days, and over that 30-day period, we've seen over 1.2 million interactions with the travel map. This is really giving us a high degree of confidence that there's great awareness about our policies and our requirements, and that people are trying to comply with them, which is great news. So at this time, I'd like to turn it back over to the governor. Thank you, Commissioner Pichek. With that, we'll open it up to questions. Mr. Allen? Thank you, Governor. So first, about the announcement about bars and clubs, I'd imagine that a lot of business owners might take concern with this, seeing as how they've been hit the hardest, arguably, so far. Why would the mask mandate, at first, why not expand this bar and club, local control mandate? Why not put that on a state level? Why do you count by count basis? Because to be perfectly frank, it looks to me like Burlington is the most susceptible to a high traffic count. A lot of people getting together and with the students coming in from to UVM, Champlain, I say, Mike's and so forth, that's where they go. And so we wanted to cater to that. I don't believe it's a problem in Island Pond up in the Northeast Kingdom. Or Enosburg or down in the Southern part of the state, it really is about those saturated areas like Burlington. So we wanted to give flexibility. We knew that there was some concerns. I knew there were some concerns from the mayor of Burlington in particular and thought that this was the best approach to giving them the ability to know what's on the ground and do what's right for their own community because they know it better than we do. And second question is kind of a lot to shift a bit to what's going on down in Washington Congress. Or what's not going on. What's not going on, exactly. What appears to be nothing's happening. So I'm just wondering if you've had conversations maybe with Governor Baker or Sununu to try to either put some pressure on the RGA or where they could either try to make some movement down in DC. The National Governors Association, Governor Baker is part of that group as well. We've talked extensively about what we think we need as states, more flexibility, more resources, some like Title 32. I mean, we put a lot of measures in place. We've done it in writing. We've done it publicly and privately and we're doing all we can as governors on both sides of the aisle trying to work with our congressional delegations. We don't have a problem with ours but certainly there's some influence in other states of where it's a cross-party line. So that's been helpful but again, it doesn't appear that there's any movement at this point in time where we thought there would be. But we'll see, we're still hopeful but we'll still continue to do what we think we can do best here in Vermont to help Vermonters in the region and our businesses. And but I would hope that Washington would get together and do what's right for all the states. And I would follow up earlier this week you said that your administration is looking into the feasibility of using CARES Act funds for this newest employment check potentially. Is there any update that? Yeah, I mean, there's been some dialogue with the US Department of Labor. There's been nothing that I know of at this point in time in writing. It's a little complicated but we believe there's a path forward and we're going to continue to move in that direction but nothing in writing at this point. So we'll react, we're anticipating what we need to do to meet those standards and we'll have to as well work with the legislature to see if we can use any of the CARES money which they'll have to approve to utilize for the extra $100 on top of the $300 for the extra money for unemployment in the PUA. So we're working on it toward the best of our ability but without anything in writing and again, makes it a little difficult to put the plan in action but we're trying to anticipate every step along the way. Thank you. David. Let's see. Good question. Sort of looking at the, how many economic forecasts we had and also on campaign trail, David Zacharman had indicated he might favor dipping into the state savings to try and fill the hole. Is that anything you'd ever consider? Are we anywhere near a threshold to that or to try and address some of the economic problems? Is it more a matter of trying to find whatever would be some $200 million in price to try and address some of those issues? Yeah, I think you'll find out, you know, we're working on the budget that we'll present to the legislature next week and we'll, I think you'll see a balance of efficiencies, I'll say, with using some one-time money and so forth but I would say we're not at this point looking to dip into the reserves but it doesn't take it off the table. We're fortunate to have all of our rainy day reserves flush, filled and ready to go if necessary but we were fortunate, you know, as I said before, we ended up last year balancing out, okay, we had money left over on the bottom line so we're able to use some of that money for the next year. I'm more concerned about the next year but can you imagine, had we not had this pandemic, what kind of shape we'd be in, what kind of surplus we might have, it would probably have been a record in some respects which is unfortunate but on the positive side, we had that to get us through that year where we had one quarter that was devastated and be able to use some of the surplus and to move into next year to help balance out the budget. So we're going to have something that I think is reasonable and we'll see what the legislature does with it from there but I will also say that the uncertainty in Washington, we don't know about the flexibility, we don't know whether you can utilize any of the CARES money or CRF money for our budgets and deficits in particular. So without that, we're going to present something that's in real time, what we have to deal with today but it could change based on what they do and if they appropriate more money, we'll be able to do more. So we have to maintain our nimbleness, our flexibility but we'll present our reasonable budget next week. Sure and a question, you sort of talked a little bit about Burlington and the students coming back and there being some concern at least certainly from the mayor. He's expressed that he's not quite content with the measures UBM has taken to try and prevent an outbreak of COVID-19 as students return from all the places they will. Do you think UBM has done enough to prevent an outbreak and to sort of try and keep our numbers low? I guess what degrees you're concerned at? Well, again, so far, so good. I mean, they are testing as they said they would. Students coming in, we have found that they found that there are some who are positive and that's in some respects, good news that they were caught before they came in where they could infect a much larger population. So that's working. Again, we'll have to watch as we move forward. We want them to be diligent and vigilant and follow through on everything they said they would do but that's why giving this more flexibility to the mayor of Burlington in terms of the size of gatherings as well as to possibly a curfew on bars and clubs, I thought was a good step forward that might put him at ease a bit in terms of mitigating the spread within the community. I might ask Dr. Levine, he worked with the colleges and universities maybe commenting on the first week. No, there are ongoing conversations going all the time between the health department, the state, the city of Burlington, the universities that are present in that area and they're all incredibly productive. I think that things have even in the last few days improved in terms of the level of communication and the decision-making that's gone around various back-to-school protocols, if you will. We're very encouraged by the fact that there's been great transparency in the data and communication and looking for guidance on the appropriate courses of action each time positives result. So I won't speak for the mayor but the mayor has been involved in a lot of these discussions and I think things are working very well in terms of making sure the university has a sense of accountability for what it needs to do to mitigate when situations arise and there's wonderful communication that's ongoing. Steve? On topic, the administration's been hammered by the Vermont NEA on the whole back-to-school thing. I guess a response to that, have you heard what they're saying and do you have a response to a fairly heavy criticism? Well, first of all, I would also say this isn't unique to Vermont in speaking to other governors throughout the country. They're experiencing the exact same thing. So this is a national effort with a lot of the same talking points. We, again, I can't say it enough, we're unique in many respects here in Vermont. When I speak with other governors, again, throughout the country, where some of them have 10, 20% positivity rates and we're under 1%, we're a half a percent or under a half a percent, we are so much different than others. Even with our case count down. And so they, in speaking with some of them, they don't understand why we're getting any pushback because most states have some measure of getting back to school. And it follows right in line with what we're trying to do, allowing for as much flexibility, keeping people as safe as possible and trying to prove ourselves as we move forward. But we're listening, they've been at the table. We've exchanged ideas and trying to do what we can to do this in the appropriate manner. But the bottom line for me, taking all the steps that we've taken has been, I think it's important for kids to get that instruction, that education from a social aspect as well as from an educational aspect. And I think we're going to have, if we don't, we're gonna have a lot of kids slipping through the cracks and we'll see the ramifications of this inaction in years to come if we don't take the steps now. So we're moving forward. The hybrid approach gives the flexibility. If something goes wrong, we'll go to remote learning. But if everything goes well, they can transition to in-person learning. I might ask Secretary French, is there anything you'd like to add to that? Oh, Heather, I'm sorry. Good morning. Good morning, Secretary Boucher. Good morning, Governor. Thank you for the question. I could not hear, unfortunately, who actually asked it. Yeah, everything that the governor said is part of his support. The only thing I would add is that, yes, we are listening very carefully to his approach. We will be today releasing our social and emotional health guidance. And that is an important component of really helping to ensure that our teachers, our staff, and our students all feel so comfortable. Again, based on the evidence with the hand, but we really are taking it seriously. And I think have acted in good faith and have actually worked hard with a variety of different stakeholders to do what we can to ensure that our local districts are actually taking this seriously as well. Hi, I would also, while we're talking about this, some of the criticism has been that we haven't given enough guidance to the schools that we're leaving it all up to them. And I would have to say that we've taken a lot of steps in providing guidance. And I'll just read a list of some of this. We have health screening requirements and specific protocols, guidance for at-risk school staff, guidance for students with special health and educational needs, bus protocols, drop-off and pickup protocols, hand-washing protocols, facial covering protocols, PPE protocols, cleaning and disinfecting protocols, physical distancing and classroom breakout, large group activities, communal spaces, volunteer and visitor restrictions, building considerations, including vending machines, water fountains, health offices, ventilation, floor markings and more. Food service guidance, social and emotional support for staff and students, communications, recommendations, contracting, tracing, details. So we've given a lot, and just as a visual here, this is our guidance. I mean, you can see it's fairly substantial. So it's not as though we've taken a hands-off approach. We're trying to do what we can in this really unprecedented time where there's no playbook here and we're doing the best we can to work together because this shouldn't be, isn't, from my standpoint, and us versus them, type of approach. We want to do what's right for everyone, but the kids are my first priority. Very good, and finally, Governor or Mike, maybe Ariel Cuero says has pled today. I think Mikey came out with a statement, but punishment-wise, and I mean, has justice been served here, or what do you think? From my standpoint, I'll ask Commissioner Pichek to comment from my standpoint. I think it's taken a long time, but in some respects, maybe we all knew that he was guilty, and he finally admitted to that. So from that standpoint, it's a step forward, but I'll let Commissioner Pichek answer further. Thank you, Steve. So yeah, we put out a statement that, certainly during the course of our 10-month investigation, we traced every investor penny. We found that much of that money had been inappropriately diverted to Mr. Cuero's, largely to fund a lavish lifestyle. So for us, his guilt was never beyond doubt. That was something that we were quite certain in. So we were happy to see that Mr. Cuero's sort of faced that reality, has taken responsibility for his actions. Certainly the plea is a good thing, but it certainly can undo the harm that was inflicted on the Northeast Kingdom. That will certainly help heal that wound and help that community continue to move forward, but there's still a lot of work that has to be done in the kingdom. In terms of the sentencing, we won't know the exact sentence until the rest of the cases are resolved against the other defendants, including Bill Stanger. So they have capped it at eight years in the settlement agreement. Certainly I know probably any amount of time isn't what Vermonters think is sufficient, but when you look at other cases across the country and even similar cases in Vermont, it's pretty much in line with those cases. All right, we'll move to the phone, starting with Kathy from the Associated Press. Hear me? We can. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to clarify with Dr. Levine, is it just one case that we are aware of of a college student testing positive of the virus at home before arriving in Vermont? And can you also tell us if you've had to hire more staff or contact tracing as we near the start of school? Yes, great questions. So it is just one case for somebody prior to Vermont out of many hundreds of tests that were done, but there are thousands more tests to be done at home that we'll hear about in ensuing weeks. So stay tuned is all I can say for that. And with regard to contact tracing, our current staff has been quite up to the task. We actually have on an accelerated timeline increased the training of several other staff and we're augmenting the ranks as we speak by another four individuals, not because we're falling behind or because the work has been overloaded, but as an anticipatory thing, knowing the numbers of students that will come back to Vermont in total. Thank you. Greg, the County Courier. Governor, can you hear me? We can. All right. Glad to be on to you today. Didn't have enough reception on Tuesday. So I wanted to start with a question for Mark Levine. Doctor, a lot of experts are expecting a vaccine in the next few months or even early 2021. I'm wondering what the health department is doing to plan ahead for the rollout of the vaccine. And if it were to you, who should get the first round understanding that there probably won't be enough for everybody? Great. A bunch of questions about vaccine. So to start, you can find your expert and they will tell you when they think we'll have a vaccine. And some will say by election day, others will say early 21, others are still talking in the latter half of 21 or even later. I'm not gonna profess to have the answer on that, except to say that things are moving extraordinarily fast in terms of the amount of work that's been done, the number of candidate vaccines that are going into phase three trials in the near future. That's a very rapid timeline. But then you have to say, well, what is the phase three trial show? Was it a efficacious vaccine? Or is there any harm associated with it? This takes time. So put that on the table first. Second thing has to do with Vermont's preparedness. So as I've implied, we don't need to be prepared for October, but we do need to be prepared hopefully for something faster than we might have imagined previously. So we have an entire cross health department and cross AHS and cross state government task force addressing all of the necessary issues, many of which have to do with actual ability to deliver the vaccine to a person, whether that be with the appropriate syringes, needles, things of that level of detail, logistical issues. Some of them have to do with storage and transport of the vaccine. Some of them have to do with actually, how do we get our appropriate share in coordination with the federal government? And while we're doing all of that work statewide, obviously the federal government is also doing some ground laying work, if you will, because they understand that this needs to, if there's nothing else that's happened in this pandemic that's had national coordination, this is something everybody seems to have coalesced around. It needs national coordination to make sure that states aren't fighting with one another, governors aren't really in dealing and things of that sort, that vaccine is available to the population at large. So a lot more coordination going on between sectors of the federal government like CDC, FDA, et cetera, and state in the states. Lastly, third part of your question had to do with who should get priority. And that won't be necessarily a public health decision at every state level either. That'll be a much more nationally coordinated effort, but you can bet that the highest priority groups for the initial delivery of the vaccine will be those who work in the healthcare sector and those who we have traditionally considered in the most vulnerable groups, which of course include people of certain ages, people with certain underlying chronic medical conditions, people who have immunosuppressive illnesses, et cetera. Those will be the first sort of priority candidates for the vaccine before it gets to what we would term the more general population. Is that covered, Greg? Yeah, I think that does pretty good. Governor, a quick question for you and let's move on, I know you have a bunch of people today. Given that this is the first time we've gotten to chat with you since the election, I'd kind of like to pick your brain on your take on the Democrat pick for governor. Is his voting history as an anti-vaxxer? I'm wondering if you were surprised that he was elected and how that changes your strategy going forward either with the virus or with your reelection? Well, my strategy in the election hasn't changed. It never does. I'm going to talk about what I can bring to the table and not specifically call out what my opponent cannot. So I think you'll see that I've done that for the last 20 years, always run a positive campaign and I'll continue to do so. I think we'll see, you know, start differences between the two of us, but he's a formidable candidate and a formidable opponent and has a lot of name recognition and a lot of history as I do. So should be an interesting campaign during unusual times. Were you surprised given his former voting history on such a hot topic at this point in time that Democratic voters picked him? No, I mean, I would say that I wasn't sure which way it was going to land. I thought it was fairly close. It seemed like a close race from the outside, but I wouldn't have been surprised if either Rebecca Holcomb or Dave Zuckerman had won. It wouldn't have, either one wouldn't have surprised me. Thank you, Governor. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Mike Donahue, the Islander, right? We'll go to Kat WCAX. So looking at the data from today, I noticed that Commissioner Pichek said to watch for spikes as college students return. Got me wondering whether the state still has search sites set up for COVID-19? Were those all dismantled or are some of them still up? Cause I know some were at the colleges. I might refer to Commissioner Sherling, who can give us an update on that. Good afternoon, Governor. Yes, there are search sites that are still set up, they're dormant, they're not staffed, and they do stand ready for any potential surge that we may face in the fall. Where are those? There's one in Ruffin and one in Essex that are the two remaining sites. And we also have equipment staged and ready to deploy at additional search sites if necessary. And then this might be a better question for Commissioner Pichek. Looking at the hospital data, it seems like while we are well within the parameters that state considers state for reopening, there are still a lot of beds full in hospitals. Is that a concern if we may see potential increases in cases? Well, thank you for the question. Certainly the 30% buffer that we have was sort of designed to make sure that when cases do come, and we see a large increase in cases that we have some time to put the brakes on before the critical care beds fill up. So we're under that 30% buffer. So we do have plenty of space in the ICU. And similarly, we don't often report on the availability in traditional hospital beds, but there is quite a bit of space there as well. And then of course, you'll have to remember that with college kids, younger, healthier, generally less likely to have severe illness, less likely to need hospital care. So again, the strategy of finding those cases and containing them early so they don't spread to the community and those that are more vulnerable will certainly help protect our hospital resources as well. Thank you. And while this Allen, BT Digger. Hi, Governor, this question is for you. Can you tell me a little bit more, please, about the kind of rules that you are considering making available to municipalities? I'm wondering if there would be any age limits for that curfew in particular? No, it would just be on the hours of operation. If it's just for bars, then it doesn't affect parties? The gathering size would affect some of the parties. They can put limits on gathering size for their communities. Thanks. And also, I'm sorry if I didn't, if you answered this and I didn't quite hear it, but I couldn't tell if you're going to actively fundraise or hire campaign staff now, now that you've won the primary. Yeah, there'll be a more active campaign than you saw in the primary. Okay, so does that mean that you are going to hire campaign staff or more staff? I think that would be the next step forward. I have not done anything at this point in time, but that would be the next step. What about participating in debates with Davis Depperman ahead of the general election? Well, I'm sure, I'd offered to participate in the primary, and obviously, I'll be participating in the debates in the general as well. We'll see which ones, but I'm sure our voices will be heard. Okay, and I also have a question about K-12 teachers and remote learning. You said last week that teachers do have the flexibility to choose remote learning if they don't want to teach in person, but we've talked to teachers who say that they are being denied that choice, even if they're in high risk categories. What's happening with that? Yeah, I don't think I said that they could choose, but it's up to the districts to work with the teachers in order to accommodate that. And I think it's reasonable, in some respects, when you have a compromised health risk in your either in your household or yourself, that you would be able to work with the school district to make sure you work that out. Okay, thank you so much. A-free, W-C-A-X? My question is likely for Dr. Levine. It's about top-up testing sites. What is the current status of them? Do you all plan to keep doing them throughout the fall? And especially in Shinton County, where most Vermonters live, are you planning to buff up sites there as well? Yeah, I'll let Commissioner Levine answer that, but from my standpoint, we're going to continue probably enhance as much as possible the pop-up sites throughout Vermont. It's not going to be just about the population centers because it gives us an idea of what's happening around the state when we have these pop-up sites. So we want to accommodate everyone, but we've been fairly active in different areas, when Winooski and Burlington and so forth. So we'll continue with that approach and hopefully enhance it a bit. Dr. Levine? That was a wonderful response. And just to add to that, we have started to increase the capacity of each pop-up site as well, slightly. And as we know, what we have to be protective of in the pop-up sites is not that we don't have people to collect the specimens. We want to make sure we have timely turnaround of the specimen result and the capacity to have labs process all of those. And we continue to be working hard in that arena so that we'll have a depth of our portfolio for places to process the samples and get them back quickly. So that will continue. The pop-up sites are going to continue as you just heard. In addition, you have to realize that these are scheduled pop-up sites. That doesn't account for a pop-up site that comes as needed if there were an outbreak. And so we're very strategic in making sure that the pop-up site appears where it needs to, in addition to having that statewide perspective of making sure we're allowing citizens of the state to access a pop-up site depending on where they live for more routine needs versus an outbreak where we would plant one there specifically for as many days as needed. Thank you. A quick follow-up. So just to clarify for people, who should be going to these scheduled pop-up sites and are there any plans for restrictions on who can get tested at them? Yeah, so the preference at the pop-up sites is that asymptomatic people go because we do like symptomatic individuals to be connected with the healthcare system. And have their test ordered through their usual channels of their primary care providers. But at the same time, there are many people who fall in this asymptomatic category who the pop-up sites might be appropriate for, whether they be people who are in quarantine because of travel arrangements and are looking to exit quarantine earlier with a test, whether they be people who are a contact themselves, identified in the contact tracing scheme, whether they belong to a group that undergoes testing at regular intervals, whether they're part of the healthcare system or what have you and can arrange to do it there. So there's a host of people who would be appropriate for those sites. You know, we are trying to make sure that people who are just interested in knowing, but don't really have a confirmed risk factor for COVID, a confirmed history of exposure. We know already in Vermont that if you are one of those people, you don't actually have much chance of testing positive because we've done such extensive testing around the state for people with no symptoms and no risk factors or exposures. And we're finding the rate that the governor quoted way under 1% positive test results. And I just remind people when we went to Manchester area because we wanted to survey those two counties, Bennington and Wyndham counties, we tested over 1,600 people and had only a very few positives come at night. So Verlana should be reassured about that at this point in time. Thank you. Thank you. Lisa, the Valley reporter. Hello, this is a question for commissioner Pichak and it's about the updated travel map. This is on slide 17. And I'm curious about the bottom three numbers. You were then 400 active cases per million VP and 400 to 799 active cases per million VT and 800 plus active cases per million VT. What is the significance of breaking out the active cases in Vermont compared to the other parts of the Northeast in the travel region? And why does the North East Kingdom show up as the darker blue? Yeah, so good questions, Lisa. So we wanted to make sure that Vermonters were at least aware of what their county rate was and where they would fall on our metrics that were applying to the other states in our travel region. As we said in the past, those many different restart metrics, the syndromic surveillance, positivity, case growth, hospital availability, those are the metrics that we measure ourselves against and Vermont against. We have more granular detail available to us about Vermont's data that we unfortunately don't have about every state or every county around us. So this is the proxy, the 400, 800 is the proxy for that type of data and how we apply it to the other states in our travel region. So really just for clarity and just for transparency, we wanted to include those same metrics for Vermont and we have them in a different color to indicate that those metrics don't apply to Vermont. You as a Vermonter need to be aware of the county that you're traveling to and you as an out of state individual traveling to Vermont need to be aware of the county that you're traveling from. In terms of the Northeast Kingdom, I think it's Essex County that is dark and as you know, there's probably just about 6,000 people that live in Essex County and I believe they had two cases in the last week or so. So just even that few of a number of cases in a small county can make the number go up high. Got it, thank you very much. John, John Dillon, Riki R. Hi John. Hello, sorry. I had a question for Dr. Levine on testing and then the death data that was reported recently by the New York Times. It says that Vermont, they were reporting on deaths above normal throughout the country and Vermont had a peak of 1.7 times above normal. It's the last week of July and I know Commissioner Peachock that death is a lagging indicator and I guess it is for a lot of things, but what do you attribute that to and could it be undetected COVID cases? John, I just want to be clear myself and we've had five deaths in the last two months, I believe so and none of them came at the same time. So I'm curious as to what they reported. It was in July. They're reporting on all deaths that are above the normal rate for a particular area so they broke it down state by state. Okay. And they're just saying this is a phenomenon that's happening around the country and they're raising the question, could it be that there are many cases that are undetected? And I wanted to see what Dr. Levine Sure. What he thought of that thesis. John, thanks for the question. I was losing sleep the last several nights that I would get that question so I had the team do a little background research for me. So just so everyone out there understands what the New York Times article was trying to say they were looking at 2020 and comparing it to 2017 to 2019 and looking on a weekly basis to see what the death rate in general would be during those times. And they essentially picked out where the greatest discrepancy was in these death rates comparing the previous years with the current years. And they came around the week of around July 25th for us. As you'll recall, as the governor said, we were not experiencing really almost any deaths from COVID. However, there are still deaths from many other conditions. And the concern of the writers of the article was that states are undercounting COVID related deaths because this gotta be a reason that their death rate would have been higher during this period of time. So it must be that COVID played a role and they just didn't recognize that. So we tried to take a look at that. Now, when we classify a death in Vermont as a COVID-19 death, if you look at a death certificate, COVID-19 can appear in the first line. The cause of death was COVID-19. But it could also say the cause of death was pneumonia or a heart attack. And then further down the death certificate, it might say as a consequence of COVID-19 and that would count as a COVID-19 death. But it might say neither of those. It might say the patient had COVID-19 three months before, but the person, the physician signing the death certificate felt that in some way that contributed, even though they clearly didn't die of their active infection because it happened three months before, but the patient never really recovered in a way that you couldn't rule out COVID had totally drained them of all their energy and adversely affected all of their other chronic conditions that may have caused their death. We even count those as COVID deaths in Vermont. So we're kind of bending over backwards to try to cast as wide a net as possible to make sure that any case that has some connection with COVID, even if it was just a contributory cause gets listed that way. So we looked at this period of time and indeed there were more deaths in Vermont than usual. But I have to say that if you go week by week by week through any month of the year, sometimes you'll find that the rate in 2017 to 19 was only 80% of what we had in 2020. Other times you'll find another week was 130% of what we had in 2020. So it's very variable. We looked at the specific timeframe they chose because on the graph in the article they showed the week of concern and admittedly didn't do a hugely scientific data analysis but looked eyeballing the kinds of causes of death and the predominant causes of death were cancer and heart disease, which are always vying for number one and number two in our state on a daily, monthly or yearly average anyways. They're always very close. They accounted for the majority and then a smaller number had a respiratory cause of death which is typical because prior to COVID, pneumonia is always unfortunately a common cause of death especially in the most frail in our population. It's the kind of added insult that brings them to that point in their lifespan, unfortunately. So there was an average number of cases of those as well. So I know I've given you a long-winded answer but I had to do that to show that we really are trying to look at this and we're not finding any systemic or systematic problem in how we're classifying the deaths or in potentially leading us to undercount deaths that might be related to COVID. And I can tell you, I know our medical examiner's office is very keyed into this and is always working hard to make sure that they've included this in their possibilities even to the point of sometimes taking a sample to test for COVID at the time of death just so they can be sure that it had no role in that person's death. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And quickly, there's been also a lot of press about saliva testing and I wondered if you're comfortable or feel that it's getting to the stage where that technology can be used for rapid screening here in Vermont instead of even with the short timeframe that we have from test results whether it could be used to feed up that process. Yeah, I'd like you to ask me that question at a future press conference because literally yesterday I tasked my public health lab and microbiology team with the task of reassessing saliva testing in terms of its performance characteristics, all the things you've asked for so that we could see if we should be embracing it as one of our strategies. I will say that we think it's getting close at a prime time and so there may actually be a reasonable strategy we could have but we'd also wanna know that it had advantages in terms of perhaps turnaround time as you implied perhaps utilizing different reagents and not overtaxing some of our current systems where the supply chain might be more vulnerable and so we'd have to look into all of that but that's what the team is doing as we speak so we'll report back on that. Okay and just one quick one for the governor. I'm not sure if the rules that you're talking about sort of empowering communities with to restrict public gatherings and so forth are would that be so for all communities I heard about one UVM student and I know an anecdote doesn't make a story but he was coming back a week early to go to a big party in the Mad River Valley. Presumably that could be a situation of concern so would all towns have these disabilities? Yes. Yeah, the simple answer is yes, every community would have the ability through their governance body to make this decision what's best for their own community so yeah, every town and village can do this. Okay, thank you very much. Tim, Vermont Business Magazine. Good afternoon. Governor, in following up on some of the education issues, I know of a teacher who's gonna be required to teach more than double their class size and reach out to another town so it's not even a student she knows and I know you have concerns about K-5 education, not being in person and other circumstances as well, special education could be a big deal. Would you consider turning and perhaps mandating certain statewide educational practices if it's about that things are not working out come to fall? Yeah, that would obviously be the very last resort. I believe that we can get there. We have to allow for flexibility to prove ourselves and I think the sooner we get back into some sort of normalcy in terms of our educational process, the better off we'll be but that may take a little time, admittedly and so we'll see how it works on September 8th and hopefully we'll again all work together in order to make this happen for our children. Great, Dr. Levine, one of the questions that was raised to me was whether college students would be counted as Vermont cases out of state college students or would they be counted in their own state? I know this issue has come up before someone from out of state being tested here is not a Vermont case but how does this fall? How do these college students fall? Yeah, so when the college students are arriving here to live here and pursue their studies that case will be considered as a Vermont case. The case that I did mention, the one case that prior to arrival that will still obviously be counted in the state where that student resided because they never left so they're still considered a case in that state. All right, great, thank you very much. Steve, any KTVs? Hello, can you hear me? I can. Thank you, a quick one for the doctor and the governor if I may. Dr. Levine, have you had a chance to look at the so-called Russian vaccine and are you concerned that with the speed that they're working on these vaccines, we might see something similar to the swine flu thing in 76 where you'd see stuff further down the road that might not have been caught in the preliminary trials. Steve, I do want to remind you that we have a travel restriction so I doubt that he's actually seen this Russian vaccine that may or may not exist. Yeah, I just wondered if he'd read anything about it. Either that or I just didn't quarantine when I came around. Yeah, I've read a lot, but the most telling thing, I can keep the answer crisp, the most telling thing is the US government was offered by the leader of Russia to be able to have some of this vaccine and they have not accepted that offer at this point in time. And a repeat of the swine flu thing with the quickness of the speed of the vaccine development. Yeah, are you speaking of vaccine development in general or the Russian one specifically? No, no, our western vaccines. Yeah, so I think to reframe the question, any harm from a vaccine because of the speed of vaccine development, that should be a concern, but once we see the process that has been gone through from a scientific standpoint, in terms of the size of the population that's been tested, the incidents of any adverse events that have occurred in that population, I think there'll be a lot more comfort because you're right. There are some things that happen very rarely, whether it's a vaccine or just a new medication on the market, that you don't even see those until it's been out there for several months. But those are so rare that clearly the majority of the population would benefit by having got the vaccine. Then there are things that you see in some of the trials that clearly can't be rare, but then the question is, are they significant enough that you wouldn't want anybody to get the vaccine? And that can be determined because we'll have seen those during these trials. So, you're right. The statistics today that I've heard quoted are that in excess of 30% of the US population when surveyed, closer to 40% would say they wouldn't want to receive this vaccine. And they don't even know anything about it yet, and we don't even know there is a vaccine. But that's their stance, which is reflective of, I'm sure, a lot of things going on in our country right now. But I think it's the onus of the medical and healthcare establishment in our country to recognize that kind of survey data and say, we have to be extra careful and we have to be able to, with confidence, assure the population that this vaccine is not only gonna free up their lives again and let them move beyond this pandemic, but it's going to be safe for them. So I think there's extra pressure on just knowing the nature of what's going on in the country now. So that should make us feel, I think, more confident. Great, thank you. Governor, regarding the pun, as we call it up here, I'm just real close to JP. Regarding the Ponzi peak scheme, is there any, are there any investigations into the state culpability, seeing how the state of Vermont put its imprimatur on it, and assured the investors of the safety and the oversight of these programs. I mean, even though a lot of us from the beginning thought it was like a repeat of the musical, the music band, I mean, it was allowed to go forward. Do you see any culpability or responsibility by state officials who put their stamp of approval on this, the sole fiasco? Yeah, the simple answer is that there is questions about that and there is a case developing in some respects, I think, but Mr. Pijek answered that directly. Sure. Thanks for the question, Steve. So certainly our first priority in 2015, 2016 was investigating the underlying fraud and making sure we understood exactly what happened and where the money went, and like I said, tracing every investor penny. Once that case, the civil case was brought and successfully litigated to a good conclusion. We certainly were also interested in what lessons could be learned about the state's participation, dating back all the way to when the regional center was open in the late 1990s. So we did do at our department a deep dive and an investigation into what were the guardrails, what were the guardrails that were lacking that allowed something like this to happen and that report is public. I think we completed it about two and a half years ago. Others in state government have looked at the same. You know, we work closely with Mike Goldberg, the federal receiver. We've worked closely with the US attorney's office. Certainly, if we ever found anything that would give us concern, we would have quickly turned that over to the US attorney's office. They have looked at all the same documents that we have and they've decided to bring the indictments against the defendants, Kiros and Bilstanger primarily. And what, if anything, can be done to help out, say, Newport with that, with the giant smoking hole they're left with on Main Street. Could there be any attachment of any monies involved to help remediate or reimburse the city to at least turn the thing into a park or something? Yeah, so that's a good question as well. So certainly when the state settled its lawsuit against Ariel Kiros and Bilstanger, that was top of mind for us. We had about a $2 million settlement combined with those two individuals made up largely of property transfers to the state. But as the governor made clear, that money is set to be set aside for development in the Northeast Kingdom and in Newport specifically. But I think we'd rather work with them and figure out what's the best use of that $2 million proceeds. Okay, great. So what you're basically saying is investigations are continuing on the state level? Yeah, and I would call those investigations into, you know, where were the breakdowns? You know, where could things be improved? They're not criminal investigations. Sure, would the results of any of these, are these people still employed by the state? Would they lose their jobs or anything like that? You know, I think we wanna wait to see what the report finds. The outcome is. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Patrick, wrote one, Harold. I'm not sure if this is a question for the governor or Dr. Levine, but there's been some talk about the steps being taken to make sure that the colleges can reopen safely and that the colleges be safe. But of course these things happen in the community. We have one of them castles into the college town. So have any steps been taken to kind of outreach to the community, to the wider, outside the college campus community, to how they can best prepare to have an influx of new people who potentially could be carrying a disease? Well, again, we have our pop-up testing capabilities throughout the state coming to that region from time to time as well. As you've heard earlier, we're allowing municipalities to take precautions themselves with gathering sizes and limits on hours of bar service if they have them in their communities. But obviously we want to make sure the colleges and universities are working with their communities to give them faith in what they're doing. I'll ask Dr. Levine. I'm sorry, I guess I'm thinking about coffee shops in the area, thinking about homes that went with students, things like that that aren't necessarily municipality issues, but are going to bring in contact between, again, a group of people who might be coming from out of state, and some of these people have probably been providing these services constitutes the year, and suddenly they're in a slightly different posture because of COVID. So I'm just wondering if there's been any outreach to say if you have a large student population who serve at a grocery store or a coffee shop or whatever, here's some things to be mindful of, and here's some communication you might need to have with the college. I don't know, just various things that might, that might, how we do this to the community because, as I said, a college isn't just limited to a campus as far as the community. Dr. Levine. I think one thing I can say from the outset, and this isn't going out on a limb, is that the coffee shop and the hypothetical community that we're talking about is actually gonna know more about that student than they know about a person coming from Massachusetts, Delaware, California, wherever, who is or isn't quarantining when they arrive because the college students that are coming from all these places are being tested on the first day they arrive, they're being tested a week later, they're being tested on a testing schedule for surveillance, and in that first week that they've arrived, they're on kind of a college campus quarantine and not interacting with the community at large at that point in time. So if you will, we're creating a setting that we know where there was disease and have already isolated that disease out, we know where there are contacts and those contacts have been quarantined and we know after several weeks when there may be more engagement between the campus and the community that we essentially started with a community that we could not measure any disease by our viral testing protocols. So the community should feel a sense of comfort related to that more so than with just general tourists coming to the state. The other part is I actually don't want the coffee shop to do anything special because the coffee shop already has its sign up saying you need a mask on. The coffee shop is part of a community that says we can't be a coffee shop and have indoor business if we don't have our tables set up a certain way in a certain distance. So we want everyone to continue to obtain to obey the kind of guidance that we give everybody in Vermont and especially give the businesses as they interact with people in Vermont. So, nothing stops at the campus community border. The same rules are in place on both sides of that line. Okay, thank you. Joe Barton Chronicle? I believe Commissioner Pichek, you were speaking of the $2 million worth of property settlement from Mr. Curios and I am curious, has the liquidated that property yet? So thanks for that question. We, the properties I believe are still owned by the state, they're not liquidated yet. There were a number of due diligence items that had to be done relating to title search and work of that nature until the settlement was finalized and we took possession of the properties. I do believe a realtor's been engaged and there is some marketing of those properties but to my understanding, they're still with the state right now but as you know, the market in Vermont is quite hot so it would be a good time to double down on those efforts. Okay, thank you. My second question is for the governor. You've raised, talked about how other governors are facing some of the same issues or all of the same issues as Vermont is and I wonder, have you made efforts to try to put together a regional discussion of these issues so that the northeastern states at least can work together because right now it seems everyone is pursuing their own strategies and there seems to be very little discussion that I can see of what has been working and what hasn't been working and sharing of those efforts. Well, a couple of things. First of all, I think most of the other states that I've encountered are using the same approach we are. They're very common in some respects allowing the districts to have flexibility, talk of a lot of hybrid instruction, some remote, some in-person instruction and allowing the flexibility of the districts to determine that. So that's been fairly consistent. The only, there may be a couple of states who have forced in-person instruction. There have been states who haven't mandated mass and school situations, which we have. So ours are different and again, New York, I think it was just last week who the Governor Cuomo had come out to say that they were moving forward with schools opening up. So they were much later to the table in some respects than we were. We've been working on this guidance and so forth for might be nine or 10 weeks at this point. So we want to hear, I know Secretary French, it talks on a weekly basis with our counterparts throughout the Northeast. So they are sharing ideas and different procedures. So it's not as though we're out on this alone. We are working with others. And again, it's more, I don't think it's as much Governor to Governor as it is Secretary to Secretary of Education. Secretary, Deputy Secretary Boucher, can you elaborate on that anymore? Sure, thank you, Governor, thank you for the question. Yes, we are having regular meetings with both other, Secretary French as you mentioned is having both other meetings with both regionally and nationally groups of other secretaries or commissioners of education. When we're meeting regularly, we use a lot of best practices that are emerging and collated through a national organization called the Council of State School Officers, which does a really nice job of providing materials for chiefs and deputies and our staff and teams to actually use. And then I would also just again state that within our, within Vermont, we meet regularly with both superintendents but also with representatives weekly of the Vermont NEA, Superintendents Association, Principal Association, Vermont Board Association and some others. So I think it's important to put that in a little bit of context as well. Thank you. Thank you. Greg, Bennington Banner? Thank you, good afternoon. Governor, the primary election appears to have smashed previous turnout records with many voters taking advantage of early voting through mail or a drop off. What was your reaction to that turnout result and would you support making early voting outreach to state employees this year a permanent part of voting or moving to the vote by mail as five states have already, already do? Well, first of all, I was thrilled with the turnout in this last election. I've lamented on the fact that we don't have enough participation paled in comparison in other years. And when you think about the population that can vote versus the population that does vote, we should do better. So I was thrilled with the response. I think this is a step in the right direction. In terms of changing our approach, again, this was not, I just want to remind you, this was our status quo. This was what we had in place. This wasn't any different than any of the election except for a higher participation rate. So the difference was the Secretary of State had sent out a notice just telling people you could vote by absentee ballot or vote by mail. But it's something that's been in place for quite some time in Vermont. So that is not any different. The general election, I believe the Secretary of State is still continuing forward with the concept of mailing a ballot to every Vermonter. That's what's going to be different. So we'll see how that works out. But again, I think it speaks volumes to how far we've come in terms of our vote by mail structure that we have in place right now. I mean, it works pretty well when you've received, even received the results early in the evening. It didn't seem, even with higher numbers, we didn't see any delay in the results. So I think everyone did a great job. I think the Secretary of State deserves a lot of credit. But I also want to give the town clerks, city clerks and so forth, a lot of credit because a lot of work goes on behind the scenes to make all that happen, sending mailing out the ballots as well as receiving them and counting them and so forth. So I think everyone did a great job. Okay, one quick follow-up. Where are your feelings on the President acknowledging he's slowing the United States local service to prevent mail voting by mail or discourage it and have you reached out to our congressional delegation or to the Governor's Association regarding that situation? Yeah, I think this is unfortunate when you're trying to squelch the voices of Americans and squelch their opportunity to vote. I think that during these times, we should be doing all we can to make sure that everyone is counted and has their voices heard through the ballot box. So in terms of much too quick, we haven't, I haven't spoken to the National Governors Association at this point in time about this provision in particular. So I'm sure it'll be a topic in the next week or so. Okay, because the email delivery has a lot of other impacts in addition to ballots, checks, medications, et cetera. Yeah, especially during these times when we're asking people to stay home more, not to interact and utilizing the mail service has been helpful as well as with the private delivery. So yeah, this is the wrong time to be pulling back in terms of mail delivery. All right, that concludes my question. Thank you. Thank you. Courtney, Local 22. Well, just a couple quick questions first for the Governor. So Biden has recently said that all governors should mandate masks. And obviously we already have a mask mandate, but I was just wondering if you had any thoughts on that or making it absolutely mandatory. Well, I think every state has to do what they think is right for their states in particular, but I think the science has evolved on this and shows that the more we wear masks, the more we physically distance ourselves, the sooner we'll get through this. So from a national perspective, if we could all just wear masks for a few weeks, we would be so much further ahead. So I think he's on the right track there. And just another quick question regarding colleges. We've had viewers and people say that they've already been passing UVM or college parties around the Burlington areas. And I know you said that towns will be able to limit people's size, but I was just wondering, will people be able to police those or will that be on the college for policing those or the town? I think it's gonna be a combination of all the above. I think we have to, again, if we want to continue to suppress this virus, we're going to have to limit the amount of engagement. I'm concerned about some of those parties and clubs and bars that attract many of our youth, many of our college students. So that's why we put into place the actions in the executive order that we did to try and prevent some of that. But we're all going to have to, again, be nimble, work on this, work together in order to prevent this from the virus from spreading. Okay, thank you. Kevin, seven days. Can you hear me, Governor? I can. Thanks so much for taking so many questions. This is a quick follow-up on that last question about giving local municipalities disability. Don't municipalities already have the ability to issue curfews in their own communities if they see public health risks? I would think that would be a power that a mayor like Mayor Murrow Weinberg already have. Yeah, there's a technical issue with that and I would have to refer to my general counsel because she, Jay, can give us the exact provision there. But I don't believe they can go further than the governor. But I don't know if Jay is on the call, no. What I can do, Kevin, is have Jay get in touch with you and so that you get this correct and exact. That'd be great, I'd appreciate that. I'd also like you to, could you weigh in a little bit on the qualifications for Lieutenant Governor? Obviously, we just had a Democratic primary where someone who has never held public office before has been chosen as the Democratic nominee. You're someone who served in the legislature for quite a spell before you served as Lieutenant Governor and now you're Governor. Can you speak to the qualifications for Lieutenant Governor's position and whether you think public service and elected office should be a qualifier for that? Yeah, I don't know if this should be a qualifier. It certainly helps to understand the legislative process and because a lot of what you do is presiding over the Senate and watching legislation and making rulings and so forth. But I don't believe you have to have any credentials to do that in some respects. But certainly, the position's important. It'd be important for me as well and for me having someone that I can work with and rely on and work through some of the issues and it has the same type of commitment that I do to what I see as best for Vermont. But as far as the qualifications, I don't believe that there needs to be anything specific for qualifications. Well, what do you think it would be beneficial? Well, again, it certainly helps to understand the process but I don't think that prohibits anyone from learning and doing the job. You have the Secretary, the Senate that does a wonderful job in trying to guide people through the process. So it's something that can be learned. Okay, and then my last question I think is for Dr. Levine and that is in the new cases today. I think I see 17 new cases today and forgive me if you've addressed the origins of these cases but it looks as though 17 new cases is the highest number of new cases in the state in the last six weeks. Do I have that right? I'm working off of data from the dashboard and trying to make sure that's accurate but I believe it to be true. I don't see a number that high since the 1st of July. Can you speak to that little mini spike and to what extent and how many of those cases appear to be attributed to college students returning to the area and if it's not that, is there something else going on? Yeah, thanks for that question because we asked many of the same questions this morning actually. I think we've had another 17 day within the last few weeks because that number really rings a bell for me so sooner than July 1st. But every week we go from zero to two to a half a dozen to something in the teens. So this isn't totally out of the ordinary to be honest. I can tell you that these are all reported from late results coming from lab so that none of them have actually had the investigation that we would want to know more about by the time we talk about them early in the morning. That's ongoing as the morning evolves. I can tell you though that the numbers of cases were close to 50% of them were in Chinden County but the rest were distributed throughout the state. And looking at the age ranges there was some very young and some older and some in between and it doesn't look like uniformly or not even close to uniformly was there a college age range amongst those 17 cases? So we'll learn a lot more as the teams work on them today because that's what they'll be doing but right now no specific relationships, no specific designation of why the number is the number or where they're coming from in terms of their exposure history. Okay, excellent. Good luck trying to figure it out. I appreciate your time. Ham Davis? Can you hear me? I can. Governor, this is about the 50 years here from COVID to healthcare reform which I think is a very difficult issue. I can't even imagine how your team could do any better on COVID. I mean maybe could but I'm not sure how but the same can't be truly said of the healthcare reform and so the healthcare reform is a little bit right now like the piece of the iceberg that's below the surface of the ocean but it's right there and it's very big and it's coming up right now. The healthcare reform itself is on the cusp of its most difficult decisions and on Tuesday, this coming Tuesday we start the Green Mountain Care Board starts looking at all of the budgets for the Vermont hospitals and the decisions they make there will provide the underpinning for the system for the next several years. Anyway, my question is for Mike Pichak. One of the most difficult questions is how to manage the money, this very significant piece of healthcare money in Vermont that flows through Blue Cross and Blue Cross is subject to two types of regulations you know. One is yours, you have to keep Blue Cross, your job is to keep Blue Cross alive and the Green Mountain Care Board's job is to keep the Blue Cross cost down as low as possible to make insurance affordable. My question is this, have you thought about and do you think, have you thought about and do you have any ideas about how we might go forward? Looking at the Blue Cross budget, if the DFR is simply looking at the amount of money that Blue Cross spends, okay, without any knowledge or involvement in what the Blue Cross spends the money for and the equation is entirely the opposite for the Green Mountain Care Board. They're not job is to keep Blue Cross alive, their job is to try and figure out what they should spend. I'm trying to figure out whether there's any way that you could do that under your current legislative constraints, whether you can look at what Blue Cross spends their money for because that's the essence of healthcare reform. Can you do that? Do you want to do that now? If you can't do that now, do you think that you should have the power to do that? Mr. Pichai, good luck. Hi, Ham, how are you? Good, Mike, I'm sorry, I think that's just the most critical question out there. Yeah, it's a good question and really timely as well as the Green Mountain Care Board is set to deliver the rates for Blue Cross and MVP today and the hospital budget review is set to begin next week, as you mentioned. So when we look at Blue Cross Blue Shield, certainly we're interested generally in sort of what percentage of their premium is going to pay claims. And as you know, that number fluctuates around 93, 94, 95% of basically premiums coming in are going out to pay claims with the rest for administrative costs like 6% or so for salaries and IT and the like. And that's really good when you compare it to other Blue Cross plans. So just in terms of that percentage, that's certainly a positive thing for them as a company and for Vermont policyholders because they get their bang for their buck, if you will. But then when you look at that 93, 94, 95% of premiums and I think your question is sort of what types of services are Blue Cross Blue Shield paying for? Are they paying for surgeries in certain locations? Are they paying for more complicated surgeries in certain locations? Should that be the case or should the care be split up in a different way? So do we have the authority to do that? I think it's a question that's much larger than just us and just payers, commercial payers. There's their plans that are outside of the commercial space and ERISA, their government payers as well. I think all of those have to be part of that conversation. Certainly there are issues about health access, how can someone get access to the health care they need, issues about quality certainly as well, which are critical and important. I think some of the issues that we have are legal issues though. There's certain network adequacy laws at the state and federal level that would probably need to be addressed. So I think it's really a broader stakeholder group that would need to really tackle that issue both on the payer side and the provider side and legislation I think would be needed. Right, I agree, thanks for that. But I think that the, I'm not sure where you stand on it. Do you, would you like to do it or are you happy with the sort of guardrails that exist in the current statute? So I think whether it's DFR, whether it's AHS and their health care reform efforts and Mike Smith probably would like to talk more about those. I think having, most states don't have as many cooks in the kitchen, if you will, when it comes to health care. Largely there's just sort of fewer players and that does make reform easier in some instances. So, but I think some combination of AHS and DFR and we obviously work very well together would certainly be appropriate. Thank you very much. Alec, Burlington Free Press. Hi, yes. Hi, my question is for Dr. Levine. You mentioned one positive policy case from preliminary test. I'm wondering if you'd be at Liberty to say which college that is. It's the one positive that's out of state. You're talking about the one that's out of state. Yeah. Yes. No, I'd be happy to. That was the University of Vermont. They are having their students do saliva-based tests out of state, the results get known before they embark on their travels. Thank you so much. Again, I guess that wraps it up. Thank you very much for tuning in and we'll see you again on Tuesday.