 Good morning everyone. As I've been foreshadowing, today we'll be laying out our Vermont forward plan. Think of this as a roadmap for the next three months as vaccines make it possible to get us back to something more normal. The roadmap includes health guidance changes we expect to make as more Vermonters are vaccinated. Now it's important to note unlike last year when we began reopening the economy, we now have three safe and effective vaccines in our toolbox, which gives us a level of predictability we didn't have before. So based on our vaccination rates, we're now able to forecast when we'll reach key milestones. It's also important to know that unlike this time last year, we're doing a lot more testing and contact tracing. In fact, we rank as one of the top states in the nation when it comes to testing, which allows us to better contain cases and also allows us to lay out this roadmap today. Our goal with this plan is to give Vermonters a transparent look at how we'll be able to work our way out of this pandemic. Moving forward together at a time when we can manage this virus like we do the flu with simple everyday measures rather than the state of emergency we've been in for over a year. It's meant to let nonprofits, community organizers, employers, and families plan for events and how these might look. To help businesses prepare for future operations and budgets and to give Vermonters something to work toward. As I've said, we're in the last lapse of this very long and difficult race and this plan shows how we'll finish strong. But I want to be really clear. The key to getting there are vaccinations, which is why we're laser focused on making sure as many Vermonters as possible get them. And it's why when you're eligible, you need to sign up. We're already seeing the positive impacts of vaccinating those at greatest risks of death. With about 90% of Vermonters 65 and older having received at least one dose, we're number one in the nation on this front. More importantly, cases have dropped dramatically in this age group as have hospitalizations and deaths. That's exactly what we've been working towards and as we move through more and more age bands, we look forward to seeing deaths and hospitalizations continue to decline because there will be fewer severe cases and fewer cases overall. But again, we need you to get vaccinated in order to make to make to move down this path. And as a reminder, within two weeks, all Vermonters will be eligible. To be clear, we've worked on this plan for the last few months in direct consultation with the Agency of Human Services, Department of Health, including Dr. Levine and Dr. Kelso, as well as our emergency operations team and many, many others. As has been the case from the start, we're relying on advice from our experts. And while we're providing dates, as always, they're subject to change based on circumstances. So with all this in mind, the roadmap is on the screen behind me and will be available at vermont.gov very soon. With this phased approach, you'll see we've taken steps based on the level of vaccinations we expect to see. But again, in order for this plan to work, we need you to we need your help in getting everyone vaccinated. Over time, certain sectors will transition from sector specific to universal guidance, which will be easier to understand, provide more flexibility and allow more creativity. Secretary Curley will talk about this shortly. But as you can see with step one, that is this is when those most at risk of death and hospitalization are substantially complete, will be transitioning, will also be transitioning to groups to universal guidance. This will start on April 9th with Group A, which are businesses that have little or no contact and are mostly outdoors. Group A will see little change. But again, we believe it will give them more flexibility and be easier to understand. On May 1st, Group B businesses, which includes most other sectors, will also move to universal guidance. Next, to better align ourselves with those states in the region, step one will also include a change to our travel policy. Beginning April 9th, we'll use testing instead of quarantines as one of our strategies for mitigating the spread of the virus. This requires unvaccinated Vermonters coming back to Vermont to be tested within three days of their return. But they no longer need to quarantine. Likewise, this policy will allow visitors from other states to come to Vermont as long as they have a negative test within three days of their arrival. Those who are vaccinated can continue to travel without restrictions. As a reminder, we've had one of the most conservative travel policies throughout the pandemic. And while this eases those restrictions, it's still more strict than our neighbors. And it relies on unvaccinated Vermonters and visitors to do their part. With this step, because testing is free and easy, we believe it will be easier to follow. So we'll see more compliance and we'll catch cases a little earlier. Now, looking ahead by May, our modeling shows we'll have a majority of Vermonters over 30 vaccinated. Just think about that for a moment. 14 months after the virus hit our state, we could have two thirds of the population vaccinated. And with that level of vaccination, our team believes that we'll be able to take another step forward. So in step two, all sectors will move to universal guidance, except for education and health care, which will maintain their own guidance. As well, we'll be able to expand gathering sizes. And by June, we expect all Vermonters who want to be vaccinated to have had the opportunity to do so. At this time, as long as enough Vermonters step up to get vaccinated, it will be safe to allow for travel without any testing or quarantine requirements. And we can again increase the number of people who can safely gather. Here's another important point. Throughout all these steps, masking and physical distancing will still be required and continue to be the best methods for the unvaccinated to limit transmission. All of this leads us to Independence Day, at which time all Vermonters over the age of 16 will have had plenty of time to register and receive their vaccine. And we may even be vaccinating people under 16 by then. And that's why we believe we can expect to be largely back to normal by this time. After the fourth, our guidance would become exactly that. Guidance, not mandates. Recommendations rather than requirements. By then we'll have been through 19 months of a historic pandemic response. 19 months of learning how this virus spreads, learning how to mitigate, developing incredible tools to control it from testing to the distribution of three very safe and effective vaccines. And who knows, by then we may have more approved by the FDA as well. Knowledge, personal responsibility and science. These are the tools we've used to protect ourselves and manage this virus. And in the future, we'll be managing COVID like we do the seasonal flu, because we know COVID-19 is not going away. But with the vaccine, we can keep people safe and return to normalcy. And by the 4th of July, we should be there. But today, it's important to be realistic. We're still in this pandemic. In fact, we need Vermonters to look at this roadmap and double down on the guidance we have in place so we can finish strong with a few as lives lost and with our kids back in school before the school year ends. But to do so, we must meet each and every one of these steps on the timeline. So I'm personally asking you to do your part. Because we need your help as much today as we did last year at this time. That means continuing to wear your mask, keep your distance, stay home when sick, test often and get vaccinated as soon as you can. Remember, case counts are still high and letting your guard down increases your chances of getting or spreading the virus. So personal responsibility is especially important right now. We have roughly 90 days to go. 90 days to stay united so we can get back to normal. As I thought about this final push, our state's motto, freedom and unity comes to mind. These principles are at the core of who we are. And it's never meant more because committing to these principles, striving towards this goal together is how we'll get through this. This has been an incredibly long, hard journey, a once in a century pandemic that's gone on much longer than any of us thought or expected. The finish line is in sight, but we need to dig deep to find the strength and perseverance to get through the next 90 days. So here's the most important message I would deliver today. I hope each of you sees this roadmap as a reason for optimism. And also is a reason to make smart choices to do your part for the common good, especially when it's your turn to get vaccinated. Because as I've said since day one, we will get through this, but we must do it together. Now I'm going to step away for a few minutes to join fellow governors on the weekly White House call. So at this point, I'll turn it over to Secretary Curley to provide more details on what universal guidance will look like and the phased-in sectors it will apply to. And when I get back, I'll give you an update and then we'll move to questions. So thank you very much, Secretary Curley. Thank you, Governor. Good morning, everyone. Before I dive into the details of the Vermont Forward Plan, which will bring our economy back to 100% open over the next three months, I want to take a moment to thank our state's business community. Thank you for all you've done and continue to do to keep Vermonters safe. The mitigation measures you implemented and adhered to and the operational pivots you made over the last year saved lives. Without a doubt, you have all saved lives. Myself and our dedicated staff at ACCD have tried to be as transparent as possible at every turn and remain in close contact with our state's business community. We have heard you talk about the pain you are experiencing, the long hours of worrying, and the mounting stress this pandemic has caused. There is no amount of thanks I can give you that will adequately recognize how much you have done for your neighbors, your employees, your customers, your community, and keeping them safe and healthy. We hope that this Vermont Forward Plan will provide some light at the end of the tunnel. We hope it will bring needed confidence and predictability to businesses, municipalities, and others in their ability to plan for a full reopening of events and gathering and businesses. I'll start with this concept of universal guidance. As the governor mentioned, this guidance is moving away from sector-specific mitigation measures and instead focuses on five main tenants all business owners, employees, and customers should focus on. Number one, stay home if you are sick. Number two, wear a mask. Number three, ensure six-foot spaces and uncrowded spaces, places. Number four, practice good hygiene, and finally, know the travel restrictions. As business sectors are moved to universal guidance, capacity restrictions and other sector-specific restrictions will be lifted, but mandatory masking and spacing requirements will remain in place. So, for example, a retail establishment could open at 100% capacity so long as they are providing for six feet of space for each customer based on their square footage. As the governor mentioned, this guidance will be rolled out in two groups of sectors. Group A will be effective on April 9th, and it includes low contact, short duration, outdoor, and controlled environments. These sectors include outdoor businesses, outdoor recreation and fitness, low or no contact professional services, farmers markets, retail operations, lodging, campgrounds, and other accommodations. Group B will move to universal guidance on May 1st, and that includes the longer duration or close contact environments, including manufacturing and distribution, restaurants, catering, food service, social clubs, bars, hair salons, barber shops, spas, and nail salons, religious facilities and places of worship, close contact businesses like gyms and fitness centers, indoor arts, culture, and entertainment businesses, and meetings of public bodies. The intent of this universal guidance is to set the baseline for how businesses should be operating. Some businesses may want to put measures in place that go further than the universal guidance or address specific safety needs that are unique to their establishment. This is their right to do so. We hope all of our monitors will continue to honor and practice the mitigation measures that we have in place. We all need to work together with our business community to ensure interactions are respectful and understanding of the changing dynamics we will see in the months ahead as Vermonters are vaccinated. To touch quickly on events and gatherings, we know that many are looking to plan weddings and concerts and community gatherings. In addition to the gathering size increases that will be allowed between now and July, we want to emphasize that the universal guidance laid out today will also be mandatory at events and gatherings until July 4th. If we can stay on track with our vaccination milestones and continue to follow current health guidance, we hope these gathering size increases will allow for some form of high school and college graduations to take place and provide more confidence for event planners to book events that comply with both the gathering sizes and the universal guidance. We have relied heavily on Vermonters and Vermont business owners to do the right thing throughout this crisis. As the governor said, it will take all of us to keep the Vermont Forward Plan on course. As mitigation measures are loosened, it will be on every Vermonter to assess, risk, and make responsible decisions in the months ahead. I want to again recognize and thank Vermont business owners for their continued commitment to keep public health at the forefront. ACCD stands ready to continue to partner with the business community to navigate this final chapter. There are great days ahead. Spring is here. The mountains will soon turn green. Summer will arrive and we are going to keep moving forward just as Vermonters have always done. Thank you. And with that, I will pass it over to Commissioner Pichak. Thank you very much, Secretary Curley, and good morning, everyone. This week we saw the continuation of five main trends in our data. First, we continue to see elevated case counts driven in large part by cases among younger Vermonters. We also continue to see geographical differences in case rates across Vermont. Third, there continues to be strong uptake among those who are currently eligible for vaccination. Fourth, hospitalizations generally remain stable with 23 people currently hospitalized and three people in the ICU. And finally, deaths have remained low and continue to slowly trend down over time. Looking first at our case count, we are reporting 1,231 new cases this week, an increase of 41 cases compared to last week. And it is our highest weekly total to date. Vermont also crossed the 20,000 case threshold this week, being the last state to reach that milestone. Looking at our age demographics of recent cases, we see that we are continuing to trend younger in terms of the median age, which stands at 27 years old. This trend in younger cases is something that's also been observed across the country as well. This next chart compares our different vaccine age bands in terms of case rates and vaccination coverage. We can see that cases are generally stable or decreasing in the older age groups in Vermont, which are also our most vaccinated age groups. While among younger Vermonters who are still largely in the process of getting vaccinated or waiting to become eligible, our cases are generally trending up, with cases being higher and increasing the most in the 16 to 29 year age group. Based on the experience observed with the age bands at the bottom of this chart, once an age group has seen significant vaccine uptake, it sees its case rates stabilize and decrease, again indicating how important it's going to be for all of us to step up and get vaccinated when it is our turn. We continue to see encouraging uptake of the vaccine among our population. Per the CDC, Vermont continues to rank as the top state in terms of those 65 and older who have started or completed vaccination. We also rank fourth now in terms of total doses administered and eighth in terms of the percent of our population that is fully vaccinated. And we can see that the pace of vaccination has really picked up this week as Vermont administers increased dose allocation. This past week we administered over 10,000 doses on a single day, our highest total to date, and our seven day average has climbed to over 7,000 doses administered daily. Further, the most recent pulse survey by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that among Vermonters who are not yet vaccinated, 88% indicate that they will definitely or probably get a COVID-19 vaccine, the highest response rate in the country, or the second highest response rate in the country. Once all states have received enough doses to vaccinate all those who are eligible, we anticipate that Vermont will be one of the highest vaccinated states in the country, which again is critical to us putting the pandemic behind us. Our cases among long-term care facility residents continued to be low. This week we retired four active outbreaks, but did add two additional outbreaks to long-term care facilities, but they continued to be very small, especially when compared to the outbreaks that we saw earlier in the year. We are also continuing to see certain parts of our state with higher caseloads compared to others. In particular cases have been rising in Orleans, Caledonia, Chittenden and Rutland counties, while the other counties continue to see a much lower per capita case rate. Again, we all need to keep up the hard work of keeping COVID-19 at bay for a little while longer, but this is certainly particularly true in those parts of the state seeing increased case counts. Turning to hospitalizations, we see that our seven-day trend has been pretty stable over the past six weeks, and that this week general hospitalizations rose about 12% while critical care hospitalizations decreased 28%. This decreased trend in ICU care is something that we expect to see as more and more of our vulnerable Vermonters are vaccinated. And we're also thankfully continuing to see the impact of the vaccine on our fatality rates as well, with our weekly COVID-19 deaths continuing to trend down over time. And looking back at the forecast we presented last week, we can see that the actual trend line followed the increased forecast pretty closely over the first five days, and then most recently has dipped down a bit as our seven-day case average has slowed and decreased. So we'll want to keep a close eye on this in the week ahead to see if this is a trend that we settle into over the next few weeks, but certainly the slowdown in the seven-day case rate is encouraging. Even with the recent rise in cases that we've seen in Vermont, we are forecasting that deaths will continue to decrease in April as cases among long-term care facility residents, those who are over 70 years old, as well as a number of people requiring critical care and ventilation all continue to trend down. And these are all things that in the past have led to increased fatalities in Vermont. Looking quickly at the region we see that cases in the northeast are basically flat this week with a 1% increase in new cases. And then last looking at the national scene, although parts of the country are continuing to see their cases rise, there are some encouraging signs with the national seven-day rate having slowed down over the last few days. But we'll also want to keep a close eye on this data as well to see if it is the result of delayed reporting or lack of testing over the Easter weekend, or if in fact it is a trend that will develop over the next week or so. And at this time I would like to introduce Secretary Smith. Thank you, Commissioner Pichek. And good morning everyone. As you can see from today's briefing, there is a lot going on and a lot being covered. So my comments will be relatively brief today. At the outset, I want to highlight that as of today, 42% of Vermonters have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. And we are currently, as the Commissioner had talked about, administering approximately 7,000 doses per day. In fact, as Commissioner Pichek said, we've had one day where we hit 10,000 vaccine doses in a day. Here are some other details of the vaccination program. Yesterday we opened registration for Vermonters age 40 and older. As of this morning, 19,500 Vermonters in that age group made appointments. Remember, you can make an appointment at one of our health partner clinics through the state website at healthvermont.gov. If you are unable to sign up online, you can call 855-722-7878. You can also make appointments directly with kidney drugs, CVS pharmacy or Walgreens. Turning to our BIPOC Vermonters and household members, 4,600 people have made appointments. We are starting to see the needle move just a little to increase vaccination rates for BIPOC Vermonters and close the gap. But there is much more work to do. You can make an appointment at one of our health partner clinics through the state website at healthvermont.gov. Or again, if you are unable to sign up online, you can call 855-722-7878. In terms of overall progress, as of this morning, 231,200 people have been vaccinated against COVID-19. 90,000 have received their first dose of vaccine, 141,200 have received their first and last doses. And 24,000 Vermonters aged 50 to 59, remember that was last week, have made appointments. I have some good news regarding Essex County. The mobile clinic scheduled for April 10th and 11th filled up quickly, so we have increased the number of appointments at each of the nine locations. You can make an appointment online, as I have mentioned before, or by calling the number 855-722-7878. We are also meeting with Upper Valley Connecticut River Hospital in Colbrook, New Hampshire this week to discuss their participation in our program to vaccinate Vermonters. I also want to remind those that are 30 years old and older about registration for your age group will begin next Monday, April 12th at 8.15. If you haven't done so already, I encourage you to set up an account at healthpermont.gov. As you can tell, I'm trying to get everybody to go to the website and sign up and create an account there as soon as possible. That way, you can only have to log in next Monday and make an appointment. I also want to thank, because there's like thousands of people to thank, but I want to thank all our partners and state employees for their dedication to the vaccination program. I also want to thank all of you, all Vermonters, without your participation and your continued participation in this program. We would not be as successful as we are. I'll now turn it over to Commissioner Levine for a health update. Good morning. On Friday, I focused on the present situation in Vermont as we see higher numbers of cases and a slightly higher positivity rate of 2.2%. Hospitalizations had been creeping up a bit, though they have subsequently come down from the mid-30s to the mid-20s. And today, in updated numbers just from the last half hour, hospitalizations are at 25 with five patients in the ICU. Now, I'm still concerned about what we are seeing. The virus has clearly not gone away. In fact, it still presents significant challenges right now. Vermont, along with the rest of the nation, is seeing more and more evidence that variants first identified in the UK and California, B117 and B1429, respectively, are accounting for more of our cases. Yesterday, the Broad Institute in Boston informed us that the P1 variant was found in one specimen. This variant may be twice as transmissible, like the others, and may have implications for reduced susceptibility to monoclonal antibody therapy. We do not yet have the case-level data from the lab to identify the county from where the specimen was taken, nor travel-related history. I will be able to share more information on Friday. One thing we do know now from this and the other ongoing genomic sequencing results we are receiving is that variants, in general, are spreading throughout Vermont. As I've said before, this is not unexpected, but it is a concern. The variants we have found in Vermont spread more quickly from person to person, faster than we can vaccinate people. This is why everyone needs to follow the guidance very strictly to prevent the spread of the virus. To each take the important personal responsibility to keep illness from spreading and to limit the odds of more variants of concern from developing here. And as we do this, we can move on planning the path ahead so we can all envision what our lives might soon look like. From businesses we visit, to gatherings we attend, and to see what happens when we travel. These gradual steps take into account what we know about the virus. For example, differences between outdoor events versus indoor ones. And they include the use of masks and physical distancing along the way as you've heard. Because the approach you've been listening to thus far is grounded in public health science, is data driven every step of the way, incorporates modeling predictions, and is methodical and patient. For those who feel these times are too uncertain, what I can tell you is that the addition of vaccination science to our traditional metrics allows us to anticipate where we will be down the road and how we can proceed forward. The plan is based on the fact that we have three safe and effective vaccines and is tied to our progress in vaccination, with more Vermonters becoming fully protected from COVID-19. So where the virus might once have found a new person to infect, there will be a much higher chance it has instead stopped in its tracks. That indeed is a major reason why it is so important for Vermont to have a robust vaccination rate. As I said, it's all about slowing the rate of spread, suppressing the virus, and markedly reducing the chance for variant strains to succeed. Because the virus is just not able to be passed around and mutate. What more can I tell you about how good these vaccines are? Here are my top 10 reasons. 1. Not only do they have great stats when we review the published original studies, but now we know they have similar great effectiveness and safety in real world settings. 2. The safety profile has held up over many, many months of experience. 3. They work in older people and those with high risk conditions, quite admirably I might add. 4. The ability to transmit virus to others is substantially reduced by the vaccine. 5. Most of the variant strains so far seem to be handled well and fully vaccinated people. 6. New data is emerging that is paving the way for their use in adolescence, and the trial results look even better than in adults. 7. The vaccines have performed safely and effectively thus far in pregnancy. In fact, immunity can be passed to infants through the placenta and through breastfeeding. 8. The duration of immunity is at least 6 months and might be much, much longer. Time will tell. 9. In countries such as Israel and the United Kingdom, case counts steeply dropped after 50% of the population had been fully vaccinated. And though that is still less than the level needed for community immunity, marked improvements in life occurred for those societies at that time. And lastly, in Vermont, since achieving almost 90% vaccination in our 65 and older age group and in long-term care facilities, we have seen dramatic drops in hospitalizations, case fatality rates, and cases alone in that population. Importantly, the vast majority of our highest risk for monitors are already protected. And as we make even more progress and COVID has fewer chances to spread, we can adjust our tactics. We will continue to test suspected cases and trace their close contacts. For those who do get very sick, we know much more about therapeutic treatments to aid in their recovery. This includes monoclonal antibodies. There are now more options available and you can learn more from your healthcare provider if you are at higher risk. Of course, we'll continue to monitor how we're doing as we follow this path forward, because this progress still depends on you. We cannot simply wait for it to happen. We have to make it happen. That means following these side-by-side pathways, more and more Vermonters getting vaccinated when their turn comes, and still following basic prevention guidance. No matter how tired you are of the pandemic, what your friends and family are doing, or what you're seeing people do in other states. What matters is what we do right here, right now, wearing our masks, keeping our distance, and avoiding crowds. If you're not vaccinated for now, it still means quarantining after travel and getting tested. Please keep this in mind if you did travel over the past holiday weekend, or were with multiple households for any spring holiday gatherings. And though testing is indeed widely available and being utilized at great levels by Vermonters, please use our website to make an appointment before showing up at a test site. If you did travel over the weekend, Friday is a perfect day to get tested as we transition to the new testing policy surrounding travel, that the governor spoke about earlier. Now speaking about travel, the CDC has just started speaking much more clearly and sensibly about the topic. Here are some bullet points. People who are fully vaccinated with an FDA authorized vaccine can travel safely within the United States. Fully vaccinated travelers do not need to get tested before or after travel unless their destination requires it, and they do not need to self-quarantine. Fully vaccinated travelers should still follow CDC's recommendations for safe travel, including wearing a mask over your nose and mouth, staying six feet from others, and avoiding crowds, and washing your hands often or using a hand sanitizer. People have asked here before about international travel, and for international travel, fully vaccinated people do not need to get a COVID-19 test before they leave the U.S. unless it's required by their international destination. However, fully vaccinated people should get tested and have a negative test result before they board an international flight back into the United States, and have a negative test three to five days after arrival, but they do not need to quarantine. Finally, the CDC continues to recommend against travel at this time due to the rising number of cases. So in summary, as people make riskier choices and we race against more transmissible variants of the virus, we truly need your help to bring this vision to life. This is how we get kids back to school, keep people working, and stay on this path toward July 4th, a time when it will be safe to live our lives using basic public health precautions. It's now just two weeks until all Vermonters age 16 and older will be eligible to make their vaccine appointments, so make yours as soon as you can. Let the state, with the lowest amount of immunity from having had a COVID infection, show the rest of the country how we can be the state with the largest amount of vaccine produced immunity. It's not time to celebrate yet, but I hope that knowing how close we are means we can make this happen together. Since the governor has not yet returned from the phone call, we'll begin the question-and-answer period. Thanks, Dr. Levine. So I'll probably have one for the governor when he gets back, but maybe this is kind of a U.N. commissioner fee check question. So it appears as over the last month our hospitalizations have stayed kind of in the mid-20s. But even though we're vaccinating the most vulnerable Vermonters over 65 of the oldest, I'm wondering, you know, why are hospitalizations are staying so high? And if they continue, or I guess if you have a sense of where they could be going in the next few weeks, and if they remain at the level they are, if and how that could affect our reopening plan? Yeah, I think we can both take a crack at that. My initial answer is that it's all relative. So obviously when we had our cases in the past and didn't have a vaccine to protect the most vulnerable, they indeed would comprise the majority of the hospitalizations because of their risk. Now, even though they are protected and the numbers of older people in the hospital may be less with COVID, we have such an amazing number of cases of COVID that even in a younger population, which is at lower risk, if you increase the number of people, even a small percentage of them does increase to a few more people. And indeed, we've seen that in our population in terms of the average age. So that's my take on it. And Commissioner Piccia can also give an answer. Thank you, Calvin. So, you know, when you look at our hospitalizations, you see that those above 70, that there are fewer cases leading to hospitalization among those over 70. You know, in February, we saw 38 cases leading to hospitalization. In March, it was down to 30. So that under 70 crowd, you know, is where cases are leading to hospitalization. And the age group where it's leading to hospitalization at the greatest degree are those 60 to 69 and 50 to 59. And then those basically in their 40s, 30s and 20s make up a smaller portion of it. So as we get more people vaccinated in that 60 year old age band and that 50 year old age band, we should again start to see our hospitalization numbers decrease as well. Thanks. I'm going to save my second question to the governor. Steve? I'm curious. We've heard a little bit of questioning online for us anyway. On the number of children, school-aged children that have reached a level of testing positive. And do we have those numbers and are they available at all anywhere? So, Stephen, weekly we include in our full data presentation the weekly number of cases that were found in a school. So it wouldn't only include students, it would include faculty or staff that had a positive case in the school. But you can look at that as a good proxy for, you know, K through 12-age students. But as we talked about on Friday, certainly the age groups, you know, between 10 and 24 are seeing the highest increase in case growth. But in particular, 18 to 24 is where we're seeing the most of that growth occur. Right. So at least hard numbers wise, though, for school-aged kids, we really don't have a handle on that. No, we, we'll go ahead. Every week we do our weekly update on the website. And there's always a child slide, if you will, that gives you a slice of how that looks over time. So we are seeing still cases that are at a decent level in that area. I can't give you a number off the top of my head. The fact of the matter is a significant proportion of those are in older kids as opposed to the entire, you know, age one to high teens. They're in the higher teen range. But I'd have to go back and look at the website to give you an exact number today. Not a problem. I can check that myself, too. Thanks. I'd probably have one for the governor after two. Thanks, Rebecca. Not to sound like I'm repeating the first two, but I do have a question for the governor. But one technical question about the vaccine signup process. An older Vermonter with diabetes who only wants the J&J shot says she still can't find out which vaccine is offered where on the states site. I know you've talked about that in the past as a feature that was coming. Can you give us any update on that? Yes, Stuart. I'll check. It's supposed to be imminent that it's, it's on there. I've just been in the notion of Texas nowadays. It is on there right now. It's one dose or two dose. So when you go to sign up on a clinic, it will tell you whether it's a one dose or two dose clinic. Okay. I will let her know. And if I could hold for the governor then. Thank you. Thanks, Rebecca. This is a question for Secretary Smith. Can you hear me okay? I can. Okay. Good. You mentioned that the needle is moving slowly and vaccination sign up for BIPOC Vermonter and more work needs to be done. Why do you think it's moving slowly and what can help in getting more to sign up? How many are eligible? Yeah, I don't have the exact number of how many of eligible. I think it's around 35,000 Lisa that are eligible that we had identified. The reason is that not everybody's been vaccinated yet. The sign up is actually going according to plan. 4600 people have made appointments in that area. The needle is the actual people that have gotten vaccine vaccinations right now. I expect that needle to go a little bit faster. It's like 1% now that we've increased. I see. Okay. And then I had a question for Secretary Curley as well. In looking at that sort of reopening guidance the next three months. There's mention of gathering an event gathering an event and how will it be determined if someone is unvaccinated? Will that person be the person to self report that or when you have these distance guidance for unvaccinated people? Yeah, so for event planners, they have an opportunity. I don't know if we can bring that slide back up that that the roadmap. But for example, if you are having an event scheduled for May 1st, if as an event planner, if you don't want to manage the vaccinated versus unvaccinated and you're having an outdoor event, you may just land on the 300, right? But if you're willing to do the extra work to determine whether they're vaccinated or not, then you can have the 300 plus any number of vaccinated persons at this event. So it's really going to be up to the event planners. And I imagine that some will set it right up online where they might have a reservation system for those who are unvaccinated. And once they hit that cap, they stop selling tickets, for example, to the unvaccinated group of persons and then maybe welcome people at the door who can show proof of vaccination. But it's really going to be on the event planners. If you're having a private party, same thing. It's the onus is on the person who's hosting the event to make sure that they're aware of their guests and and trying to keep that keep track of that. So it's again, I just want to reiterate that people don't have to manage that. If they choose to keep it simple, they can stay with the lower threshold. Is that helpful? Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So I just got off the call with the White House and fellow governors. We heard that our Pfizer and Moderna will remain steady with a very, very slight uptick. However, unfortunately, Johnson Johnson is down quite a bit this week as compared to last, though, though we were told to expect a week to week fluctuation. So we'll receive about 7400 fewer doses than last week. But I don't want anyone to panic because last week we had a substantial increase. As you might remember, we received about 7000 doses more last week than the previous week. So this is really on track with what we had beforehand. And we wisely didn't count on the increase allocation on an ongoing basis. So I think I believe we're in pretty good shape. They also, J&J, they told us that J&J has committed to delivering 100 million doses to the federal government by the end of May. So we'll be back on track if that holds up to receiving about 8 to 10,000 doses a week of Johnson Johnson by the end of the month or during the month. So no need to panic, but wasn't as good a news as we had hoped, but not unexpected in some respects. With that, back to questions. Yes, so I'll just circle back on the book. I've had questions for the governor, but just a quick note. We do have 22 in total in the queue, so could you please just take it to one question? Calvin? Thank you, Rebecca, and thank you, governor. So I guess, you know, last night your office put out a statement responding to criticism about the BIPOC vaccination program. I mean, certainly this isn't the first time, you know, that some have criticized you. So why didn't you respond at this time? Well, what we were seeing on social media throughout the country, as a matter of fact, thousands and thousands of people responding. And we just didn't feel the information was accurate. So we wanted to make sure that people understood why we had done this for the right reasons and we had the data to back it up. So we just wanted to make sure that was out there to at least have them base their arguments on the facts and not about what they read on social media if they take the time to read that. So first of all, we wanted for monitors to understand it and then hopefully the rest of the country will as well. Later this afternoon, Secretary Young will be giving an update as to sort of, you know, how you'd like to see the American Rescue Plan funds spent. I guess I'm just wondering, at least as of right now, if you can kind of speak to some of the themes, whether it's in, you know, one-time investments or broadband or some of what, you know, you'd like to see out of this one. Yeah. I don't want to get ahead of what Secretary Young is going to present and the rest of the cabinet. As a matter of fact, we did give a heads up yesterday. We gave a presentation to the legislative leadership yesterday, so they weren't surprised with what we're coming out to today. But I don't think anyone's going to be surprised with what they hear. I've said all along that, you know, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity here. It's where you have a billion dollars to spend. I think it should be transparent, something that we can look at and then years down the road look back and say we made an incredible monumental decision in real tangible type of investments that made a difference here in Vermont. So I think that's what you'll see this afternoon. None of it will be a surprise on met needs over a long period of time and a lot of common interests, but really about infrastructure needs. Steve. I'm all set. Thank you. We're going to go next to Cameron. Yes, thank you. Hi there. I just wanted to ask looking at the Vermont forward plan. So on July 4th, obviously we have a lot of things being rolled back, but it still says masking and distancing encouraged and universal guidance for businesses. I'm just wondering, you know, when we think of normal like pre pandemic normal, is there any sort of statistical point that we can that we're looking for in terms of getting back to that point? Well, I think it a lot of it depends on on the virus and circumstances between now and then. But we certainly will feel a lot more normal than we have over the last 14 months. But time will tell, you know, it's like in some respects, three months is like an eternity. So we'll have to wait and see as we move towards that date and what it will look like. But we're hopeful this is a time for optimism. And we really do see light at the end of the tunnel. All right, great. Thank you. Thanks, Rebecca. Sorry for the delay there. The very step in a certain percentage of Vermonters being vaccinated is that it is movement to each incremental step contingent on Vermont hitting the vaccination percentages outlined at the top of each respective slide. Well, that's yeah, that's the way we laid it out. And that's what we're hoping for. And then so we want to make sure that we get to that point. And before we make the next step, but, you know, we'll know more as as we move forward. Certainly the supply chain needs to meet our demand and we need people to sign up for their vaccinations, which is very important. And when it's time for you to when your age band opens up or you have an opportunity to get your vaccination, please sign up because this is all predicated on people doing the right thing. So if on June 1st 70% of Vermonters are not vaccinated, does that mean we will remain in step two until we hit that benchmark? Well, we will, we will be making changes along the way if necessary, but we do believe that we'll be able to accomplish this. Yeah, no, I understand that I'm just will we go to step three on June 1 if fewer than 70% of Vermonters have been vaccinated. Yeah, I think it would depend on, you know, for 1% below 70%. We might move forward. But if it's substantially less, then we'd have to reflect on that. And of course, the biggest transition is to live for there is no vaccine percentage benchmark for that. What what is the percentage of Vermonters that you envision being vaccinated at that point? That would allow us to move to that phase? I don't know if that's Dr. Levine. I'm sorry if I'm being unclear. Step one says 45 to 55% of Vermonters 16 plus are vaccinated. Step two 60 to 70. Step three 70 to 85. But this move, this big move to drive forth where all the mandates are lifted does not have a similar percentage benchmark that will be right. Well, but if you look at step three, 70 to 85% of Vermonters 16 and over 60 to 70% of all Vermonters were already approaching those levels that we would want to see us approach to feel comfortable doing that. The other question you had about contingent versus not your assumption is that each step is only focused on vaccine and nothing else from a health standpoint. And obviously, as I tried to say my comments and as others have said, we didn't replace all of the previous metrics with vaccine and are ignoring everything else. It's all part of a grand picture still. So obviously, when the governor says we're going to see what's going on with the virus, I mean, he means more than just how many Vermonters have gotten vaccinated. So there's other metrics that will continue to be played out and that will continue to project here each time we move and even in between moves as part of our normal reporting process. And so none of that really changes. And again, when we've looked at some of the other experiences around the country around the world, when people have reached a certain level of vaccination of their population, a lot of things that were good happened in their reopening process. And that was only at 50 percent of fully vaccinated. So there's still opportunities for even more once you go beyond that. But that's when cases began to markedly diminish. Thank you. We have one more comment. Yeah. This is Secretary Curley. I just wanted to add, you know, when we set these benchmarks, we set them, we took a conservative approach and we have set benchmarks that we feel we have such a great chance to meet. I mean, we're confident that we can get there unless something that completely unforeseen shows up. So we want Vermonters to feel good about this plan and to rely on this plan. You know, you can you can start planning and you can be thinking about those events in the summer and towns can be accepting event applications based on this plan. So again, we'll continue to monitor everything. But from a planning perspective, we're giving a plan that we feel that we have the ability to meet for all Vermonters. Thanks, Rebecca. My phone really does want to go skiing today instead of being on the press conference. Does the state have knowledge of who has received the vaccine and which type of vaccine? And is the state maintaining a database of people who received vaccines through the state system and or the federal pharmacy programs in the VA programs? Yeah, a bit of a complicated answer to this. Dr. Levine will take it, but we don't we don't have insight to all. For instance, what the VA has done, we think we have a rounded number of Vermonters who have received vaccines, but we don't have that data at this point in time. So and it's a little spotty with a farm suit or pharmacies as well. So that's why I've said from the beginning that I had wished hoped that the federal government would just send us the supply of vaccine so we can distribute it to the to the pharmacies. But they've chosen to contract individually with the some of the pharmacies and some of them are on our system. So it's a little bit more complicated than it might appear. Dr. Levine. And I'm not going to make it more complicated from up here. You know, we do have an immunization registry and a program for all vaccines. And this is another vaccine. So it gets reported there. The pharmacies do have an obligatory requirement to report the problem has been on occasion some of the pharmacies timeline for reporting. But again, that's usually within several days as opposed to months. So that's not a huge problem. And as the governor and Secretary Smith have said repeatedly here, we don't have as much insight into those being distributed by the federal government such as in the VA program. We have a ballpark idea, but we don't have the accurate data that we really need to track that. So to be clear, you know that Bill Smith out of vaccine or you know that Kenny drugs administered 500 vaccine. You know grant you have granular level data. Yes, which individual people you do. Yes. And more importantly, the healthcare system has access to some of that data as well. So they know if somebody shows up at an office setting, if they've been vaccinated or not. And if they want to have vaccine, which one they got for the first dose, etc. So that information could be used. Where the state to create any kind of a vaccine passport. Yes, right. We have not talked as a state of developing our own passport. And as you know, the federal government is also talking about it, but not wanting to necessarily lead that program. But everyone at the time of vaccination gets a vaccine card. Many have suggested people laminate that card so that they could keep it in great shape in perpetuity. But the fact is every individual who gets vaccinated has a written record of that that they can have on their person. Great. That's exactly what I needed to know. Thank you both. Mine is not yet laminated. Yeah, a question for Dr. Levine on something one of my colleagues is working on a childhood obesity during the first few months of the pandemic started to rise. I'm just curious if you have any details on sort of the issue as it pertains to Vermont. I know we're a pretty healthy state, but these are, you know, over a year of inactivity here starting to weigh on people. What are your thoughts on sort of that rise and what Vermont can do about it here as we look to sort of get back to normal? Yeah, great topic. And I know there was a news story today on it and I haven't had a chance to consult our health surveillance section and the statistics yet at this point in time. But I think we can accept the fact that whether it's childhood or adulthood, it's well documented nationwide that weight has gone up in a certain percent of the population. So the bottom line is we've always been passionate about childhood obesity. Programs like 3450, the three adverse behaviors, which is physical inactivity, poor nutrition or tobacco use that lead to the four chronic diseases, heart and lung disease, diabetes and cancer, that account for about 57% of deaths in Vermont has always been a major part of our health department's programming. We've teamed with organizations like Rise Vermont to partner with them and make that very community directed so that around the state there are various efforts going on. Needless to say, a lot of that activity has not been able to be carried out during a pandemic and teachers alone are noticing the rates of weight problems going up in their school classes. I believe a return to a pre-pandemic life, which means not being at home, sitting at a computer and being more sedentary, but being active in your classroom, having the benefit of physical education classes and sports activities, etc. And returning once focus on the way their lifestyle once was will be the answers to this in the long term. Short-term, I'm sure there'll have to be some interventions that we can develop that will be more targeted, if you will, so that we can have specific populations with specific remedies directed in a community or countywide fashion. So you bring up a really important problem. It's another one to add to the list. Unfortunately, it's hard to say one is more important than the other. We've talked about mental health problems. We've talked about social problems. We've talked about academic problems. Now there are also physical health problems, whether they be childhood obesity, whether they be delayed diagnosis in adults of heart disease or other problems that present at a later stage because people were afraid to access the healthcare system. All of these things are now fertile ground for us to really focus on once again and try to develop programming around. Thank you. Hi. Assuming the reopening roadmap ago was according to plan, when he hits the life force, will the state of emergency definitely be lifted? It's not a definite at this point in time. There may be factors that where we might have to keep it in place for a bit longer. It's my hope that we can just let it go and not reactivate it, but we just don't know at this point. We may need some legislation to keep some of the programs going or something tied to the state of emergency. I don't want to give you the impression that we will definitely not re-up the state of emergency, but in all intents and purposes it will be over. And then kind of a follow-up to that. I guess, looking big picture, what is the kind of acceptable, if you will, amount of COVID-19 cases once we open up vaccine eligibility to all Vermonters 16 and older and they've had a chance to get their shot? Effectively, I'm just trying to look at what might have, what would we have to see down the line that might cause some restrictions to go into place? Dr. Levine. Yes, Kat, I'd rather not look at it as an acceptable number of cases. I'd like to look at it as a rate of increase in growth of cases or hopefully by then a rate of decrease in growth of cases because that's where I think we'll be at with the percent of the population vaccinated. It will still again be some of those traditional metrics, but again, keep in mind the distribution of whatever number of cases there are will be very important. We presume they will be similar to now where they're in a very younger age group who will be on the verge, if not already having just received their first dose of vaccine so that there will be a little bit of a lag in time because those who have become cases will have become cases, but they'll still be getting themselves vaccinated and will start to see less in their age demographic. So even now, we see so few cases on a given night of people 65 and older. It's literally a handful even when there's over 100 cases. So that should continue as a trend as we get younger and younger in our age banding and see less and less cases in the groups that have had the opportunity to be vaccinated. So we would look at more of a rate to answer your question and a rate of decline, hopefully as opposed to an absolute number. Got it. I was thinking more in the context of the kids who can't get vaccinated for a little bit and what if we saw among that age group that isn't eligible for a vaccine would cause the state to say, whoa, hang on. So it sounds like it's looking at the same rate for those groups as well. Yeah, and frankly, those groups will be so much more protected, even if they're not yet eligible for the vaccine because there's less opportunity for the virus to be transmitted to them by people older than them. So it would only be within their own peer group. And I would think that would diminish very quickly. Thank you. If I could just add to that, just to remind everyone again about our strategy from the from the beginning was was about hospitalizations and deaths. And we saw that that increase during the pandemic. We've seen a tremendous decrease over the last couple of months. And we're at a point now where things are leveled out and still decreasing. So that would have to be one of the metrics from my standpoint before we went into a state of emergency. Because we feel that based on everything that we talked about, that we can hit all the steps here and get back to normalcy by the 4th of July with fewer hospitalizations and fewer deaths. And as well, there's some hope. I mean, I heard on the White House call again, Dr. Fauci was talking some about the potential for for having a vaccine available to our youth younger ages. And that's going to be coming sooner rather than later. So I think this is all good news and they're developing that every single day working on that with the trials. And we feel that we're going to be in a really, really good spot by the 4th of July. Yeah, hi, I'm wondering if these dates for Vermont's forward could be moved up if things go better than planned? Or are these dates sort of the earliest possible time that we would take a step forward? No, I think if everything went, if all of a sudden we received a lot more supply than we had anticipated or the Feds had told us we would receive, this could be accelerated. And if we saw, you know, continue to watch the metrics, I don't see why it couldn't be accelerated in some respects moved up. But we feel again, this is a somewhat of a conservative approach. We feel we can meet this without any problems. And so we're just going to go with this at this point in time. But we're always willing to move things forward or back depending on the circumstances. Great. And a follow up to the questions about how case and positivity metrics play into this plan as well. I noticed that in the forecast that was presented today, we're actually expecting cases to continue to increase about until that may first mark when we would enter step two. You know, I know we obviously hit a, we've had a new record for weekly average cases just as we're hitting step one. And I would imagine we may be in a similar situation as we enter step two. So I suppose my question then is, if you could elaborate on how the, how this Vermont forward plan incorporates the projected case load. And if we were to exceed the projection, if that would be cause for concern. Yeah, again, as we said, or I said in the previous question, from the beginning, we've looked at hospitalizations and deaths continues to be our strategy. And it's difficult. I realize it's difficult for me as well. Because when I see the case counts, and if I see there's an increase, it gives me pause. But because that's what we've been talking about for the last 14 months or 12 months or so, just about case counts. But what really matters is that hospitalization. Remember, flattening the curve in the beginning, we were watching our healthcare system. What we had to do to make sure that we protected our healthcare system. And that's basically what we're still trying to do, making sure that we keep the hospitalizations to a minimum and deaths to a minimum as well. If not, you know, it'd be nice to get to a point where we had zero deaths like we did last summer. We had, we went through at least three months without a single death. And so I'm looking forward to that in the not too distant future. I think we can get there. And the summer will provide for that as well as the vaccine. Do you want to add anything to that? Commissioner P check showed this slide of the projections and we veered off of the, we'll call it the worst case scenario projection. And we're sort of veered in between best the worst case, which is notable. And I mentioned it because if you look at the country, we're talking 65,000 cases each time. That number hasn't really changed in the course of a week or so. It's sort of at a plateau as well. So we're hopeful as a country that we're actually in a plateau phase as opposed to a more rapid acceleration phase. And I would hope in Vermont we could continue in the direction we're going just as well because that means even with varying strains and their increase in transmissibility and they're becoming more dominant across the nation, we still have vaccine becoming more dominant across the nation too. So the two forces are working against each other in a nice way, so to speak. And we may not turn into what some of the European countries turned into in the United States where they had a steep acceleration in cases. We seem to be doing much better in our country right now. And many attribute that to the deployment of vaccine in our country and how it's gone to date compared to the European Union, which has been criticized a lot. I'm not here to criticize them at all. I'm just here to show a comparison that we have not had that phase of going straight upward in this country even with the new questionable surge. So we'll hope that in Vermont we can continue to follow a lower flatter line as well and get to a decreasing line quicker. I think it's also important to note that we're doing more testing, more contact tracing than ever before. So when we do that and we have the colleges and universities doing some of them twice a week testing, they're picking up some asymptomatic cases as well. It's not severe, but again, I'm not trying to minimize the virus at all. But that's why we look at the hospitalizations and deaths as an indicator as to what we're trying to do. But keep in mind we are also light years ahead today in terms of testing than we were a year ago. Yes, thank you. Good afternoon. These are for Secretary Smith on the expansion of the mobile clinic in Essex County. I understand the original allocation was about 300 Johnson and Johnson doses. How many more doses are you adding to those? We're adding about 135 more doses to those nine clinics. And by early afternoon yesterday I was hearing from several Essex County residents that they were surprised when they went to book and they discovered all the appointments had been taken. Has anyone in your agency looked to verify how many of those appointments actually went to Essex County residents? I haven't looked, but I'll have somebody look. I'm almost certain the majority of them probably did, but let me just look to make sure. So we've increased the total of 135, and we'll continue to monitor that as we move forward. We also, as I mentioned, we're going to do the Upper Valley Connecticut River Hospital in Colbrook as well. And that will be weekly clinics in that area, sort of in the Canaan, Beecher Falls, and South area as well. Do you have a sense of how many doses you'll be allocating on a weekly basis to the hospital there? About 100. And as you can imagine, transportation is kind of tough in that area. Is the hospital going to be following the same eligibility guidelines, or is there going to be opportunity, say, if a family wants to make a trip to Colbrook, that people who might not be eligible can get appointments? Yeah, it's going to be following the same state rules that everybody else follows in terms of that. But remember, in two weeks, it's going to be everybody. Yeah, true enough. Thank you. And on behalf of a reader about what the status of children are, is it can't be vaccinated? If they travel out of state, do they need to be quarantined or tested as well? Well, as of now, or as of the 9th, which is, I think, this Friday, they will just have to have a test within three days of their return. Okay. Thank you very much. That's good for me. Thank you, Rebecca. Governor, I was wondering, you just got your Johnson & Johnson vaccine. I was wondering if you were the first lady had any reaction? Well, I'm glad to get the vaccine. Oh, a little levity, okay. Any physical reaction? No, none whatsoever. Didn't have any soreness, any of the symptoms that they had warned us that we might have headache and some tiredness. I just didn't have any of that, at least not yet. Well, they suspect at this point you probably won't. I was wondering, you know, that the gathering, I was looking at the MAPERS gathering guidelines, and they're actually not conservative. It doesn't seem to me, it seems pretty liberal. You know, you think about weddings and graduation parties. Given the number of people that will be vaccinated then it's going to be just about back to normal. Is that how you're anticipating it'll be within those guidelines? So, 150 indoor, 300 outdoors? Yeah, and no limits on if you were vaccinated, it could be any number on top of that. Yeah, I think this is... By that point it'll be... Yeah, great news. Secretary Curley. Yeah, you know, actually you gave me a really great opportunity to point something out. So, while it's 150 indoors, that's the maximum of unvaccinated people, on MAPERS you'll notice that it's one person per 100 square feet. That is more than six feet per person, so there shouldn't be any crowding. So if a facility is 15,000 square feet, they can have 150 people inside. But if the facility is 7,500 square feet, they should only have 75 people inside. So again, we have set this up to avoid crowding, and we're looking for people when they're planning events, you know, from now until when we get to July to really make sure that they're not crowding people into small areas. And the reason the outdoor is bigger is because that's what we want. We want people to be outdoors. And we want people to be thinking when they're at these events to be thinking about that six foot space. If they feel uncomfortable and they feel crowded, they should make a little more room for themselves. So it's going to be all hands on deck on this, but I think that we've again provided a safe path forward for events in early May. Okay, so just to clarify, Lindsay. Yeah. You couldn't have, if the space is limited, it wouldn't really matter if people were vaccinated or unvaccinated inside that. Because even vaccinated people would still have to meet the spacing requirements. Yes, for right now, if it's all vaccinated people in that space, they still should be allowing for 100 square feet per person in indoors. And again, you know, this is to get us to July 4th, right? So we're we're trying to encourage outdoor at this point. But if there is going to be indoors, even all vaccinated, you know, we're still requiring masking and we're we're again asking people to leave some spaces space between them. Okay. All right, great. Thank you for that. With the listening of the travel restrictions starting on Friday, do you see there being as a higher demand for testing? And what's the state's testing capacity going to look like by Friday and then again by June 1st when there won't be a testing requirement? But Secretary Smith, is that We have plenty of testing capacity that is still unused. I think on average, we have 19 facilities throughout the state and usually a little bit more on terms of capacity. I don't I'm trying to look for the number, but bear with me and in proc in using just approximate. We average about 50 to 58 to 68,000 tests over a seven day period, you know, about 7000, 8000 tests. We have the capacity to rise above that if we have to. So I don't see capacity as an issue. In fact, I would urge people to test more if they have the opportunity. We still have plenty of testing opportunities in this state. Past July 4th, will there be a reduction in testing? No testing capacity voluntarily by the state. Yeah, we haven't we haven't determined that yet. But, you know, it's your we're in a good we're we're in a good spot. We have all the testing capacity we probably need will probably continue to do survey surveillance testing and probably have some testing for those that I would hope that there wouldn't be any verminers that would be unvaccinated, but do have some testing capability for both verminers that are vaccinated and verminers that aren't. Thank you. Would indicate that, you know, vaccine interest is high in Vermont in general. What about that team could take up or interest among the population that's getting cases right now like the 18 to 29 age group. You know, I've seen some national data that would indicate that younger people are a little bit less likely to want the vaccine or to feel or see about getting the vaccine. Is there anything that you're planning to do to kind of target that age group, especially as the April 19th date for them to sign up lose ahead? Yeah, I know the federal government, the administration had said today that they're still planning a push to try and capture those groups and and try and entice them to get their vaccination when they can. But I didn't hear the details of that. I know there's some funding available and I know they have a strategy and I know they want to work with the states, but but I don't have anything in depth on that at this point. Maybe Commissioner Peachette can answer part of that. So Aaron, thank you for the question. The graphic that we showed doesn't have, you know, we didn't show the breakdown by age. There is a statistical estimate by age, but what I will point out is that what the survey result was asking was for those that were not yet vaccinated and certainly by mid March that skewed younger. So we do expect, you know, a good uptake across the population. Generally, we're hopeful in particular that schools, colleges, college age students will help encourage that age group to get vaccinated. So, you know, there is there is reason for encouragement among that that youngest population as well. Are you are you thinking of any issues and access particularly for young people? Like, you know, maybe they work weird hours and they might not be able to sign up for a typical clinic or, you know, younger people may have less access to cars. Yeah, this is Aaron. This is Mike Smith. I wanted to sort of add and then I'll get to your question. We are and I think I've said this before we are reaching out to that younger age group. I think it's going to be important. We're seeing really good interest from what Commissioner P check has shown in his graphic. But we want to make sure that they also hear from us that they they need to get vaccinated, not hear from us, but hear from peers. You know, they're they're not going to listen to us. They'll listen to peers as we move forward. So we do have a communications plan that we're developing in order to reach out to those individuals to encourage younger age groups to get vaccinated. I think it's important. And I think you'll start seeing that rolling out in the next few weeks, actually, it actually sooner than that in the next few days. And Dr. Levine can add to that. The only thing I wanted to add is we know from surveys, both in our seniors in high school, but predominantly in the college population that very high rate of enthusiasm for the vaccine. Now, some of the colleges may end up having mandates like they do with other vaccines, you know, for the fall semester. But just judging the interest here in the spring semester now where there are no mandates, it's very high rates of wanting to have the vaccine. So that's promising. It doesn't take care of the entire 16 to 29 year age demographic, but a good chunk of it. Okay, I also have a question about the variant. Dr. Levine, you said that the variant spreading faster than we can vaccinate. Is there something like a specific, you know, will do you have or even just kind of general what you're thinking about how the spread could affect the pre-opening plan? Like if it becomes the dominant strain in Vermont, you know, one of the more transitional strains comes the dominant strain in Vermont. Could that have an effect on any of these rules and restrictions? You know, I really don't think so. And as we've said, there are more cases in fact the fact that the variant strains are more transmissible is one of the reasons that there are more cases. But again, these are cases that could be prevented with vaccine if we could just get enough vaccine into the state fast enough and into people's arms fast enough. So I don't think there should be any impact of something like B117, which is the one that will probably nationwide be the most prevalent variant strain and the most dominant. I don't see there's anything in that that would impact any of the timeline or the specifics of the openings that you saw today. We just want to make sure that we continue to play our role in this race to get more and more people vaccinated. Fortunately, we're not seeing a lot of harm in the predominantly younger group. You know, 50% of our cases are under age 40, and we're not seeing a lot of harm coming to that group right now. So that's good news. And we'll just try to keep working on preventing it from developing further in that group by our rapid vaccine program. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Rebecca. Just a quick question for the governor. Governor, did you hear any news of any other types of vaccines making any progress toward being approved? Yeah, they did not mention that today. But I wasn't there for all of Dr. Fauci's remarks, and he could have mentioned it before I got back up there. So I'll check in to see, but I don't have any inside knowledge of that. Anything, Dr. Bain? Thank you. With this Nani Day, with this Ford Vermont program, what is the plan for getting state employees back into state offices? I might ask if Secretary Young is on the phone. I am on the phone, Governor. Thank you guys. We are pulling together a plan that will evolve, I believe, over the summer as things open up to get state employees either back into the office, or for those who are able to work a hybrid plan by staying home a couple of days from home and working from the workplace. We're developing that with some cabinet members. We've done some surveys and so we are working to, I guess we would call it, open this big up for state employees to return to the work site, but also understand that we've learned quite a bit from the pandemic and our work experience, and we expect that there will be some opportunities for individual state employees to tell a work on a hybrid plan with a hybrid plan. Thank you. Governor, Commissioner Levine has stressed throughout the pandemic that no group should be stigmatized. Does that now include people who decline vaccination, even if their collective choice means possibly vaccination goals are not met? Well, again, we have a great deal of hope that we'll meet our vaccination goals. We understand that not everyone will be vaccinated, nor for whatever reason they might have, so we're fully accepting of that. So at some point after, again, after the 4th of July, we hope to be in a position where we will provide guidance, not mandates, and that will include everything that's been ordered thus far. So there won't be that stigmatism, I don't believe. Thank you. The question about these shifts in the travel requirements, with people not being required to quarantine anymore, but getting a test within three days, I wonder what is the protocol if that test comes back positive? What happens next? Yeah, that's an important question. So being a case, which means having a positive test, does require everything it requires now. So we would expect that person to isolate and we would then do contact tracing surrounding that person to make sure that no one else is at risk and that they're all safe. And if others need to quarantine because of that positive, that would happen as well. Thank you. I had one other question based on, I think of the last press conference you mentioned that the 16 and older age group is going to be the largest group to become eligible when that day comes. And one thing that we hear from readers every time a new age group opens is the frustration about having to search for different websites for the soonest appointment. We've also heard reports that in some locations, the health department spots and the pharmacy spots can be weeks apart in terms of the soonest available. I wonder, is there any plan to streamline the process for searching across four different scheduling systems that are available to the volunteers right now? That's a really good question. And I understand that some Vermonters are frustrated with the various avenues that are available to them and the fact that you have to search different websites. This is the issue that the governor has talked about many times in terms of coordinating with our registration system. Although they're not required, we're trying to get many of these pharmacies to coordinate with our registration system so that it is all available right there and you don't have to hunt for it. We've been very successful with Walmart and Costco and Hanna-Fords and others that we've brought in, less so with Walgreens. Kenny's we get a download from. It's not sort of connected with our system, but we get a download from, but less successful with some others. I understand the frustration. We're trying to work it out to be better coordinated as we move forward. But in some respects, it's a little bit of out of our hands, but at the same time, we're trying to do as much as we can to coordinate and getting better at coordinating this. Yeah, I wanted to be clarified. I mean, some of the pharmacies are under the federal pharmacy program and although we try to coordinate, there's not a mandate that they do coordinate. In fact, in some states they don't totally. We do have communications with them here and we're trying to bring it together. And again, the federal farmers, some of the federal pharmacy program is integrated in our system. Hannaford, Costco, those sort of ones are integrated in our systems. Others are not. Thank you. Another point to be made is as much as I'm frustrated by this federal contract with the individual pharmacies and this lack of coordination. In some respects, it would have been easier for us again to receive the supply and to run the scheduling of these appointments. We had one stop shopping, but that's not the case. It's not going to change. It doesn't appear and we're just going to have to soldier through this. But but I will say on the other side of this and Dr. Levine and Secretary Smith might talk about a little bit down the road. But there's going to be a point where we aren't going to be in control of this and that is going to be just like the seasonal flu where the individual pharmacies are going to be offering these vaccinations on their own. So we're moving towards that. It probably will all make sense six months from now. But right now it's a bit of a point of contention and frustration for us as well. I have a multi park question for Secretary Levine and Governor Scott. When it comes to the phase, the vaccination phase for BIOC people. Can you say more specifically at what rate that population was dealing with code infections more so than the general population of Vermont? And can you say anything about what more than just like a specific vaccination phase was being done to try to get that population vaccinated? Be that targeted messaging or specifically located vaccination clinics or anything like that? And was this vaccination phase and this outreach part of the government of Vermont's ongoing attempts to provide some kind of amelioration for the history of genetics that has specifically impacted this population? Let me try and answer part of that and let Dr. Levine fill in all the gaps that will emerge. We had adopted a strategy early on, a vaccination strategy for the BIPOC community. We had great hopes for that strategy, but it wasn't working out as well as we had hoped. And then we began to see some of the data that was developing and that gave us a little bit of concern and that we were falling behind in the rate of vaccination of the BIPOC community as compared to the rest of the population in Vermont on a percentage basis. So we decided to move forward with a different strategy and just open it up to the BIPOC community overall. But this was all based on the data, the science, the health experts and really had nothing to do with anything else other than we knew that those in the BIPOC community were more susceptible to the disease. And we knew that we were falling behind and wanted to make sure that we caught back up. That's basically all I have. Dr. Levine will fill in the rest. Thank you, Governor. So from the very beginning of the pandemic, the rate of cases in the BIPOC community has been disproportionate to the size of that community in Vermont and disproportionate to white non-Hispanic. So earlier on it was three or four to one. As the pandemic has evolved, it's in the two to three to one ratio. Likewise, hospitalizations early on were around three plus to one. They're now definitely two to one. The only adverse outcome that was not demonstrable in Vermont was an excess in death. And that's explainable by the fact that there are so few deaths in aggregate in Vermont, thank goodness, and in that community. But nationwide data unfortunately supports a disproportionate share of the deaths as well. So we had all of that adverse outcome data, if you will. In addition to that, we had multi-generational household data that indicated that that was an additional risk factor specific to that community more so than others. And then finally, the most recent data, which we would only have in the last couple of months, is the uptake of vaccine. And the fact that the rate was about 20% in the BIPOC community in total versus 33% in Vermont for having, I believe, received a dose of vaccine. So certainly the community that was suffering to a greater extent was not actually getting vaccines to the same extent that they should. So we had all those statistical pieces of data. A part of your question was, you know, what were we doing all along? So tremendous amount of educational programming, tremendous amount of interpretive services, communication, partnering with organizations throughout the state of Vermont that are advocates for this community, and having them be our sort of pathway for them to understand better, to subscribe more to vaccine, and the most important ingredient to access the vaccine. So we not only allowed people to register through the traditional website and pharmacies, et cetera, but developed community clinics that were accessible to the populations that needed them and made the vaccine much more accessible and extended the use of those clinics to multiple generations in the household. So that one individual early on could, in their age band, register, but then have their family members registered as well. And now in the most recent phase, of course, it's open to all ages in the BIPOC community. So all of them can be registered at the same time. So a lot of activity, I think between the governor's answer in mind, do you have a follow-up picture? Yes, thank you. Good afternoon. My question here is based on going to school board meetings, supervising meetings and so on, and then having a conversation about whether they should be, should it eventually get to in-person instruction before the end of the school year? And it seems to be absolutely unanimous, all the way from a parent to a teacher, whatever, an administrator. They have no interest in going back to in-person instruction until the fall. Is this going to be something that, as a goal, you ought to pitch forward? Or do you have the school administrator and then the school board make that decision? Yeah, obviously this is a local decision. It's unfortunate that they've taken that stance. We still have a lot longer to go in the school year and to get the students acclimated to getting back into school. I think it would be important for the fall even to make sure that we smooth out all the wrinkles that may develop and get them, again, acclimated to going back to school. I'm wondering if in all of those surveys, whether they had asked the kids what they thought, whether they wanted to go back and what their feelings were, I would have to imagine that they would want to go back to school to see their friends and get back to some sort of normalcy. So sometimes we should think about what's the most important product here. Who should be part of this conversation? And I'd say we should look at the kids and listen to them. Maybe I could refer to Secretary French if I've missed anything there. Governor, I would just echo that and suggest that, you know, from the state perspective, we've addressed many of the operational barriers for returning them more in person. You know, we have addressed the vaccination concern and when our new guide comes up this week, we'll have allowed for the closer distancing at the CDC standard at three feet. We're seeing those kind of approaches work well in other states and in terms of enacting more in person. So we really just strongly encourage districts to operationalize that and to do what they can to put a priority on in person because it is what we need to see happen relative to the meeting the needs of the kids, which the negative impacts of the pandemic at this point have accumulated. So we have to have a sense of urgency to get it back to in person. Well, recently actually ten minus students from North Dutch Union High School did speak to the school board and they're actually unanimous. They did not want to, they recognize that there are students who actually like remote learning, you know, as opposed to being in the classroom. But they also tell them it said that they didn't feel that they would be comfortable or safe by returning back to in person, you know, construction until there was a vaccination available for them. Can you address that? Ed, if you could, I didn't hear part of that. Did you say how many, all the students were asked and it was unanimous? Is that what you said? It was student representatives that they're representing the other school for the school board and they came in and they talked to the school board and administrator. And they said that they were not that they knew that they had some peers who were more than comfortable with remote learning. They didn't want to go back into the school but they also said there was a number of other students that they talked to who wanted in person instruction. But they were, they were scared that if they did that, you know, that they could be infected by the virus or something to go back into instruction. Like I said earlier, Ed, this is a local decision. That's the way we have our system set up here in Vermont and we will adhere to that. I think it again is unfortunate. We'll see what happens, you know, maybe as time goes on, we're going to be open up the 16 and over population. I would advocate that those 16 and older sign up as soon as they can, April 19th to get their vaccinations so that they, those who are seniors, might have some sort of normal graduation, which I would think that they would want. They wouldn't, I wouldn't imagine that they'd want that to be remote, but I might be wrong. But we'll, we'll see. Again, we have quite a while. I mean, it's March, April, May, June. We actually have three months, you know, before we're two months, actually, before we're at a point where they will be out of school. So a lot can happen in between, but I would hope that they wouldn't give up yet that even if they could go back for a month might be just what they need to finish off this year. And again, get back to some sort of normal. It's an emotional decision. It is tough on your end. And your administrators to make that decision. But it's a question that has been raised a number of times in school board being a go to. All right, we do have to move on to our next question. Eric, the Times Argus. Yes, this is also for Secretary French, I think you might have answered it a little bit for the distancing guidance. When will that be coming out? Because we've been hearing from schools, school districts who want to have a plan in place prior to the April break. Yeah, that can. I think you're on mute again, Secretary French. Or we lost you. Hello. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, the guidance will be coming out this week. Is that going to be at Friday's presser earlier than that? Most likely before Friday. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Rebecca. Good afternoon, Governor. I think this is for doctor was being looking at just that a dashboard. I see that there's roughly 2000. Other cases in the last couple of weeks. Just a quick estimate with about 20% vaccination rate, 95 fish on effectiveness. I'm estimating that that there's probably 20. There's 12 cases that are attributed to vaccinated for moderate, but I'm wondering if maybe I'm doing that math directly. I'm almost, I'm also wondering if by if the state is treating positive tasks. From, from the moderates who've been vaccinated any differently, for instance, if the state prioritizing those DNA testing to determine if a specific variant is getting around our vaccine. I'm going to interpret your questions a little back to you just because they didn't come through as clearly as I wanted. But the first part has to do with people who are fully vaccinated, but show up as a positive test. So you're right. The numbers of those, the numbers of those are very small right now. And I hope they remain that way. And I don't, I don't think we can do it with a math example, because the reality is, you know, we're not going to do nasal swabs on every person who's been vaccinated and get a set a random sample of them and figure out what the sensitivity rate is. More importantly, we want to know out of people who have been fully vaccinated, does anyone end up in the hospital? And so far the answer is zero. Does anyone, or maybe one, I think zero though, does anyone end up dying? And the answer is zero. And then, does anybody turn up as a case? And the answer is going to be yes, there will be some. In the majority, we believe they should be and have been mild cases, not people who are markedly symptomatic. Any vaccine, as we've sort of described, is going to have a failure rate of some discernible percent. In the current vaccines, it's a very low number, but still some people will present with symptoms, but hopefully symptoms that are mild. Your second question slipped my mind already. Do you remember Rebecca? Yeah, Dr. William, basically the second part of that question is, is the state doing anything specifically different with those vaccines? Sorry, those positive tests. Specifically, are we DNA testing them to see a specific variants around our existing vaccines and them on? Yeah, no, that's a great question. I don't believe we've targeted those tests to do the whole genome sequencing on. And the reason being, because we have a bunch of criteria for the whole genome sequencing, because we can't do that many in the course of a week, so we want to be very targeted and make sure we get the highest yield possible. So we use a variety of clinical and epidemiological attributes of the case, as well as geographic, to determine which ones are going to be used for whole genome sequencing and which ones are not. I think we could start to do what your question asked, though, because we just learned from Broad that they now have much more capability of increasing and enhancing the whole genome sequencing they're doing, plus we'll be able to do some at our own lab in the coming weeks. So stay tuned on that part, because that would be something that I think would be worthwhile at a time when we'll still have plenty of samples going for the more strategic aspects that I mentioned. Thank you. Yeah, I certainly did be interested to hear about those results. Other quick question here. I'm hearing about some cases where patients are trying to get more than one type of the vaccine. Almost like a sort of a Pokemon, collect them all mentality. One story I just recently heard of a patient who'd taken the Johnson and Johnson vaccine just in the last couple weeks and followed it up with one of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines. What sort of prevention measures is the state employing to ensure that people are not. I guess, signing up for multiple vaccines, doubling up in the hopes to improve their immunity. Well, you know, at this point in time, I'm not aware that you could actually try to game the system that way because we have a documentation of you getting a vaccine, which you will have as well on the card, but we'll have it more electronic. And clearly, we wouldn't want to be giving you an inappropriate vaccine at another time if it was the wrong second dose or if it was another vaccine, even though you've gotten that one dose vaccine. So I'm just not aware that that's happening a lot. And just so people in the state can understand, it doesn't mean that's a poor strategy, but it's an untested strategy. And it's one that at a time when there isn't a lot of vaccine around and we want most people to get at least one dose of something, it's really not fair to others to take a second dose when you didn't even need one. There are studies going on in this country and around the world that do get at mixing up the vaccines a little with different time intervals with different vaccine for the first shot, different one for the second shot. And these make sense to do as trials because we want to be as impactful against this virus as we can be and have the best strategy unfold. But right now, the only strategies that are approved are the ones that were tested in the original studies that allowed us to use these vaccines in the first place. So I would not want to encourage anyone from conducting their own, we call it an end of one experiment on themselves because there won't be any reliable data coming from that. And for all we know, it could be harmful. And the last thing you'd want to do is subject yourself to harm without really realizing that that was a possibility. Yeah, I'm told that at least the situation that I was told about happens in St. Albans where somebody had gone to a pharmacy, had gotten to Johnson and Johnson, followed it up with, I think it was a Pfizer shot. The administrators of the Pfizer thought it was the first dose. And they actually did have a pretty negative effect. I was just curious what sort of check and balances there were between the federal pharmacy program and the state program to ensure that that's not happening on a regular basis. Yeah, I can tell you that when you and I can tell you that another check and balances when you go to get your vaccine, you're asked a lot of questions by the person before they put the needle in your arm regarding which doses this, which did you get last time. Did you have any untoward reactions last time, etc. So safety is always paramount. But I guess if you want to game the system, you can work around that to some extent. Yeah, for sure. Thank you. Probably for Secretary Curley, but just a clarification on the chart and who those people are in the unvaccinated category in other words for for planners for church or for say weddings and things like that and having children. Are they counting in a family. Yeah, so unvaccinated is unvaccinated to be clear. Attending a church service is going to fall in this group B sector so currently they're still under sector guidance. But the gathering and events just to try to help people understand that is where you're sort of more like a reception that is you know that that follows a ceremony. For example, it's where people tend to like be standing around and get you know gathering and wanting to dance and you know what I mean. So, so children would be included in the unvaccinated. And again, you know, when we get to July that won't be as big of an issue. It'll just take a little bit more planning up front. So sporting events, if you're attending your kids thing or something. Correct. That's it. Thanks. Okay, thanks very much for tuning in and we'll be back on Friday to get an education update as well as I hope we'll be able to talk about summer programs and summer school for kids. Thanks.