 Since Brian asked me to kick it off, I'd like to welcome you all to the presentation from the administration about the transition piece. As things begin to open up, the Senate has had a lot of questions, and we thought that we would gather everybody here to start off and have you as things open up tell us what's going to happen and what we should expect and where we might go with questions is always good, and with that we'll, I think you should go ahead. If I could just add just one thing, just a reminder for folks that came on late, we're going to hold all of our questions to the until the end to give everyone an opportunity to speak, and we did share some broad questions and concerns with the administration that they so hopefully a lot will be covered that people have sort of been on people's minds, so thank you. Commissioner. Great. So I'll kick it off and the tentative for the record Mike Sherling, Commissioner of Public Safety and the run of show will be all given overview. Mary Smith will walk through an example of one of the restart operations on the side secretary curly will walk through one on the commerce and community development side and then doctors Levine and Kelso will provide the healthcare medical scientific components of how all of this work in greater detail. There is a system and a flow to what we've developed and while we have a few of the executives on the call today there are teams of dozens of people that are supporting this effort and there are folks out in industry and various sectors, businesses, nonprofits, all helping to support the work that's going on relative to restart. It all starts with data. We have a variety of dashboards that have been built. We have data that's modeled on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day. The types of things that are modeled many of them you're aware of from illness to hospitalizations, ICU capacity, ventilator use, our personal protective equipment stock and what we are both confident and question what's inbound at any given time. Our medical surge capacity. We have expanding data sets beyond just Vermont at this point. We're beginning over the last few days, Commissioner of P-Checks team and the team led by Kristen McClure, the state's chief data officer are now modeling regional trends and data to see how things look adjacent to us to help inform some of the decisions that are made. We look at not only data that the state's got and models there but also data that's available to us that maps other things like the mobility of Vermonters. We can even see a little bit of granular detail around physical distancing and the impacts of that year over year based on certain metrics. There are, you hear a lot about thresholds that have been created. We do have four minimally viable thresholds that we've created to enable decision making but those are just sort of the base level. They're not an if we cross this particular line then we trigger a particular thing. Those are where the baseline for conversation begins. And as a side note and Dr. Slovene and Kelso can talk more about this but we have passed the four quote unquote gating criteria of downward trends that allow us to contemplate various components of restart. In addition to the data that we're tracking, Commissioner P-Checks team also cross checks with external models and scientists including Northeastern University, IHME, data that's available from RT Live and other data sets as they become available. As you've all probably noticed and the any public folks that are watching, there's more data available on an ongoing basis as this unfolds. The agency of human services in the Department of Health have been focused on increasing our testing capabilities and contact tracing capabilities over the last few weeks. We believe those are fairly robust now with large numbers of tests available and a robust plan for contact tracing should that become necessary. Those are components of the decision making process around restart as well. In addition to that, there are illness monitoring systems that are already in place so the Health Department can see who's presenting on any given day with symptoms that match something that could be a COVID-like illness. That kind of syndromic surveillance that you hear Dr. Lanine talk about with some frequency. That is built in to the data metrics in this process as well. Then there is a workflow and the crux of the beginning of the workflow is that we made a decision early on to try to frame the restart decisions around how cross sections of the workforce and how businesses work rather than trying to take them one by one with hundreds or thousands of different NAICS codes for types of sectors because that would be even more complicated than a process that's fairly complicated to start with. So flowing from there, the process involves multiple meetings each week, at least one every day. The nomination process for restart if you will can come from a lot of different arenas but typically comes either from the health care sector or the agency of commerce and community development and it goes on to a workflow document. The role of the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Operations Center is really to act in really a moderating kind of capacity for flow as the agency of commerce is immersed in the ongoing business conversations and the Department of Health obviously is quarterbacking the health response and the data associated with that. So from there in that moderating role it goes to the Department of Health for review. There are multiple sessions typically with each phase of restart where things are discussed among all of the parties on the restart teams and then once the guidance and the timing has recommendations that are finalized it goes to the governor for review and then potential inclusion into a weekly either executive order update if it's necessary or guidance issued in conjunction with that executive order or in some cases guidance that just updates prior guidance from the agency of commerce issued by Secretary Curley. There is a parallel process to that within human services for key things that exist in their sphere of influence like health care system restart child care and things of that nature. Then it all goes back to the data and not that it stops and starts but the data is sort of woven into everything but we go back to the beginning and we see after a certain cross section of restart decisions are made what does the data look like what additional data is available and we go from there. That's the overview of the process at a sort of a super high level and from there I turn it over to Secretary Smith for a more nuanced example of the restart process relative to the child care restart. Thank you. Thank you Commissioner Schirling one of the things that we thought would be important is sort of walk you through an example of what goes into the various discussions that we have and so I chose child care because there was some interest in that and secondly this is something that will be coming online on June 1st. Let me sort of take you back to the week of March 21st when we didn't know what trend the virus was going to take and I said we must plan for the worst case scenario and that was a really pivotal week during that week the stay at home stay safe order was issued and all child care centers were closed except those programs that could offer services to essential workers and I want to I want to congratulate Vermont I sort of want to pat the state on on its back because Vermont took the highly unusual step of instituting a program that utilize state and federal funding to replace the revenues that the child care providers normally would receive from families and public and publicly funded child care subsidies and what Vermont did was put in place a 12 million dollar dedicated child care what is called a child care stabilization fund or payment that was established to ensure that when the economy was ready to begin to read open and we knew that that child care was going to be very very important of that reopening that that had to be there that the infrastructure had to be there so we did institute the stabilization payment program a component of which was an incentive for payment for pre-k and pre-k to eighth grade children of essential workers and this program was I think the senators should take some pride in this the this program was lauded nationally for its innovation and the payment structure that it that it used in fact I just received an article I don't know if I have yeah I do I just received an article from the Center for American Progress not a Republican publication for for example it's a fairly progressive publication where they highlighted Vermont for its proposal and Governor Scott was the only Republican mentioned out of the five governors that were highlighted now as we start to reach start the economy and child care is an important part of restarting the economy those stabilization grants will those stabilization payments will start going away and but Vermont has stepped up even more into that so we had the 12 million dollars of stabilization payments that we had budgeted for plus now the six million dollars what we call what we call restart grants that will assist various centers with the restart and and again these child centers are critical to any restart effort because workers need child care in addition we reached out to various organizations bright few building bright futures let's grow kids and other community partners to get their input on what was going to be needed in terms of this this restart and we heard a couple of things that we have been working on to help with this restart one was the payment structure to help with supplies for example and the six million dollars that we have done on restart grants can help with supplies but not only that helping with access to supplies through bulk up through bulk purchasing and working with the SEOC the state emergency operations command trying to help them and guide the the supplies of cleaning supplies that are going to be needed for this restart the other one that we heard quite a bit about was dealing with flexibility in the payment process just to get a little bit technical before the paint the pandemic we reimbursed child care centers on attendance during the pandemic we reimbursed them on enrollment because that we could base a steady stream of stabilization payments on what what they had for normal enrollment during that time we are transitioning back to what is called a attendance based program and given the what the first month will be like there'll be some we have offered some flexibility in terms of what we can do with coding and various things like that with the payment structure as we move forward lastly and I'll let Dr. Kelso and Dr. Levine chime in if they want but this was very data and health driven in terms of this decision on June 1st because frankly June 1st we're going to be opening up child care for right now they're at 10 will be opening up to 25 per classroom as we move forward and so this was making sure that this guidance reflected not only the guidance for childcare centers of what what will be the guidance June 1st for the general public as well in terms of gatherings and the health department is confident that the health and safety measures in place really align with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations and will protect the children and the workers in fact I've said this in a couple of news conferences national care organizations are national childcare organizations are using Vermont's guidance all over the country as an example and the decision to open and I can't emphasize this enough was data driven and epic epic guided as we move as we move forward Vermont right now knock on wood has a very low level of viral spread and a strong public health as we've seen a very strong public health system in place to contain future outbreaks in fact Dr. Kelso and her team we tested various scenarios the other day just to make sure that we're keeping sharp on our ability to respond to any sort of future outbreak the other consideration that went into place was that the hidden sort of pandemic what we would call the hidden pandemic which is the the impact of isolation on childcare on all childcare provider on all the emotional and developmental needs of children particularly our most vulnerable children and health is there also we made it known that health is there to provide technical assistance and support for all childcare providers in camps we have a direct phone line and support staff for them so and again I just want to emphasize all of this planning for reopening in coordination with the child development division here at AHS we included comprehensive input from pediatricians building bright futures let's grow kids and other community partners who all agree this is the right thing to do for kids so the focus was on health and data and then what can we do to make it easier with the six million dollar grants the six million dollar grant proposal that we have or the grant program that we have put in place plus trying to assist them with various things like finding supplies and flexibility in finance so I just wanted to give you an example of all the things that went into place from those days that when we closed a childcare centers except for those that were providing for essential workers what we put in place which was fairly significant and what we're putting in place now to work through the transition and how we looked at this as we were looking through the transition and with that I'll turn it over to Lindsey second secretary Kerry sorry you can tell me Lindsey thanks so yeah just to kind of dovetail off that at the agency of commerce and community development we are obviously working very much in trying to get employers open safely in the right timely fashion and so from sort of kind of taking it way back as secretary Smith mentioned earlier you know going back to when we closed down we we very quickly closed down in person business functions and when we tried to help employers comply with that we realized that it was it made sense to give sector guidance so we created very quickly sector guidance and made a website where folks could go and get information about that and as we started to open up it it didn't always make sense to just do it by sector right because you've probably heard you know we we've phased it in the sense of you know groups of 10 for example or at 25 percent and behind the scenes we have a team not just the team at ACCD but you've all heard about the economic mitigation task force that the governor put together and we have action teams there it's a it's a small group each team action team has five or six members and on the restart action team they are literally going out and gathering intel from industry and sectors about how they work and they document it and they work with them to propose what a phased opening would look like so you can fill in the blank whether it's a marina or a gym or a realtor or a restaurant they created these plans and the idea behind the plans wasn't that they could choose when they opened but it was to have the plan so that we would have intel about how they operate so that we could then bring it to our discussions with health and safety so we have a variety of these drafted plans and when we get together with health and safety and we understand what we can consider opening we try to figure out which which types of business in-person business functions we can start letting back to work or permitting back to work and what kind of falls in these in these buckets so as you've seen we had construction went back to work again you saw like a really slow phase where they had a couple people and then they had five people and they had ten people and now they're they're working at full capacity but again it's very different because in order to to do your phased opening you also have to be able to comply with the health and safety requirements that have been put in place over and above everything that they've always been required to do there are new requirements related to COVID-19 so if an employer is unable to even though they may be permitted to restart at a certain fate you know in a certain capacity I guess if they don't feel that or if they can't operate in the manner that is compliant with our expectations then they're asked to continue to keep their in-person business functions suspended until they can get to that place so we you know just give you an example and jump around a little bit but we had a municipal clerk for example who had reached out originally when we went to low or no contact professional services and we said you could operate one on one and you know the clerk reached out and said I don't know if you know my setup but I can't I you know I can't possibly do that I can't adhere to the six foot there was a whole you know a host of sort of I'm not sure how I do that and I wrote back and I said let me just assure you when we permit you to go back into business we were back into business functions we want to make sure that you're complying we don't want this isn't a you must this is you're permitted so long as you can meet these these requirements and I talked to her a little bit about some creativity and some things that I knew some other town clerks had done and two days later she wrote me and said thank you I figured it out we're you know I'm feeling better about it we feel safe we're able to operate so that's like the the aspect the ACCD is working and again everything that we bring to the table in terms of what might be next is as as your hearing is very much vetted with health and safety so there's nobody in ACCD that's just making these determinations of you know who to send out next and and whatnot but it's it very much comes down to how you work and can you operate and you know operate in a way that will continue to mitigate the spread and keep the risk very low so with that I know thank you so here I think you remember who we agreed would follow me up doc we are we are going to doctors Levine and Kelso the expression of course Mark you're on mute was that perfect don't ask me how these things happen sometimes so in the interest of getting you to your question session which I know you want to get to I will just be very brief as secretary as commissioner shirling alluded to to even begin this process we needed to go through what we call the gating criteria and those involved basically having a downward trajectory over a 14-day period of various health related statistics including things like less incidents of cases lower percent positivity rate of tests lower syndromic surveillance data of who's presenting with what symptoms in our communities so that was the first the second had to do with making sure that the health care system was not at a surge level or in danger of being at a surge level with its capacity being challenged and that clearly we never got to third was to have adequate testing capacity meaning at the very least we could do the number of tests per day we said we should be able to and from a research standpoint it would be appropriate for Vermont to do slightly less than a thousand tests per day and we actually exceeded that yesterday but the bottom line is we have the capability to do that in terms of all the components of the testing system being in place and then the fourth is to have adequate contact tracing capability that's basically a manpower thing and the amount of manpower can be quite large if there's a big outbreak because it's a very laborious labor intensive process which we've actually made even more labor intensive because we've expanded the timeline of people's memories people have to remember not just 48 hours ago where they were if they happened to be considered a case but 14 days so that we can really try to figure out what was going on when they might have first acquired the virus who they were with what circumstances etc so that was a very important part of our deliberation and the only other point i'll make i think you've probably gotten the message by now all of these restart groups and all of the people working on various sectors one of the governor's prime criteria and he says this every time he talks about things is that we examine the impact on the public's health and safety and commissioner shirling and myself and dr kelso being a big part of the whole process we are certainly not a power hungry health department but i'm impressed with the amount of diligence that's been paid to making sure that any decisions that are made are made in a public health vision if you will taking into account all the considerations and concerns we might raise before the triggers hold on some decision so i'll just stop there so that you can proceed on with some of the more specifics of what you'd like to hear from us who's up next or let's talk to kelso would like to add anything to that or has any other independent comments just to make a couple comments to add on to what dr levine said i feel very fortunate to be working on this pandemic in Vermont because i hear from my counterparts in other states that their government and leadership don't pay as much attention to public health and data so i think we're lucky here everything is very data driven in addition to the things the metrics that dr levine mentioned we're looking at what's happening in states around us because they potentially pose a threat to what's happening in vermont as people move around and he mentioned you know we're asking all of our cases to think back to the 14 days prior to their onset because that's the time frame in which they were infected and we're trying to identify for as many cases as we can what their possible sorts of infection was because the proportion of our cases for which we don't know where they acquired the infection is another important metric that we're keeping an eye on and i'll just stop there can i can i just mention one thing is i'm not i'm not supposed to talk but but i i just want to i just want to point out uh something that dr levine and dr kelso did last night we processed 30 over 1300 tests last night for you know in terms of testing that's a phenomenal amount of tests that they did last night and it is is something that i just wanted to point point out what what is been transpiring you know i will say this i just went down to look at a board down in a what we used to call the war room down here um and on march 22nd i think it was march 22nd we were looking at only two days of supplies of tests left and now through innovation through hard work through um lock uh we have had uh we have the ability now to test not only some symptomatic people but asymptomatic people and this is uh this is a lot different world than it was just a mirror a few weeks ago so it is something i just wanted to point out what they've done here thank you uh are we going to hear from someone else or is that the end i didn't know if we were hearing from uh mr p check or if that's the everyone we open up for questions commissioner p check is standing by to answer your nuanced data questions as necessary okay terrific well then i think i'll send uh turn it back to senator westman who is going to manage uh the q and a and um first i'd say thank you all for your presentations and um we're gonna use the blue hand function and mark you have a blue hand up uh you're muted do you have a question mark which mark mcdonnell oh i gotta get rid of my blue hand then i i don't have a question i'm trying to get rid of my blue hand okay so so now we're open for questions and i um and i'm good i don't see a blue hand but i know she has questions um um ruth would you like to go first uh yes thank you senator westman and i was actually trying to find the list of questions i sent to you to refresh my memory and i cannot find it but um and they've had your questions i have yes i can tell they've had my questions so thank you all for um for for answering a lot of my questions and for doing this i think i was the first one to ask for this this briefing so it's been really really helpful and i you know overall just want to commend you for the work you've done vermont is the envy of the country or at least anybody who cares about public health it's the envy of the country um and you all should feel really proud of that i certainly do um and uh i i appreciate hearing the point the sort of process that you're going through and one of the reasons i wanted to hear the process you're going through is because as you probably know we have a lot of nervous and anxious constituents out here who are concerned about the process and being able to explain to them how decisions are being made and why decisions are being made is helpful um and one of the things i i've read a lot of uh of your um guidance i've read more guidance in the past three months than i thought i ever would in my life um and i i also just want to she's she's not on the screen now but um secretary curly um just tell you how good your website is i've sent your i've sent your website link to dozens hundreds probably of my constituents it's a really great website i really appreciate how you set it up and it's easy to follow and i definitely suggest that you talk to your colleagues your counterparts at the department of labor and um get them to do their website as as nicely as yours because theirs is much much harder to navigate um well thank you ruth i'll share that with the team i mean i am proud of how quickly they've been able to put this up and make it you know rearrange it as as needed but it takes a lot of effort so thank you yeah it's really great and i like the way that you've done it by sector it's easy you know when i want to find somebody who's asking me about some random thing that i have no thing idea about i almost always can find it so i really appreciate that um one of the things though that is missing from a lot of the guidance and maybe um dr levin could speak to this is guidance on what happens um if there needs to be if there's a case that's you know an outbreak or even an individual case um and what what are the procedures the process the thresholds for going in the opposite direction you talked about the gated period for opening up what is it for going back knowing that you know where we've been told by people like you that there's probably going to be a resurgence so how how are we going to go back into shutdown what what is your process for that yeah that's a very commonly asked question so i appreciate hearing that again because um it it has a very nuanced answer if you will um we are literally following so many pieces of data that we would hate to disproportionately focus on one item or one other item we have told everyone that we will forget about a resurgence we will see more cases as we open up the whole principle of physical distancing and staying at home is people can't be in contact with one another so they won't be spreading an infectious disease in this case we are now bringing people back together in some ways even though we would hope they would adhere to all of our guidelines about how to behave in a responsible way the fact of the matter is if you're going from group sizes less than 10 and starting to increase them the likelihood of somebody being infected and spreading that to someone else becomes greater so we do expect the number of cases to go up not to a resurgence level god for bit unless the entire country sees a resurgence and will hopefully have seen that coming but the bottom line is the whole notion of having adequate testing and adequate contact tracing is to make sure that when a individual case arises or when a small outbreak occurs whether that be in a facility in a prison in a community that we can immediately have the manpower to focus all the attention there isolate the person or persons who tested positive do the appropriate contact tracing as intensively as you heard dr kelso comment on a moment ago with all those individuals and then make sure that those people who through contact tracing appear to be capable of being infected and then themselves spreading the virus make sure they are all quarantined so if we can do that very effectively from the outset we stand a great chance of being able to continue to reopen and expand the principle here is that you need to have that workforce and that testing capability so that's why we emphasize that so much and really make that a big focus of where we're going in the future the country as i've said a few times prior to today's meeting the country wasn't able to contain the virus when it first arrived for a whole multitude of reasons not the least of which there was some denial but there was also an issue of not having literally any testing capability at the time so by the time the virus had really taken hold containment though we tried it as a parallel strategy couldn't be the only that the country could use and that's why we evolved into these harsher mitigation strategies like you know decreasing mass gatherings social distancing etc and eventually to stay at home so the hope would be the next time around every time a case appeared you'd be able to do the effective boxing in as it's called test isolate contact trace quarantine and still go on with life in the rest of the state because you're taking care of whatever you had to at that moment that's our that's our real vision for the way the future will look from now going forward unless there is some major resurgence that occurs in the country okay well thank you do you mind if I just follow up Richie go ahead so you know i'm thinking in the context of that that's helpful but in the context of of a child care center or a school or a university in college whatever those are much harder places to box it in and you know just talking this morning with a child care center who plans to open next week on June 1st she's I asked her that question what's what's your plan if somebody tests positive in your facility whether it's a child or a staff member and she said I don't know we haven't really been told what to do do we have to shut down for two weeks and so I think that making sure that in the guidance that you're presenting to individual organizations or businesses or whatever you're really clear to them about what is the protocol and specific to that type of business operation I mean I you know I'm on education committee and I'm a mom so I'm thinking really much a lot about colleges and schools and child care centers and I think they in particular need more guidance in that area about what to do if there's a case you know sort of like when do you when do you call us to no day yeah yeah and we have a lot of experience with that based on what we've done with long-term care facilities and correctional facilities when any case appears that's positive what to do about testing what to do about isolation how to function as a facility still and maybe I'll let Dr. Kelso chime in if she'd like because we you're speaking to guidance statements that are either pending or will be coming in the very near future that have to take what you took what you just stated into consideration great thank you yeah and as Secretary Smith referred to last Friday we did a tabletop exercise to demonstrate what the epi teams do with case investigation and contact tracing and demonstrating that we have capacity to do that and I think people found it people outside the epi teams found it really helpful to really understand the work that public health does and we've talked about doing that presentation again for others it sounds like we should do that presentation for businesses and and maybe just the public just to highlight what we do that were on top of it you know we had a handful of cases yesterday identified of the over 1,000 tests and Secretary Smith reached out first thing in the morning to say you know I see there were three cases in one county is there anything we need to be worried about and by late morning my epi teams had reached all the cases knew all the details about where we think they were exposed or you know whether they were associated with anything broader and we were able to reassure him so we are that much on top of it and I think it might be helpful for more people to see that yeah I would agree I think that would be great I would love to see that because I get a lot of questions about contact tracing and how it works and I'm not a public health expert so okay so the next hand I saw was Senator Polina and then Senator Lyons after that thank you appreciate everybody being here together I have kind of a process question which might seem a little bit similar to it Ruth Hardy was just asking about but because I'm going to use child care as an example you folks made a decision the team working on it made a decision to open child care centers June 1st as the legislator I get a lot of people contacting me who are concerned about that child care centers who are saying I'm not sure I want to do it I'm there's a variety of reasons why I don't think it's a good idea so what I'm wondering is whether or not how you worked with different groups of people no there was not the experts but well the experts meaning the ones who actually are doing the work I don't mean your team of experts how you worked with folks that come up with the decision to do June 1st as an example and make people feel comfortable with that and if people are contacting me with concerns about opening up again I presume some of them contacting you folks as well and I'm wondering how you're going to keep open lines of communication going to as we evaluate what happens over the next couple of weeks and you know there's some of it is the technical stuff about whether people are going to get viruses or not the other is some of the trauma that comes as a result of for instance young children having to spend the day with adult caregivers who are wearing masks you know those kinds of questions so my question has to do with how you reached out to folks before you made your decisions folks as members of the public and how you maintain communication with folks as things go forward regardless of the sector there are split opinions on restart so as we've described most of the decision making comes through the public health lens for the details on whether it's child care or if you want another example on the engagement I leave that to Secretary Smith or Secretary Corrella let me Senator Polina let me sort of discuss that a little bit one of the things that we were really cognizant about and I and we'll do more of it as we continue is making sure that we included some groups in here in this that was just wasn't us that we're making this decision and as I said we included building bright futures let's grow kids community partners who sort of all agreed that this was the right thing to do for the kids the the one thing that we have been doing through Brina Holmes who is with the health department pediatrician with the health department and with CDD is reaching out I believe it and I don't this you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna test me with my technology but reaching out through these forms to make sure that everybody gets a voice and they can hear some of the thought process that's that's going on so we'll continue that process as we move forward make sure that we're hearing voices out there fact that's where we heard the issue about supplies and that's where we heard the issue about flexibility and some of the finances aspect of it and trying to accommodate those as we move forward the and that's where Brina Holmes and just really really good in talking about the health aspects of it and the the various things to work through as we move forward so I definitely appreciate the question and we got to continue to do that as we move forward yeah and don't get me wrong I understand the difficulty of trying to corral these different various ideas and various concerns that people have from that perspective is that presenting that pretending that it's easy to do I mean I think we've made some good progress so I don't say that in a negative way but I just there's something there's a disconnect between those of us who are doing with government and those people who live in the real world and I just want to make sure that we're not losing connections between the two senator I would ask secretary curly also to answer in part because I know that as we're crafting the actual guidance that goes into what accd releases oftentimes it's sectors and businesses that are writing components of that we place that the draft and then that gets called through by the health experts and oftentimes those initial drafts are more restrictive than even the public health construct would necessitate so maybe secretary curly could walk through an example of that yeah um you know I I don't have it right in front of me but I you know you'll be hearing an announcement tomorrow about the governor's been been promising to talk about salons and barbershops I can tell you that there's a there's a I don't want to say there's a divide but there's a difference of opinion between many who operate within that field with respect to how they feel about opening we have some that are very very anxious to open and feel like they are they live in a world of cleaning and constantly like cleaning surfaces whatever it might be and then there's you know a whole host of folks who are still anxious about it and so when I look back at you know the teams that that tried to figure out what a phased approach would look like in the salon slash barbershop teams the restart team engaged with more than a dozen people around the state they were there was an RN on the group there were folks that in different kinds of services within like salon you know the salon world so to speak so they were really really thorough and again what I tell people when they reach out whether they're anxious to open or they're anxious not to open I just try to help them understand that you know at the end of the day we need to find a path forward to living while we you know work through this and you know again I have no clinical background but short of a vaccine I understand we all we want to prioritize public health but there's also a little bit of a balance in terms of there's like a mental health aspect too like these are this is what people enjoy doing these are their hopes and dreams as well and so we're just really trying to find a balance and don't want to put anybody at risk so again it's a lot of different effort going into it and for me I'm lucky that there's a backstop of you know Dr. Levine, Dr. Kelso, Commissioner Sherling there to sort of say to me when I'm too far in the weeds for the employer right to say okay let's bring yourself back out we've got to protect public health first and again I just want to make sure that as we transition that we're all staying as much as possible on the same page we've seen how in other parts of the country transitions have not gone very smoothly in terms of people sticking together I think one of the benefits of the way you were transitioning here in Vermont is that Vermonters are cooperating in a really good way with government officials and I think we just want to make sure that we stand the same page as much as possible not always going obviously not everybody's going to be happy with everything but we want to do as best as we can in terms of keeping people in the same page. Thank you yes yeah so next is Senator Lyons and then Senator Campion is after that. Oh great actually I was going to I'm going to ask a question that none of us can answer maybe but so I'll save that one for next but I'm very interested in the data tracking aspect of this and data collection and knowing that the health department has apparently you have a huge capacity for data collection but it seems to me that all the sectors are providing information to you people who are working in their stores or out in the in the real world outside of government so what are the what are the data acquisition and data tracking needs that we have in the state that could improve the work that you're doing and the and the outcomes that I mean that's for all of you who are here greatly appreciate what you're saying and and just FYI I do really very much admire the health department's website it's it's improved greatly over the past several years but so is there is there a need for additional and I include in that IT and data tracking capacity in this state so that as we go forward we're we're covered and I do have two another couple questions but that that's the first one Patsy do you want to do the the the introduction of the new technology that we're using the sera alert yeah yeah sure so we've partnered with the mitre corporation which one of the leaders of that is dr paul jarris who many of you remember as our former health commissioner he's the medical director there and they have worked as public health professionals and people who know what public health does to develop this app which is free to health departments and it it allows us to enroll people who are either under quarantine because they've potentially been exposed to a case or who are under isolation because they are a case and to monitor them through a daily outreach through this app so people choose whether they want their daily message to be through a text or a phone call or an email then they'll get depending on whether they're in isolation or quarantine they'll get a daily message saying you know do you have any of the symptoms today or are your symptoms improving and it lets them it lets the health department check in with them every day to make sure they're still in quarantine for example or still haven't developed symptoms so we'll we're implementing that app this week we had to do some mapping between our surveillance system and the app and there were some glitches but we're launching it today I think we will also have a survey gizmo tool I think where returning Vermonters can go fill out some survey questions through this online survey gizmo tool basically name and how they want to be reached and then as they're in quarantine because they're just returning to Vermont they'll be enrolled in the system the survey gizmo will enroll them in the system and then they'll automatically start getting these daily messages so we're using some new tools like that which are really cool there are always needs for our lab information system you know that's an ongoing challenge but we've made a lot of progress in getting communication between our lab system and either other labs or the public health surveillance system so we've done an awful lot and I'm amazed how Commissioner Pichek and and ADS and others have really stepped up and pulled all kinds of other data sources from other states and you know the modelers we have access to tons of data that I never even existed so it's been it's been actually really great so with so having I know that Commissioner Pichek has been very much engaged in putting all that data together and getting information out and what would I mean do we have sort of are we establishing a model for this so that going forward when some of us are no longer here that we'll be able to replicate all that work it sounds like a lot of human hours in human resource in the process well I don't know if that's a question or a comment and that's both and then I do have a question about burnout and how long our Department of Health and public health folks and human services folks are going to be able to continue at the rate because there is not an end yet so just from a human resource perspective I hope that everyone is healthy and thank you for that concern that actually came up in several phone call phone meetings in the last two days here you know I'm a physician I come from a profession where burnout is one of the top discussed issues of our time and it was not an issue I heard about in public health but clearly a pandemic can push people to that limit for sure people in public health are so dedicated to their work so committed and they live for a pandemic if I could say it that way this is what they want to be involved in but most not your fault most epidemics that occur they sort of have a beginning and an end and you can sort of see the light at the end of the tunnel or understand how they work when you're dealing with this kind of lesser known virus that hasn't really affected mankind before it changes the game tremendously and when you look at the pace with which our knowledge is growing the pace with which things were evolving early on and now even the pace of which we're trying to evolve to come out of this still not completely certain about the more distant future people in public health haven't stopped working the entire time and we're becoming much more conscious of that I'm conveying that message myself if you will to make sure everyone else is aware of it too and within the department division directors and members of the state and health operation centers are beginning to really look at schedules and trying to make sure that people actually have time on their schedule that they are not dedicated to the cause because it's been kind of a 24-7 thing for everybody where you feel you can't put your phone down not look at another email close yourself off to text messages etc and the reality is we can't have people do that hadn't been item so we're becoming much more conscious of that and we're going to be much more deliberate about trying to impact and and senator my wife my wife keeps reminding me that I could be retired by now so that sounds familiar just a tiny tiny note senator on your data question commissioner peachek and I were actually talking this morning there is an enormous amount of data some of it through existing systems some of it through ad hoc systems that we've stood up on the fly and we were talking about strategies to integrate that moving forward so it is on our mind as well yeah I think it's I'm glad that you're doing it I know how hard you're working and how much is out there but it certainly makes sense going forward to have some alignment and systems in place I have one last question and you don't have to answer it and I I'm trying to I continue to try to explain how this state has such a wonderful culture of cooperation I think it begins with the people who are here with us today and I really do appreciate the work you're doing so thank you you too that's it thanks jenny um senator campion and then senator ingram great thank you of one question that I have been hearing a lot down here in bennington county is the mask issue and how how people will transition back to you know regular life what kind of protections they'll need and I'm wondering if you could give some additional information on why you decided not to do a statewide policy on masks to me one of the things that I think a lot of folks are concerned about is you know it's almost as we're putting that enforcement in the hands of businesses and they have so much going on store owners bookshops all different folks and if you know if they want to make sure that their workers are protected we're kind of saying to them you have to enforce it and it seems to me as statewide policy might work better along those lines so I'll leave it there I think one thing we've tried to establish in our first conferences is the fact that this really is a it's a behavior change like any other behavior change and it's a more of a cultural norm change not that we ever thought cultural norm would be to wear masks I mean I think we could agree a cultural norm is to not smoke in a restaurant but maybe not wearing masks so it does take a little time for people to evolve into that interestingly I did look at a survey today that came from the national response coordination center and a CDC conducting this public perception study of mitigation behaviors 86 of the public reported that the current social distancing guideline strikes the right balance 75 would not feel safe if restrictions were removed 80 report having worn a mask in the last week well that's nationwide I can't tell you what our number is in Vermont I don't think we have that data specifically except my informal surveys of visits to the supermarkets and big boxes but I think we're evolving in the right direction and I think that you're right there have been calls for this to be more legislated I guess would be the word whether it be through an executive order or through the legislature or as was done in Burlington this week through the city council essentially saying that to be in any government building or in any retail establishment you have to have facial cover and on we I think the governor and we were hoping that it wouldn't come to having to be that impactful on people that pressure just peer pressure social pressure and normalization as part of our culture would be the way to go no remains to be seen if that will be a successful strategy or not I have to say that the number of states that have actually done something more strict I think I can count on one hand or less it's not become a widely enforced or mandated policy around the country at this point I think we started the conversation off a little bit by talking about how the administration is basing decisions in science and on fact and data and I felt like what you just said was you know sort of public perception cultural changes you know shifts that kind of thing but as the chief public health officer I'm wondering do you believe that you know masks should be you know statewide policy and that whether or not that that would help keep our numbers lower you know I believe mass should be adopted widely I wouldn't recommend it if there wasn't any evidence that right effective right the real question though is is there evidence that a policy created in the way you describe would improve compliance and adherence more than what we're trying to do which is be more generous about allowing the public to get there yeah and I take your point it's a good one I just you know shopkeepers and others it's it's sort of like a lot of things we can't enforce you know we have a 21 the smoking age of 21 but you know it's not as though we can we're going to pull people over that look like they're you know not of age or it's just a tricky thing but I think when the enforcement policy is out there people take it more seriously yeah I'm completely with you on that yeah I'll use smoking again as an example you know we can't tell people who are under 21 you know you cannot smoke like you said they may do what they want to do no matter what enforcement policy we have but somehow everyone now gets the fact that you don't walk into a bar restaurant or any indoor establishment and light up we've achieved that in our society can we achieve the same during this pandemic where I consider the stakes to be pretty high that's what we're going to find out right I just push back a little bit you know smoking has taken a long time for the culture to change this is a pandemic we're not looking at having years to change we have a very brief period of time I would say to to change this is where I think a statewide policy would be helpful but thank you it's very helpful senator ingram and then senator hoker thank you um in senate education we spoke um about a week or so I can't I lose track of the days but a while ago to the secretary of the agency of education and I wonder if you have been in discussions with him with that agency and what you envision since schools are by nature by the very nature congregate settings do you think it's really going to be possible for us to open up in the fall what will that look like will classrooms have to have like half the number of students or do you have any any indicators about how that might will all the students be required wear masks um any any indication what the thinking is on that so it turns out three o'clock tomorrow is a meeting myself with dr brina holmes with dan french and the number of others from his department to address exactly what you said because we really regarded as time to to really look at this no one's talking about opening schools tomorrow or anything as we know the school year has already been predetermined to have ended and no one's going back to the classroom this spring so we're taking our lead from some good the creative thinkers around the country who have really said we need to have input from all sectors so public health education obviously the pediatrics sector the child psychology sector so that we can evaluate not only what the benefits might be of returning children to the school but what the harms might be of not returning them to the school sort of akin to the discussion on child cares where there's some benefit to keeping children out of child care if you're thinking that they might get infected there but at the same time is the social isolation that they encounter an experience outweighed by the benefits they might get by being again in a congregate setting where they can actually emotionally and socially develop the way that we all want them to develop in that positive way but maybe are being held back from because they can't be in those settings there's so many things to balance on both sides of the equation and that's why we're starting these discussions in May as opposed to at the end of August to really put all that on the table and help us make decisions as you know the decisions to open schools have been made in some states but not many and they were one of the later things we did in our evolution of the mitigation measures we took but it happened actually it wasn't that late it happened fairly quickly but we're going to be very deliberate about the way we decide to return them if we do it's very very challenging to be honest for all the reasons you listed and that's why we want to have very very diverse input not just make this public health issue and an education issue because there's so much more to I don't know if anyone else in my group here has anything to say on their topic looks like Senator Hardy wants to follow up to so just I'll quickly add that at 2 30 today we got an update from CDC that they have updated guidance on considerations for schools reopening that just got posted to the CDC website so we haven't read it yet okay what do you mean right you've had two hours already what have you been doing today oh Richie may I follow up with Senator Ingram's question or did you have somebody else in line I don't want to budge yeah there's a couple of people in in line and then we are going to go maybe 10 minutes more and then we're done so but if you're quick well I just wanted to say first of all that I'm really glad that you're having the conversations early on schools and starting now with that conversation because it's extremely complicated I'm thrilled to hear that Brina Holmes is involved in that I actually have a call with her tomorrow she was my children's pediatrician when they were young so I have a great faith in her so thank you for having her in on that conversation I also would just suggest that you bring parents and kids into that conversation this summer I think kids will be able to help you understand compliance issues and how much they're going to comply with whatever regulations or guidance you set up I have three teenagers and I can tell you their level of compliance would vary greatly so I just really encourage you to not just include the quote-unquote experts but include the the experts of child behavior which are the children and the teenagers themselves and that my final comment was just the timeline some of the guidance seems to come out and then say the next day you can open up x y or z and that sometimes is really problematic so having this long lead time for colleges and universities and schools is crucial so thank you I'm done thank you Cheryl a little of what we've been doing has had the benefit of such a time one Cheryl thank you thank you all for everything that you're doing Dr. Levine and Dr. Kelso I'm so pleased to see the expanding of testing but this testing only shows whether or not we're positive do you have any idea when the serology or the antibody testing will be more widely available I'm waiting momentarily to get the second report of the work group that I assigned to to this topic made up of infectious disease experts at the university made up of laboratory medicine experts in the health department and the university and health surveillance experts but I can give you a little bit of a preview the preview will be that unlike the first report this report will say that there are now actually some assays we can rely on that their validity has been actually analyzed and they are satisfactory to use so that we don't question the accuracy of the test that we're going to be implementing they will probably still say that for individual behaviors like will this tell you that you have are immune to the virus will this tell you you can go back to work they probably we've not reached that stage where the test should be used in that manner and that the test will still be of value for a population level survey health surveillance understanding what percentage of the Vermont population has had potential exposure to the virus whether they had symptoms or not which will really go a long way towards in the future understanding risk levels and understanding based on our prior experience with the virus what we might expect and the next go round if there was a significant resurgence so I'm waiting for the final report I assume that one of the press conferences next week I'll be able to actually provide that report publicly and we'll go from there excellent and we've been in consultation with the Centers for Disease Control just in terms of getting some preliminary word on advising us if we wanted to do what's called a zero prevalence study of the state with a with a sample of the state obviously and we're going to see if they're interested in working with us on that to any degree as well. Excellent and a second question regarding the impact of isolation we've talked about daycare centers and we've talked about kids at school and I know that there's a vulnerable population that is really impacted by this isolation and I applaud the state for what happened with nursing homes and long-term care facilities because I'm sure that it's kept a lot of people healthy but is there anything that's being done or thought about to help people in this vulnerable group one of the things that's rather interesting is to hear about all of the places countries around the world and even states that are opening up but if you're in that vulnerable group you should probably stay home so what are we going to do for these vulnerable people who will you know still be at risk and what can we do to help them to deal with the impact of this isolation. I don't want to do all the talking and prevent Dr. Kelso from talking so I'll just say one quick thing Commissioner Hutt of Dale is working with us very closely because we are very concerned just from a compassion laden basis for our citizens who are in long-term care facilities and have not been able to visit with their families vice versa obviously and trying to capitalize on warmer weather outdoors and trying to connect people more than they have been able to to this point in time so expect some movement on that front in the near future we hope because that will keep them mentally much more healthy but for someone like yourself who's actually free living in a community but still concerned and perhaps anxious and wanting to take the advice about age being a part of vulnerability I do think what we've said to date is really important in terms of abiding by all the usual things like hygiene and social distancing and covering your faces but in addition to that really thinking about who is a trusted friend a trusted household and we use the word trusted to mean they too take everything seriously and are abiding by things so that people can start to get together again rather than be afraid of each other and afraid of those circumstances yeah unfortunately vulnerable populations are going to be among the last to have the the restrictions lifted entirely we are meeting with Commissioner Hutt on Tuesday to talk about you know moving forward if we can with nursing homes and until we have a vaccine I think unfortunately the recommendations are largely going to be that vulnerable populations whatever they are need to take extra precautions Rich can I ask a very quick follow-up to that quick quick it is quick in the area of vulnerable folks there are many who have autoimmune diseases and related vulnerabilities who might work for example for the state or and are we going to encourage them to continue their work remotely until such time as we have some comfort within the workplace or a vaccine I am concerned about this for vulnerable populations people who might look normal and can go to regularly do work but how do we and I see Lindsay turned I was going to direct this actually both to Lindsay and the rest of you all of you I mean to me it's an important question I um I this question came up during a press conference maybe about two weeks ago and I heard the governor and this the secretary administration said we will make accommodations for those people that are vulnerable that have autoimmune issues that feel that will be vulnerable if they come back to work at state government so I'm I'm using the exact same answer that Secretary Young gave is we'll make accommodations for those I was going to say the same thing so I think we're approaching then maybe five minutes but I want to shift gears a little bit and since this is the transition committee I and we know that the administration is going to have a package and an economic package to begin to move businesses to um um open up and it's a pretty significant package Lindsay could you um speak a little bit um because we haven't really had a chance to hear all the pieces of that could you from a very high level talk about that are you you're talking about the economic release package we announced yesterday oh okay uh yeah sorry I I didn't know we were going to go here today um yeah we unveiled a 400 million dollar economic relief package that we're proposing that would essentially provide financial assistance to the many Vermont employers who have been either completely closed or partially closed during the last month and I guess we're going in a month three now but um the idea behind it was we gather a lot of intel about impact and well we know that the the impact is greater probably than we have funds for we are hopeful that we put something together that would help employers cover three months of their fixed costs um so we thought that you know they're you know when you you're suspending business there's certain things that you can shut down in terms of your cost but there are other things you can't can't control so even if you can defer some things your utilities or what not eventually when you're ready to turn the lights back on you've got to you know catch up on those things so that's a big big bulk of that package so the initial phase is 310 10 million so around 250 million um would be specifically to help uh cover those costs as well as give some loans for some other you know aspects of getting them then back off the ground and then there's a technical assistance piece of it so there's a component of knowing that we just don't have enough um resources to make sure we help these employers navigate not only our programs but the federal programs and also reimagining how they deliver their services so um when we permit folks to go back to work it's very uh very unlikely it's going to be business as they knew before right so they have to make adjustments with the layout you know the architecture the design of whether it's their store the restaurant i'm talking really fast because there's a lot of this to cover i don't want to take up too much time on it but well it I think it's important for you to get it out so we have a broad view of this okay and then um also there's an employee assistance uh program sorry um employee assistance program that would uh be offered to employers nonprofits and whatnot kind of like we have at the state in the state we have an opportunity if uh employee is struggling with whatever it might be they can go talk to somebody and um in this situation it would be business owners their employees as well as their family members so sometimes you know when they have these conversations at surfaces that there's a family member struggling in the home as well so it would extend to there um so that's the technical assistance piece then we have a housing um and in the housing uh we have a rental stabilization fund that we're trying that for 42 million and this would provide up to three months of emergency rental assistance and rental arrearage payments to property owners who are suffering from non-payment of rent to prevent tenant evictions and you know prevent an increase in family homelessness so there's that in terms of housing there's also something called the re-housing recovery fund so this would be eight million dollars set aside for emergency housing rehabilitation grants and forgivable loans to make up 250 units of housing available to re-house homeless families who are experiencing homelessness during this outbreak so um that's the housing piece and then the last piece so that's 50 million total and the last piece is the marketing five million and what we you know are looking at with with marketing is that you know we generally rely on out-of-staters to to boost you know the second largest sector in our state tourism and obviously with the sort of unknown of when we'll be able to invite people back to enjoy our state we want to make sure that we're encouraging Vermonters to look inward and try to help each other so we want to you know promote economic activity with our with in our state and consumer spending in the downtowns and really try to give an immediate boost from Vermonters or people that are within our state um to keep folks going and to start generating and start generating tax revenue um we also have regional marketing and consumer stimulus grants and the idea with that is to encourage grant uh communities that might be chambers or local downtown associations to come together and and make a proposal to us about how they would spend a grant to again kick start the economy in their area and the idea on that is you know we from the state can create tools that could be shared broadly but different parts of our state really are different right and they rely on different things in terms of their their tourism and and um their economy right within their community so the idea is a grant payment to the region that would allow them to um be creative and and stimulate um economic activity within their community so that's a really quick overview of of the plan there's a phase two and that's really more about this right now is survival like let's keep the lights on let's get people through this because um if we lose all these employers we lose downtowns we lose jobs we lose it you know trickle down it just carries on so we need to survive and then in the next phase once we're seeing how people are doing we really want to make sure that we um become innovative and and creative and make sure that we emerge stronger than ever so there's going to be a lot more to come on this um and you know we can certainly bring that the team ACC as well as the ag team together to to present on this further so and and i'm sure you'll be hearing from all of us about that at this point we've been going for an hour and a half and i think um um i'm going to say thank you um to everyone in the administration that has um come and done presentations brian do you want to add anything no just thank you this was just terrific thanks so much and lindsay i just have a follow-up with you but i can do it offline uh maybe you can just send me uh i'll send you an email just yeah that'd be great i have another meeting now but it's no right because it's a question yeah okay thank you all so much so thank you thank you everyone keep up the good work yeah thanks thank you bye