 As you know, yesterday we opened up a vaccinations those 60 and older and on Monday will move to 50 plus. We've moved to these age bands after having all the most at risk for monitors, the elderly and those of any age with certain high risk health conditions able to be vaccinated. I want to remind folks this is going to move very quickly. Each Monday over the next four weeks, a new band will open ending on April 19th when every Vermonter 16 and over will be eligible. And this is great news, but only if people sign up. So when it's your turn, make sure you do so. As we vaccinate more and more Vermonters and substantially complete those at highest risk, we'll also be able to methodically and safely relax certain restrictions. As we've done all along, these changes will be strategic. And in close consultation with and in agreement from our health experts, Dr. Levine and Dr. Kelso. So in the next 10 days, we'll detail the path ahead and show you a blueprint of how we expect to ease restrictions based on the level of vaccinated Vermonters. This will demonstrate why we believe the fourth of July will mark a new phase, a time when things will look and feel much more normal. It's important to remember the focus of our vaccination strategy has been to save lives and limit hospitalizations. And we've made substantial progress protecting those at highest risk. Even after every adult has had the chance to be vaccinated. COVID is not going away. There will still be cases for quite some time. But we can reduce the most harmful impacts of with this vaccine. And you all play a role in that progress, which means we need to get you vaccinated just as soon as we can. And when you're eligible, we also get there by continuing the personal responsibility Vermonters have shown throughout the pandemic. You also continue to play an important role in limiting the spread of the virus while we work to vaccinate more Vermonters. This means be smart about the things you're doing every day. Wear a mask, keep your distance and stay home and get tested when you're not feeling well. If we stick together and stay united, we'll get to the end of the tunnel in the best possible position with the fewest lives lost. Next, we'll turn to our weekly education update. And we'll hear from Secretary French. But first, members of my team and I had the opportunity to join a virtual youth forum yesterday with about 24 incredible young Vermonters who talked about the impacts the pandemic has had on them and their lives. This event was hosted by Vermont after school. And I'm pleased to have their executive director Holly Morehouse with us today to talk about some of what was shared. These were inspiring students from across the state with different backgrounds, stepping up to share their stories. The message I heard from many is something we've been talking about at these briefings. Our kids are struggling. And we must pay attention and do all we can to support them. One student shared results of a survey that found over 70% of Vermont teens are reporting more anxiety and mental health concerns as a result of the pandemic. While another said she actually did better learning remotely due to her personality. But the majority shared how important it is for their social and emotional well being to be in school with their classmates, teachers and staff and that for some school felt like the safest place to be. Several had this advice for adults. Don't forget about their mental, social and emotional well being. Listen to them. Talk to them. Help them grieve and heal the year they've lost. Don't sweep it under the rug. They also talked about the importance of after school and summer programs. And as you know, expanding these areas have spent a priority for my administration. The forum is online at the Vermont After School website. I encourage you to take some time to watch it if you have a chance. It's so important to listen to our youth because they truly are the leaders of tomorrow. And if this group has any indication of what tomorrow will look like, there's hope. With that, I'll turn it over to Holly. Thank you, Governor. I would sincerely like to thank Governor Scott and his whole team for co-hosting that virtual youth summit with us yesterday. I also want to say right up top, I fully recognize the irony of someone my age being here representing youth voice. That is not what I mean to do. No one knows better than a 14-year-old currently living in Vermont what it is like to be 14 years old living in Vermont today. So I do, as the governor did, encourage you to watch the youth forum if you didn't get to catch it yesterday to hear directly from the young people. We do have a bit.ly link at bit.ly slash virtual youth summit 2021. I want to reach out and thank the 24 youth ages 11 to 19 from across the state who gave their time and their effort to make the summit happen and to be part of that event. They worked hard on their pieces, deep in thought. They gathered data. They arranged to get out of class or other obligations to be there. They made sure their technology would work. All of those pieces together. Most of all, I'd like to thank them for sharing their voices with us. I won't presume to speak for them today. What I'd like to do is just reflect back on some of what I heard. I also appreciate the governor and his team for pay attention to the well-being of our young people as we work together as a state to move into recovery. A few weeks ago, we shared data at this press conference from the Vermont Youth Project, where young people reported increased levels of anxiety, loneliness, and sleeplessness this year. A sense of feeling overwhelmed and growing concern for their own mental health and for that of those around them. That data got our attention, but data isn't always enough, and the governor's virtual youth summit yesterday offered up another way, right, to get behind the numbers and to better understand the experiences, ideas, and needs of our young people. The summit was not about the youth putting on a performance, right, or saying the right thing. Rather, it was about us as adults pausing, being quiet, and listening to their authentic input from a diverse group of young voices across our state. And what they shared was not cookie cutter. As the governor said, some ideas were specific. A crossing guard, more buses, especially in winter, helped transitioning from eighth to ninth grade after this crazy school year, more racial and ethnic diversity among teachers and staff in their schools, sensitive and well thought out supports for reentry into full-time school and life, and more education on racism. There was empathy and compassion in their words. They thanked their teachers, and many spoke to the challenges of maintaining their mental health. They're worried about making and keeping friends, domestic abuse, and being heard. They're asking to really be listened to, and to have their input and experiences taken into account in an authentic way as we come through this crisis. Over and over again, they brought up wanting opportunities to connect. And they spoke about after-school and summer activities of all types, from sports to yoga, drawing, crochet, swimming, biking, community service, and more. They asked for teen centers, flexible models for school, quiet social groups to read, paint, or draw, more mental health support, social gatherings, and someday Dr. Levine, life again without mass. Reflecting on all the activities and interests that you shared yesterday and recognizing that our wonderful Vermont summer will soon be upon us, I'd like to mention two open surveys to collect input and information from around the state. Senator Sanders has a survey right now for high school youth in particular to ask what they're looking for this summer, whether it's career exploration opportunities, jobs, work, catching up on coursework, taking college courses, dance, drama, singing. Youth can find that survey on Senator Sanders' homepage at www.sanders.senate.gov. There is also a survey that we have been working on with close partnership with the governor's office and a number of state partners to collect information from all the organizations and camps and schools and businesses that are seeking to open up opportunities this summer for our youth of all ages, whether it's a summer program or a learning experience, leadership experience, a work experience, and you can find that survey at vermontafterschool.org slash summer survey and we hope that everyone who's planning and thinking about offering programs in that space will respond there. So instead of closing with something profound or shattering, I'd actually like to close by stating something that I hope is obvious. Young people make a better Vermont. Just by being here they enrich our communities. Young people are also problem solvers and they are so eager to be engaged in making our state stronger, healthier, and happier place to live. And honestly when I reflect back on what I heard yesterday, young people want and need what we all want and need. Community connection, opportunities to learn, a sense of belonging, the ability to get to places and to be with friends, access to recreation, and the chance to participate in all sorts of fun enriching hobbies and activities. I look forward to seeing the results of the two summer surveys that I mentioned and I look forward to working with our state partners and with youth to ensure that all you young Vermonters have opportunities throughout this recovery period and beyond to be active, engaged, connected, and heard. Thanks for your time this morning and I will now turn the virtual mic over to Secretary Dan French of the Agency of Education who is joining us by video. Thank you Holly. Good morning. I will begin my report with a review of this week's surveillance testing data in our schools. This week we tested 1,408 school staff from all regions of the state. To date, this week's testing has identified three cases of COVID-19 which is a 0.21 percent positivity rate. This is a slightly lower than last week's positivity rate and the statewide positivity rate is still low at 1.6 percent. We are considering ending the surveillance testing program for school staff as the vaccination program for them winds up. For now, excuse me, we intend to continue the testing for the next several weeks. The vaccination program for school staff is working very well. We're working closely with school districts and our various education partner organizations to ensure staff are aware of openings at clinics being held across the state. Secretary Smith will provide more details on the program. The CDC recently announced the shift in its distancing recommendations for schools from six feet to three feet. We're excited by this announcement because it'll help support a return to more in-person instruction which is critical to better meet the needs of our students. We are now in the process of reviewing the CDC recommendations and the studies that they cited behind it. This review is being conducted by Dr. Levine in the health department in conjunction with infectious disease experts at UVM. We are also working on revising the safe and healthy school's guidance to make it more responsive to the conditions for the remaining months of the school year. Last time we edited the document was in October in advance for the holiday period. We expect to pull together the distancing recommendations from the health department and other edits for review next week. At this point we are on track to publish revised guidance in early April. In terms of our recovery work school districts are actively involved in developing the recovery plans. We now also have a better sense of the federal dollars that will be available to support this work so I thought I'd provide some detail on the funding. The federal dollars to support recovery work in K-12 are coming to us through a program called ESSER which stands for the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund. Three different rounds of this funding have come from the federal government, what we now call ESSER 1, ESSER 2, and ESSER 3. The programs are slightly different but I thought I would highlight how much the funding has increased with each new package. Vermont received 31 million dollars under ESSER 1 last spring. ESSER 2 which came out in December was for 127 million or about four times as much as ESSER 1 and now with ESSER 3 Vermont will receive about 285 million which is more than twice the amount of ESSER 2. So in total that means we will receive about 443 million, almost half a billion dollars to support COVID operations and student recovery in our pre-K through 12 schools. Although the ESSER programs are slightly different they allow school districts to decide how to spend 90% of that money and the agency of education can decide how to spend the remaining 10% on statewide activities. The 90% to school districts is allocated on a formula which takes into account the number of students and the poverty level of each district. To give you a sense of what this means in real dollars I thought I would share the amounts for the three districts that will receive the most ESSER funding. Again these allocations are based on population and poverty. The Southwest Vermont Supervisor in Beddington will receive about 26 million, Burlington School District will receive 22 million and Windom Northeast in the Bellos Falls area will receive about 20 million. A complete list of all the district funding can be found on the agency of education's website. Districts will have several years to use these funds but I think districts will have adequate funding to support the implementation of the recovery plans. A challenge we'll face now is how to use these funds in a strategic manner since they are one time funds. As a former superintendent I can tell you that one of the challenges with federal funding programs is that they eventually go away so we do need to prepare for that eventuality now and try to use the funds strategically. To help districts focus on strategic priorities we are emphasizing recovery activities and their grant applications. We are also calling attention to the improvement of school facilities. Improving school facilities is an allowable use of these funds particularly when these improvements are related to addressing safety and health concerns. We think these one-time federal dollars present an important opportunity to address the condition of our schools. In addition to the recovery planning effort we're also working on guidance for the end of the year school activities such as graduation and also the summer activities many of which Holly referred to. We will have something out on end of year of activities and graduations in April. In terms of summer programming we think it'll be important to offer all students access to some engaging programming this summer. In conjunction with the governor's office we are working with a variety of stakeholders programs and service providers to design a statewide summer initiative that expands capacity for these programs and extends their availability for all families who wish to participate. Our hope is to provide a fun engaging experience open to all students regardless of ability or economic circumstance. Currently we are working out the details regarding funding staffing and resource allocation and how best to integrate summer programs with what schools will offer as part of their recovery plans. I will have more information on this work in the coming weeks. That concludes my report I'll now turn it over to Secretary Smith. Thank you Secretary French. Good morning everyone. As many of you know registration for Vermonters age 60 and older opened yesterday as of this morning twelve thousand seven hundred Vermonters have made their vaccination appointments. When you add that number to the thirteen thousand five hundred that have already been vaccinated through various other programs and eight and for example one a that comes to a total of twenty six thousand seven hundred uh that that's fifty five percent of this age group that either has registered or already been vaccinated uh for sixty and above. A technical issue early in the day cost some Vermonters to end up with COVID-19 testing appointments instead of vaccine appointments although the issue was resolved relatively quickly within forty five minutes it impacted approximately twenty one hundred people. We have canceled the accidental testing appointments and the Department of Health has reached out to those that were affected to help them make the correct appointments. We do truly thank those that were impacted for their patients. In terms of our overall progress as of this morning a hundred and eighty eight a hundred and eighty nine thousand five hundred people have been vaccinated against COVID-19 eighty five thousand seven hundred have received their first dose of vaccine one hundred and three thousand eight hundred have received their first and last dose of vaccine. I'd like to go to the slide here because I think it illustrates some of the things I've been talking about in in progress that we've made in those higher age bands eighty six percent of seventy five and older have been vaccinated as well as eighty seven percent of those seventy to seventy four have been vaccinated and seventy percent of those age sixty five to sixty nine have been vaccinated. If you want to see how we're doing with the rest of the nation Tori if we can go to the next slide. Vermont is first in the nation for vaccinating sixty five and over according to data from the CDC and and quite a bit in terms of ahead of the rest of the nation in that regard. Turning to our educator clinics in the last three weeks over seventy seven percent of teachers and school staff have been vaccinated. You think about this this is remarkable and we thank all educators for their participation and dedication to getting our children back to school. As I mentioned earlier this week we will receive additional doses of Johnson and Johnson and we will ramp up vaccinations for educators again next week. Starting today we are opening educator clinics to eligible health care workers and those in the one A category who will have access to Johnson and Johnson vaccine. If you have not done so already I encourage all educators eligible child care providers and health care workers and others in one A to make appointments at health for month dot gov slash my vaccine or by calling the vaccine call center at eight five five seven two two seven eight seven eight. Educator clinics will be phased out in early April as they will become eligible for all community vaccination sites that means that if you have not received a vaccine through an educator specific clinic you will be able to make an appointment at any other site by early April. Educator clinics will be available with available appointments over the next week include Berlin Grand Isle and Plainfield today Wells River on tomorrow on March 27th and Rutland and Hartford on March 29th later today we'll add clinics in St. Albans, Richford, Montpelier, Newport, Brighton, Lowell and Middlebury. Additionally we are adding many other sites and collectively nearly five thousand appointments will be added over the course of a week. As a reminder registration will open up at 8 15 a.m. on Monday March 29th for those 50 and over. You can make your appointment at one of our health partner clinics which includes Costco and Walmart through the state website or you can make it through that one of the community vaccination sites at healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine if you are unable to sign up online and we would encourage signing up online but if you are unable to sign up online you can call 8 5 5 7 2 2 7 8 7 8 you can also make appointments directly with Kenny drugs CVS pharmacy or Walgreens all of these options are available at healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine if you're again if you're unable to sign up online you can call 8 5 5 7 2 2 7 8 7 8 but if you do that and you have multiple appointments please cancel your appointment in the state system if you get a vaccine at one of the participating pharmacies that way we have a slot for somebody that will need a a vaccination I want to thank you it's been a very successful sort of vaccination program so far in the various elements that we have opened up and I really appreciate what vermoners have done in terms of stepping up and and moving particularly in those older age fans we're number one in the nation that's something to be a proud proud of I will now turn it over to Dr. Levine for a health update thank you well after daily case counts ranging from the 80s to the mid 100s today we are going to be reporting 251 new cases our state's positivity rate is 1.8 percent our seven-day average positivity rate has varied between 1.2 and 1.8 percent range this is a concerning number of new cases and should not be dismissed but it is also not the entire picture as Governor Scott has said we've been successful in meeting our primary public health goal and responsibility during the pandemic reducing the number of deaths and severe illness and protecting those among us who are most vulnerable currently there are 26 vermonters hospitalized four in the ICU these numbers have decreased significantly from highs over the past year we never forget that these are people not statistics making these relatively low figures all the more meaningful so why are we seeing this high number of cases now when we seem so close to the finish line the answer is both simple and complex our efforts to vaccinate for monitors is a race against what the virus does best move easily from person to person throughout the country including up and down the eastern seaboard case numbers are up you've most likely heard on the national news the warnings from Drs Walensky of the CDC from Dr Fauci and others that the country has leveled off and increased slightly in its number of cases and we must pay attention to that with the change in seasons to warmer weather people are starting to move around more and interacting with each other as expected we're also seeing both nationally and here in Vermont increased circulation of the more easily transmissible variants especially the B117 united kingdom variant in this regard the CDC guidance and regular and recommendations have really preached caution and a gradual and very deliberate pace of reopening much like the Vermont approach we've known for more than a century how viruses spread and have each had a crash course in learning how to prevent it what we need now perhaps more than in the past several months is for everyone to do everything they can to keep the germs from spreading this is especially important among younger Vermonters who will be the last age groups eligible for the virus let me tell you a little bit about the 250 cases half of these cases in the last two weeks and a little more than half in these 250 have been under the age of 30 the largest age band has been age 20 to 29 yesterday a higher percentage of the cases were from Chittenden County but cases are being seen across all of Vermont the most important piece of information that I want you to take home though is to note carefully that only a handful in fact only four of the cases were age 65 or older this again is a vivid illustration of the success of the vaccination strategy we're using the good news you saw on the slides that Secretary Smith portrayed tells you what we're doing in terms of vaccination the good news I'm giving you is the impact of that strategy on those who by age alone are in the most vulnerable group we've obviously portrayed in other press conferences the fact that the pace of increase in deaths and the numbers of deaths absolutely have markedly decreased as well during the month of March in comparison to any of the three preceding months at the last press conference I spoke about the spring-like weather's impact on our activities and gatherings so with what I reported about case numbers I will add a few words of caution about the upcoming spring holidays beginning this weekend with pass-over followed by Easter and then Ramadan soon after if you celebrate any of these holidays you're likely forward looking forward to spending some time with family and friends making up for having to miss out last year so a reminder fully vaccinated people can gather freely that means two weeks after your final dose but with recent case numbers putting an exclamation mark on this please follow the current gathering guidance anyone who's not yet vaccinated should certainly limit their social interactions to one other unvaccinated household at a time you may want to have the COVID talk which you can learn more about on the Department of Health website ahead of any gathering just to make sure everyone is comfortable with the plans to stay safe the CDC continues to urge people to avoid non-essential travel right now but if you do travel and you are not vaccinated be sure to quarantine for either 14 days or if you have no symptoms after seven days with a negative test as always remember that testing is available around the state and this is a key tool for preventing further spread of the virus again to put our numbers of cases in context more than 68,000 tests were performed in the past week with nearly 19,000 tests just on Wednesday tremendous numbers not all explainable by surveillance testing in the college population I might add and I thank everyone who was tested and our lab teams for all of this work you can get more information on testing at healthvermont.gov slash COVID-19 additionally we're making great gains as you've seen in the pace of vaccination nationally and in Vermont which should give us all hope for the future but as I and national public experts have said we cannot give this virus any more chances to spread not while declining cases are reversing course and the more transmissible variants are taking hold every day more Vermonters are getting vaccinated which increases our odds in the accelerating race against the virus now that we have a timeline for all Vermonters to get vaccinated mark your calendar make your appointment and get your shot I also discussed on Tuesday that the best vaccine to get is the one available to you this still stands however we know there are certain public health reasons why one vaccine may be better for certain people than others for example the single dose Johnson and Johnson may be well suited for protecting people who are hard at a reach or can't easily access a second dose or may live in long-term care facilities as a new resident there or experience homelessness because it will be a few weeks before we have sufficient ongoing supply of this vaccine coming in this is not yet relevant but as soon as we can we will look to quickly accommodate the very few Vermonters who have a medical contraindication to getting one of the new mRNA vaccines like a severe allergic reaction we'll announce that when the time comes our goal is to fully vaccinate all Vermonters as soon as we can your role and this is essential and I ask that as soon as your age band comes up you register to get vaccinated go to healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine to register for vaccine or use the phone number that secretary Smith noted as soon as you are eligible this will put you your loved ones and in fact all of us in a much safer position by not allowing ongoing transmission of virus and more opportunities for the variant strains to flourish or further develop considerations like these will move vermont to the finish line quicker so that we all can benefit thank you Dr. Levine we'll now open it up to questions thanks governor so probably a question for Dr. Levine so you mentioned we're seeing cases especially young people 20 to 29 and then the Burlington area too so I'm wondering is this because of behavior of young people is it because of the variants maybe a mix of the two and I guess are you expecting to see more cases at college campuses in UVM as well so it's one of those all of the above answers and because the cases are so recent obviously we can't tell everyone's reason certainly we are seeing cases in younger people who are generally more freely mobile do tend to gather together more and often have public facing jobs which may put them in more contact with the public at a time of more transmissibility of virus I think it's hard to say that the variant strains play a major role or a minor role but they clearly play a role here we can't begin to do enough whole genome sequencing to really get an assessment yet of how prevalent that strain is in the state or in certain counties of the state but we know it's here and because it's so much more transmissible we know it will increase in terms of the percentage of total strains that we see so that's playing a real role the University of Vermont has had some ups and downs and it's a look at the numbers of cases that they've had the last couple of days being a little worse than previously but at the same time the fact of the matter is a lot of what their students are showing with positive test results are reflective of what's going on in the region that surrounds them and where they live so I wouldn't look at it as a specifically college-related phenomenon in total because that doesn't account for all of the cases also looking at the other colleges across the state we're not seeing huge surges in numbers of cases it's been very very modest this was a bigger week in general and I think Commissioner Pechak showed that on Tuesday but at the same time there has not been a tremendous surge in cases across campuses and then Governor on a separate note you've probably seen House Democrats unveiled their proposal to reform public sector employee pensions and shore up the three billion dollar hole in the pension fund what what do you make of their proposal and what what are your thoughts on using the one hundred fifty million dollars to kind of kick start that filling the hole yeah well first of all I want to give credit where credit is due treasurer brought this up early in the year I've talked about this a lot over the last four years but it was going to take the majority in the House and the Senate legislators that of the majority party to actually get something done it was alarming to see that it's grown the unfunded liability is grown from four point three to five point seven billion dollars at this point in time so something had to be done this was costing more and more to fund every single year and money that we didn't have so great credit to the to the Speaker of the House in particular I know it's not easy I mean you've seen that I've had to make some decisions over the last four years that were not in agreement with some of my base some people that who supported me but but when you get into these positions you have to do what you is right for the entire state so from a financial standpoint I'm in agreement that something has to be done I don't know all the details and I obviously am concerned about how we leverage money a certain dollars to implement this plan but but again it's a step in the right direction and this is going to have to be something passed by the House over to the Senate and then we'll be all working together along the way but again I you know I give credit to the House Speaker and others for moving forward with this and follow-up the unions are of course pushing back on the the proposal instead saying that you know we should raise revenues on state's top earners what do you make of their their suggestion and their proposal how to shorten the fund that's an easy talking point but when you really actually look into the details and find out how many of these high wage earners we have we'll find out very quickly that there's not many and to to raise that amount of money without doing anything about the structural issues within the within the pension funds and the retirement funds that are significant and so we just have to take a look do the best we can protect those who are heavily invested and we'll we'll come to some conclusion hopefully they've got to follow through but these are difficult times again when you're when the majority party is faced with this much pushback from their base I know all too well how difficult that is so we'll see how they do over the next couple of months but but I thank them for moving forward I'm all set thank you sorry Steve caught me off guard there I want to follow up on that on the pension issue if we could we're already hearing governor about you know the possibility of an exodus of state employees and police officers if the house reform plan goes through what would you say to those employees and those nervous unions well again let's see what the final product is I mean this was the initial draft that was put forward they put some effort into to coming up with a solution I'm sure that everyone will have their opportunity to weigh in and it may look different from what it is today from what it is hopefully when it passes both the House and the Senate and it's something acceptable to me so again I encourage people to have their voices heard but also to be realistic about what we can afford and what we can't and I think that this is something that's been brewing for quite some time this isn't the first legislative body that has had to come to grips with us this has been around for quite some time and the last time that there was anything significant done about this issue it didn't work it didn't fix the problem so again we have to get back and become realistic 5.7 billion dollar unfunded liability it's not sustainable it's not fair to them because in the end someone is going to be shortchanged I mean if you if you come up with a if we keep going the way we're going without any changes it goes bankrupt because there won't be enough money there to pay everyone so we have to be realistic and we have to be honest about the challenges why though is it appropriate for current workers future retirees to shoulder most of most of the of the burden well again I don't know the details Stuart this is something that the house has been working on I don't know what it does and doesn't do for existing employees but this is a conversation that has to begin somewhere and and I encourage them to have their voices heard now again I would I would say we have to look at the structural issues within the plan to be sure that it's sustainable in the future and to do that someone has to give and and I from the proposal that I saw there was some one-time money that was going to be part of the solution and so it's not as though everyone isn't it doesn't have to give something but I would agree I mean those who've been with the with the the state for most of their careers should not be penalized at this point in time but how far back we go in terms of who has to carry some of that burden will remain to be seen and on a happier note did you get your appointment or did you sign up for a test yes I'll be I'll be having my vaccination a week from Monday pretty happy about that yeah I'm looking forward to it you know I'm looking forward to more mobility more freedom getting this behind us so that we can enjoy everything that we have to offer in Vermont so yeah I'm looking forward to it thanks governor Eric the Times Argus yes we've been hearing from some homebound Vermonters who are not patients of a home health agency they say that they're waiting long amounts of time just to get a call back schedule a vaccine visit is there something that can be done to speed up that process I'll ask Secretary Smith Eric I haven't heard that but I will check into it obviously we've been making sure that we put the allocation that's necessary each week into EMS and home health next week it'll be 222 that we'll be putting in but let me check into that and find out if there is something that is going on I I just haven't heard that there has been an issue we've been allocating home health from the beginning and continue to allocate home health through the weeks ahead so we've been using what we've been told is the demand so if there's an issue I will check into it do you mind if I give you a call later Eric and another logistical issue people who have a change in circumstance between their first and second shot say they have to go into a hospital or they go into a nursing home before they get a second shot they're reporting issues with getting that facility to give them the second shot is that something you're aware of and anything to address that no I haven't heard you know I to be honest with you I won't hear unless it's a multiple unless it's a fairly significant issue that's coming up in the registration system or in sort of the program so you know these if this is a huge issue I will hear about it I haven't heard about either of these issues but let me let me look into that as well hi there I just have a couple of quick reader question so we have a reader up here who has been vaccinated her husband is in the hospital with a condition but is not being she's not being allowed to see him I'm wondering is this along the state guidance or is this sort of a per hospital policy as far as visitation I believe it's a hospital decision but secretary Smith thank you it's both out of the secretary's office there are minimum guidelines that are established for visitation we are revising those visitation guidelines as we speak I think they'll be implemented fairly shortly what will what will happen those are the minimum that a hospital has to follow they can on their own increase sort of the level of restrictions that they want to they want to impose but I will say this if you're vaccinated and you want to visit somebody in the hospital the new guidelines will say that you you can you can do that so I would just say standby those are making it through the approval process right now they'll come out of the secretary's office I would say in the next few days through the your through your agency through my agency right it'll come out of my office in the next few days okay my other question has to do with travel so if so the this reader cited in Massachusetts if only the parents are vaccinated it's counted as a vaccinated household and travel is allowed but if there's a family with children that cannot be vaccinated due to their age but the parents and everybody in the household who is of age or older has been vaccinated do the same sort of rules apply to them or should they quarantine I'll go to the secretary carry currently for that hey there sure I'll take a stab the doctor Levine might might be able to help as well as I don't get to it sure if if a family if there are a couple adults in house and a couple of children and the adults have been vaccinated but the children who are 15 or younger have not been because they've not been offered the vaccine currently under Vermont rules you are not able to travel without a required quarantine there's a variety of ways they can meet that quarantine either prior to coming into the state or once they do get into Vermont we do anticipate relaxing that policies and get more people in in our state vaccinated but currently that is the expectation and Dr. Levine if I missed anything feel free to jump in secretary Curley Dr. Levine said you answered the question correctly awesome thank you so much hi morning everybody I'm looking at these new cases again the 251 I just looked at the chart on the health department's website and that seems to be the biggest number we've ever had and obviously Dr. Levine spoke about that extensively in his remarks a few minutes ago but given and I given that number and those large numbers keep popping up do you think it's wise for the state to keep turning the spigot no matter how I know everybody in state wants to see that spigot turned but are we getting a little ahead of ourselves given the prevalence and the spread of the virus that frankly I was kind of surprised by that number yeah I mean admittedly the 251 caught me by surprise as well but in reflection when you look at the what our strategy was and is we wanted to make sure that we prevented loss of life and to reduce the impact on our health system that's been our focus since day one so when you look at the you know you look at those numbers and what's been happening ever since January December January our rate of death has reduced significantly and that's great news for us we want it to continue to move down in the next few weeks and we expect it to as well the hospitalizations were increased in January February as a result so when we when we look at the number that's leveled out in fact it's still declining we've received more good news this morning fewer in ICU a few more a few fewer in COVID related hospitalizations and they were zero vented as of today so those are the metrics that we chose to look at and again as Dr. Levine extensively talked about in his remarks when you look at the the age groups it's lower age so the vaccines are working I mean that's that's great news so again it's concerning it's something that we all have the ability to prevent in some capacity we can't let our guard down we need to continue to wear our masks so stay physically distanced avoid crowds wash your hands all the things that we've done over the last 13 14 months are going to be important over the next couple of months as well so we'll we'll continue to watch the numbers we'll continue to watch our focus continues to be on hospitalizations and deaths and if we see that there's a change there we will react with in accordance with our healthcare professionals Dr. Levine Dr. Calso will make changes as necessary but at this point in time we don't see that there's a need to change course I'll let Dr. Levine answer okay great yeah I'll let Dr. Levine add to that okay thank you pretty challenging to add too much to that but the reality is we should always continue to be humbled by the virus the reality is countries like France and Italy are locking down again the world is not safe right now with regard to the virus it's shown its ability to keep resurging and that's just the reality we face and we know that pandemic fatigue has played a role are all across the world and certainly across our country so we have to be cognizant but if you think about the cases that we have now one thing that is not tying them together is large gatherings or even medium gatherings and you know there there haven't been abundance bigot changes but a couple of them have dealt with gatherings but what we're seeing in our cases isn't really reflective of people abusing the privileges if you will of gatherings we're finding cases in our worksites but not the whole worksite usually a person we're finding cases in our colleges and schools we're finding cases in some of our healthcare settings where someone shows up at an infectious time but not symptomatic and they're a case so that's been the trend for quite a while now we do find that if you're a contact the most likely way you became a case if you did and about 15 or so percent of people are becoming cases is through the people you live with so a household contact as opposed to anything else and even in our school data most of the time if we have a contact that turns positive it wasn't a contact who was sitting at the next desk in the school it was someone in the home setting so that's how this has really been playing out and I agree Wilson we have to be very vigilant and look at this data very carefully but believe me we do that every day multiple times a day so that's how things are going to proceed on and again okay great another can I just one one more just find a point on that again when you look at the sheer number of tests that were done as a result of the 251 cases that were found 19,000 I mean think back I think Secretary Smith talked about this on our 206 state emergency operations center call this morning and he said you know a year ago we thought 100 or 200 tests was a lot and we're struggling to do so and now to think 19,000 so we don't know out of the 251 the severity of cases I don't think we've looked into that yet and we don't even know how to measure it but I would venture to say there could be a number of those that are asymptomatic but they don't really have any conditions they just happen to have are carrying the virus so before we again that's why we watch that hospitalization rate and when you look back over the last month or so or you know with the hospitalizations and it stayed relatively flat and is in fact dipping downward a bit that gives us hope because we've been opening the spicket a little bit more in the last month or two and we haven't seen the hospitalizations increase as a result of so that's what we watch that's the metric we watch oh okay great thank you another health question not directly about COVID but I saw the health department before I don't know exactly when it came out but about the opioid death that they were up 38 percent I don't I know that issue has come up elsewhere I don't know what the exact percentage but I wonder if you have any thoughts on any of you have any thoughts on what's driving this Dr. Levine yes I've I've actually had the chance at this very press conference to comment on that previously just to put it in the perspective the trying to reduce the rate of opioid overdoses that are unintentional causing death has been a priority for a long time for about five consecutive years no matter what was done that rate continued to stay stable or go up a little a year ago we had a marked decrease in the death rate and it looked like strategies were beginning to work we had hoped that that would be the beginning of a trend but obviously the pandemic came so the explanations for why this reversal has occurred include a whole host of factors one is the stress of a pandemic and what that impacts how that impacts a person who has an opioid use disorder or who is susceptible to developing an opioid use disorder second factor is that the best way a person can avoid an opioid overdose death if they're going to continue to use intravenous drugs is to use those with friends and to have somebody available to them to if you will rescue them with Narcan with a 911 call whatever is required if they are not arousable after their injection that went away with a stay home stay safe and the ability of people to really stay separate from one another that safety net was reduced significantly for this population there's plenty of Narcan available and we have as I've said in the past flooded the streets with Narcan across Vermont it's a very low threshold to provide a person or a friend of a person or a family member with Narcan to use to save someone's life but if you're injecting alone you're not going to be able to administer the Narcan by yourself and you can have a bad outcome there's also the increase in prevalence of fentanyl and now 88% of all of our overdose deaths have in some can some way a connection with fentanyl even when the person thought they were using cocaine a stimulant not a depressant medication there was fentanyl mixed in with the cocaine so that's just part of the marketplace and the way things have evolved lastly there's also I believe an opportunity for people to well there was a necessity for people to use alternate procurement routes for their drugs because their usual suppliers in the advent of a pandemic weren't always there as the go-to people so they were going to people that they didn't know they were getting powders that they had no idea what was really in them and they were more susceptible to having an overdose because it was a different drug supply so there's a whole host of reasons that were sort of associated with what's happening the reasons that aren't associated are number one the medication assisted treatment access hubs and spokes in vermont has remained as robust as ever and in fact had increasing enrollment and maintained lots of opportunity for people to be able to attend and get what they needed as a form of medication for opioid use disorder number two the initiatives like providing rapid access to buprenorphine in emergency room settings in hospital settings and in syringe service programs has only increased and will continue to increase over time so the treatment system itself became more user friendly even Vermontus who had an opioid disorder and were in a spoke setting could get a prescription without a face-to-face visit because as you know so much more has been done by telehealth and telemedicine so a lot has been put into play but the power of the of the pandemic was quite overwhelming for this population unfortunately okay thank you very much when bar restrictions were loosened the state gave local municipalities the option to put additional restrictions of their own on to that reopening or prevent it all together and as far as I can tell no police study has taken up you up on that offer yet with so many reports of you know increases in college students in particular and today was a new record breaker for in county would you encourage municipalities like Burlington that are seeing such heavy spread to consider shutting bars down again I didn't hear the first part I heard the last part of the questionnaire and but let me answer that part of the question unless there wasn't a question in the beginning but the in terms of we put the we gave the ability to municipal municipalities and local governing boards to make the decision whether they should open or close or keep close the bars and social clubs um so that will remain in place and they'll do what they think is right at this point in time Dr. Lean I'm sure we'll we'll put a finer point on it you know we don't know where this is coming from I don't believe there's been enough time for this to be an issue that was caused by the bars or social clubs but we'll have to continue to monitor that with our contact tracing that will mean anything that's correct Governor and the bars are under tremendous restriction as they are right now following the restaurant guidance so unless they weren't following guidance there was no opportunity for I think the kind of transmission of virus in that setting that people fear and I have complete confidence that they have been following that guidance this would be too early for me to say where the most recent cases came from and if that was involved but I wouldn't want to give you any reason to believe that that is a common pathway by any means and the mayors as the governor point out do have the opportunity to be more restrictive should we get less restrictive even in the future with regard to operations of bars thank you Rebecca as Dr. Levine and the governor both have pointed out about the restrictions that we put in place and I think it's really important for people to understand when they're operating bars or when they're thinking about bars and social clubs operating we specifically worked hard to find a path forward for them and agreed that that having them follow the restaurant guidance would be probably everyone's best chance of being successful the restaurant industry has shown us by following our guidance they've been very successful in mitigating any spread of COVID or the spread of COVID within the restaurant the restaurant environment so just as a reminder patrons must be seated while they're at the bar or at a bar there's less call at 10 p.m bars are required to keep a list of their who has visited their bar in the last 30 days all of the guidance is on our website at ACPB under again under the restaurant guidance and I think it's really helpful if people refresh their memory or their their understanding of what those expectations are so again we're feeling like we gave them a path guidance that will help them be successful and again in help the community is not have further spread as a result of them being open what do you have to say to the multiple servers who have told me that it is extremely difficult to enforce COVID restrictions at their restaurants especially mask schools for either people picking up takeout or for people who are visiting the restaurants but are expected to leave the mask on you know when they're in hygiene you know this seems to be something that is not restricted to one restaurant but all across the state for it was just saying it's very difficult for them to be the ones to enforce COVID restrictions yeah I from my standpoint and I'll let Secretary Curley weigh in as well but this has been a problem since day one right this isn't something that's evolving today we are advocating for people to continue to wear their masks where appropriate making sure they keep their distance follow the guidelines follow the restrictions and and just be sensitive to who they're coming in contact with as well we're trying to slowly open up the economy in a very safe and strategic way and making sure the mitigation measures stay in place just as long as we possibly can and get people vaccinated so it's incumbent upon all of us individually to do the right thing for the right reasons and be be aware of who again you're coming in contact with and try and keep them safe as well and yourself and your family members so this isn't anything new we've heard this from the start in fact we've seen in recent recent weeks where some businesses have not tried to conform at all and in fact have taken another approach so this is still very much a pandemic and we need to make sure that people are continuing to wear their masks Secretary Curley Yeah Governor I think you you know really know that I I think our reminder is that you know we're all doing our part and we are grateful for the restaurant owners and every sector really that are enforcing this and we know it's not easy and we appreciate the work that people are doing to try to ask their customers to comply and as a reminder businesses are entirely in the right if they refuse service that they want to refuse service for somebody who is unwilling to comply with the mandate which is exactly what it is and I am in touch with restaurant owners pretty regularly and they have expressed their frustration but at the same time I would say that they are also grateful for the safety guidelines that are in place because they are very concerned about their employees and the people that they serve when you go to a restaurant it's an experience and everybody wants them to walk away remembering a positive experience so it's hard we're getting closer but everybody just has to stay dialed in for a little bit longer and it's hard work but we're going to we're going to get through this and I would say to the the staff as well it's worth the effort to enforce okay thank you I also have a question about school data the state has reported 96 school cases in the past seven days I don't know for certain that's the record but it's definitely higher than it was a couple weeks ago and there were two data a bit of a particular spread in Folchester High School what is the state doing to kind of check in on this or combat that specific outbreak and also do we know why there are cases spreading among students in particular well again first of all I think we're jumping to the conclusion that this spread within the school and I'm not sure that's the case in every situation I think it's actually coming from the outside in so it's about the community their families and and they're bringing into the school and so that's why contact tracing is so important to be sure that we minimize that to mitigate that so that there isn't spread there isn't outbreaks within the school themselves but I'd let Secretary French answer further and possibly Dr. Levine if he has anything else to add yeah thank you Governor no I would just you know echo what you said I think you know the as we've known what we see happening in schools is often a reflection of what the activity is in the communities as Dr. Levine mentioned earlier we we are seeing a large number of cases in the Chinden County area so we shouldn't be surprised to a certain extent to see the schools in that area seeing increased cases but it is concerning and I know the health department's working very closely with the schools to support them but I don't think there's broader patterns of outbreak per se but perhaps Dr. Levine you want to add to that we work very closely with the schools and these school administrations when these occur but at the same time the schools are very quick to be on top of these as quickly as possible so that they can understand if there's any staffing concerns that might arise or if there are concerns about transmission within a certain setting but Secretary French really summarized it well that where we see more viral activity in a community we expect to see it in all of the various parts of that community and schools unfortunately are not totally protected I don't have specific insight into Colchester to give you I know you asked that in your question but I we have a lot of schools in the state and I don't have specific insight into that okay thank you Hi Governor the unemployment rate came out today 3.1% which is which is very low but you've mentioned in the past that it paints a rosier picture than the than really is being reflected but one thing that Commissioner Harrington mentioned in the report is that professional technical services are at about a historical high in employment and of course they've been able to work remotely the house is proposing a hundred and fifty million dollar broadband bill that presumably would would encourage remote working and working on these type of jobs is a hundred and fifty million enough to get the to get broadband to the last mile or is more needed and where might that come from? Yeah I don't believe it's enough Tim as a matter of fact we'll be presenting our plan to the legislature it gives me an opportunity to talk about this a little bit I I think it's incumbent upon us as with the with the leaders of the house and the senate and myself to get together to have some sort of idea of what we're going to do what what is our plan what's the what's our outlook on on what we want to do with this incredible gift that we're receiving about a billion dollars and we have to make sure that we're using utilizing it in the right fashion and when I say that we have some incredible legacy monumental needs in this state that we have seen for decades and have experienced and talked about that we need to to focus on so but I think we have to to get you know the concept first what it is that we can all agree to and and choose wisely because again this is a one-time gift it doesn't keep coming and so it's important for us to solve some of these legacy issues and do it in a way that truly does solve it so from my standpoint I think there's about a 300 million dollar need for broadband and so I'm will advocate will put a plan together and work with the legislature on this but that's one area the other area you know I would say that we all would agree is a is problematic for the state is housing and that's for low income and those for the workforce you know decent affordable housing for the workforce so I look forward to this again in the next week to 10 days we'll be presenting our plan to the legislature so that we again use this strategically to get the best return on investment and we solve some of the these historic problems that we face each and every day to make a stronger foundation for the future great thank you we were from a wakefield woman who was affected by the vaccine scheduling issue yesterday after following all the state's recommendations for creating an account and familiarizing herself with the website so what she thought was a march 27th vaccine appointment in wakefield was actually a testing appointment when she got a call from the health department four hours later she asked for the soonest possible appointment and got one for March 30th in island pond she wants to know if the state will work with people like her who were caught up in the website glitch to schedule her second shot closer to home the drive almost to Canada to get it Lisa you said she lives in weightsfield and she got a she got a call she called and she got an appointment in island pond she was caught up in the glitch yesterday where she thought she was thinking an appointment for a vaccine and it was actually a testing appointment four hours later when she was a wait for computer she got the call from someone from the health department and they scheduled her she asked for the soonest possible appointment because she's the caregiver for her 90 year old mother and she got an appointment on March 30th in island pond she wants to know you guys will help forget her second appointment closer to home why don't I do this why don't I get the information for you and I'll see what I can do how's that that's great thank you but don't go away because my second question is also for you okay we've heard from several readers we've heard from several readers who've been trying to book directly on the Kenny drug and Walgreens website Kenny drug is consistently showing no appointments available and Walgreens is the same despite people putting in multiple zip codes into the Walgreens website and trying at multiple locations with the Kenny drug website do you have any insight into that well Walgreens is with the federal pharmacy program Kenny's does have does have slots now we we allocate every week to Kenny's in terms of what their allocation is for the next week so I would I would just say keep trying or come into our website and try that in terms of our you know our health department website and try try that I mean we are we have you know we're going to have about 22,000 doses of vaccine next week that we will have multiple clinics for and the pharmacy through the federal pharmacy program by the way we'll have about 8,000 so there should be slots opening up if you just keep checking on those websites particularly the pharmacy websites but we open slots up every age band that we open up we open up enough slight slots for those age bands so you should be able to get an appointment through those age bands okay thank you very much and if you want to have somebody from your office email me I'll pass I'll share the information about the woman going to island pond okay thank you great thank you thank you Governor do you support the plan from U.S. border and Customs Protection to arrest surveillance towers in silver Vermont communities on the Vermont Canada border well again you know I don't know all the details from what I've read I don't know if they have to have the range that they're they're asking for and I do think that there's the ability to to do something a little bit different that conforms to the area residents and satisfies their need for privacy so I'm hopeful and this is more of a an issue with the federal delegation and the locals but from my standpoint it seems as though they could come arrive at some solution that would satisfy both the needs of Vermonters as well as the needs of border patrol to protect that that crossing or that area that that could be crossed thank you and Secretary Smith just to clarify a question are all veterans able to get their vaccines through the VA at this point or only veterans who already get their health care through the VA you're asking me a question about a federal agency that I will attempt to answer with the caveat that I don't know all the answers to this particular question but I think it is for all veterans through the VA you don't have to be getting your health care through the VA thank you thank you first question is I noticed that we've heard from readers quite about a response when the Vermont system went down yesterday CVS got a flood of applications for people trying to get registering for scheduling through CVS instead and one of the things that you've been trying to follow up on and understand is does the state not receive the data when people get their vaccinations through one of the participating federal pharmacy programs that is not integrated into your portal that has been a bit of a challenge for us admittedly and that's why you know as I've said in these press conferences previously while I understand why the federal government is trying to utilize the pharmacies and and has their own contracts with them they aren't always fully integrated with us we don't know when for instance at one point in time we found out that they had a surplus of vaccines like there was one one entity that had 7,000 doses unbeknownst to us that we desperately need so we were able to claw those back to put them into to put them into use but that's one of the fallacies of this federal intervention that we need to have some oversight I would much rather have the vaccines come to us and let us distribute to the to the pharmacies and but I do believe that they integrate with us so that we know eventually who has had the vaccines so that we can enter them into the system I'll let Secretary Smith answer that Tom you've hit on a challenge for us and it's been a real challenge now Kenny's does a flat file to us once a week so we have that and we're integrated into their system Wal-Mart and Costco are actually integrated into our system so we we do have looksie into there but Walgreens for example isn't and we we have challenges trying to figure out what is what is going on and it you know it's very manual in terms of trying to figure out trying to have a looksie into that federal into that federal program and as the fed start ramping up the federal program it's going to be more of a challenge that's why what the governor said and what other governors are saying is the more that we can integrate this the more we aren't stumbling over each other as we move forward and you know we have a very successful program here in the state of Vermont we have a very successful registration program and and the pharmacies being integrated into that only enhances that program as we move forward but it's been a challenge to have a looksie into those that aren't integrated with us so just a quick follow-up on that so it may be at certain points in time as you fit from now and previously and continuing that you are understating total number of of months who have been vaccinated either with a single or both doses because you haven't received that data from them well there'll be a lag that's what our problem is there's a lag in that data eventually it gets reported it has to get reported to the CDC and we have a integrated sort of system with the CDC on monitoring that but what our problem is is been the lag that has been happening I see thank you one last question Mr. I believe it's for Secretary French we've been following an issue concerning Harwood the Union High School Boys hockey team the head coach of the team was fired in February for sending a text to his players that included several swear words words the community felt the punishment was too harsh and they gathered about 1400 signatures to ask the administration to reconsider then the assistant coach took over in three days before the championship game the assistant coach was arrested for his second DUI charge and will be appearing in court in April but the Harwood administration still let that coach coach the championship game well what's the Department of Education position on this and when do you consider getting involved in what may be needing to help an administration's decisions yeah thank you I'm not familiar with the specific specifics of the circumstance we will say that school districts are required to perform background checks on all their employees and then that information is utilized to inform their hiring decisions but that's certainly something we can in the specific circumstance look into to how that process functions but I'm not aware specifically of the decision-making around this issue so given that he had had a previous charge of DUI that sort of been something they took into account in the process yeah I can I can tell you being on the receiving end of that information as a superintendent you still have to make a judgment call there's certainly certain things that might appear in someone's background check that are immediate disqualifiers for employment but there are certainly there's opportunity for discretion in terms of decision-making and having that personal conversation with the prospective candidate to understand their motivations and the circumstances under which the information appeared in their background is important in the hiring decision is this something that we could follow up with you in the next press conference sure or just directly offline we could have our staff review it okay thanks very much welcome hi Vermont's vaccine eligibility guidelines allow everyone 16 and over to sign up by April 19th our neighboring states have a faster sign-up plan including New Hampshire which opens its full eligibility 17 days before Vermont we've had several people ask us you know why is Vermont moving more slowly so would you just mind explaining to people why this is so they understand how the comparisons of timeframes work between Vermont and other states yeah you know every state uses a different strategy and just because they're opening up the eligibility doesn't mean you're going to get vaccinated any quicker because everyone's getting the same supply as they did last week the week before I mean it just is on a weekly basis you either get more or the same or maybe even a little less so from our standpoint we know our strategy is working well we want to make sure we maintain the approach that we're taking we're not seeing that there are any slots available and if there are slots available and there's more supply than need we just open up another age band so again we're not going to they're not going to get there any quicker than we are in the end because it's all per capita but I will say that our system I believe is more efficient because we can react to different supply changes one week to the next so for instance when we open up the the next age band we'll know for sure what we're going to be receiving for vaccines for the next three weeks and if you open it up if we open up tomorrow and that's easy I mean that would be an easy thing to do we could open up tomorrow 16 and over and you may not get an appointment until in June but but I don't know if that makes you feel better or not but it doesn't get you there any quicker and what if the supply changes one way or the other so next week for instance they come back and say we've had a glitch we're going to get 10,000 fewer doses to you next week well we could we can fix that by by making sure that we mitigate the number of appointments we're taking in the next age band or at that point in time for those who have opened it up to the vast the vast majority they're going to have to do a lot of backtracking a lot of calling and changing of appointments and so forth on the other hand if all of a sudden we receive more of a vaccine and we ramped up then we could add appointments and and get through it quicker so we just think our approach is is easily to easy to understand we've laid it out gives us a little bit of flexibility to either ramp up or scale back depending on the supply but it all depends on the supply everything depends on the supply of the vaccine from the federal government and then my next question is a quick data one what do you think is the reason for the slightly lower percentage of seniors 75 and older who are vaccinated compared with the next age group of 70 to 74 on that vaccination progress slide that you showed earlier because you kind of think maybe the 75 plus groups since they've been eligible the longest would be the highest or is it just the difference in the size of those groups I don't know yeah it's so close it's yeah yeah it's hard to hard to measure I think they're both outstanding and as we were able to show we're leading the nation 65 and older so we're doing something right so I don't know what the reasoning is behind that maybe there's some hesitancy on the parts of some and some age group or maybe that age group has received their vaccine from the DOD Department of Defense for instance and we don't know about it yet because there is there is that component that again the federal issue but we don't at this point in time unless Secretary Smith yeah but but we don't know what the Department of Defense for instance has who they vaccinated they only have told us that it's about 6,000 Vermonters but we don't know specifically what age group and so forth so I don't think we have the answers you're looking for but the difference between obviously 87.33 percent and 86.06 percent is in in these smaller numbers could just be you know an accounting type of issue thanks it was a curiosity question for Dr. Levine about variants should it be assumed that this spike in cases is largely attributed to variants in Vermont and given that variants like the UK variant are more contagious is it enough to follow the same precautions we've been following or are there certain activities that might have been safe when variants weren't as present that would now be considered high risk because we're dealing with an increased presence of the highly contagious variant yeah thanks for bringing the discussion to variants the the reality is as I said probably at the opening of the press conference it's really a multi-component thing and we know that there are more variants we just don't know it's prevalence right now because we don't have enough measurements and enough parts of the state to understand that but the pattern of spread in some of the situations that we've looked at make us think that variants may be catalyzing that kind of spread and if that's true when we do send targeted whole genome sequencing uh requests for the cases in those situations we expect we'll find at least one variant present we know that some states have already recorded up to 40% of the UK variant being part of their population and the CDC originally said through the month of March it's going to become the dominant strain now they're extending that a little bit over time but still the expectation is it's going to be the dominant strain for quite a period of time so it's only when that day arrives if you will that was the first part of your question the other part is what can we do and I've really been trying to to really preach the party line that it's really hard to do more than you're doing if you're doing all the things we've been telling you to do all along and with the only exception to that being perhaps doing more double masking making sure that your mask has no gaps on the sides so that you're getting maximal protection and protecting others maximally by wearing the mask I would hope that people could avoid any of the larger kinds of gatherings till we truly are in the kind of weather where that's going to happen just naturally anyways because if it gets colder again this weekend and people gather more indoors together it is a more transmissible strain so it will by definition be a little easier to transmit it in a crowded indoor setting so avoiding that would still be really really important but otherwise no one's discovered sort of a magic cure for the fact that variants are around and we should accept the variant as just another aspect of the SARS-CoV-2 virus it's the same virus it does the same things it just does it a little better than the previous one but nothing else about it has really changed and thank goodness we've got really good evidence now that the vaccines that are in current use are effective against it so the goal would be again win that race and getting more and more people vaccinated so if this becomes a dominant strain it still won't become a high concern in terms of breaking through the vaccine thank you thank you Rebecca my question was the same as the one that Lisa Loomis asked earlier and which Secretary Smith replied to regarding I've heard I've heard from people a number of people who have to travel all the way to Island Han for their first for their first vaccination and so I'll await I'll await Secretary Smith's response to that with regard to they're being able to get a second vaccination close to the home Tom if you could also connect with Secretary Smith we'll see we'd like to know the details of that so that we can fix the problem so if you could connect with him also that would be great I'll just connect with him via email I'll let Secretary Smith yeah Tom I'll reach out to you but I think what's happening here is people who are going trying to get the first available appointment and the first available appointment may be in Island Han if they just waited a week or so they probably would find a location around the area but let me let me reach out to you and I'll I'll talk to you or somebody in my office will talk to you Tom very good thanks very much hey Tom I did follow up on the glitch that you talked about last week and there has been a fix put in to place on that on that glitch on the birthday glitch thanks so much yep thank you thank you we're back to governor before I ask a question I did want to acknowledge a member of your team that's moving on I believe today is the final day for Ted Brady the deputy secretary of commerce and community development and I just wanted to say that over the past 13 months that has been excellent fielding questions along with his boss secretary Curley both at the news conferences and more so offline and it's just we appreciate his prompt and transfer responses we're going to miss Ted tremendously he's been a great teammate for the last over four years now as deputy secretary of the agency of commerce community development very knowledgeable and again a great team player he's not going too far but at the same time we're going to miss him okay thank you now the hardball question governor I was wondering your thoughts about the decision by the Vermont principles association to award high school titles to three or four teams without them stepping on a ranker court to win championship games we have heard several complaints about the Brompton Cold Chester girls co-op hockey team not getting a chance to play due to close contact and there was a question about delaying the game maybe last night we learned the race girls fastball team so by the health department could not play this Sunday in the title game because in the semi-final there was apparently brief close contact with the Brompton high player that it tested positive and we were told the review of the semi-final video showed the VHS player may only have had like four minutes of contact in a large gym with few people I thought the controlling time was supposed to be like 15 minutes of contact or whatever but anyway we were also told the state was not interested in investigating apparently because they hadn't investigated other positive cases and everything and we now learned Danville girls also have to bow out Sunday so governor to guess in light of the opening positive comments at the start of your news conference about helping youth that opening doors providing access to recreation enriching hobbies working with youth in general seems to be just the opposite of what is happening to many Vermont high school teams the CVU girls basketball also had to pull out with shotgun South Brompton boy so it's it's all across the state so should the state be bending over backwards to help these student athletes achieve their goal of playing in a title game and this is not like mean bowing out because they got caught drinking or breaking training rules this is somewhat beyond their control of the student athletes I think everybody understands it's an arbitrary rule and just we've never done it this way should the state have a can do attitude I guess well I think we did have a can do attitude right from the beginning we were trying to find a path forward so that we could have sports played we heard and we we heard from the health experts the pediatricians and so forth about the mental health aspects and and we wanted to make that happen we've taken a lot of criticism to be honest with you we still do today from many who feel we shouldn't have played at all that we should not have even had anyone step on the ice or step on the court and play any games so for every person saying that crying follow in some respects because of the championship games I'm sure I can find someone who would say you shouldn't have ever had a single game plate so we tried to find the balance and in doing so everyone has to had to agree to different aspects on what would happen if and and it and it's it's I'm terribly disappointing for those involved I can't imagine how they feel at this point in time but I would ask them to reflect on that they play they they got to play they got to play the season which you know four or five months ago wasn't going to happen and we had that again can do attitude and pushing forward so that they had the ability to at least play the season under certain conditions so I don't know the specifics Mike about whether you know who said what to who and and determine whether they could play the championship games I really don't know but and and I acknowledge how disappointing that must be for the players the kids and I would I would also offer that that again the highest priority is keeping everyone safe and we are still in the midst of a pandemic and sometimes life is just unfair but we have to live by the rules and and make sure that we're doing all we can to protect everyone so again we may have missed the mark I don't know but at the same time I I'm just thrilled that they got to play at least some games during the season we were told that the health department was not interested in watching the video to even confirm what was said as to the very limited contact supposedly that the player may have had and you know I understand that that there were rules put in place but you know you have a game plan much like when you're on the racetrack I assume you have a game plan and sometimes you have to adjust that on the fly so I'm just wondering over the years I I haven't liked the ruling of the officials but it's something I have to live with because you know that's that's what I accepted when I decided to to get on the racetrack regardless I mean I I can count a number of times that I didn't think things were fair and going my way but that's just the way it is in life and that's what I accepted when I decided to get on the racetrack okay great thank you very much I'm going to ask Dr. Levine to comment on the Department of Health yeah I I'm going to make a few comments I want to echo the governor's comment regarding the fact that it has to be devastating to a team to not be able to play I don't know if that devastation is greater than not having a season at all and the fact that most of these teams had a pretty good season and were able to engage in competition was I think really up every very positive feature we've often been asked about why we let that happen because now there are cases whereas originally there was no one who didn't want it to happen it seemed and everyone thought that was a no-brainer to just let the season begin but we had to go through a great deal of deliberation regarding that and just like we now have people feeling very disappointed I don't know what we would have had if we had no competition at all during the course of the season in terms of the impact on our adolescents mental health with regard to the specific situations I'm not going to go into exquisite details about any or all of them it's not the health department's role to actually cancel a game the health department's role is to use contact tracing and interviewing and appraisal of the situation and what I like to call as a clinician clinical judgment in each and every case and evaluate it comprehensively and fully and recommend either that quarantine should occur or quarantine shouldn't occur it's the VPA's role to deal with the scheduling of games the canceling of games and if there are opportunities to have games rescheduled at other times that's not certainly part of the health department's purview with the specific instances that we've been involved with not only have we had our contact tracing staff involved we've had our crackerjack contact tracing staff involved because these are very challenging decisions to make and we know we can't please all the people all the time and there was a clear consensus about all of these cases where unfortunately the timing of them is poor with regard to championships but the actual clinical judgment was quite clear and just one other additional point it is a little different if you're in an auditorium like we're in six feet away everyone's wearing their masks and it's a quite spacious room that people that can be quite a far apart from themselves and they're just sitting and watching as opposed to young women or young men running up and down of basketball court breathing very heavily yelling to one another and constantly crossing paths if you will that's a very different kind of a circumstance and all of those things have to go into the judgment call that's made in the end so I just wanted to give a little better appreciation for all of that No I appreciate that but I guess I was told that you were not interested in watching the video to see if the girls in fact what our movements were and that it was limited is that true or were you offered a chance I was not I was not personally interested in watching the video but I knew of others who had and I was comfortable with their appraisal okay so you were offered a chance to I was personally offered the chance yes and I chose not to take that chance okay okay thank you very much Go on and we still have seven folks left in the queue Greg the county courier thank you Rebecca good afternoon governor watching the vaccine vaccination rates over the past few weeks I noticed that Grand Isle was the first county to meet a hundred percent vaccination rate in any of the age bands at that point in time I believe it was a hundred percent for the 75 plus a few days later it rose to 102 percent for 75 plus which not quite sure how that math works out and then now it's down to 95 percent for that same age group so this may be a question for Dr. Levine I'm wondering how the general public should should trust these numbers that they're if they're up and down and you know becoming more than a hundred percent and you know two weeks later we're we're losing seven percent I don't know you know it doesn't make my sense to me the 102 percent but I would say that the numbers will fluctuate as time goes on but I'm not sure why they go down to be honest with you Secretary Smith Greg I'm not familiar with that situation let me do this let me look at the numbers there's going to be an explanation for I just want to know what the explanation is before we all speculate here without any knowledge of what it is right now okay I think given the time I will yield any additional time to the next person thank you over the past two months there have been more positive cases reported on Thursdays and in the other day of the week is there a specific reason for that or why do you think that is I don't know but I would suspect that it had something to do with the schedule at the universities possibly that they may I think they're scheduled twice a week so there may be something to that and when the Broad does the testing and sends the results back but us Commissioner Levine yeah Avery you probably also noted that Mondays and Tuesdays are usually more optimism prone days and in this week they were much lower so some of it has to do with the colleges themselves and the days they test on and the day they get the results back others though have to do with I think human nature which is that probably on Saturdays and Sundays people aren't running over to do testing as their prime weekend activity and it's not their priority so they're doing it during the course of the week that's the best I can come up with for how that works you know Wednesdays generally Wednesdays Thursdays Fridays are when we do find our higher numbers sometimes on Saturday as well so that would make that theory hold some water I think thank you yes thank you if I may there have been several mentions of Island Ponds today I'd like to just point out that it's a beautiful drive through the heart of the kingdom to get there but I guess I would hope that all of Essex County's vaccines don't get scooped up by people coming from other parts of the state on to my question though we're hearing from school officials across the kingdom that say they are seeing COVID cases now at numbers that match or even exceed the numbers in November and December I know Secretary French and Dr. Levine have discussed a bit some of the sourcing of how cases get into schools so what I'm wondering is how concerned are you that a potential rising number of cases especially among younger people might upend your hopes to get schools more fully opened up yeah again I think that we have to consider the different areas and how the how the virus gets into the schools from families and others and I would advocate to the parents and those in those areas that their actions have a direct impact on the schools if it's community spread then there's active activity of the virus within the community meaning there may be some things that the community is doing or not doing that is affecting that virus rate which has an effect on the school eventually so keep that in mind and there's just another reason for those in those areas to make sure they get their vaccination when they can and sign up for that because you're going to be protecting your school or your school's ability to open up to full time operation which we know kids desperately need so I don't know Patricia Levine might be able to add more to the context of that yeah I want to give Secretary of Friendship a chance as well but in my my instance some data that I'm aware of is that one of the prime ways that a student at school becomes a positive case is when you do the tracing through contact in their own household that is the predominant way actually and of course the contact in their own household is again as the governor was been saying part of what's going on in the community as opposed to a classmate that's been the predominant pathway so obviously we are very very interested in following this data very closely as we talk about the recovery process in schools Secretary French yeah I would just emphasize the point around that's the function of our guidance I think we've always been very careful not only to assess you know the latest research and so forth but also to really make sure our guidance is is responsive to on the ground conditions in Vermont and you know that's exactly kind of what we're doing now with evaluating not only the CDC guidance but the studies that informed it but we do have to intersect that with an understanding of what our conditions are I think you know one of the reasons we've been successful in that regard is that we have a very good understanding of what our conditions are not to belabor the point but we've as a state deployed a lot of testing for example so we have a very good understanding and of course we have a really strong regular contact with our schools related to contact tracing and so forth but we do have to seek that balancing act it's not as simple as looking at the CDC guidance and adopting it we've always been very careful to ensure it can be applied in our setting you know again I think the broader trend is still one of conditions improving particularly as the vaccine makes a bigger impact in our case accounts and with the warmer weather and so forth we're optimistic that the trends will be heading in the right direction which allow us to make modifications to the guidance scenarios like distancing which in turn will allow districts to adopt more in-person instruction so it is it's cause for concern certainly but it's it's always been a cause for concern it's something that's factored regularly into our decision-making process and just to put an exclamation point on those comments people should not should understand that the CDC guidance is not do A, B and C to reopen your schools it is do A, B and C or maybe only A or maybe only B and C depending on what your rate of new cases is in the surrounding community and what is your percent positivity rate so it really does force you to look at conditions on the ground if you will as you make your decisions in any particular district or in a particular state okay thank you thank you this I think takes up from the last question we've had some concern in our area and some schools that at some point the state might mandate the reopening of schools to in-person education and is that something that all in sight say for this school year or even for the fall I would say from my standpoint we have not contemplated making this mandatory at least in this school year we want to make sure it's safe we want to provide to try and eliminate some of the obstacles along the way some of that was in making sure that the education system was vaccinated we're doing that as we speak and a number of them I've already had their their vaccines at this point and I know the distancing was an issue and now the CDC has come out with reducing from six feet to three feet and I know that Secretary French and team are contemplating that as we speak so we're not contemplating at least at this point in time mandating going back to school for in-person instruction Secretary French I would just emphasize the point that you know we've had to deploy a certain amount of flexibility into our planning all along because of the variation and operating conditions among our schools and districts so it would be one thing to mandate it would it be another thing all together to successfully operationalize that mandate so we have to be you know we have to consider the operational realities of our school districts in terms of staff the availability and so forth so as you know the government government mentioned the approach of sort of eliminating the barriers to get to that goal has been our preferred strategy and one I think will work best without understanding of our operational conditions in the state thank you I have one question that seems to be one of those things that has to be asked every month or two and that is what is the standing of research on the ability of people who have been fully vaccinated to transmit the virus despite not having yet any symptoms of their own you know that's probably one of those questions that does deserve a monthly examination because the data is starting to accumulate but it's by no means a hundred percent definitive yet but we are seeing more data that indicate that vaccination does reduce the positivity rate of nasal swabs being tested for the virus in those who have gotten the vaccine versus those who have gotten the placebo the only trial of vaccine I'm aware of that actually intentionally did that as part of the trial was the AstraZeneca trial and they reported a two-thirds of those who were vaccinated did not have positive PCRs compared to the placebo group which is pretty nice to see the other trials I think some of them are doing it sort of after the fact and there's more scientific research being done on it all the time so we're hopeful and optimistic that this respiratory virus like most respiratory viruses that have a vaccine made against them won't be able to survive in people's nose and we won't show much in the way of infectivity so it's still a work in progress so you'll have to come back in another month I think we'll still be doing these and you'll get another answer hopefully we'll have a dance slightly thank you very much you can come let me ask you again if you're still doing these things hi I wanted to ask about the reporting that came out in seven days this week about a soldier in the Vermont National Guard who's been charged with assault and I wanted to ask governor for you to expand on the statement that you put out yesterday according to seven days the this soldier has been found guilty of crimes that guard officials admit should have led to his discharge last night in our general night said that it could take up to six months to a year to kind of work through the process I want to know do you believe this soldier should be discharged well again I have a lot of faith in general night in his and I appreciate how he's handled this situation that's unfolding as we speak so I I'm fully supportive of everything he's done and will you know follow his guidance on this he knows more of the particulars than I do and but I haven't spoken to him directly about this at this point either there's one aspect of this story that seems to have stuck out to readers which is that guard soldiers are effectively asked to self report if they have some kind of criminal history and likewise it sounds like what general might put out yesterday was saying that the better system might be for police to ask whenever they're arresting someone if that person is a member of the Vermont National Guard and it seems that people are responding to the fact that it seems like there ought to be a better way to conduct some kind of background check or to understand when members of the Guard have issues that ought to be addressed such as these and you know knowing that there should be a roster of the people in the Guard and that you know there are records of when people are arrested and charged with crimes how is there not a better system for kind of bridging my gap? Yeah it's just one of those issues that's been overlooked to be perfectly blunt and I I do believe I agree with the readers and others and General Knight that the system should change and we'll I believe that we will seek change and that we will have a better system as a result of this situation Do you have an idea of what that system might look like? No I mean I'm going to leave it to the General Knight and others and it may take a legislative change I just I don't know at this point but but suffice it to say that we we believe there needs to be a change as well Thank you Hi can you hear me? Okay My questions are for Dr. Levine I'd like to circle back to the topic of high school sports Mike Donahue raised a few minutes ago Dr. Levine what was your or the state's recommendation to write in regards to its girls basketball team and playing in the championship game? We made we made no recommendation regarding playing in the championship game we made a recommendation regarding quarantine based on the contact with a positive case Okay and I know you touched upon this already but how does the state define a close contact for sports and competition? Is it no longer a cumulative total of 15 minutes within six feet? No that's certainly part of the equation in fact Vermont created that rule for the CDC if you will so that's part of the equation and it's also other aspects of the interviews and other aspects of what I'm calling clinical judgment regarding the proximity of people and the intensity of effort meaning not just staring at people or having a conversation but actually involved in vigorous athletic activities that would go beyond 15 minutes it's not just that's not the only piece it's a right it's a it's a definite decision that's multi multi-component absolutely and it involves judgment and it involves experience over the course of a one-year pandemic knowing how we've called things and knowing when and how we've called them right okay thank you for your time all right thank you very much for tuning in we'll see you again on Tuesday stay safe this weekend and a reminder those 50 and over on Monday I can sign up so make sure you do so thanks very much