 Good afternoon. I'm Representative Ann Pugh, Chair of House Human Services in Vermont. This is Tuesday, April 7th and we are meeting and the first person that we have on our agenda is Chris Herrick from Emergency Management and we're really talking about COVID-19 updates and where we're going. Chris, before we start, I thought that it would be helpful if the committee introduced themselves. Nolan, Representative? Logan Nicole, Representative from Ludlow, Representing Mount Holly in Shrewsbury. I'm Mary Beth Redmond, I represent Essex. Carl Rosenquist, I represent the town of Georgia. Jessica Bremsted, and I represent Shelburne in St. George. Sandy Haas, I represent Rochester, Bethel, Stockbridge and Pittsfield. James Gregoire, I represent Fairfield, Fletcher and Biggersfield. Dan Noyes, I represent Wilkette Hyde Park, Johnson and Belvedere. I guess we're going in a different direction. Teresa? Okay, I wasn't sure if Kelly was going to go or if I should. Okay, I don't know what to do in there. I heard a silence, I didn't know. Teresa Wood, representing Waterbury, Bolton, Beals, Gore and Huntington. Kelly Payala, representing Londonderry, Weston, Stratton, Windhall and Jamaica. Oh, thank you. And Topper just texted me. He's waiting to be led into the meeting. He's coming in now. There he is. Hi, Topper. Topper, can you introduce yourself to folks? Chris, we're almost there. Okay. Topper, are you on? Chris, the 11th member of our committee is representative Topper McFawn from Barrie Town. Thank you, Chris, for coming to committee from the confines of your house. I'm actually in my office right now. Oh, well, well, please, please start. And can you explain to the committee what your role is and the update is in terms of how the emergency management office is working? I can. And so for the record. Chris, we can't hear you. Not at all. Now we can. Okay. Okay. For the record, I'm Christopher Herrick. I'm the deputy commissioner of public safety. Emergency management is a function within public safety. Chris, you're going to have to speak really loudly. Okay. How's that? Is that better? Yep. I see heads nodding. Okay. So I'm the deputy commissioner of public safety. As part of, as Sandy, are you not able to hear me? You keep going in and out. Is there a phone if I can call in maybe? I think just this is just my two cents. I think if you were to like Uber project into your and get close to your laptop, I think we could hear you, but it seems to fade down. How's that? Is that better? That's good. Okay. There's a different microphone setting. All right. So how's this? Perfect. Okay. So deputy commissioner of the department of public safety, of which Vermont emergency management is a part. The other parts are state police, the division of fire safety, and the forensics lab from our criminal information center that covers it. So my role is, I have been the EOC manager on a number of occasions here. And the biggest charge that I'm leading right now is coordinating with AHS on the medical surge component of planning for the COVID-19 impact in Vermont. What that means is we're working directly with all the hospitals, the department of health groups serviced by the agency of human services such as homeless folks, folks in DCF custody, the DOC in long-term care facilities. We've been working specifically, and we've been working on this for about four weeks, almost nonstop on the hospital's plan to surge internally. And then there's a point where they might become overwhelmed. If you look at the modeling that's been put out with the great work by commissioner Pcheck, you'll see that the worst case scenario is pretty significant and would overwhelm the medical systems capability in short order. But due to the mitigation efforts that Vermonters are really doing a great job at complying with, we've seen a real flattening of the curve. I know that's a term everybody's hearing, but it's really super important in the planning process. And we could be very close in terms of bed capability, capability, ventilator capability, based on the number of folks that are in it at any given time. But we're planning for the worst, hoping for the best. And planning for the worst means, like I said, the hospitals have been working to increase their internal ability to surge. We've also opened up two regional med surge sites, one at the Essex Fairgrounds, and we're utilizing National Guard assets for that. And that is a 400 bed facility with the ability down the road if we have to isolate 50 non-acute COVID-19 positive patients. The other site is the Spartan Arena in Rutland. And that's originally up at 150 beds. And that's being staffed by folks from the Rutland Regional Hospital. Both should be ready, excuse me, by the end of the day tomorrow. But that doesn't mean that they'll have patients. We also have opened up a site at the Berry Auditorium, which I'm sure Topper is familiar with. And we've also opened one at the Collins Purly Sports Center. Each one of those is to accommodate 50. But those are not going to be staffed immediately. And if they are, the hospitals will need to staff it. But hopefully we won't get to that point. The third site that's important to note that's open is, fifth site, I should say, is at Patrick Gymnasium. And that's opened with assistance from the Vermont National Guard, but is being staffed up when needed by UVM Medical Center staff. And it's designated as a COVID positive treatment area for non-acute patients. Then if any of those folks need to be hospitalized, they will bring them into the hospital proper. So that's... I'm sorry, I can explain the difference between what is going to be proposed for Patrick Gym versus the other four places that you were talking about, in terms of who is going to be there? And what need are you addressing? So the need there is if... So the other sites that we talked mainly Essex and Rutland are for decompression of hospitals. So they can move folks who don't need high level of medical care. That way we can use the hospital space for patients who may have COVID-19. The Patrick Gym is going to be for folks who may have... Who have COVID-19, but aren't requiring a high level of medical care at that time. And they can go in there, receive treatment, and as they recover, they can move out. If they need higher level of medical treatment, then they'll be moved in. That's being staffed by Medical Center personnel. Did that clarify? Yes, thank you. Okay. So along with that is a number of other factors that we have to consider, such as how do we feed the patient, laundry services, cleaning all the logistics that need to go along with that. There's also the component of moving patients around the state to the regional sites or to other hospitals. And the hospitals generally do this on a daily basis. The UVM Medical Center and Dartmouth-Hitchcock coordinate patient transfer on a daily basis, and they're going to do that through this as well. So if there's a swell of folks in one area, we'll be able to move them. And so we're working with the hospitals on developing a transportation plan as well. They can handle it for the most part, but if they get overwhelmed, we will have a transportation unit to assist them in moving folks from where they are to where they've been identified would be best for the patient. In addition, we will be supporting the movement of ventilators. We've been ordering ventilators like crazy, pardon the expression. Anytime we can find any that would be deliverable in the timeframe needed, we've been ordering them in consultation with experts at the UVM Medical Center. We've been ordering PPE from any source where we can, and we keep a daily count of what we have available at the warehouse. And those are being shipped out to medical facilities as a priority and then first responders next. And so we're constantly trying to resupply that. So Chris, yeah, Chris, what is or who is considered a medical provider? Is it the hospitals or where do long-term care facilities, residential facilities fit in in terms of those? And so they're also able to request and I don't have the algorithm so we'll be supplied with equipment, PPE, because we recognize the need to protect folks who may be in home care or in a long-term care facility. Well, we've already seen what can happen. And so they're also being supplied with PPE through the request channels that I mentioned earlier. So are they they have to do this by request or are they everybody? Yes ma'am. And in the list, in the prioritizing, so home care people are within the top group as well, are you saying? I believe they are. I don't have, we don't manage that out of the EOC that's handled by over at the Health Department and the Health Operations Center. Okay, thank you. So go ahead. No, I was gonna say, I apologize for interrupting your train of thought. No, it's okay. I should tell you at the front end of this that the State Emergency Operations Center is fully activated. But today, there are only two or three of us actually in the building. We are having the State Emergency Operations Center operate remotely because we're concerned about our folks. One of the things that we're concerned about going forward is staffing because the virus could affect staffing levels in all sectors. And so the governor has directed the development of a website to recruit volunteers. And the landing page for that has two buttons. One takes you to the MRC, the Medical Reserve, or the other one is a much more general page for folks that wouldn't necessarily go to the MRC like nurses and doctors. So we might have a need for drivers. We might have a need for firefighters. And so those are being aggregated in a database. We'll be working through the EOC to help respond to requests for those kind of assets. And the MRC will be working to address staffing requests that come from perhaps medical facilities or home health care or other facilities like that. So I've said an awful lot. I can probably pause and let folks ask questions. Okay, perfect. Because I'm sure we have some committee. Does anyone have a question at this point? I do. Okay. So you mentioned before we do this. Do you raise a hand or how are we going to do it? Topper, I could hardly hear you. Since I cannot see everybody at once, if you could use the little hand raise thing. Now I have three. I had it up there. Okay. Well, it just came over. So Mary Beth, James, and then Topper. Thanks, Madam Chair. I have a question about PPE. I know that there were a lot of concerns that we, you know, that we don't have enough. And I'm wondering if we're still in that boat. If people and like long-term care facilities, all of these, you mentioned the different prioritization of them. I'm wondering if we're able to fulfill all the requests at this point for essential, you know, essential personnel. I would, I'm going to have to defer to the HOC. I'm going to check on that. I know that we're filling requests on a daily basis. I think that it's fair to say that some folks might request, say, on an ambulance squad may say, hey, we need 295 masks and they may get 70 or 50. And we're trying to refine that process. I know that we've actually asked them for the algorithm or the, what are you using instead of just saying, well, we'll be assuming they're asking for more than they need probably. We don't want stockpiling. And so we're looking at methodologies where we can look at what's the typical call volume for our rescue squad and how many should we maybe think about having per call. And so, but I'm not, I'm not hearing anymore that requests are going unfilled or even unrecognized. And I do want to say this, we've been working to identify, I have to say, I'm actually very impressed with the amount of creativity and hard thought that's been going in about this particular item is decontaminating N95 masks. And so we've identified a way and we're helping to get some decontamination units into Vermont. So we can go around, we're actually pushing language out to all hospitals and providers to not throw their N95s away, to store them safely, we're going to collect them and we're going to decontaminate them so that we can extend their use. You can only do that so many times, but they're like gold right now. And so by recycling them through decontamination, I think we get 20 uses out of them instead of one. So we're going to be improving our ability to meet resource demands that way. Just a follow-up. Has that started happening using that decontamination system? No, we're waiting for the machines to arrive, but we've already put the message out to not throw them away. Got it. Thank you. No, thank you. Representative Gregoire and then Representative McFawn. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Deputy Commissioner. Probably beating a dead horse the same as Representative Redmond had for questions kind of similar. So I was reading an article for Montdigger about the nurses union asking for more PPE. And also from stories I'm hearing from inside the hospitals about, you know, basically having to wear the same mask for the entire shift in and out of different patients' rooms, which normally you would take all your gear off after you leave a room or before you leave the room after and then go into another room fully restocked. So, but then I hear on the other side that we have enough for now. And even in the nurses union said that they have enough for now, but it's a confusing story because I'm hearing two different sides. Have you heard that as well? Or you on your at your level, not hearing those two different, very, very different stories of having enough for now and then the other side being, no, we really don't. I'll be honest with you. I haven't had time to read any news outlets. So I don't, I'm not familiar with this story. I'm sure that there are some situations that are like you described. But I haven't heard them overwhelming. I haven't heard gotten calls from people saying, hey, we're not getting any PPE at all, or anything like that. And I know they're fulfilling requests on a regular basis. So and I'm on the phone every day with home health care. It's the same call home health care and the hospital association in some of the hospitals. And I haven't heard everyone's concerned about PPE going forward, but I haven't heard what you described. Thank you. Thank you to your question. I'm to the best of your ability. I mean, I just I know from the article and from all the people I know inside the hospital that they feel differently. But if that message isn't getting out, or if they just don't understand why, you know, representative, I don't want to give, I know we're on YouTube, but if if you call, I'll send you an email after with my contact information, and we can have an offline call. And I can dig into it. Roger that. Thank you. Chris, I'm going to interject right here before Representative McFawn. So it in that offer to Representative Gregoire, are you saying that it is okay if we contact you? It always is. Okay. Yeah. Nothing's different now. If you have questions, you know, here's my feeling, I would much rather have the ability to answer the question than have you wonder. And I think is it Julie Tucker has my email address, I believe. Thank you. And I will get some clarity from the speaker who has along with someone from the government, they have requested. I know what you're saying. But if it is fine with you, that even I contact you directly, or if it's fine that people on this committee do, but we'll figure that out. That's right. I forgot about that process, and I didn't make the short circuit there. No, you know, it's, we'll figure that out, but I appreciate your willingness to hear directly, if not from, so that will. No, I think it's, I think it's important, Madam Chair, that we get the best information out there, because right now, things are moving extremely quickly. What I know this week is a hundred times or a thousand times more than I knew last week. I didn't expect anything. And so sometimes it's hard to know, and I want to make sure you have all the appropriate information if I can do that to my best of my ability. Chris, thank you. Thank you. Representative McFawn and then Representative Haas. Tucker's muted.