 Good afternoon, everyone. There was no White House call this week, so today we'll do our weekly data and modeling presentation. Secretary French will provide more detail on the Test of the State program and give an update on education in general. And Secretary Smith will provide his weekly update as well. Dr. Levine is on a well-deserved break for a few days. We wish him a lot of rest, relaxation. But we do have our state epidemiologist, Dr. Kelso, here with us today to answer any health questions you may have. First, as you'll see in Commissioner Pichek's presentation, we're seeing national COVID rates continue to decline. And that's holding true for Vermont and much of the Northeast as well. We'll continue to keep a very close eye on all the data, most importantly on hospitalizations over the next several weeks. If the trend we're seeing continues, it could put us at a point where lower numbers coincide with FDA vaccination approval for children under 12, which, as we've discussed, will be a huge step forward. As we await their decision, we'll continue to make preparations to make sure the vaccine is as accessible as possible so Vermonters can continue leading the way. On vaccine boosters, I want to remind folks that if you're eligible, you should get one as soon as you can. It's really important because it gives you more protection, especially if you're older or have underlying health conditions. If you receive the Pfizer vaccine more than six months ago, have a health condition or work in a high-risk setting and that term will be interpreted broadly, you're eligible. So please visit healthvermont.gov slash myvaccine and schedule your appointment today. Again, we're anticipating booster approval for Moderna and J&J in the coming weeks. So be on the lookout for that and sign up when it's time. Secretary Smith will talk more about vaccines in a few minutes. Lastly, before I turn it over to Commissioner Picek, on a non-COVID topic, yesterday I learned of the passing of 102-year-old Sydney Walton, a member of the Greatest Generation and a World War II veteran. Sydney made headlines across the nation over the past few years embarking on what he called his No Regrets Tour. He was aiming to travel the country and visit with all 50 governors in all 50 states, raising awareness for veterans' issues. I was the 24th governor he met back in November of 2019 and he met his 40th Governor Stitt in Oklahoma just one week ago today. As you know, while I have a great deal of respect for anyone who served our country, World War II veterans hold a special place for me with my dad serving in the 3rd Army in France as a tanker under General Patton. I wanted to share the sad news about Sydney because it's a reminder of how important it is to thank those World War II vets of the Greatest Generation whenever you have the chance because, unfortunately, there aren't many of them left and they did more than we'll ever fully know or appreciate. They literally saved the world and were the best of the best. So, again, whenever you get the opportunity to thank someone who served, take it. With that, I'll turn it over to Commissioner Pechak. Good afternoon and thank you very much, Governor. So taking a look at our slides this week, as the governor alluded to, we're starting to see some real progress across the country and we're also fortunately starting to see some improvement in the region and, most importantly, here in Vermont. Taking a look at the national picture first, you can see infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. All three of them have been trending down over the last week. Each of those metrics has decreased over 10%. So, again, good improvement across the country. When we look at the states by their vaccination rate, you can continue to see that even the high-vaccinated states have started to see their cases come down, as well as their hospitalizations and their deaths have flattened out as well. Some of the more highly-vaccinated states have been a little slower to see improvement, but at this point, we're seeing improvement across the board. And, again, most importantly on this slide, what you can see is that dramatic difference between those states that were not as well-vaccinated and how bad the infection rates were, the hospitalization rates, and the fatality rates were during this Delta wave. So, again, the most-vaccinated states, including Vermont, keeping their numbers much lower, but, again, starting to see some improvement this week as well. So, looking across the country on a county-by-county basis, this is looking at where cases are improving and where they're getting worse. One of the things that we'll keep a close eye on are those early Southern states, like Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida. We want to make sure that their cases continue to drop and that they stay low. We've seen at least one example in the United Kingdom where their Delta wave receded and then jumped back up a bit before coming back down. We're not seeing any indication of that in any of the early states, which is certainly a good sign, but something that we'll keep a close eye on in the weeks ahead. Looking across the region, again, you can see pretty much a vast improvement, particularly in most of New England, with the exception of New Hampshire and Maine. Maine, in particular, has seen their cases jump this past week, but as you can see here in Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, certainly improvement over the past week. And the region is down 8% in terms of the week-over-week case numbers. So, looking more closely here at Vermont, we see our seven-day average has gone down 15% over the last seven days and is down 23% over the last 14 days. So, again, whether we look just at this past week or whether we look at it in a two-week period, we see some good signs of improvement here in our case numbers. Another important thing to keep in mind is whether or not we're doing similar levels of testing. And when we look at our seven-day average on the testing, we can see that it's been pretty stable over that two-week period that I mentioned and actually increasing about 5% over the last seven days. So, that, again, is a good sign. If you want to see your testing be stable or even increasing while your cases start to decrease, which gives you more confidence that what we're seeing is a reflection of cases decreasing and not a decrease in testing. So, looking at those case rates between the fully vaccinated and the not fully vaccinated, fortunately, both of those rates are coming down. You can see that it's coming down more quickly in that fully vaccinated rate. And there's still quite a considerable difference between those that are not fully vaccinated and those who are fully vaccinated about 4.3 times greater for those who are not fully vaccinated. So, again, another good opportunity to mention that those who are vaccinated have much greater protection from infection and severe outcome as well. So, on the next slide, again, more good news when it comes to the Vermont's data. These are hospital admissions on a seven-day average. So, you can see the hospital admissions have started to drop both for the fully vaccinated rate but also for the unvaccinated rate as well. And you can see a pretty significant drop there in those who are not fully vaccinated in terms of new admissions to the hospital down 30% over the last week. The fully vaccinated admission rate also down considerably down 14% over the last week. On the next slide, you can see where are those age groups that are seeing the numbers drop. And you can see it's really primarily in that over 70 age group that has started to see their admission numbers come down. So that's really good. You can see that last peak that we had in the winter and how those numbers started to come down and now we're sort of following a similar trend. But it's also really good news in terms of what we might anticipate in terms of fatalities in the next month. Having fewer of those older Vermonters, whether vaccinated or not, getting infected and having few of them ending up in the hospital will mean fewer fatalities in the weeks ahead. Looking across Vermont and it's sort of four regions as we look at them, you can see that cases are still elevated in the Northeast Kingdom. You can see also that there is some improvement in the southern part of Vermont, although they're more elevated than the Chittenden County region and Central Vermont as well. And you can really see that stand out when we go to the county by county slide on the next page that Orleans County and Essex continue to have elevated case counts, although there was some improvement in Orleans this week, but generally 12 of the 14 counties in Vermont saw improvement with the exception of Orange and Essex. But again, good trends basically statewide. Looking at higher education, you can see that cases really stay really low on campus. We only are reporting 19 cases for this week. Testing stayed about the same as last week. So again, just a good indication that when you have a 95% vaccinated population, you see the cases stay very low even when cases are more elevated in the communities in which those colleges are located. Turning to the long-term care facility slide, you see that we now have eight facilities that are reporting an active outbreak down from last week. And also the cases are down from that last week as well, 163 compared to 177 from last week. So again, those are trending in the right direction also. All of this leads to our modeling slide that we have here. There's still uncertainty in the forecast. We'd like to see another week or so of data before we can project with more confidence that Vermont and New England are starting to see a downturn. There's still a 50% confidence interval there that shows cases might stay stable, they might go up, they might go down. But all of the other trends are really moving in the right direction in what you wanna see. The Vermont trends and numbers improving as well as the states around us. Of course, we wanna keep a close eye on Maine and New Hampshire as well, since they aren't at the moment seeing those same improved trends. But again, at the moment, all good news. Looking at statewide hospitalizations, you can see those numbers are relatively stable. We expect those to come down over the next week or so, since new hospital admissions have started to drop off more dramatically. This is the number of people currently in the hospital. So we'll take a little bit more time till we start to see some improvement in those numbers. In the ICU side of the equation, the thing to really point out here again shows the sort of the change that we've seen over time and the power of the vaccine. But over the last seven days, 100% of the people in Vermont that have needed ICU care for COVID-19 have been unvaccinated. So pretty remarkable number. And you can see that there is improvement here in those Vermonters requiring critical care overall. But again, over the last seven days, 100% of them that have required critical care have been those that are not fully vaccinated. So looking at the deaths for the month of September, we at the moment have 42 deaths. What we are projecting or anticipating for the month of October is that we'll see a decrease in that number. Again, assuming that the cases hold and assuming there is not another variant that comes about and we don't see one on the immediate horizon, we would estimate that October fatality rate would be somewhere in that 15 to 20 deaths down from the 42 that we saw in the month of September. Turning to vaccinations, we see that we have an uptick actually in the number of Vermonters who are starting to get vaccinated. We're up to 88.3% of all those Vermonters who are eligible. We had just over 27,000 Vermonters get vaccinated this week up from about 2100 last week. And you can see that on the next slide. It results in an increase in our seven day average of about 24% week over week. So a good sign, certainly that Vermonters continue to go and get vaccinated for those that have not yet done so. And then finally looking at the state rankings, everything is the same as it was last week with Vermont leading in most of the categories and most importantly, leading in the percent of our population that is fully vaccinated as well as those over 65 who are fully vaccinated the most vulnerable. So with that at this moment, I'll turn it over to Secretary French. Thank you, Commissioner Pichek. Good afternoon. Last Friday, we released additional information and resources to our schools about the response testing programs are rolling out now across the state. As I noted last week, the goal of these programs is to reduce the impacts on student learning and to reduce the time students spend out of the classroom as a result of COVID-19. Our intention is to maximize in-person learning which we know is the best way for students to get caught up further to learning and to succeed. Our testing programs offer multiple pathways to do this. The test-to-stay rapid antigen testing is intended to allow students in quarantine to attend school as they normally would. Every antigen chest that comes back negative is a quarantine day prevented. This program is for unvaccinated close contacts of positive cases. Students and staff in the program take an antigen test at the start of the school day. If the test comes back negative, they go through the school day as normal. Participants test until seven days have passed since they were exposed to the positive case. And test-to-stay participants still have to quarantine when they're outside of school. As I noted last week, this kind of program has been very successful in several other states, including Utah, Massachusetts in particular and also the United Kingdom. Massachusetts is showing some very promising results in terms of recapturing instructional time. And if Vermont has a similar experience, we will have averted hundreds of days of potential quarantine for our students. Another testing option is in-school PCR response testing. This testing gives schools a powerful and flexible tool to complement test-to-stay antigen testing. Schools will be able to test students or staff when they become symptomatic at school. Schools will also be able to test students out of quarantine and provide testing for vaccinated students and staff who are close contacts who may want to be tested. Finally, schools will have access to take-home PCR test kits they can give to students and staff or to their families. These kits can be used at home on the go really anywhere. The kits will have sample collection materials, information on how to register the kit and conduct the test in a prepaid shipping label, allowing it to be smoothly returned to the lab. This will make them ideal for symptomatic students at home and for close contacts of positive cases and for family members or positive cases or close contacts. Because the kits are easy to use and can be used in return without need for a clinic, schools have broad flexibility with how to use the kits. All of these response testing tools complement our surveillance testing program. Even some use the same infrastructure, so that makes it easier to administer. We still strongly recommend schools participate in surveillance testing if they can and that families sign their students up for this testing. All of these programs are designed to be complementary with the goal of keeping students at school and learning. Our next steps will be to work with each school district to establish a test-to-stay program and to help districts operationalize the program in a way that works best for them. Things will look different from school to school. Like we saw last year, our condition in our schools varies greatly, so parents and families should expect to hear directly from their schools on how these programs will exactly be rolled out locally. To highlight this variability, I thought I'd review to some of the differences in the experience that our schools have seen relative to COVID-19 since the start of school year. I think it really gets to the heart of this variability issue. I'm gonna share some data that are current as of October 3rd. So to date, we've had 651 total cases since the start of school. 107 of those cases have happened in the previous seven days. 80% of our schools did not experience a case in the last seven days. 51% of our schools have not had a case this year at all. 31% of our schools have experienced between one and five cases so far. 93% of our schools have had fewer than five cases or no cases at all. And 10 schools have experienced 10 or more cases in total. So you can see the experience among our schools with COVID has varied significantly. You can also see this variation playing out among schools even in the same supervisory in a region. Where we would expect the vaccination levels are the same and the districts implementing the same mitigation measures such as masking. So for example, in the Champlain Valley School District, Williston Schools, which includes the Allenbrook School and the Williston Central School, have seen far more cases than the other elementary schools in their district. Williston has had two cases in the last seven days, but 24 in total since the start of the school year. Shelburne on the other hand has not had any cases in the last seven days and only had two cases since school has opened. Hinesburg has one case in the last seven days and two cases in total. In Charlotte, the other elementary school has not had any cases at all this year. And that's all within the same supervisory. So you get a sense of how it really does vary from area to area, even in the same supervisory. But what these data don't show is the amount of work that's involved with engaging staff around contact tracing. Each of this case in a school requires significant effort to manage and be coordinated by school nurses and other administrators. The lack of precision in contact tracing, particularly with the greater transmissibility of the Delta variant, has not only been labor-intensive, but it also has resulted in too many students being quarantined. This is where testing will be critically important because it ultimately can lead to fewer students being out of school. Our challenge will be to support schools to enact testing programs while they're doing everything else at the same time. The major bottleneck for implementing testing will be staffing. I expect many schools will consider hiring additional staff or redeploying staff they already have on hand to implement the testing. So this will take some time to ramp up across the state. And again, the conditions vary in each school. One measure that we'll be announcing that should help to a certain extent, we'll be announcing this later today, is that school nurses will have access to student vaccination information in the state vaccination immunization registry. This will greatly speed up their ability to make decisions around contact tracing and the vaccination status of students, particularly as we deploy tests to stay. And also, as you know, in our guidance, we have a measure that allows schools to stop contact tracing once they have a student vaccination rate of greater 80%. So by giving nurses this direct access to this information, it will greatly allow districts to redeploy potentially resources on contact tracing to the elementary level. But it's important to note that the districts do have considerable funding from the federal government available to support their COVID related activities. I do not think at this time that funding will be the issue. I think it will be staffing. But I think, again, schools will likely find a way to use non-clinical staff to support the testing. School nurses will still need to oversee things, but there'll be an opportunity for non-medical staff to help in managing many of the logistical issues, particularly those that are associated with tests to stay. I'm very optimistic that testing will increasingly become the critical strategy this year to keep schools safe, but also keep students in school. As of Friday, we've laid out the description of all of our testing options, and now we're gonna focus on implementing them in each school. And our goal at the state is to do everything we can to make testing as easy as possible for all of our schools. But we will continue to refine our testing processes based on their feedback as they move forward with the specific issues around operationalizing the testing programs. That concludes my update. Now I'll turn it over to Secretary Smith. Thank you, Secretary French. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll begin by discussing the ongoing rollout of booster shots over the last week. 9,000 people have gotten their boosters. This is in addition to the 5,000 people who have weakened immune systems and have already received a third dose. An additional 5,400 people have made their appointments to get boosters. We'd like to see more people take advantage of this opportunity to have additional protection from COVID-19, given our expanded approach to offering booster doses, which takes into account age, health conditions, the BIPOC community, and occupational environments. Most Vermonters who received the Pfizer vaccine six months or more ago are now eligible for boosters. So if you're over 18 and you are eligible for a Pfizer booster, please make a plan to get one. We, as the governor mentioned, we are being as inclusive as possible in our definition, which includes just about anybody that's over 18 and has had Pfizer in six months from their last vaccination of Pfizer. Whether you need a vaccine or a booster, you can tell which type of the vaccine is available at each location when you make your appointment. Visit www.HealthBermond.gov slash my vaccine to make an appointment. You can also call 855-722-7878. Vaccines and boosters are also available at many pharmacies and healthcare providers. This week, we have more than 70 vaccination clinics statewide. We'll be sending out a press release later today with the details. Meanwhile, the FDA's advisory committee has a series of meetings starting next week in which they'll discuss COVID vaccines. On October 14th, they will discuss Moderna boosters. On October 15th, they'll discuss Johnson and Johnson boosters as well as Mix and Match boosters. Then on October 26th, the committee will consider emergency use authorization for the Pfizer vaccine for children ages five to 11 years old. Based on the FDA's conclusions, the CDC will typically make a decision on approval within a week. Turning to our state's hospitals, recently we've seen capacity issues at some of our hospitals. And having been working, we've been working in partnership with our hospitals to provide some relief. In most cases, the capacity issues are not driven primarily by COVID cases. Rather, it's a combination of things. For example, people showing up at the hospital, sicker and needing an inpatient bed, perhaps because of delayed care. Mental health patients presenting at emergency departments and some subacute patients that can't be discharged to rehabilitation and long-term care facilities because those facilities are finding it difficult to staff additional beds. To mitigate this issue, we've worked with the Brattleville Retreat to increase the number of mental health beds from 47 to 68 over the last few weeks. Also, the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living is working to staff up to 77 beds across three nursing homes across the state over the next two months. Our goal is to have the first of these beds start to come online later this week at the Burlington Health and Rehab thanks to a collaboration between UVMMC, Genesis and Dale. In addition, we're working to help bolster the workforce for rehabilitation services. So those presenting at the emergency department with substance use disorders can be served elsewhere. And lastly, we need to ensure that our children with mental health, substance use or behavioral issues are properly cared for. We're looking to augment the shortage of workers and resources in this area to avoid them going to emergency departments. Finally, I want to turn to COVID testing. We have continued to focus on keeping a robust testing capability as Commissioner Pichek had shown and we're adding testing capacity where it is needed. Over just the past seven days we've processed over 46,000 tests. You can find these testing locations at healthvermont.gov slash COVID-19 slash testing. To make an appointment for testing, we encourage appointments given the demand on testing nowadays. So please make an appointment using healthvermont.gov. There are many opportunities to get vaccinated. Get a Pfizer booster and get tested. Please take advantage of them to protect yourselves, your loved ones and your communities. Now I'll turn it back to the governor for Q and A. Thank you, Secretary Smith. And now I'll open it up to questions. All right, we've got folks in the room. Governor, you had mentioned wanting to sort of present vaccination data at some of these different facilities to show the effectiveness of the vaccine in Vermont. As you look at the boosters now starting to come in, how do you sort of plan to follow how effective those have been? And I don't know if Commissioner Pichek wants to get in on this as well, just what's the data gonna look like for that? How is the state gonna be sharing that? It's a good question because it's going to take a while to see the results of that. So I'm not sure how we'll track it. I don't know if the CDC is tracking that either. It might be Dr. Kelso maybe first and then Commissioner Pichek. CDC has a website where they're tracking the number of booster doses administered in each state. We will also be tracking it. I want you to know that the definition of fully vaccinated is not going to change. It's still, at least for now, gonna be two doses of Pfizer, two doses of Moderna or one dose of Johnson & Johnson. So we're not gonna say that you're no longer fully vaccinated if you've had two doses of Pfizer. But the boosters when they are recommended as they are for Pfizer currently, we're encouraging people to get them. They're recommended because the data shows that they offer more protection. And I think besides reporting the number of boosters administered, we'll be looking at data like hospitalizations and deaths and rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated Vermonters to see the effectiveness that booster doses are having. Commissioner Pichek has nothing to add. You've heard Secretary French describe the anticipated need for additional help in schools to man these testing sites. How realistic is it though? Your administration has talked about how hard it is for employers to find staff. I mean, do you think that there's workers out there to staff these clinics? I mean, might you consider asking for staffing help from say the guard or the health department or the medical reserve corps, someone else? Yeah, I mean, we're looking for any opportunities to help out in any way we can. Obviously, we are seeing a shortage of workers in every single sector. The problem we are still using the guard in some of our vaccination clinics. If we ask for more guard people, it really impacts other areas, other sectors. It's a civilian military. So we'd be calling them into active duty and taking them away from their other day job. So we're not sure if that's something that we could do at this point in time but the reserve corps is a great idea. I mean, I haven't heard that yet but we might talk about that. So thanks for the suggestion. In addition to staffing levels, are you concerned about testing supplies? Right now, we feel that we are covered. We had anticipated this and Deputy Commissioner Herrick has been working on this with his team. And so we feel we have enough secured at this point. But it's always problematic. The White House is engaged. They understand the need as well for both PCR and antigen testing. PCR we're fine on, but the antigen testing is something that, again, there may be a shortage but we're dealing with a company locally here in the region, in Maine, Abbott, I believe is where we're receiving those. So again, we're in good shape right now. So when should that start in schools? Or is it underway now? The test will be done. It doesn't stay. Yeah, it'll take probably a couple of weeks to fully roll out statewide. You know, again, it's voluntary for school districts. We'll be meeting, you know, last week on Friday we outlined basically how it works which is sort of the first step. And as I mentioned now, we have to work to support each school operationalizing. And again, we have a lot of logistical issues to solve, whether it be staffing, supply, and so forth. But I can't help but think this is gonna be the solution that really strikes the appropriate balance between keeping kids safe but also keeping kids in school and their education progressing. So we have to work hard to figure these things out. And it's gonna be a state and local partnership to do that. Can you shake a couple of weeks before the end of the month? Yeah, I would think so, for sure. You know, we have, there's some issues around obtaining a Clio waiver, what's called the ability to conduct the test on site in a school. There's some training issues that we have to address as well. But I think initially a lot of the conversation on operationalizing it will move immediately to how to situate this in the context of the other initiatives that are ongoing. You know, like how does this fit in relative to contact tracing? How does it fit in relative to response testing and so forth? So that's really where the rub of it gets, you know, to staffing is like, how to do all these things simultaneously and where to put the effort. As I sort of portrayed in the last couple of press conferences, I think ultimately these become sort of competing initiatives when we look at our finite resources. So we're gonna increasingly look at those strategies that allow us to both accomplish our health goals and accomplish our educational goals. And for me, that's testing is really emerging as a priority. Secretary, just a couple of weeks before the first test to stay, aren't yous or go to the library? Well, as I mentioned, it's sort of on an individual district basis. They have to sign up and get ready. I mean, I've had superintendents reach out to me over the weekend, like we want it like yesterday kind of thing and others are a little more cautious. So I think we'll see districts move forward fairly quickly. Others will take a little more time. I have a question. Probably not for you, probably to Dr. Kelsow. I wanted to know if you guys have any estimate in terms of how many Pfizer booster recipients are there in the state and how would you compare the sort of the uptake right now of the boosters to sort of what you're expecting or, you know. I don't have the total number, but I'll get the total number for you. But I would say that we are hoping that we have a better response than we've had in the last couple of weeks. I think it's a different animal than, I don't know if I want to use that word. I think it was a different sort of situation than it was with the initial rollouts of the vaccine. I think people are waiting for maybe their primary care. A lot of them haven't done the six months yet. So we'll see the rollout sort of go in phases here as we move forward. But I would say we were hoping to be a little bit further along than we are right now. And that's why I said, if you're 18 years old and you're six months out on your last dose of Pfizer, get vaccinated. Get the booster. I want a quick follow-up. I know that most Pfizer's would give in to folks in cities. Is that sort of where you guys are seeing more uptake? We're trying to spread it out geographically on our, in terms of our boosters, trying to bring it around the state. You know, there are some, for example, St. John'sbury where Moderna was the predominant sort of vaccine there. But nonetheless, we have vaccination efforts in that area as well. So we're trying to geographically bring it around the state. If you look, you can see how geographically dispersed it is throughout the state. Kelso, from an epidemiological standpoint, what happens this winter if not enough people step up for the boosters? I'd be lying if I told you I knew what was going to happen this winter. But what I think is gonna happen is that given our high vaccination rate with people who are fully vaccinated, that our case counts are gonna go down. We're gonna see lower transmission in our communities because we've protected enough people with the original series that things should calm down. I'm not hearing a lot of concern from national experts about moving indoors. There are parts of the United States that are indoors more in the summer than they are in the winter because it's too hot outside. So I don't think just moving indoors is gonna result in a big change. And the reality is there are few mitigation measures in place in Vermont right now. And yet, because of our high vaccination rates, we're seeing cases start to plateau and we think go down in the coming weeks. Having said that, I think as boosters are recommended, as the data shows that vaccine protection decreases a little bit over time, I do encourage people to take advantage of the opportunity to get that extra boost of immunity. So any evidence, Dr. Kelso, that the influx of tourists is having any effect on our domestic transmission or case rates? I don't know of any. That doesn't mean there isn't any. There are international travel recommendations and requirements and we assume people follow those. And we're reaching peak tourism season in Vermont as well. And we're not detecting that we're seeing additional cases or spread largely due to people coming from other places. Governor, in light of the Secretary Smith's timeline for possible five to 11 year old vaccination approval, what do you think it's likely that the masking is going to be through the end of this year in schools? We'll have to wait and watch the data and then make that determination. So we're hoping that the approval will be soon and then we'll have a high response rate for vaccination in that category. But we'll take that one step at a time. And if we think it's necessary, we'll continue to provide that guidance. I did wanna say in terms of out of state, I do see the API reports every night. And what I have seen trending at times is more from New Hampshire and New York. And they seem to come to Vermont to get tested, even though they live there. And maybe it's just accessibility is, it's maybe closer for them. But I have seen at times there's 13, 14, 15 cases from out of state residents. And they're typically from New Hampshire and New York. I'm asking one non-covid question, Governor. The legislature, as you know, is likely to consider a change in the school funding formula, I'm sure to be controversial, to given what the assertion of that, schools that have lots of kids and don't speak English as the first language come from poverty or a very rural district. It costs those schools more to educate a typical people. And the formula doesn't take that into account. Do you think that that's inequitable and probably should be changed? I think it'll be a very robust discussion. I think that this waiting study that many are advocating for the results of to be implemented and change the formula is going to be a very, very difficult topic to get through and agreement on. But I'm sure that that'll be a highlight of the legislative session this year, along with many other ARPA funding and so forth. Legislative session, you have repeatedly said you do not believe the state of emergency is called for. What if the legislature took action or passed specific public health policies, depending on whatever the infection rate is at the time come January, is that like a method that you would support instead of going through a state of emergency but through legislation? I don't, no, I mean, plain and simple. I don't think it's necessary. If they want to, they want to come back into session and they want to introduce a mass mandate. They want to limit travel. They want to shut down bars and restaurants. They want to limit gatherings. They want to cancel Christmas. I mean, that's up to them. But as far as the tools that we have, I mean, I have the tool. It's called, it's the state of emergency. That toolbox is there and I have the key to it. So if we thought it was necessary and effective to have a mass mandate at this point in time, we'd open that toolbox, the state of emergency toolbox, and that gives us broad, gives me broad powers to do almost anything. So I don't think it's necessary at this point in time. I don't think them doing a work around would be helpful from my perspective because I already have the tools. I don't believe that's happening right now. It's just a process. Robert, I've heard that rumor. So, but. Starting with Joseph Pressard, Barton Chronicle. Good morning. Good afternoon. I'm wondering, is anyone looking at which vaccinations people have if, for example, they show up at the hospital with the case of COVID? Is there some tracking being done to determine effectiveness in that way? I can speak anecdotally and then we'll go to the experts to maybe get the correct answer. But when I've asked that question, it seems to be there's no one particular vaccine that is more effective or less effective than the others. It seems to be fairly balanced. But Dr. Kelso. We are monitoring that. We look up the vaccination status of every single case and to determine whether they're vaccinated and which vaccine they received and how many doses. So that's data that we have. And as the governor said, we're not seeing a big discrepancy where one seems to be performing worse than the other. But even better, when you look at the national data, which is millions and millions of doses across the entire US and some breakthrough infections, there are all three vaccines that are currently in use in the United States are highly effective. Thank you. I have one other question. And this may have been covered before, but I'm used to it being ignorant. Does the announcement that flights from foreign countries will be allowed to land in the United States and presumably people will be allowed to get off them, does that have any bearing on the land borders? No. It is a source of frustration from my standpoint because when it was announced, I think it was 36 countries or something of that nature were going to be able to come to the United States and with a certain vaccination policy or testing. I'm not sure which and maybe both. But for them not to open our northern border at the same time was frustrating from my standpoint because I don't understand the difference myself. We're limiting our friends to the north who have a pretty good track record in terms of vaccination and case counts and deaths and so forth. Their data looks pretty good, but we're willing to open it up to other travelers from other countries. So it just didn't seem fair from my standpoint and we're looking forward to engaging with the Biden administration on this so far, thus far. We have not heard had any response to our letter from the 10 governors who signed it. Thank you. Pete Erskle, VPR. Thank you, Jason. Governor, you've long said that hospitalizations and deaths are the metrics you pay special attention to as you monitor how the state is bearing with the pandemic. And September proved to be the second deadliest month of the pandemic. The 42 of them on is dying as a result of COVID-19. I'm wondering why you don't think that that death toll merits some revisions to the mitigation strategy that you've outlined? Mainly because data in the science doesn't back up any mitigation measures that would change those numbers. Take, for instance, I think there's seven states across the country that still have a state of emergency and mass mandates. Their data doesn't look any different than ours. In fact, it's worse than ours. So their mitigation measures haven't worked. And you see this time and time again. So I think what we're doing, the strategy we're promoting and providing, I think, is working. It works for Vermont. And I think that, again, it's unfortunate the number of deaths. We're monitoring the hospitalizations. The hospitalizations have been plateauing for quite some time. And are admittedly elevated more than we'd like to see. But they aren't as high as they were back in January of February or March. But mask wearing, for instance, I mean, you credited Vermont's high rate of compliance with the mask mandate during the state of emergency with averting transmission of the virus. Do you still feel like mask wearing accomplishes is similar? I think wearing a mask in certain conditions is appropriate. And if you're in an inside venue with a lot of people, I think wearing a mask makes sense. I think that we've learned a lot about this virus and what it does and how it reacts. And again, we're not seeing in other states across the country with different guidelines, we're not seeing any difference in terms of the data that we're receiving, the number of hospitalizations, the number of cases for that matter. So again, no one in the Northeast has a mask mandate or any stringent mitigation measures. And our numbers are starting to decline. Thank you. Chris Roy, Newport Daily Express. We're hearing from readers who are concerned about not getting information promptly from the state police about serious crimes. In one case, a derby man in his own home was beaten so severely that he was paralyzed. Yeah, it took the state police 10 months to tell the public about the attack. And that only came after they made an arrest. Last week, another serious crime up here in the Northeast Kingdom, where a man committed several crimes, including kidnapping and taking a woman from her home at gunpoint. And again, it took the state police a week to issue any information about that. And we're just wondering if there's other incidents that are not being reported and what's going on. I might ask Commissioner Sherling if he has a response to that. Certainly. Thank you, Governor. Thanks for the question. Occasionally, there are delays in reporting that relate to investigative strategy. A 10-month delay, as you described, would likely not be investigative strategy. So if you could send me the details, I'd be happy to have the command staff take a look. In terms of whether there are other errors, I would venture to guess there are, in large part, because the number of press releases the state police do on an annual basis is in the 5,000 range. So there is going to be an error or an omission rate. Certainly try to avoid that, but I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge or probably are other errors. OK, thank you. Thank you, the islander. Thanks, Jason. Boy, I'd like to follow up on that one with Sherling, but I guess I will start with Secretary French. I think I'll try to get an answer from you on the same sort of question that was earlier. As noted, you announced last Friday the rollout of additional COVID testing. But even before this new testing, Vermont schools haven't been able to fill a lot of vacant jobs. I mean, have you personally noticed? I mean, Vermont newspapers have display ads for vacant jobs in schools. They were in school spring. I think I saw yesterday 80 school jobs available in Vermont. I mean, how do you hope to fill those jobs much less than new testing jobs that you think these school districts are going to be able to try to fill? Again, Mike, I'm going to let Secretary French answer that himself, but you know from your own ads, it's across every single sector. We have a workforce crisis in some respects on our hands. And I don't know of any sector that has been left untouched. So this is something that I spoke about over the last five years, why we were focusing on this with the legislature trying to attract more people into the state. Remember that 631? I talked about a lot. Six of your workers in the workforce every single day we lost every single day. When you start adding that up, that's a couple of thousand a year. And you do that over a few years. And it's no wonder we have workforce challenges now. So this shouldn't be any surprise to us. But the pandemic has certainly exacerbated that. And we're all going to have to dig deep in some respects to get through it as every sector has tried to do. So Secretary French. Yeah, hi, Mike. Yeah, I mean to underscore that, definitely school districts feeling the shortages, what you described in school spring and so forth, jives with my observations on the ground. And as I go around talking with school administrators, they're spread pretty thin. I think to draw the comparison to last year, I think it's good news that we expect that there's a high vaccination rate among our school staff. Last year, one of the issues that tipped a lot of our schools into remote learning was the staff availability, not necessarily student issues. So the logistics of our schools are always been stretched a little thin. We don't have a deep bench in many communities to operate our schools, so it would be challenging. In terms of the testing, though, I think, firstly, we have to look at how to situate the testing in the context of the other work we're doing. So I think it's a question of prioritizing our efforts. And again, my conclusion is that there needs to be a priority on testing because it accomplishes both our educational goals and our health goals. So I think we're gonna have to figure that out, just working with what we have to a certain extent. But I think the other aspect, as I mentioned in my remarks today, I don't expect testing necessarily to need, if additional staff are needed, it's not necessarily gonna be licensed, educated staff to do that work. I think schools will have additional options in terms of finding some of those staff. It's gonna be difficult in some communities, for sure. I was up in Canaan last night and watching the school nurse there work, she was augmented with a school board member who happens to be a nurse and who was on her day off essentially working part-time in the school district nurse office. So the two of them are running the whole show. They're gonna need to redeploy some of the other staff in the district to ramp up testing, whether it be paraeducators and so forth, everyone's gonna need to chip in. But again, the testing strategy is the one that's I think really gonna enable more kids to be in school. So we've just gotta figure it out on a school by school basis. But isn't adding more positions just making the situation worse? I mean, the governor was right on, people aren't going out to work and now you've added more openings and the situation's just gonna get worse for school districts. Well, I think it's ramping up for a particular moment that we're in. And again, I don't think this will be licensed educators per se that we're looking for folks. We need folks to help out this particular moment to get us through. I think it's a pretty challenging moment to try to ramp up a testing program, even though the case counts are coming down, simultaneously doing contact tracing and so forth. So we'll continue to tweak our processes to enable it to be more doable and we're committed to doing that for all our schools. But those problems need to be worked out on a school by school basis. It isn't, as I mentioned, there's a lot of variability across the state in terms of what people are experiencing. As we saw with a surveillance testing announcement, as we started messaging out on test to stay, we had school nurses reach out and say, we'd like to pause surveillance testing and that was followed up immediately on the weekend with people saying we wanna move forward with surveillance testing. We do have the staff to do it. So we just have to figure out how to support those who need the help, but some will be able to move forward sooner than others. It's uneven. Okay, and one question for Commissioner Pichek. Commissioner, you had declined comment initially when you were pursued over the possible mishandling of BB-5 case and claim to you and other state officials withheld the evidence of fraud from the public for more than a year. Now that time has passed and you've had adequate time to reflect on the lawsuit. Just wondering what is your reaction and obviously some of the court records have now been unsealed and seem to support the claims of being made. Yeah, well, thanks for the question, Mike. Well, not so much upon further reflection, just the fact that yesterday, Bill Stanger and his lawyers stipulated to the facts that were in the U.S. Attorney Sentencing Memo really makes us more free to talk about the situation. I was happy to talk about it at any point, but we had to certainly not do anything that would jeopardize that sentencing. That was first and foremost. In terms of the documents, I was an advocate of releasing those documents. I suggested to the Attorney General's Office that they be public, that they don't try to defend their release because I think they're the opposite of how you described them, Mike. If you read them in totality, it shows that the state was actively investigating from March 2015 through the end of the time period when we filed the complaint against the defendants. It also shows that we made the criminal referral to the FBI on June 1st of 2015. We brought in federal law enforcement. We worked closely with the SEC through that whole time period. It was not that we were preventing it from being public. It was that we were tying out every last penny. So when we did do the court case, it was on solid footing, and the court case ultimately was quite successful against the defendants. So happy to talk in more detail about it, but we just view those facts as very different. Okay, I will follow up with you. Thank you. Guy Page from Montaile Chronicle. Governor, I wonder if either you or Dr. Kelso perhaps could explain why vaccination is needed for people with natural immunity as a result of having COVID. Is it natural immunity enough? And if not, why not? Yeah, I'm gonna let Dr. Kelso answer again to give you a more accurate accounting for that. But my understanding is that the vaccine will actually give you more additional protection on top of your natural immunity. So I don't know if it's been studied long enough. Maybe there's not enough data available at this point to know how long your natural immunity lasts, whether it's short term or long term or more powerful or not as powerful as the vaccine. So at this point in time, it's safe to have both and we encourage people to be vaccinated after if they become a COVID case to give you all the protection, more protection on top of your natural immunity. Dr. Kelso. The governor's right. The data shows that the immunity that you get from being fully vaccinated is not only stronger, but last longer than the immunity you have from having had COVID. It's as simple as that, it's based on the data. Thank you. Governor, how many state employees have been placed on the five day unpaid suspension or the indefinite unpaid leave as a result of not meeting your administration's COVID-19 vaccination or testing criteria? I am not sure at this point in time. Guy, here's what I do know. I believe they have been over 86% who've attested to being vaccinated, which leaves us with about 1,100 state employees who have not and will have to be tested and wearing masks on a regular basis. So I can get you that information or have someone get back to you, but I don't have that at my fingertips. Yeah, that'd be good. I'm sorry, one last question. If you know or Secretary French knows, are the 2021 enrollment numbers in yet? And if so, what are the public school enrollment and home schooling numbers? Hi, Guy. The enrollment census window is just closing now, so we don't have that information. That's in the first 30 days of the school year. Home school, I did pull an update on that information a couple of weeks ago. I wanna say, last year we had in total about 5,000 homeschoolers, which was approximately double of what we would normally see. This year it's far less, it's more like 3,000. So an increase over our normal amount, but not as significant as what we saw last year. Okay, thank you. Michael Doherty, Vermont Digger. Also for Secretary French, just to return for a moment to the staffing for the school testing program's issue, I'm curious to hear what are the barriers to the state augmenting some of the staffing that's available to schools, either through redeployment of other state workers or even potential use of an outside contractor? I think we're all suffering from the same workforce challenges, whether it's the state workforce or even outside vendors as well, but Secretary French. Yeah, thanks. Now, I mean, we've been at this for two years almost now and my staff have done a fantastic job, but they've taken on a lot that was never in their job descriptions and that's so typical of what we've seen our state employees have to do in the last couple of years. The Agency of Education, for example, we never managed many of the operational aspects of schools, whether it be vaccination or testing, these are all new responsibilities. And of course, we've taken on significant responsibilities managing all the federal dollars that have come into education in the state. So we don't have the staff and frankly we don't have the capacity to manage at the state level. And my guess, based on my sort of operational understanding of the variety that exists in our decentralized education system, I don't think it could be done effectively at the state level, even if we could, because I think there's so much variability and basically each school needs a custom solution to a certain extent. So I don't think it would be a good candidate even if we had the capacity to manage it or staff it for a state level policy. You had talked in announcing this program about how this had worked in Massachusetts and we've noticed this in Massachusetts, the CIC Health, which we use as a testing contractor in Vermont is really providing staff that are going into school buildings and actually helping those schools conduct the test. Is there a reason that that, have you explored that option? Is there a reason that that wouldn't be applicable to the way we're going about this in Vermont? Yeah, I mean, two things I'd say. One is it didn't really go well in Massachusetts. And then two, we just don't have the density of population to make that work. I mean, unlike Massachusetts, which is largely a suburban type context for school districts, our schools are spread out across a very rural landscape. So it would be really hard to make that work logistically. When you say it didn't go well in Massachusetts, can you elaborate on that? What were the shortfalls there and what can we learn from that? Just talking with my colleague in Massachusetts and other folks I know down there, I think there were expectations that those services could be delivered to a certain extent and a lot of school level officials found that not to work and to be inadequate. And so it definitely informed my perspective on to what extent we could rely on a contractor to ramp up this strategy. Thank you. Greg Lamarill, the County Courier. Good afternoon, Governor. Just for clarity purposes, I want to go back to something I said earlier. I believe it was announced earlier that school nurses will have access to the state's vaccine records. I'm wondering if school nurses will have access to everybody's records or just students within their school system. Dr. French. Yes, hi. Just to the students that are enrolled in their school. So previously, the school nurses always had access to state immunization registry. As you know, certain vaccinations are mandated as a requirement of enrollment. So the challenge was as they went in to verify, for example, someone's measles vaccine, they could see the COVID vaccination in the record because they have that sort of user level access. But we weren't able to permit them to use that information in the calculation of student vaccination rates or determine close contacts and so forth. So we've been working jointly with the Department of Health and the Agency of Education Legal Teams to kind of resolve this issue. And we'll be announcing later today that they are able to use the information to inform their decision making, but it is restricted to the schools they have access to and to the students in those schools. Thank you. You're up there. I don't know if this is a question for you or the governor. As you're both likely aware, there was an incident at a recent boys' soccer game with Winooski and Inesburg in which it included overly physical play as well as accusations of racial abuse. It kind of brings up the topic that the Vermont Principles Association happens to oversee all the athletic events at least for high school in the state of Vermont. I understand that during the dean administration there was talk about moving the athletic oversight from the VPA into a state-run organization like the Department of Education, but that never happened. And without that happening, there's really no oversight from elected officials at the VPA level. I'm wondering if either one of you could give a little bit of insight as to whether it's still a good idea to have a private organization run all of the state's high school athletics or should there be some sort of state oversight with state officials, elected officials, and so on? Yeah, Greg, I'm not familiar, trying to remember that specific proposal. I probably was a member of VPA at the time as a principal, but I know it is done in New England in particular. It's done both ways where it's more centralized or not. I think these types of issues unfortunately still need to be addressed, so I'm not 100% sold on that being the perfect solution because I think we have these issues, unfortunately, particularly hate speech and racism that sounds like, in the case of Winiski, have been there quite some time, which frankly is equally as disturbing as the specific incident. But I think as all the adults involved need to take their responsibility to do what they need to do, and it is concerning to me that if referees are not acting or if the games are not receiving proper oversight, that's something we should take a look at for sure. But I'd have to see the specific solution before I'd suggest that's an improvement. Do you think that there would be more oversight if the Department of Education oversaw? Oh, that would be, depend, again. Or at least, go ahead. Or at least maybe more transparency from the public's point of view. Well, it's a hypothetical. I mean, anything we would do would be a function of regulation. So on the one hand, you could say that's more transparent, but it also might not be as responsive because regulation takes a while to change. So again, I could see it both ways, but it's a good conversation for us to have as a state, but we have to, you know, if there's persistent patterns of this type of behavior, we have to err on the side of taking action and figuring out how to make our systems more responsive. So I'm all for that. Thank you. Didn't know if the governor wanted to express his opinion on whether athletic events should be overseen by a government organization or whether they're adequate by the VPA. Yeah, I think you have to look at the outcome. I'm not sure that whether it be something the government provided or in this situation, the VPA, if anything would have been different, we would hope so. But the VPA has been receptive to any involvement that we've had with them, certainly over COVID. I would hope that they would be amenable to guidance and us working together to provide the best experience for forced kids and in the sports realm. Having said all that, I mean, this is a topic the legislature could get involved in along with many other thorny topics, but this is something that they could get involved and insert themselves if they thought that it was something that would be needed. Appreciate it. Thank you, governor. Chris Mays, Rattleboro Reformer. Hi, I have a question for Secretary French. Last week or the week before the principal at Rattleboro Union High School told families they were seeing an increase in physical aggression at the school since going back to fully in-person learning. And he mentioned to me that he talked to colleagues around the country and Hurt was hearing similar things. I was wondering if this is a trend you're seeing statewide. Yeah, thanks. Like you, I've heard sort of anecdotally talking with school leaders about that. And again, we pre-Delta, we were really positioning the school system to take on the issues that we call education recovery, which included social-emotional learning and re-engagement in academics. And as you know, the better part of our summer programming, summer matters was focused on the re-engagement piece. But we expected that the pandemic and its impact on students would be long-lasting and we would need to start to unpack that. And it's a certain extent, I'm not surprised to hear sort of the anecdotal information about these types of concerns. We are still contemplating implementing a statewide data collection that will give us better insight more specifically as to what those patterns actually are. What are those behaviors? What are specifically they manifesting themselves as? So we still have some work to do to investigate this more thoroughly and understand what the broader patterns are. It's my hope we can do that once we get past the specific moment relative to Delta and implementing our testing program and so forth. Yeah, and part of the issue that was reported by the principal had to do with social media. There were fights going on on social media that kind of spilled over into the schools. Do you think that there might be some kind of programming around that coming out in the near future? Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, I will make the observation it's not just our students. We see it in adults as well. I've been in several school board meetings or observed them, was in one last night and can't help to think that some of the interactions that were sort of permitted, if you will, on social media don't translate as equally as well when you're person to person and should be exercising more civility and self restraint and frankly more respect for each other. So I think we have some work to do as a society on that. I wouldn't want to pit it all on kids but I think as schools we can certainly turn into making it better for them and using our tools and education to enable them to be successful. Thanks a lot. Tom Davis, compass Vermont. Thank you, Jason. Governor, I was looking, there's a new report out that said that the example they used was in Chicago where the temperature was over 80 degrees during the school year had risen from 27 to 32 and is projected to go up to 38 by 2025. So this is no longer just a Southern problem. It's curious if you have data on the condition of our schools in terms of being able to stay cool as it gets hotter and also if any money through ARPA was available as part of that project if you're joining it. Yeah. Well, HVAC is a major component in terms of COVID and there has been money. We have lauded it that has been received from the federal government and we have other money available as well for just that. So I think it's a good point, not only just the ventilation but the cooling aspect is something that we need to provide and as we upgrade our schools and we looked at some of the construction needs across the state, this will be a factor as well. Secretary French, anything you want to add? Yeah, we have a major policy underway. The General Assembly put forward Act 72 which includes many of the components around school facilities improvement. We are trying to leverage as the governor mentioned the federal dollars that are coming in now as a result of COVID. Key part of Act 72 is to do a facilities inventory statewide. So we are in the process. I think the RFP for that just closed. So we'll be hiring someone to do that inventory just to provide some baseline information and the condition of our buildings in the age of certain mechanical systems in particular like HVAC. I will say I have heard from a number of districts that are looking at cooling as increasingly being a concern. So I wouldn't be surprised to see that emerge as a concern as we go forward with our inventory process. So once that data is gathered, is that information you'll be supplying to the public about what percentage of our schools need upgrades to the cooling system to meet this and what the timeline might be to get it done? Yeah, under Act 72, we've broken this into two phases. The inventory phase, we're trying to get done in anticipation of this year's legislative session coming up so we'll have some information that would be publicly available but also would be able to inform sort of next steps in our policy deliberations. In the second part of Act 72 includes a broader needs assessment which includes not only the mechanical systems but also gets into instructional conditions. To what extent are schools, the construction and the use of space, is it conducive to 21st century learning patterns, for example? So first phase inventory, we're hoping to get done in time for January. The next phase will take a little longer. Okay, thank you. Governor, one last question. This one's a hardball. I saw that the US Mint has declared that we'll be coming out with a $1 coin and it's going to have a Vermont snowboarder on it as a Vermont commemorative point. Seems like a great choice. Were there other finalists for that? Yeah, this has been a process over the last couple of years and we've seen many, I've seen personally many renditions where we came and we supplied those to the federal government as we narrowed the field. So they made the ultimate choice but yes, there were two or three other finalists, as I recall. Are you able to share what they were? I probably could, but I don't recall specifically what they were. Let me check and see if we have those and if we can share them. I'll check that out and we'll get back to you. Okay, thank you very much. Your adulation seems like a great choice. That's all I have. Thank you. Andrew, Caledonian record. Yes, thank you. Good afternoon. Was going to ask this of Dr. Levine but perhaps Dr. Kelso could respond. Received an email from an Essex County resident wondering why the vaccine dashboard doesn't get more routinely updated to reflect vaccinations received out of state. For the longest time, the dashboard tucked into its notes that there was an additional number of Vermonters vaccinated in New Hampshire. As of mid June and just recently that was updated to show at least in Essex County an extra 6% as of mid August. Why is it so hard to get more timely data out of New Hampshire? And does this have an impact on contact tracing and other processes where vaccination status is affecting? Dr. Kelso first then Secretary Smith. Great questions. No, it does not impact contact tracing. We get really good data from laboratories as well as from other state health departments on cases and we're able to follow that up in a prompt way. As far as the vaccination data, I'll turn that over to Secretary Smith, but I think the bottom line is that not every state is as timely or as complete in the reporting that they do for a range of things in COVID, including vaccination data. Dr. Kelso stole my thunder on that. I think the vaccination information coming into us is what we rely on. Also, you gotta remember, we've slowed down a little bit too in terms of vaccinations, particularly in information coming from out of state. We've been very aggressive in trying to go where people are in order to vaccinate whomever isn't vaccinated, but that doesn't necessarily mean other states as we go forward. But let me also take a look at if there's any sort of internal issues that are going on, just to make sure that we are keeping that updated. There's a concerted effort to keep everything updated. There's a lot flying around with different things. So let me just check it and make sure that we are making that in a timely way, if there's any issues. But I think it's gonna boil down to what Dr. Kelso said. Thanks. And for you, Secretary Smith, same reader had the suggestion that the state consider deploying take home PCR testing kits for the general community in areas that are remote from testing sites like Essex County, they suggested perhaps take home kits being deployed at town offices or town clerks. Your reader must have been in one of my meetings this morning. That is something we're actively looking at is deploying take home testing for those areas that don't have access to other forms of testing centers. So stand by, we're actively looking at that right now. Sure, they'll be thrilled to hear that. And then finally, maybe for the governor, or perhaps Dr. Kelso, subject of workforce challenges come up a couple of times today. I'm curious, could businesses, could or should businesses adopt a strategy similar to the test-to-stay programs at schools in which unvaccinated employees that are asymptomatic close contacts could take antigen tests and stay on the job? I would say yes, from my perspective, Dr. Kelso may have a different opinion on that, but I think businesses use some of the tools available. And I do think that antigen testing is going to be more useful in the future as we learn how to deal with this virus on an ongoing basis, even as we anticipate, I know the holidays are something that a lot of folks are considering, whether to travel and so forth. I think the antigen testing is part of the answer that we should continue to try and live our daily lives, but being using the tools in the toolbox and one of them being the testing is certainly going to be useful. I wanna go back just and I'll let Dr. Kelso add to that, but Andrew, I'm gonna ask Secretary Smith if he can look in to the status of some of the vaccination clinics, let's say in New Hampshire, because I'm not sure that they are as vibrant as ours in Vermont at this point in time. We kept all our testing facilities open in vaccination clinics, but I just don't know what they've done. So we'll look into that as well. Dr. Kelso? We're using test to stay in schools as a starting place, I would say. And there's really good data coming from Massachusetts showing that not only does it allow more kids to be in school rather than home in quarantine, but also the numbers or the percents of those close contacts who participate in test to stay and go on to become a case are very low, something like one point, something percent, I believe. So given that exposures that happen in the school classroom environment are relatively low risk in that we typically don't see a lot of spread, those exposure situations could look very different in a work site where there's very close contact, for example, or different levels of risk. So I would say we're, for right now, we're implementing it in schools, but I agree with the governor. I think that's where we're going. We wouldn't wanna change a whole bunch of policies like this all at the same time. We wanna be cautious and measured and look at the data as we've done all along. But I think as COVID transitions to an endemic disease that we all have to learn how to manage day to day, more access to testing, more frequent testing is gonna be how we stay on top of this. And then given what testing results show us, we respond accordingly, whether it's staying home or notifying close contacts or whatever the current recommendation is. So I think that's where we're going, but I wouldn't wanna go there next week. Okay, thank you, everyone. Aditi, Vermont Digger. I'm all set, thank you. Kevin, seven days. That's it, okay. Thank you very much and we'll see you again next Tuesday.