 Good morning everyone. We're going to start today with a health update from Dr. Levine. Good morning. You can see where our total case count is as of yesterday, 1,572. Deaths remain stable, thank goodness, at 58. Over the last few days, new case numbers in Vermont have ranged from 4 at the lowest to a high of 12 per day. And they've impacted people in a wide age distribution. This trend of ups and downs impacting Vermonters young and old is what we've been expecting to see. The data confirms again that while our gains continue, thanks in large part to the efforts people are taking to protect themselves and others, the virus is still very present and widespread throughout the state. College student testing continues and will pick up even more this week. Students who test positive are isolated and receive the health guidance and care they need. And importantly, our contact tracing efforts ensure anyone affected are being identified to help contain potential outbreaks. For the last week, Vermont was again noted for being the state with both the lowest number of new cases per 100,006, as compared with a national average of 93, and the lowest percent positivity rate, again well under 1%. And over the past three weeks, 60% of our new cases were in Shittenden, Rutland and Washington counties. None of our counties have ongoing community transmission. And in the last slide, we continue to really have very minimal discernible people presenting with COVID-like illness to urgent care settings and emergency care. In the remainder of my comments, I'm going to comment about three stories. There have been three national and international news items we've discussed previously at these conferences that I would like to briefly update and address. First, countless times we've received the question, can one get reinfected by this novel coronavirus? Well, there's a recent report out of Hong Kong followed very quickly by perhaps another report from the Netherlands that seems to reinforce that the answer is yes, but quite infrequently. The way this was established was that a man had a mild COVID-19 illness four and a half months ago prior to testing positive once again recently. Although the second time around, he had no symptoms. It was determined that the genetic sequence of the first infection and that of the second were different from one another and typical of infections from different parts of the world, which means it did not involve prolonged shedding of virus from the first infection. Encouragingly, his immune system held the second infection in check, giving some hope to the value of prior infection providing some element of immunity. The second issue, the FDA has provided an emergency use authorization, EUA, for antibody-rich blood plasma donations. Unfortunately, though, not without controversy. The bottom line from my public health perspective is that while there is some truth to the fact that these infusions might be helpful for hospitalized patients in reducing the severity or duration of their disease and possibly mortality, this applied to a subset of patients who were not elderly, not on ventilators and who were treated very early in their disease course. And importantly, from an epidemiological standpoint, this was from observational data, not from a randomized trial. Unfortunately, all the data is not yet in, and in my opinion, the FDA's actions are somewhat premature. I still believe that the patients who receive such therapy should be enrolled in clinical trials, so we will know for certain. Finally, as we prepare to open schools, we have a report from the CDC regarding childcare programs that involves the state of Rhode Island, but could have just as easily represented Vermont. This report's major finding was that childcare programs that resumed operations at a time of low community spread of coronavirus infection and followed strict protocols that included masking of adults, daily symptom screening, maximum class sizes up to 20, and strict disinfection protocols were successful at limiting new infections. During June and July of 666 programs that reopened, cases occurred in 29, and in only four of the 666 did so-called secondary transmission, transmission from the Delta others in the facility, occur within those facilities. This means the infection was contained in all the others or totally prevented in the majority. The director of the CDC believes this is further evidence that both childcare and schools can reopen safely. I know this is not K-12, and we continue to review and evaluate other related data and science, but it is similar to our Vermont childcare experience and should be very reassured. I'll turn it over to the government. Thank you, Dr. Levine. As I said before, each Tuesday we'll give updates on the school reopening process. And as I previewed last week, we're also announcing some reopening steps and expanded online services at the DMV. Since DMV offices were first closed due to the pandemic, we've been working to make more online services available. But I recognize there are still many Vermonters waiting on registrations and licenses, which is why we gave them an extension in our executive orders. But I want them to know we're committed to doing better, stepping up our customer service, especially with new registrations. I've also asked the commissioner to develop and put into place a plan that will quickly resolve the backlog. As part of that work, today we're announcing the addition of two new online services and the reopening of three branch offices by appointment only. Commissioner Manoli will speak to these in more detail following our education update. We're just two weeks away from the restart date we set of September 8th. As we get closer to the school year, we want to remind everyone whether you have kids or family members in schools or not to be extra vigilant when it comes to wearing a mask in public, washing your hands, physically distancing, staying home when sick, and following the state's travel guidance. We've heard the doctors say our schools will reflect what's going on in our communities. So, if we can continue to suppress the virus across Vermont, there will be low risk for it in schools. But it's up to all of us to keep it that way. Under normal circumstances, most kids and families will be heading back to school this week. By pushing out the start date, we hope everyone can make the most of the extra two weeks in order to do it safely. The school prepare for the in-person return with a goal of keeping the virus outside school walls. In some places, teachers and staff are back in the buildings this week preparing classrooms, testing remote platforms, and troubleshooting potential issues that were fully ready. Because we all share the goal of making sure kids safely get the same high quality education they would have had before the pandemic. Last week, the Agency of Education reached out to districts to assess the models being used and whether schools are going fully remote, fully in-person, or hybrid of the two. Some media outlets have published AOE's data already, but we want to share it here as well. With a few exceptions, most districts are starting with a hybrid approach, with some days of in-person instruction and some days of learning remotely. As we talked about, we understand wanting to start with this model, make sure schools can manage kids in the building, while also using and improving upon remote learning platforms will be beneficial. Though we hope to see schools expand in-person operations with the data, while the data supports it, improving remote operations and options is also important because we know schools could close if there's a community outbreak. What's not showing up in the raw data is all the hard work district leaders are putting in to make sure teachers, staff, and kids are safe when they return for much needed in-person learning. Superintendents, principals, teachers, school nurses, administrators, and others are going above and beyond to make this safe. We appreciate their efforts answering the call to service because, as we've mentioned several times, many kids and families need this to be successful. They need to get back to school. And with everything in this pandemic, there are no easy answers or ideal solutions. It takes all of us pulling in the same direction, getting creative, and staying nimble in order for us to be successful. So I want to thank everyone for this work. This is indeed a time for service, but we're all in this together. So I'll now introduce Secretary French to provide more details on school plans, as well as an update on how we're coordinating PPE with these dedicated school leaders. Secretary French. Thank you, Governor. Good morning. Our schools are deep into implementing their reopening plans at this point. As expected, almost all schools are implementing some form of a hybrid model, where students are in school for in-person instruction a few days a week, and remote learning on other days. To better understand how school districts are approaching their reopening planning and creating these learning options, I thought I would review the planning process of a district in some detail. In this case, the Rutland City School District. Rutland City is a single school district and has its own technical center. The staff are technical center. Rutland City formed a committee in early June to start planning for the reopening of its schools. This committee was composed of all the major district decision makers, including administrators, representatives of the teachers union, staff from the technical center, a lead nurse, a school psychologist, and the athletic director. This team began its planning work by evaluating school reopening plans from around the world and the United States. Once the Vermont guidance came out, they were able to integrate much of the state level guidance into their planning efforts to address the specific issues for their schools around health precautions, disinfection procedures, and social distancing. When it was determined that hybrid learning would be an option, Rutland City conducted a community-wide survey to understand the preferences of its families. In that survey, 25% of Rutland City parents expressed an interest in a completely remote learning option. Notably, tech center parents were less interested in a fully remote option. Only 6% of these parents were interested. No doubt because tech center programs tend to have more hands-on environment. After gathering all this information and considering the Vermont guidance and guidance around the world, the district's planning efforts yielded a comprehensive yet concise local school district reopening plan of about 17 pages. You can find a copy of this plan on the district's website at RutlandCityPublicSchools.org. To meet the needs of their community and their staff, the district decided to offer three learning models that vary based on the grade levels of students. Parents can enroll students in these different models by completing an online form which is available on each school's website. Parents are asked to select a learning model for the first marking period. The district has created a process for schools to check in with families just before the end of the marking period to consider adjustments to learning models if preferences change. The three learning models include a 100% remote option for all students in grades K through 12 through their newly established remote learning academy. Another option is a hybrid model for students in grades 10 through 12 with alternating days of in-person and remote learning. The third option is full in-person instruction every day of the week for students in grades K through 9. According to the superintendent, these learning model options have provided important flexibility for staff as well. Teachers who were not necessarily available to teach in person have been assigned to classes that incorporate more remote learning. In early August, when the Agency of Education and the Department of Health issued revised health guidance, Rutland City responded by publishing a six-page, frequently asked questions document and described how the revised state guidance would affect the district's reopening plans. Rutland City's clear and proactive communication efforts are a good example of how local school districts are supporting their communities during this emergency. Rutland City School District is just one example of how school districts are applying state-level guidance to respond to the needs of their students and their staff. Rutland City School District is a single school district with a single school board and a tech center, but has a totally different set of planning considerations for reopening schools than the more typical Vermont Multidistrict Supervisor Union, which usually has multiple elementary schools that feed into another district's middle or high school. In spite of these structural differences, however, the health guidance from the state provides a consistent framework for ensuring the safety of our students. Local leaders carry a significant responsibility for enacting this health guidance within the unique circumstances of their districts after considering the input and perspectives of their communities. This is incredibly challenging work, but as demonstrated by the work of Rutland City, it can ultimately yield a very responsive solution and one that can be nimble enough to adapt to changing circumstances. Shifting to an update on state-level preparations for reopening our schools, we are in the process of distributing personal protective equipment or PPE this week. This has been a significant partnership with the Vermont Emergency Management, Vermont National Guard, and the Vermont Agency of Transportation. On behalf of our schools, I would like to thank these entities for their dedicated service and support. We are currently running a distribution of specialized PPE kits for school nurses and district COVID-19 coordinators to make sure nurses and designated school staff are prepared and adequately supported to respond to a potential presumptive case inside a school. These kits include surgical gowns, face shields, surgical masks, and gloves. We are working with our partners at the Department of Health to provide guidance to school nurses and administrators on the proper use and care of this equipment. We are also providing two gallons of hand sanitizer to every Vermont school, as well as a limited supply of adult cloth face coverings as part of the statewide effort to provide cloth face coverings to every Vermont community. Face coverings are required in all Vermont schools. We are providing these additional face coverings to make sure that everyone who enters school has one if needed. With these additional facial coverings, we are also providing schools printed copies of posters as part of the state's Mask on Vermont campaign, and we'll be providing a toolkit for schools to make their own versions of the posters. As we speak, PPE distributions are going on in St. Johnsbury, for schools in Northeast Kingdom, and St. Albans for schools in Franklin, Grand Isle, Lamoille, and Northern Chittenden Counties. Yesterday we ran distributions in Central Vermont and Chittenden County, and next week distributions will take place in Rutland, Bennington, Wyndham County, the Upper Valley, and again in Chittenden County. Here are some numbers on the quantity of PPE being distributed to Vermont schools in this initiative. We are providing 1,634 of these specialized PPE kits that include surgical gowns, surgical masks, approximately 81,700 pairs of gloves, and over 1,600 face shields. We are providing nearly 800 gallons of hand sanitizer and 25,900 face coverings. This is in addition to the over 280,000 KN95 face masks that we provided to schools in the distribution earlier this summer. The KN95s are for educator use, for teachers. As the governor mentioned, many schools are now holding in-service trainings in their buildings, so staff are starting to return to school and make preparations for the start of the school year in their classrooms. We will continue to work closely with our schools to support them, and this incredibly important work. That concludes my update. I'll now turn it over to DMV Commissioner Wanda Minola. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Throughout the COVID-19 state of emergency, the Department of Motor Vehicles has continued to serve customers statewide. We've added more online services. We have also improved the customer experience online and made several adjustments to our business processes to address for monitor's needs. But we know we have more to do to meet all of the needs of Vermonters. I would like to just highlight a few things that we have added and resumed during this time. We have online license renewals at the convenience of, for every Vermonner, online learner permit exams. We have opened regular road exams and testing. We have opened the commercial vehicle driver's license knowledge and skills testing. We have opened motorcycle knowledge and skills testing. We have modified processes and made decisions on opportunities to avoid returning documents by calling customers for additional information that we need. We have supported out-of-state licensing processing, which is when we have individuals that have moved to Vermont and they are transferring their out-of-state license to help them with emergencies and residencies. We have added additional lines, phone lines, and the ability to have our phone system call you back. It's really important. I want to highlight here, if the lines are busy, you have to wait for 10 minutes before that action takes place. And I'm going to encourage customers to do that because once you choose to have a call back, you will immediately move up in line on the services and we will return your call. I'm encouraging everyone to continue using all of our online services as much as possible, especially for your license renewals, registration renewals, and mail-in renewals if online services are not available to you. We understand some services cannot be offered online or by mail or by phone. While DMV employees have continued to work daily processing mail online and responding to email requests, our goal has always been to reopen the buildings to the public as quickly and safely as possible with health and safety protocols in place. Several teams have been working for months in preparation to reopen for in-person transactions. Today I am pleased to announce the reopening of the Montpelier, South Burlington, and Rutland offices to the public by appointment only. Using a new online scheduling system, beginning this Thursday, August 27th, customers will be able to go to our website to schedule an appointment at one of those locations. The week of August 31st, we will be establishing new dedicated phone lines for customers that need to call in for their appointments to schedule. The first appointment times available to the public will begin next Monday, August 31st. The hours of operations for these three locations will be 7.45 until 4.30pm. Appointments will be scheduled beginning at 8am and ending at 4pm. Customer with appointments, we are asking that you arrive 10 minutes early before your appointment so the DMV staff can review and verify all your required paperwork is completed prior to that scheduled time. We are also asking that you do not bring guests to your appointment unless necessary. If you are a minor that must have a legal guardian present or if you need support of a translator, this is acceptable. This new appointment system will send customers confirmation notice and reminder notices of their upcoming appointment with the DMV. Customers will have the ability to choose their appointment based on their personal plans. Customers will have access to the system 24-7. You will not have to wait for the DMV to be open Monday through Friday to schedule your appointment. The new system and process for the DMV is not only a solution during the COVID times, but it also means a new customer experience anytime you need to come and do business at the DMV. Vermonters will no longer need to wait at a DMV office for their turn to take care of vehicle and license transactions. Appointments mean no or minimal waiting. We believe that this new way of serving your needs will transform how Vermont interacts with the DMV. This is yet another step toward our full modernization. We are starting with the reopening of these three locations. Again, that is Montpelier, South Burlington and Rutland, where we have currently been offering driving exams in person. We hope to learn a lot during the first days that the new scheduling system is in use. We will make any needed changes and then prepare to open additional DMV locations around the state. We believe it is safe to reopen and our branch offices. This rollout will ensure our systems and processes work. We know that for some of you this is not enough. We understand that some customers have had to wait to take care of important business at the DMV. Because of COVID, we have had to refit our office space. We have had to retrain staff. We have had to obtain new supplies. We have had to work with our IT partners and other specialized teams to get everything ready for a safe and smooth reopening. The DMV has worked tirelessly for many weeks to prepare for a successful reopening and a good customer experience. Yet we are certainly aware that Vermonters have been frustrated with the temporary suspension of some services. So I'd like to take a moment to address concerns about slower service and the backlog of mail-in transactions that the DMV has been dealing with since COVID began. Throughout the state of emergency, we have had staff working in our buildings to process customer transactions. The backlog grew in part because more customers began to use our online services in place of visiting the DMV in person. As we all know, the mail has been moving slowly through during COVID and that has added days to each transaction time. As we wait to receive the customer mail and then as the customer waits to receive our reply. In addition, the agency of transportation, our parent agency, reallocated several employees to assist the DMV with the backlog. While the backlog has been reduced significantly for common transactions, we are still averaging a three-week backlog for purchases made through private sales and for the transfer of vehicle registrations. We understand that Vermonters want and need to register vehicles in a timely manner after purchasing through a private sale. We are now finalizing work on another online system to meet that need. This new system will enable customers to obtain a temporary registration and plate right at their own computer. We will be announcing the launching of this new system very soon. Finally, in closing, I want to encourage everyone to continue using the many services that are available online and by mail. We urge you to take advantage of the efficiency and ease of those options. Online services include license renewals, replacement licenses, registration renewals, replacement registrations, address changes, learner permit exams, paying reinstatement fees and many commercial vehicle transactions. So please go to the dmv.vermont.gov for these services and other information for transactions that can be completed by mail. In addition, I want to remind Vermonters that the state of emergency order specific to DNV is still in place. Your license and registration renewals still hold a 90-day extension from the due date. Notices for photo renewals for license has been extended for four years. We will be sending out a reminder of these extensions to all law enforcement entities as well as our state inspection stations to ensure that you are not penalized for something that is not your fault. I personally want to thank all Vermonters for their understanding and patience we have all experienced during the pandemic. Also for your cooperation with using our new online scheduling system for services we currently cannot offer through alternative means. We look forward to seeing you in person when we reopen by appointment only next week. Thank you very much. Thank you Commissioner Minnoli. With that we will open up for questions. Thanks Governor. Legislature kicks off today. This morning House appropriations leaders said that they're concerned with part of your budget that there is no provisions for K-12 funding in your budget. I'm wondering if you can address those concerns and maybe just kind of give a reason as to why. Well I think in the first quarter budget we did come to conclusion with about 50 million dollars I believe. And we have utilized a lot of the relief money for that need. Obviously there could be more. I've heard that the congressional action could include more dollars which would be much needed. But at this point in time we believe that we presented a budget that works. Obviously with every budget that's presented there are negotiations and there are thoughts on both sides on how to improve. And we're welcoming their input and we'll make adjustments as necessary as we do with every single budget that we present. And then the side question actually a labor question probably for Commissioner Herrington or maybe you Governor. But I'm hoping to inquire about volunteers who are still in the adjudication process. I believe a couple weeks ago labor officials said it's a few thousand. I'm just hoping to find out how many people are in the adjudication process. How many aren't receiving their benefits. And what's being done to clear these last few? I have engaged with the commissioner about the backlog so to speak. We did this a few weeks ago and trying to find ways and opportunities to expand upon that appeal process. And I'm not sure what the numbers are to date. But we knew we had a backlog at that point in time and we were working our way through it. I might ask Commissioner Herrington if he has any of those numbers. Thank you Governor. I don't have them necessarily right at my fingertips. The number does fluctuate. We claims come in and out of adjudications on a daily basis. Anytime someone files they can go into adjudication. I think it's important to note that the reason a claim goes into adjudication is because the department has made an initial determination. That person is ineligible for benefits unless we can gather additional information that sheds light on their circumstance. And so they have been issued at least some determination that they are ineligible or going through adjudication. And we have increased the communication to those claimants to let them know where they are in the process. So they do now receive an email when they go into adjudications. They receive an email when they're assigned an adjudicator and moving through the process. So we have tried to also step up our communication to individuals who are going through the process. It's hard to equate necessarily the one number. Sometimes when we get a batch of claims that go into adjudications, we can clear, in some cases, hundreds of those within a matter of days because we are able to quickly look at the claim and realize that it's not valid in terms of the issue on the claim. And we can move them through others that end up staying in adjudications longer typically because they are more complex or there's a dispute with the employer or dispute of the fact that are on the claim. So we are working through what is considered the backlog. Our ultimate goal is to shrink that significantly. But we do end up receiving, in some cases, 1,500 or 2,000 claims in a week that end up going into adjudication just because of the way someone built out their application. I would also point out that any time someone files for their weekly claim, they can do something on that claim that would cause the claim to go into adjudication. So in some cases, we are also seeing repeats of people who may have gone through adjudications, moved through the process, but then in filling out the next week's claim or a claim further down the line, again, answers a question or does something that causes that claim to go back into adjudication. So there is an educational part that comes along with this as well, but it's all based on how someone has separated from their employer, whether they're receiving other wages or separation and severance pay. Things of that nature are typically what's then claimed to do adjudication. And how many adjudicators does the state have right now? So I can pull the number. Last time I checked, when we started prior to COVID, I would say we probably had somewhere around five or six adjudicators, maybe seven. We're upwards of 12 to 15 now. These are individuals that have been trained in making informed decisions and determinations on claims. What we're actually looking to do, and we actually have a team starting on this week, is have a team of back finders that are actually doing the legwork on these claims to reach out to employers to gather additional information, gather additional facts, and compile that into a packet that then the actual trained adjudicator can simply review the packet of information and issue a more faster determination on these claims to move them through the system more quickly. So we do have claims that stay out there longer either because we need more information or in some cases the claimant doesn't reach back out to us. And so it does hang out there for a while. So again, we're kind of trying to divide and conquer on this, but it does take a knowledgeable person to be able to make an eligibility determination on a claim. I should have probably asked Secretary French, is there anything you want to add to the education portion? I don't think so. Governor, the college gets kind of back this week. Came to out a couple of weeks. What do you worry about most? Where is our most vulnerable? Yeah, I mean, I think individually we're vulnerable by people not adhering to the guidance. My fear is that they don't take it seriously wearing a mask, staying physically distanced, not congregating over a certain number. People getting together and not following the guidance. I think that's my biggest fear. And then an outbreak occurs and makes the whole process problematic and that creates a lot of fear and anxiety or attitude. So that's probably my biggest fear. Did you see any of the RNs? I have not. I have not seen any of that in fairness. I didn't watch the DNC either. Plenty. I probably not. I mean, I keep up with it as best I can in some of the news reports, but I haven't watched it. If I could just ask Commissioner Minnoli one question about the backlog and the typical, if you could just give us a number on the backlog. And what is the kind of case that will require an in-person visit? What are you expecting this week? So to, right now, we have, between July and August, we have received approximately 14,000 private sale transactions. These types of transactions cannot be provided online yet. And that is where the focus of our backlog is. And so our customers are getting communications that this could take four to five weeks. And I talk about it's really a three-week processing backlog because from the time the customer mails it to us, to when we receive it, and then we mail it back, it is looking at this five-week window. Those transactions are going to be really important and Vermonters need to come to DMV to take care of this business. And the piece that we talked about that the Governor announced and I highlighted is, and it's really going to be the beginning of September, we are creating an online solution that allows Vermonters for these types of transactions to actually go in and register that new vehicle and then mail in their documents. What they will receive is they will actually receive a temporary plate and registration that they can apply to that vehicle or that camper or that boat during the rest of the season while we still can enjoy it. And then we will process their transaction. Good? Steve? Governor, given the sort of tailing off of Scrooge's question, with the colleges coming back, we've already seen a few instances where there's been some large parties and not necessarily hearing of things. You've mentioned that's your fear. Less of a fear for the overkids and at the same time, are you gearing up what's the plan for the next couple of weeks? Yeah, in some respects, you know, we have the school systems that I believe that everyone is going to be masked up in going into more of a coordinated effort. Whereas with the colleges, it's the after-hours situations that I'm most fearful of. I'd ask Secretary French to comment further on K-12, if that's your specific question. Yeah, that's... Yeah, as the Governor mentioned, I think, you know, we feel fairly confident with the K-12 environment that we have, you know, strong regulatory control of that. And as you heard in my previous comments, like the Rotland Cities, an example, they've been very responsive to being able to meet those needs of the students. And we're talking about very young students all the way up to high school age students. I think there are two different settings altogether. But certainly, I think one of the advantages we have in terms of delaying schools after Labor Day is we can watch the epidemiological data from the high school or the college opening and really monitor that very closely. So we are paying attention to the college trends very closely as they pertain to K-12, though we feel fairly confident right now that we're going to be able to reopen K-12 successfully. And what's the mechanism for you folks as far as the monitoring goes and making sure that everything's focused on it? Well, we have the modeling that, you know, is disclosed to the press conferences every Friday and we'll be watching that very closely. In addition, the Department of Health's epi-team pays attention to any of those positive cases, if you will, to notice those trends. So once again, I think as a state with our enhanced testing capacity and our ability to contact tracing, we feel fairly confident that we're positioned well to reopen K-12. As well, I would say that the constant communication with the superintendents and principals as well with the agency of education will be important and ongoing as we've done after the last 10-12 weeks. Moving to the phones, we'll start with Lisa from the Valley Reporter. Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. My question is for Dr. Levine or maybe Dr. Kelso, she's down the line. Dr. Levine, you mentioned the Washington Post article about daycares reopening in Rhode Island and mentioned that their numbers were similar to the Vermont experience. I wonder what we can learn about the Vermont experience. What can you share with us about COVID cases once Vermont daycares reopened? Sure. I was actually referring to the original article, which I guess I'm learning from you, the Washington Post reported on, but it was published in MMWR. The experience in Vermont... I don't know if I might interpret that. No, no, that's fine. The experience in Vermont, very early on, we had a more limited number of childcare facilities open for essential workers and then as things progressed, more and more were opened more recently. And we've had an astonishingly small number of cases actually attributable to those settings. And pretty uniformly, they've involved, as you would expect, just like in the Rhode Island experience, an adult or more than one adult in those settings. And then have been very limited in terms of numbers of individuals. Sometimes the setting could continue on, other times they chose to close for a limited period of time. But considering the number of childcare we have, I'd say less than a handful would be an accurate assessment of the number that actually had any cases reported. Thank you. Is there a way to know, county by county, how those numbers break down? And when you say less than a handful, do you mean less than a handful of facilities that have to do with cases of COVID or less than a handful of cases? Less than a handful of facilities. And at each facility, very limited number. Just less than a handful, usually, of individuals. Is that on fire with, like, county or some other measure? Again, when we're dealing with such small numbers, I'm not so certain that we could release that information. I understand. Thank you very much. Joe, the Barton Chronicle. This is another question for Dr. Levine, I believe. Given the administration's clear attempts to put political pressure on the FDA, combined with Commissioner Hahn's willingness to misstate the findings such as they are from the Mayo Clinic concerning plasma treatment, how confident are you that FDA findings about, for example, a new vaccine will be reliable? And should you think they might not be? What would the state do in offering things for itself? Just to be clear, Joe, when you speak of the administration, you're talking about the one in Washington, correct? Yes, I'm sorry. I didn't think that you were in a position to put political pressure on the FDA, but yes, you probably aren't. Good morning, Joe. Let's start with the plasma treatment first. I'm not 100% confident that the Commissioner for the FDA intentionally misstated the numbers, but nonetheless, the rigor of scientific scrutiny led him to update us all on what he really meant. And just to be clear, I think the numbers were originally represented as 35 people out of 100 might have their life saved from having this treatment. Really, the number was the difference between what we call relative risk reduction and absolute risk reduction. So if the number without the treatment would be 12% would die, and with the treatment only 8% die, that's a 1 third or 33% relative risk reduction, which sounds much more impressive than the absolute difference between those two numbers, 12 minus 8, which is 4%. He was using the 35%, or in my example the 33%, when in reality it should have been the 4%. So this is what, and I preface my comment to your second question this way, because this is what the scientific community does. It looks at data from credible sources and makes sure that it's been properly obtained and analyzed and reported upon. So when it comes to a vaccine, you can be sure the scrutiny of the entire biomedical scientific community is going to be on whatever comes out. And effectiveness of the vaccine weighed equally with safety of the vaccine are going to be very, very important considerations. So though I know there's a lot of politics that people are already writing about and discussing from the scientific community standpoint, and I believe Dr. Fauci has quietly stated what I'm going to say, there's not going to be a vaccine provided to all Americans that hasn't really been vetted appropriately. And that means has had rigorous trials to show that it's effective and safe and will accomplish the goal that we want, which is to immunize this population of ours against this coronavirus. So I'm a little less concerned about politics being an issue. I mean, obviously politicians can say what they want, and they often do embellish things. But at the same time, even in the politicians' communities, there are back and forths. So clearly the scientific community won't let a vaccine all of a sudden appear that really we don't know enough about. I'm pretty confident about that. In spite of the natural tendency that we want to rush it and get on with our lives and have something effective. Okay? Thank you very much. Wilson Ring, the AP. Morning everybody. I have a non-COVID question for the governor. The governor, you probably are aware, I'm sure you're aware, that last month the Secretary of Interior asked a question on behalf of President Trump of the governors of all 50 states for what is sometimes called a national garden of American heroes, places of, and I'm quoting, natural beauty and statues that could be donated to, you know, two well American heroes. And the Secretary of the Interior sent a letter on the 21st of July, asked for a response by July 31, and I'm curious what Vermont's response was to that. Have you thought of any place that would be a location of natural beauty and any statues that Vermont might provide for such a location? Wilson, I'm not 100% confident we received the letter. It certainly didn't come across my desk at this point in time. But, you know, I came from, I grew up in Berry, and we have a lot of beautiful monuments depicting many heroes throughout the ages in some of our final resting places and throughout the community. So we're no stranger to welcoming these different monuments, but I have no knowledge of anything, and I don't believe that we've responded at this point in time. Okay, did you think you didn't receive it, and that's why you didn't respond, or you chose not to? I just don't remember. So you're unaware of this? Okay. Okay, that's a fair answer. Thank you very much. Was there somebody else answering that? All set, Wilson? Yes, thank you. That was easy. Mike Donahue, the Islander? Good morning. Thanks, Rebecca. The Islander got an interesting question, Governor, from one of its readers at Shelburne. On behalf of keeping elderly parents and others safe, as Governor, would you be supportive of waiving the 2020 Vermont income tax for those elderly snowbirds that had south for six months plus one day so that they could in fact remain in a safe state? Obviously, there'd be no financial tax loss for the state of Vermont, and it actually might financially help the state by those snowbirds paying taxes on any purchases they may make during the winter. The reader says the thought of dad leaving Vermont and going to such a red zone is scary. Just wondering any thought on considering that and knowing it needs legislative approval, too. So I just want to see if I understand the question correctly. These are folks that come to Vermont for less than six months. Maybe previous Vermonters that have chosen... No, these are Vermonters. Well, long-time Vermonters who have relocated, supposedly to Florida for six months plus one day so that they don't have to pay income tax in Vermont. Technically, they're still Vermonters, I guess, but they just want to declare residency to avoid taxes. Would you be willing to consider waiving any income tax on these people and allowing them to stay in Vermont instead of going south for the winter? You know, Mike, as you know, over the years I've been in favor of lower taxes and less burden on Vermonters, and I don't mind having the conversation, but I'm struggling a bit with folks, and I understand why they're doing it to avoid higher taxes, but I think it would impact Florida as well. I'm not sure how that works out and who keeps track in some respects, but people have choices. They can choose to stay here in Vermont and be Vermont residents. I'm happy to have the conversation, but I'm struggling with that a bit. I mean, as I understand the question, this would be like a one-year waiver. This is not a long-term thing. This would just be because of COVID-19, trying to keep the people here in Vermont in a safe state as opposed to sending them out of state to a red zone. That's all I think the reader is asking. I definitely understand the strategy, and I don't blame them for asking. Again, I think we all make decisions on where we live for different reasons, and I would think that living in Vermont as we've proven has been beneficial to many because we have lowest positivity rate, lowest number of cases. I think we'll find that people will want to come and stay in Vermont. I would ask the reader maybe to reflect on that, maybe become Vermont residents again. That way they can be safe year-round. We've always been one of the safest states in the union as well. Again, I don't mind having the conversation, but I am struggling with that one just a bit because it puts the burden on the rest of folks that have chosen to stay in Vermont, pay taxes in Vermont, live in Vermont, and so forth. Again, don't mind having the conversation with the legislature about this. Okay, and one follow-up. We've heard reports of university students being sent home for failing to follow the signed agreements or pledges. It appears there was a large party at Castelton over the weekend. Three people got stabbed. There were 50 to 75 people at this party, I guess. I'm wondering when Vermonters might be able to expect hearing weekly reports from the state from the number of students that do get sent home. I assume you'll be tracking that kind of information. Obviously universities do provide statistical reports on student discipline. I assume we're not looking for names, but will Vermonters be told if students are misbehaving and that 5, 10, 15, 20 kids are being sent home? A couple things. I'd be happy to look into that as well. I'm not sure if we're receiving data on a weekly basis, but I think the burden is on the universities and colleges to set the tone right off the bat. And those students that didn't adhere to guidelines in Castelton should suffer the consequences. They should be sent home, as far as I'm concerned. And so we'll see how they react, how the college reacts, how the university reacts. I know in my conversation with the president of Champlain, for instance, he was ready and willing and able to make those tough decisions right in the beginning because it's important to set that tone and because if you're going to make that a requirement then you have to follow through. Otherwise it's hollow and it's meaningless. So I'm hopeful. I know our folks and our staff have reached out to the Castelton today. And we hope that they will make an example of those who didn't adhere to the guidelines as well. As you know, we did, through executive order, allow municipalities to change the hours of operation of some of the local establishments as well as the gathering size. So I would wait and see whether Castelton follows through to make stricter guidelines enforceable at that point as well. So we'll see what happens. But again, if we receive the information, I think it's important to be transparent to get the information out there. So again, setting the tone so that everyone knows what's going on because if they don't, again, they might assume that nothing happens. And we want to make sure that when they break the rules that something does happen. Great. Who is following up? Is it Commissioner Sherling or who is dealing with Castelton on this? Commissioner Sherling was going to. I know that Secretary Smith wanted to, but I think Commissioner Sherling was the one to make the initial call. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Kat, WCAS? Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you very much,ает. Like I said, we have made a rural part of the state who is concerned about the fact that DMV offices are opening up in places like Montpelier, South Burlington, Rutland and the people in the northeast kingdom for instance, that's still an hour and a half, of them need help in transportation to get there. So as I had mentioned earlier, we're rolling out the new appointment system and we anticipate over the next couple of weeks to work out any bugs in that system to make adjustments, to ensure that our safety protocols for our employees and for the visitors at our locations are successful and then we will start rolling out and identifying the other locations. We have had to make small improvements at all of our branch offices throughout the state. We've had to make adjustments with furniture. We have to maintain social distancing of six feet for customers and for our employees. And so all of this takes time. We focused on Montpelier, South Burlington and Rutland because those are our branch offices that we have more direct customer contact at. So I understand the concerns of our citizens in our rural areas on the eastern side of the state and the northern part of the state. I want to work with you and ensure that we can help you do what transaction you need to online but otherwise right now during the transition, those are the locations open and we will be opening up other ones. I just don't have a definite date yet, Kat. Understood, got also a similar question but it was about where are we with passport renewal? It sounded like some people have had their checks cash but no passport has arrived and this was months ago that they sent them in. So that's something that DMV has a backlog on as well? I'm thankful we're not issuing passports. Our book of business is... Okay, sorry, but first it must mean something else then. Okay, good, thank you. They must be telling us. They also, they might be thinking of enhanced driver's license then. So enhanced driver's license, if you currently have an enhanced driver's license, you can renew that online. If you are going from a driver privilege, a real ID to an enhanced license, you will have to come into our office for us to be able to take care of that transaction. Got it, that's probably what they meant. Thank you. You're welcome. Erin, BT Digger? Asked of the status of data collection was on cases at the college level. This week at Lake Sumerial, you know, K-12 schools reopened. What can we expect in terms of what the partner health and the agency of education will release for parents to be able to see cases in their districts, test for their districts, and other things like that, that they might not know, you know, the decision about their child? I'm going to, well, first of all, from my standpoint, I think we need to be as transparent as possible to lower the amount of anxiety that some might have in some of the rumor that might be working its way through social media. So I think it's incumbent upon us to be as transparent as possible to relieve that. But I'm going to ask Secretary of French and Commissioner Levine to comment further. Yeah, thank you for the question. It's something we're working on. As the governor mentioned, we're sort of launching that conversation in the direction of trying to be as transparent as possible because that information is very critical, not only to parents, but also to local decision makers. The flip side of that is we have to be cautious about student privacy. It's perhaps a little higher standard than the medical information that's covered under HIPAA. We even education we have what's called FERPA. But I think we'll be able to strike that down as sort of something we're still working on. Would FERPA limit the amount of things you can say as out of case, or would it limit your ability to occur on cases entirely? Like if there's two cases, you want to be able to afford it because it's too small? Yeah, it's a concern that it's a lens we have to apply to the decision making. I don't really want to comment on the hypothetical per se, but we have some very, very small schools in the state. And I would just want to make sure that we're addressing those privacy concerns before we establish a model. Dr. Aline had a few comments on this. Without being redundant about the previous two sets of comments, I just wanted to impress upon everyone the fact that let's assume there is a case in a school and it's been tested, it's a positive test. Dr. Kelso gave a little description a number of weeks ago about what the public health impacts of that might be. Whether it might be just isolating a teacher or a student or both. Whether it might be a small number of students, whether it might be a classroom, whether it might be an entire school. And there are some very specific guidelines we follow to be able to ascertain how detailed this needs to be. But what I would want people to be reassured by, and this is above and beyond any kind of reporting transparency that we're discussing, is public health will always do the right thing. So if the right thing is focusing only on one person in a building or one adult and one student in a building, that's what will happen. If on the other hand the contact tracing reveals that everyone in the class might be at risk or everyone in the school might be at risk, then that is what will happen. We will follow the appropriate protocol to make sure that everyone is taken care of. So though I know there's always a sense of anxiety if someone has tested positive, whether it be in a school, whether it be in a workplace, whether it be in a shopping mall, the reality is the number of people at risk can be very, very variable and very, very small or very large. So in this sense, if you will, no news is sometimes good news because if people in other classes have not been notified that they need to take certain actions or go into quarantine or what have you, that's because the public health investigation hasn't really shown that that would be a warranted action. So we know from very early in the pandemic before schools had closed, how much activity on social media, just somebody having a cold might have as an impact within a school. So we certainly wanna make sure that we do all the right things in terms of the reporting, but also we will always do the right things in terms of the advice and actions we take from a public health standpoint. Yeah, I'm notifying about specific outbreaks then which examples might be kind of like case-by-case cases. Will we be able to see like day to day how many cases there have been in total in schools, how many tests have been conducted in total in schools? Yeah, as the governor and secretary French just detailed, we're in ongoing discussions about just those kinds of details right now. So we'll be able to get back with you. John, the Chester Telegraph. Thank you, this is also a question for Dr. Levine, back in July, the state of Connecticut had 60 false positives using the Thermo Fisher PCR platform that Vermont State Lab uses, and last week in response to Connecticut's experience, the FDA issued a risk warning of the, quote, risk of inaccurate results, including both false and negatives and positives. The FDA's also outlined the software changes that could fix the problem, and on Friday you called Quidel's reference to this inappropriate. Could you say why that statement was inappropriate in light of the FDA warning? Can I follow up? Sure, so first of all, the two issues with the PCR test that you were talking about had to do with a procedure called vortexing, which was not something operative in our lab with the device we had at the time, and then an adjustment of a piece of software which we've had going the entire month of August. The reason I said that their comment was inappropriate was because while on the one hand, the FDA had said that their instrument was working well and that the results that came from that instrument seemed to be what they were, they had done no such work on the PCR. So to come out with a statement that it must have been the PCR that was wrong without actually going through the same kind of meticulous investigation, really doesn't bear scientific scrutiny. Just to follow up, two things. I think that the press release basically just referred to the risk, but also, we understand that the state lab took the actions recommended by Thermo Fisher in terms of the software fix. Has there been any efforts to look back or reconsider the results that were produced before that software fix? Yeah, so unfortunately due to the volume that the lab gets, there's not any storage of past samples. So would have been unable to retest all of the samples during the time period from months ago when that was under concern. So that would mean there's a possibility that there are false positives or false negatives out there around from the PCR test? That would be a possibility. That'd be a possibility with any of the testing platforms that are used for COVID-19, to be honest. Tim, Vermont Business Magazine. Hi, Gavin, first of all, that was a pretty gracious answer to Mike's snowbird question, but I think I might have had the $400 unemployment insurance a little off the run. So I want to clarify that. So you have to go to the legislature to get that extra $100 as I understand it. That's correct. And that will come out of the CARES Act money. That's correct. Okay. And in the FEMA release it said they were going to retroactively go back to August 1st. And the 20 million you have would only last about a month. Would that piece of it with the $100 that Vermont's going to add into it go back to August 1st or would it start? Yeah, no, yes. It would go back to August 1st as well. And I would just remind you and others that the FEMA money only lasts about three or four weeks as well. I mean, it's not, there's not a big pot of money there. And so that will run out, I believe, in about three to four weeks without further action by Congress and by the president and so forth. So we're following the same timeline. So once it's approved and it's all set to go, basically if people who UI and UI, et cetera, they would get that money and that would be done. And would it be one, you know, would it be one fell swoop with one pot of money or would it be doled out on a week-by-week basis? Yeah, that I don't know. You know, there's a lot of steps, even with the $300 at this point in time. There's a lot of restrictions and guidelines and so forth. And so it's not going to be as easy as it might seem, even get that money out. So that's going to be probably two to three weeks away, even now that we've received the go-ahead from the federal government and approval on our FEMA application. So it's going to take a little time to get through that as well. We'll see what happens with the legislature, whether they want to include an extra $100 with that or not. But I would assume that it might be done week to week, but we might be able to catch up. I just don't know because we can't use the same platform that we're utilizing today. Have I got that right, Commissioner Harrington? Let me just make sure I've got that right with Commissioner Harrington. For the most part, Governor, you're right on target. You know, we can, we'll use unemployment information, but we've got to process it in a very different way. We do have about, our initial obligation from FEMA was for three weeks, so that will get us through the initial three weeks of the program. It's likely, as you mentioned, there won't be much funding left after those three weeks, given the number of states that are also applying and being approved for this program. It really depends in terms of when we actually launch, but even just given the fact that we're already talking about going back in time, two or three weeks, we'll probably end up issuing different separate checks for each week of the benefit, but we may end up processing all of those at the same time, given just how far out most states are in this process already. So you are on to our contract. Thank you. I'm wondering, Michael, whether the people that have been getting the COVID relief UI, will they have to do anything different? I'm sure that's a question they're asking. Is it going to be a new process for that? It won't. It will, from the, the only difference that the claimant will see is that instead of, like with the federal pandemic unemployment compensation, the $600, it was actually on top of their UI benefit, so it was all combined into one check. Because this program is such a short-lived program, we didn't want to go through the full embedding of the program in our mainframe and various systems. So for the hope of getting the process quickly, they'll probably go out a separate check. So someone may receive both their regular unemployment or PUA check, and then they may receive a totally separate check for the $300. Okay. And the last thing, if the legislature were to say no governor, would people still get that $300 machine? Yes, they would. We're doing this separately. We didn't combine them, just because we didn't want to slow the process down, knowing that it might take a little time to work its way through the legislature. So we are going to move forward with the extra $300, as was included in the payment application, and then we're separately going after the extra additional $100, and then we'll deal with that separately. Okay, great. Thanks for the clarification. Thanks, Tim. Greg, the county courier. Hi, governor. I think my first of two follow-up questions are for Wanda, Commissioner Menoldi. In regards to the DMV reopening, we're hearing a number of reports of widespread, or at least a significant number of fraudulent permit-takers. People have been bragging that they took the test with their book, or they took their test with a parent. I'm wondering what the state is doing to ensure that public safety is a priority, and that these permit-takers are actually knowing the needed knowledge and not just working it out. And I guess the reason I ask of this, I know that the legislature requires that when they're doing voice votes that they have their camera on. I'm wondering if the state does anything with the DMV testing in order to ensure that it's just the test-taker and they're not looking for a book or something like that when they're doing their online testing. Yeah, well, let Commissioner Menoldi talk about that, but I just want to remind everyone that when you do receive your permit, at that point in time, you still have to drive with someone in the vehicle that is of age and has their driver's license as well, so it's incumbent upon everyone to do this safely, but there is someone in the vehicle with a permit. Thank you, Governor. You are absolutely correct and safety is the most important. This is the first time to be honest with you that I've heard that new drivers are having parents assist them or that they are, maybe even having someone else take the test for them and this is really unfortunate. We've worked really hard to create an online permitting system when we rolled out this system, it was designed based on the actual curriculum that is in the manual. We are transitioning to have it be more of a multiple choice test and individuals won't know exactly what questions they are getting. We cannot in this scenario be able to monitor if they are using the manual that goes with it, but to the governor's point, it is the proficiency comes when you're behind the wheel and when you're working with your driver educator and you are starting to transition to that learning opportunity. Yeah, I mean, certainly the proficiency comes behind the wheel, but as a state have required that test for a reason for public safety and I'm just wondering what's preventing the state from being able to implement something like that? So the permit testing is important and it is a credential you need to have to move into a driver education and to be on the road and safety is first. We had a demand, we needed to find a solution to help our youth get their drivers permits to bring that solution online while we were building and connecting with the multiple testing was to use the learning manual, which is already online before testing, students could go on and do a practice test and it's no different than practicing for your boating license and being able to become proficient in that. So that is the method we use. We are transitioning to the multiple testing and it's still important and that exam currently, if you come into an office, it is a multiple choice question now, so. Are you able to pull up on your database, maybe how many people, what percentage of people pass in 2019 versus what percentage of people passed in 2020 to see if this is a widespread issue or just a few people bragging here and there. I'm pretty confident that we would be able to get that information and look at it. I'd love to see it back. Moving on to the governor, just a quick follow-up on your budget last week and then I'll let you go. I know your administration worked really hard to ensure that there would be no tax increase to have this budget. I'm wondering how much of your budget relies on deferred maintenance with state buildings or other sizable infrastructure that could actually cost for monitors more money in the long run in order to make this budget sort of level funded, so to speak. Yeah, I know, I get your point. Obviously there have been certain types of operations that we've had to scale back on one of them. We talked about it in the first quarter budget. The legislature decided to reduce the amount of maintenance for highways in terms of, we had to reduce roadside mowing, for instance, to adhere to the lesser amount of maintenance money for that action. As far as state buildings are concerned, ongoing maintenance is done through the capital budget. It's borrowed money, so I wouldn't anticipate any of the major construction that would normally happen, would probably continue to happen. So I think we presented a budget that we can certainly live with that would impact for monitors in any significant way. Thank you, Governor. Thank you for your time and thank you, Commissioner, for your time. Going back to the permits for just a minute, Greg, we don't know whether we're going to be doing this on an ongoing basis after this is over. We're gonna learn a lot of things that we've done throughout the last five or six months and maybe we'll continue to provide that. Maybe we'll enhance that and learn from some of what we've done, take the best of what we've done and do it in the future. But I'm not sure that this is one of them. And as you might recall, there was an outcry from many who wanted to get their permits and there was a backlog. And so this was the best thing we could do with what we were dealing with. We still have a number of these transactions for new vehicles and private sale vehicles that we want to work on. But we'll see what happens in the future with the online permit system. We could improve it and technology's changing all the time, so maybe we'll learn something and maybe we'll be able to do it better. Certainly, Governor, and we appreciate that. I think I was actually one of the members of the media to bring that up in April, that there were concerns about people not being able to get their tests. So certainly didn't mean to imply that you guys weren't working hard at it, just that maybe wondering if you had seen some of the same issues that we've been hearing. So again, thank you. Yeah, thanks for bringing it to our attention. Ed, Newport Daily Express. Yeah, this evening I'm calling to a school board meeting and on the agenda they have 10 people applied for leave of absence. These are positions that'll be difficult to recover and replace. Mr. President, can you perhaps show us what is going on on a state-like basis and are there any particular fields that we're lacking in like nursing that could end up being a serious issue considering a current pandemic? Yeah, we don't really have a sense of that statewide at the moment, as you mentioned, you're going to a school board meeting tonight. I expect those same conversations are playing out around the state as we speak as districts have finalized their plans and they're now working with their staff to determine their availability. I have talked with a superintendent in North Country School a bit about his reopening plans. I know it's still fairly dynamic, but he also feels fairly confident that they're heading in a good direction. So I think it's a little, I know it sounds early or it doesn't sound early enough, but I think these conversations aren't going very much as we speak right now and we'll know more here in the coming weeks. We have had a conversation. Okay, are there any particular fields where we are severely lacking? Well, I was just going to add the issue of school nurses in particular has come up in the last couple of weeks and we are working with the Department of Health to reach out to private nurses that might be available to augment our school staff. But in terms of other specific licensure areas, I'm unaware at this moment as I mentioned where the trends are still emerging. Okay, thank you. Andrew, Caledonia record. Yeah, good afternoon. This is for Secretary French. Is the school by school reopening plan data that AOE is collected available online at this point or can it be shared out? Yes, we have the data available and I think the governor mentioned it was used as a basis for some visualization or a map in a Vermont bigger story. We're certainly happy to share that with you. It is still fairly dynamic. We are updating that on a weekly basis, but happy to share that. And if you would, I'd like to know from you on sort of a more wide-looking perspective, what are your biggest concerns for the K through 12 reopening process at this point? Are there things you view as potential vulnerable spots that could make or break successful reopening? Well, I think, divide that sort of into two concerns. One is certainly, watching very closely, I think all of us are what's happening with the college reopening. So we want to ensure that the state maintains its high degree of suppression of the virus because our planning is really based on that assumption. But as the previous caller brought up the issue staffing, reopening schools is based on a series of very, very fragile logistics, if you will. So trying to attend and work closely with the superintendents to ensure they have what they need to reopen schools successfully, whether that be bus drivers, food service personnel, teachers, you name it. So it's a very compressed timeframe, but we're very attending to a lot of logistics involved at this moment. And when would you expect if some of those issues become turning points for individual schools or for districts that large, when would you start to hear about some of that bubbling up? I think going into next week, as we approach the eighth, we'll start to hear those specific concerns. And once again, I think in Vermont, one of the nice things about our system is we have a very sort of flat chain of command, if you will. So I talk on a daily basis with superintendents and we have a weekly statewide call. So we'll be very aware of those issues as they emerge. Okay. And if I may follow up on the discussion earlier about transparency and the reporting out of cases within schools or districts, as you pointed out with Rotland City, there are a lot of schools that are adopting plans that call for parents and families to revisit what mode their students might be participating in throughout the school year. How can schools and parents feel comfortable making a decision if they won't necessarily know whether or not cases have occurred within school? No, that's a good point. I think that's sort of one of the guiding reasons why we're interested in the transparency piece, because it is an essential element for informed decision making, whether it be an apparent level or at the state level. We just need to balance that with the privacy concerns, but I'm hopeful that we'll be able to strike that balance in a way that's useful to everyone. Thank you. Steve, any KTV? Can you hear me? We can. Great, thanks. One for Dr. Levine and one for Ms. Minnelli, if I may. Dr. Levine, countries like South Korea and New Zealand have been held up as like sterling examples of the way to do this thing right. And lately, I guess they've seen outbreaks again in both countries. And absent a vaccine or a vaccine that would work long term, is it possible that this thing could just circle the globe over and over like the 1918 flu for a couple or three years? Again, from my perspective, without a vaccine, I'm not sure that you can stop it. It does keep spreading without us taking action. So Dr. Levine? Without trying to paint the worst case scenario, let's just analyze the two countries you mentioned. So New Zealand pretty much thought they had totally eradicated the virus, suppressed it, it was not gonna be a factor. I think they're attributing some of their spike in cases to be travel related. But again, we live in a very global society which makes it very, very challenging. But still, as a small nation with a cohesive national strategy, they're able to take what other countries would have felt was a disaster and quickly get a handle on it even though they don't feel as comfortable as they did previously. Korea is a very good example because they're attributing their entire recent issues to a large church where I guess the analogy would be they were non-believers and all of the things that we preach every day regarding how to continue our lives, reopen our society in the context of being in the midst of a pandemic. And the unfortunate part of that is it didn't just impact the church, it's impacted the entire largest city in South Korea. So they have a major problem on their hands. So they're gonna go through now another cycle of having to suppress the virus and go to more mitigation strategies that you wouldn't have wanted to have to go through first but things have kind of gotten out of control. So it's always why we talk here about the fact that when we actually don't let our guard down and we try to maintain all of the guidance that we provide every day in our state in a very consistent fashion, that's the way you get your level of virus suppressed to the point where you can continue to try to open up your lives again and do things. Hoping that the containment strategies we use when cases arise will control those and contain those so that we all benefit. So this happened to Germany as well, it's happening now in Spain. So you're right, there is a cycle it seems. But look at our country now, our country's actually improving. So the number of states that are reporting decreases in cases are the majority of cases, well the majority of states right now as opposed to just a month ago or so where everybody saw that there was a real problem here. So our country can also go through those peaks and valleys if you will. And hopefully maintain some consistency as we come out of this latest surge that affected mostly the South and the West that's possibly affecting the Midwest to a greater degree right now. We'll see how that plays out. Okay, thank you. Ms. Minoli, as we all know, one of the things that seems to beat the dickens out of our roadways is overweight trucks. Do we still have the on the spot overweight truck inspection team going? Yes, we do. During the beginning of the pandemic, we actually moved to a lower tier of those services and we were not out as much or doing safety checks along the highways. But the commercial vehicle team is in full operation and we are out there working with the trucking industry every day. Are they, is the team say as large as it was 10 years ago has it been diminished in any way in the past five or 10 years? We don't seem to see them that much up here. I don't have the statistics in front of me for a comparison from what our staffing is today to what the staffing was 10 years ago. I do know that I am currently down one position. I see. Okay, well, that's great. Maybe we can keep our roads in better shape as we see them falling apart frequently. So thank you all, thank you all very much. Steve, just to give a counterpoint there, I would say if you ask all the logging operations up in the Northeast Kingdom, if they thought that the DMV enforcement was diminished in any way, I would say, they would say no. Yeah, well, there's two sides to every coin. I guess three of you got the edge. All right, thanks Steve. Thank you. Courtney, Local 22. Hi, I'm just a quick session for Secretary French going off some of the previous ones. You and the governor both mentioned that schools are already kind of in their reopening plan and troubleshooting things. Just wondering if there's been any kind of major common issues or anything that's already had to be changed in regards to their plans without the students being there yet? No, I can't say I've seen folks making adjustments to their plans, certainly as a couple of weeks ago we produced a revision to the health guidance and that seems to be settling in just fine. We are, I think right now in the last two weeks focused keenly on logistics of reopening and as part of our PPE distribution and so forth. We just want to make sure everyone has that they need to have a successful reopening. So thanks for being so far. Yeah, so far so good, I would think. Thank you. Liam, VPR. Hi, I was wondering as we're at this point now where college students are beginning to return to campuses and I'm wondering what the state threshold is for when they would intervene and tell a college that they would need to shut down in-person learning based on the number of cases of COVID-19 on campus. I'll let Dr. Lean try and answer that one. Yeah, Liam, thank you for that question. It's one we've been asked a number of times and it's very hard to apply one specific metric again to an individual college or university. All of them have been told in their guidance that they need to reserve bed space, if you will, living space for 5% of their student body. Should they have a number of people who need isolation for quarantine so that those can be appropriately housed and the school could still go on? A number of comments from some of them indicate to them that if they got to that 5% level, they would think they had a serious problem going on and might be thinking of other plans at that point in time. But nonetheless, we are continuing to monitor all of the metrics we provide here every Friday because that will be a good indicator in some ways. And some of those are, if you will, leading indicators like the numbers of new cases and the percent of new cases and the percent positivity rate. Others of those are lagging indicators but we would have enough to go on, I believe, with those to make some good decisions. Clearly, from our college point of view, it all depends also on who's being impacted. We're assuming that the students are the primary ones being impacted but think about the staff, think about the faculty. Just as Secretary French has been talking with schools, you need a certain number of those to just have operations and offer the educational experience that you've promised to offer. So I'm sure that would go into another set of considerations that schools themselves would make. I mean, I think that's one of the things that may be causing some unease is there is a little bit of that. It's not a hard and fast and clearly it's an evolving situation but I know in Burlington and that area with thousands of people returning, there's a lot of concern about this issue. And I mean, do you, I guess, do you have any sort of, any more hard or specific details on if X number of students are to test positive upon return or do you kind of have to wait and see how it unfolds a little bit? Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both because as we've said, we do expect students to test positive upon return but small numbers of students, predominantly students coming from hotter zones in the country where they may not be symptomatic when they leave home, they may not even be symptomatic when they get here but they may test positive. What we've seen thus far from all of the early testing that all of the schools have done and from some of the before leaving home testing that a couple of the campuses have used so far is that those numbers are very, very small like in the single digits of numbers. So we're not even seeing from that standpoint in terms of being able to just assess people as they come in, we're not seeing any large number of cases whatsoever. And then of course when you consider how many of our schools have predominantly Vermont students in them and there's a number, they presumably look like the rest of the Vermont population so their percent positivity rate on surveillance testing is gonna be very, very small as well. So that's why I think we need to see how things play out because I don't think that initial set of testing is gonna give us information that would make us hesitate. It will be all in what happens after schools actually begin and classes have begun and students are all here together. So it's gonna be, in some ways, what are you looking at then? What are you gonna be looking for in two or three weeks? Yeah, just like what we did when we looked at protests, just like what we did when we looked at holiday weekends. We follow our percent positivity rate and our numbers of new cases very closely and graph them out and look at the curve and come to some conclusions about that what we call the R naught, that infectivity factor, how infectious this virus is, how many people are being infected by being in contact with one person who's test positive. All of that will happen, as you point out, weeks after we get everybody together in the same setting. Thank you. Eric, the time is our guess. Yeah, given the issues that colleges are already facing with off-campus parties and things like that, is it a question of when and not if there's gonna be an outbreak attributed to one of these parties? You know, that's a difficult to answer. Obviously, we're putting more people at risk when they don't follow the guidelines and not wearing masks and socially distancing. They're gathering in huge numbers in small confined spaces. That's problematic. And so that's why we're working with the colleges to make sure that they put the guidelines or restrictions in place and then they follow through. So we can, it's still preventable from my standpoint, but I would not be surprised if we don't see some small number of outbreaks and then we will react accordingly at that point. But it really is incumbent upon the colleges and universities to make sure their students are following the procedures that are in place to keep everyone safe. Is it reasonable to expect 18, 19, 20-year-olds to follow these rules and these guidelines and not act like college kids given that we have things like youthful offender laws that take into account that their brains aren't really developed yet? Yeah, I think it's reasonable, but it's going to be difficult. And that's why the colleges and universities have such a huge burden on them to make sure that they take appropriate action when they see that they're in fractions of their restrictions and guidelines. So to act swiftly is important. To provide an example for others is important. So if there is a restriction that's in place that's been ignored, then I think the college or university has to take swift action to send the message to the rest of the population that they are going to, there isn't going to be any forgiveness of that and that they will follow the rules or they'll go home. I think it's as simple as that. All right. Guide H. The Virginia commissioner of health last week said when the COVID vaccine becomes available, he plans to make vaccination mandatory, even though his governor's office has now walked that comment back a bit. Commissioner Levine, can you tell us if you will recommend mandatory vaccination when the vaccine is available and is still wide or why not? And governor, you said you lean heavily on the commissioner's recommendation. What are your thoughts about making a COVID-19 vaccination mandatory? Yeah. Well, maybe I'll give my thoughts first and let the doctor react accordingly. If we could magically go back about six months, and I was to tell you that if we had a safe and effective vaccine that would prevent the destruction of the world economy and that we could prevent 180,000 deaths in the U.S. or prevent 33,000 deaths in neighboring New York, I would bet that most people would say, give me some of that. If it's safe and effective and it would prevent this devastation, prevent this enormous loss of life and livelihood here in the U.S. and in our region in particular. So from my standpoint, when I see that, I lean heavily on trying to make sure if there is something that's safe and effective and is widespread and we could get that out, that we would do so. But the details do matter and there are some exceptions that will have to be made, no doubt. But from my standpoint, the more people that would take the vaccine, the better off we'll be in the future because as we said before, this doesn't magically disappear. It's going to take some action, it's a vaccine to stop this from reoccurring year after year after year. So I think we're well on our way to seeing a number of vaccines produced. It really depends on how effective and how safe they are. So it's going to take a lot of trials. In the meantime, mitigation to suppress this is our only answer. So that's why we've taken the steps we've taken in Vermont. That's why we'll continue to do them and put them into place while we can to mitigate and suppress the virus so that we can get back to some sort of normalcy. But it's still dangerous. This virus is still dangerous. Dr. Levine? So are you saying mandatory but with exceptions? I'm saying that I want to make sure the details matter and I can't say at this point whether I'd make something mandatory that we haven't even seen or proven or know what the risks are associated with it. So it would be dangerous for me to say that. But again, if we know something safe and effective, I would hope that we put into place a way for most people to have the vaccine with some restrictions, no restrictions for medical and so forth. So I know that that's important and we have to be realistic. But at the same time, this is about our livelihood. This is about the loss of life. As again, we've seen in the US 180,000 deaths so far and we're not, it's not ending today. So I would guess it's gonna go well beyond 200,000 before this is over, even if there is a vaccine. Okay, thank you. Commissioner? Good afternoon, guy. Hi. I do know the commissioner from Virginia and I have a lot of respect for him. He and I and every other state health official are eagerly and anxiously looking at all of the information that's coming out regarding vaccine and what progress they're making. And I have to say the progress has been an astounding case, but not yet ready for real time yet. The prime considerations, if we were to make something mandatory, would be first of all, what the outcomes would be like if we did not do that. How many more deaths would our society, our state tolerate? How much more illness? Is there a chronic part of illness that we'll have yet to learn about that we could prevent by immunizing people, et cetera? And we already know how contagious this is and how infectious the virus it is and how much care we have to use to try to prevent contracting it ourselves. Remind everybody, we don't have an FDA approved vaccine yet. We don't know it's effectiveness. We don't know it's safety profile. All of that would have to be taken into consideration for sure. What do you mean by safety profile? Pardon me? What do you mean by a safety profile? Yeah, so I can tolerate any vaccine giving some discomfort at the site when you inject the vaccine or even perhaps a low-grade fever as a result of getting the vaccine. But what about the more serious side effects that other vaccines have had in the past? They usually occur very rarely, thank God, but at the same time, you wanna have a handle on that from the start. So that means the trials have to have had enough people enrolled in them so that any beneficial effect will be evident, but also hopefully there'd be a sense of any adverse effects that would be evident too. So again, you have to really take everything into consideration, but I'm with the governor that this is a serious enough illness and it's not just because it's impacting the economy and our ability to do everything we used to do and the way we used to do it. It's affecting people's health. It's affecting people's lives and so we have to balance all of that together. So can't give you the definitive answer just yet, but stay tuned. Thank you. Well, that's it and we'll see you back on Friday for the modeling and hope you have a safe couple of days. Thank you.