 good morning everyone. Before I get to the topic of the day I want to provide an update on our work on the pandemic unemployment assistance or PUA program. Last week the Department of Labor and the Agency of Digital Services stood up this brand new system to provide unemployment assistance to the self-employed independent contractors and others who aren't traditionally covered under unemployment insurance. As of this morning 9,500 claimants are in the system. Of those 8,500 are eligible and have submitted a total of 39,000 weekly claims so far. I admit that that's complicated in some respects but it's based on the fact that they're able to file for back weeks in their claims. So a one person may be able to file for four or five claims depending on how many weeks it's been. The first round of direct deposit payments totaling $24 million are going out today. As most of us know this is much needed money getting in the hands of Vermonters. For those who opted to receive their check by paper those payments will be scheduled for next week to be cut. So you should receive those Tuesday or Wednesday. I know far too many have waited weeks to receive benefits and I hope that this provides some relief for them. But I also know we still have a lot more work to do to get benefits into the hands of all eligible Vermonters and we won't stop until that's done. So with that, we'll go on to today's topic. As you know, my team and I have been working on strategies to help restart Vermont's economy and get people more people back to work. But the same time it's important we do the following. Protect those at the greatest risk from COVID-19. Continue to slow the spread of this virus and quickly respond to outbreaks as they happen. To do this, we've set five principles to guide our work. And today we're here to talk about plans on their principle number three, which is to increase testing and tracing. This goal is incredibly important to restart our economy. Because as we ease those restrictions, more testing and tracing will help us quickly identify and isolate outbreaks. If you think of this whole pandemic as a forest fire, testing will allow us to spot those embers early. And contact tracing allows us to surround it in order to contain it. Through hard work and creativity, we've done a pretty good job here in Vermont testing on our testing capacity, even as other states have struggled. And we also have strong contact tracing as well. But we must build on this model by increasing everything we're doing and adding new technology as well. Doing so will help make sure that if we slowly ease restrictions, we're able to identify cases and prevent the spread of this virus. Our goal is to ramp up so we can conduct up to 1000 tests per day, about 7000 per week, which is more than double what we've been doing over the last several weeks. With this goal in mind, I've established a testing and tracing task force, which will help roll out this program with support by new technology and then deploy it across the state. I'm pleased to say steps to increase testing have already begun and a plan is in place to phase its growth over the next several weeks. Simultaneously, ramping up our testing while tracing and connecting with the contacts of those testing positive will allow us to continue opening the economic spicket and make sure we don't lose ground on the progress we've made thus far. The enhanced testing and tracing will also give us more information on where we may need to focus more of our resources and will help us better understand infection rates. From day one, the team has taken a data driven scientific approach to our decision making and will continue to do so in order to do all we can to make sure the health and safety of all our monitors are protected. Dr. Levine and Dr. Kelso will share more about our strategy in a minute, but it will be a measured approach. And just like our restart restart strategy, it will not be a flip of the switch. My team has developed a phased approach in order to maintain the supply chain we need, which is so important. That means we'll continue to stock pile materials so we're prepared for any future outbreaks. I know there are some who may want us to turn on this increased testing overnight. But by taking this approach, we can give our public health workers the room they need to make adjustments along the way. So we don't ramp up too fast too soon. It's also important to remember that no matter what amount of testing we do, it won't completely eliminate the risk. In fact, an increase in testing and tracing will only help in our restore restart efforts if we also continue to separate ourselves, wash our hands, disinfect things so we touch and wear a mask. It's literally still in our hands. And individually, we can help control this. In many respects, it's really up to each and every one of us to make this work. I know this has been incredibly challenging for all of us. But thanks to the hard work and sacrifices of our monitors, we're seeing a decrease in the spread of the virus. As I've said before, we cannot declare victory yet. The work must continue to help keep our families, friends and neighbors safe. But if we continue to rise to this challenge, I'm hopeful we can open up the economy in the near future, get Vermonters back to work and begin enjoying all the state has to offer by slowly lifting these restrictions. We have done and will continue to do this together. And I could not be more thankful and more proud to be a Vermonter. So at this point, I'll turn it over to Dr. Levine for an update to talk about the testing in particular. Dr. Levine. Thank you, Governor. Some weeks ago now, we set a goal to increase testing. I want to be clear, we're talking about testing now of the nasal and oral secretions that indicate an active infection of COVID-19. We're not talking about antibody testing or serology testing that we've covered in previous press conferences recently. The work of the task force now will be to oversee our next big push to expand testing even further. Over the next few weeks, we'll work to ramp up our testing capabilities to, as you just heard, 1000 tests a day, 7000 a week. That's about triple the average number of tests that we've been conducting over the last several weeks. Ever since the start of this pandemic, as a state, we've worked aggressively to ensure the testing supplies needed to maintain stable and consistent access for testing sites across the state. It's important to remember that having ample testing supplies hasn't always been the case. In the early days of the pandemic, we were literally 48 hours range of running out of test supplies altogether. But since that time, we've worked very diligently and continuously to grow our stock of in-state supplies, to forge relationships with private labs to help speed processing of tests. Now not a day goes by that we do not report out all of our laboratory capabilities and capacities. We've been laser focused on this. As a result, we've been able to offer testing to more and more Vermonters over time. Governor Scott has instructed that we continue the work to stock these materials, not only so we can take on greatly expanded testing, but also to make sure we are adequately prepared in the event of a second wave of illness, which is a very smart move. The Vermont Department of Health Laboratory has literally been working nonstop for two months, and I want to publicly recognize and thank this experienced and committed team for their Herculean efforts. And I also wish to thank the University of Vermont Medical Center for their work in triaging of laboratory tests and in acquiring the resources needed to produce collection and testing kits. And we'll continue to work alongside UVM Medical Center to help bolster that production. This has been a fantastic partnership in a true team effort. And we're grateful for their continued strong support of our testing program. Our ability to keep acquiring these additional supplies while working with community partners to produce in state tests will be key to our success in expanding testing and contact tracing. As a state, we've shown our collective strength, innovative spirit, resource fullness and creativity throughout this pandemic. And this must continue as we move forward. The task force will evaluate the testing capabilities of our state and out of state labs to determine the optimal use of the multiple labs currently serving Vermont. We believe it may be possible to identify ways to increase testing capacity while freeing up resources and personnel to take on the other work critical to our ongoing efforts to limit the spread of illness and restart Vermont. Will everyone be able to get tested for COVID? Our team has identified several key groups that we will make testing available to in the coming weeks. It's imperative that as we ramp up our testing and contact tracing capacity, we carefully identify and address any gaps in this plan. The task force and consultation with other departments, agencies and community partners will manage any concerns and needs that arise. And with this, we must be thoughtful on how we deploy our resources and our public health workers. Throughout this pandemic, we've worked hard to expand our testing guidelines beyond the federal recommendations, as long as we were operating in line with science and the data. We simply cannot roll out expanded testing without being very intentional in our planning to take into account which populations would benefit most. Throughout the planning process, we've sought to focus on vulnerable groups to be strategic evidence based and science driven to try to improve on lengthy quarantines for asymptomatic people, to strive to suppress outbreaks wherever they might arise, and of course, to be supportive of restart Vermont efforts. So we will first focus on the residents of long term care and other group living settings. That's important because here in Vermont, a very large percentage of the people who have tested positive for the virus and who are at highest risk for severe consequences have been in these settings. They clearly fit the definition of being highly vulnerable. These are the people who are most at risk of needing hospitalization, stretching our health care resources when we're trying to restart Vermont. It's critical for the health and safety of these populations that we act to limit spread of illness in these settings as quickly as possible. As a reminder, we currently provide testing for even the most mildly symptomatic patients and recently to the entire population of pediatric patients, as well as testing of all residents and all staff in group living settings where there has been a single positive test. These include nursing homes, assisted living facilities, prisons, and certain high density residential buildings that house vulnerable populations. Now starting immediately, we'll expand testing at these facilities. For sites with COVID positive patients, we will add day three, seven day and 10 day and 14 day retesting of all residents and staff to prevent community wide outbreaks. And for all sites COVID positive or not, we will provide testing at intake discharge and for certain residents who require regular care outside of the facility. Further, we will offer testing to healthcare personnel who may have been exposed to COVID positive patients, but are themselves without symptoms. We will also offer testing to healthcare personnel who may be needed to aid the healthcare system's restart efforts. Expanding testing to this essential workforce will not only ensure that we keep our healthcare heroes safe, healthy, and ready to respond as they're needed, it will also be a critical tool in protecting Vermonters who count on these healthcare workers for their care. And finally, we now provide immediate testing at any correctional facility where there has been a positive test. If an inmate or a staff is symptomatic or identified as someone who may have been in contact with a COVID positive individual, they will immediately be tested. If that inmate or staff test positive, everyone in the facility will immediately be tested. As part of our enhanced testing in this first phase of expanded testing, we will test all correction staff over the next two weeks. During the next phase, we will focus further testing on healthcare and home health workers who have had direct interaction with a COVID positive individual. While these workers certainly take every precaution to protect themselves while caring for Vermonters, we must further support them and give them and their families peace of mind with readily available testing. And when the time is right, we will coordinate with healthcare and other providers to put in place testing to help us reopen these services to Vermont. As our testing continues to expand, we'll use the strategy to ease some of the restrictions Vermonters have had to endure over the last few months. We'll consider testing for those who are in 14-day quarantine because they may have been exposed to the virus. We will increase opportunities for childcare workers to be tested. This is also critical as we begin to ask childcare centers to reopen to provide the essential service that so many rely on. Increasing our testing to childcare workers on top of the other expanded testing opportunities I've just outlined means we are taking another significant step in protecting Vermonters all across the state. As the governor noted, these expansions will not happen all at once, but will be phased in over the next few weeks with health alert notifications forthcoming. Dr. Kelso comes next. We've talked a lot about contact tracing in these press conferences in the last week or two. And Dr. Kelso is available to talk with us now about our expansion in that arena. Thank you. This increased testing capacity is only useful if we have an equally robust tracing system in place. The Health Department has a contact tracing program currently in place that connects with COVID-19 positive individuals, provides them information on isolation and available resources if they need them, and gathers information on individuals they've come in contact with and then reaches out to those contacts to inform them of possible exposure to the virus. While we've been successful in tracing our current positive cases, we have and will continue to add resources and personnel needed to address any uptick in positive cases that we project may arise with more testing. And we'll use technology to help us. And we're doing expanded tracing to investigate the sources of positive by talking with cases not only about their recent contacts while they were contagious, but also before that period to help identify where they might have been exposed to COVID. We'll also make sure we continue to have adequate numbers of trained staff to perform tracing as we perform more testing. So we're prepared to trace up to 500 cases per week or even more if needed. For contacts currently, the tracing staff has been handling roughly 34 cases per week and we have enough trained Health Department staff to handle up to 500 a week. We know that with increased testing, we're likely to see a rise in positive cases. And as we restart Vermont and more people are at work, each case may have more close contact than our cases in the past several weeks of past. We'll be prepared to handle anywhere from 300 positive cases for this 7,000 tests per week, which is a higher positive rate than we've been experiencing during stay home, stay safe to an even higher scenario of 900 positive cases per week. And we'll use technology to help in these efforts using an app called Sarah Alert, a secure monitoring and reporting system for public health created by the MITRE Corporation, where our own former Health Department Commissioner Dr. Paul Jaros is the chief medical officer. This system, which other states are also using, allows us to offer to enroll cases and their trace contacts into the system to keep in touch and help with system management. If they're a case, they'll get a daily text, email or phone call, whichever they choose to check in on their symptoms and recovery. And if they're a contact of a case, they'll get a daily message to see whether they develop symptoms. This is not a location or proximity tracker. It's simply a system to help us monitor and collect more information on our cases and their contacts. It will help us ensure we're on top of every case and collecting the data we need to inform restart for months. Thank you. At this point, we'll open up for questions. All right, we'll start in the room with Calvin. The physical office last night presented a report basically forecasting next year. We're going to do, I think it's up to about $430 million of revenue next year. It's going to take a lot of force to fill that hole. What are you thinking in terms of right now what resources we'll have? Well again, I've been talking about this for a while over the last couple of weeks. We need to figure out what the magnitude of the problem is before we start spending money in any area and before we contemplate how we're going to fill those holes or what we're going to do without. So this is a good first step. I know Secretary Young is on the phone as well. She might be able to add to this. I think she was part of the discussion over the last couple of days. Secretary Young. Thank you, Governor. I'm not quite sure I heard the question about, is it about the revenues? It was about the joint fiscal committee had anticipated a $400 and something million deficit or hole in the budget for next year. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Governor. There's been some evolving numbers on a weekly basis from the legislative economist. And as of April 28th, the total down in the FY20s that he has predicted was about 309. And that was really a number that substantially less than what they were predicting earlier. So that's the 20 picture. And we're working with those numbers as they have all been waiting to see the final April numbers. As far as, is that answer your question? Yeah. Well, I guess if I just had a follow up too, so, you know, we'll have to explore new streams of revenue and potentially make cuts. What would the administration look at if we did have to cut Well, again, I think you have to look across the board. This is a huge issue that we're facing. Many states are facing. We're still not sure what the federal government's going to do at this point either. I've heard other governors and our congressional delegation talking about possibly the opportunity of having some relief there to fill some of these gaps, but we don't know that for sure. We have to plan for the worse. We're going to have to present. First of all, we have to take care of fiscal year 20, which is going to end at the end of June. So with all the projections coming in at this point in time, addressing that deficit comes first. And I know that we're talking with the legislature about how do we move forward? Are we going to do this in, you know, a three month increment? For instance, for fiscal year 21, which starts July one. So there are a number of different ways of addressing this. We're asking our cabinet to again look from within what is it that we, you know, what prioritize what our needs are, what we can do without. And we're just going to have to work at this together because there's no simple answer to this. This is going to be incredibly difficult. And this is compounded. It's not just the general fund. It's the education fund, you know, the transportation fund. All are going to see tremendous opportunities, tremendous holes. And then you take your municipal budgets as well. So it's everything coupled together as created again, a very vast deficit throughout the throughout the state. And that's why it's so important for us to try and get people back to work and trying to get the economy rolling again. So we'll be talking a little bit about that on on Friday, but all the things we're doing today, even the the tracing and and and testing is going to be important so that we can measure as we move along. How can we continue to to put people back to work without creating harm to others? Stuart. If I could follow up on that getting back to work thing. I'm just spoken repeatedly about coordinating with other governors. Yesterday Governor Mills outlined a four phase plan very specific starting Friday in Maine barbershops, hair salons, golf courses, hunting fishing state parks. I mean it was a very specific list starting in two days. Does that inform what you're willing to do here given the similarities across northern New England? Can you give us anything? Yeah, you know every every state is different. And I look at and I we've been in contact with Governor Mills and Governor Sununu and in fact Governor Baker this morning. Governor Baker is in a much different situation than others. He said this morning you're not going to see much opening up in our state for quite some time. Governor Mills is different. You know in in terms of they have a you think about their shared borders. They have a shared border with Canada which is closed right now. So that's protected. They have a the other border with the Atlantic which is fairly well protected. Their other is with New Hampshire and very little in the southern part of the state which is where they they will see see the most issue. They're also and I don't know all the details of their plan. But but I believe she's talking about and I don't we're not sure constitutionally whether this is this is even doable. But I think she's restricted most of this to residents only not to anyone coming into the state. So how do you protect that. You know what happens when somebody comes in. If you open up your golf courses you open up your state parks you open up your beaches and you just and you say it's just for your residents. How are you going to what are you going to do when somebody comes across the line and goes to your beach and they're from Massachusetts or they're from New Hampshire they're from Vermont. Are they going to be cited. I just don't know enough of the details. So you can see there's all kinds of ramifications. We've taken a different path here from the very beginning. We've been more restrictive and in our our tracing and testing program has been much more vibrant than others. If you look we've been you know in the top 10 since the almost the beginning in terms of testing and with this provision we're outlining today. This will shoot us up I would believe into the top five but we think this is a strategy that works and if we can if we can prove this out we can start opening up the economy that that makes sense for us while protecting Vermonters by continuing to trace and track. So this is just the way we're doing things. Again we're we're contributing all the above as well but our focus really is on the major sectors and how do we get those back going. If I could follow up you didn't mention that we have zero new positive tests today. Yeah I don't remember when that's been through. Yeah no that's great news but one one day doesn't create a trend and we have to look at the trend lines to see where we're going but this is great news again for us and it gives me a little bit of support and comfort in some of the measures we'll talk about on on Friday but as I've said we're going to keep watching the the data and the science and make our decisions based on that not on not on public pressure and I the public pressure is immense and I know it was for Governor Mills I know it is for other governors throughout the country but from my standpoint I you know I'll take the pressure but what I can't take is looking into the eyes of a family member who's been harmed in some way or lost due to the action that we took. On the labor side Governor we've gotten a few correspondents from folks who were on the waiting list they got their 1200 bucks but they were found to not be eligible for the other unemployment stuff and they're wondering do they have to return that money or if they don't have to return that money do they is that some sort of income that they have to report on their income tax they are they're kind of confused. Yeah I don't know the specifics of that maybe I would refer to Commissioner Harrington if he's on the line but I'm not sure is that see there is some confusion as well because some people are probably getting notices that they don't they aren't able to take advantage of the traditional unemployment so they've been turned down for that but they may qualify for the PUA which is this new program that Congress created so there may be confusion there but I'm just not sure Commissioner Harrington Sure thank you Governor certainly as you mentioned every case is unique in terms of whether someone is eligible for traditional UI or pandemic unemployment assistance and so in these cases if someone may have been found to be not monetarily eligible for traditional UI but would be eligible under pandemic unemployment assistance so if if they are are determined to be eligible for one or the other program there is a mechanism for recapturing that $600 times two that was sent out in the check you know I think we'll handle the unique cases where someone may not be eligible for both however I think those will be in a much smaller category those who are not monetarily eligible for traditional UI but are potentially eligible for PUA you know there are still a couple outliers there groups of people that we are working to put into the essentially transition over into the PUA system so they may also be hearing from the department you know in a matter of a day or so as to the status and next steps For the callers I just want to let you know there are 20 callers with questions on the line so please keep that in mind when you when you're asking your questions Wilson Ring AP Hi as always thank you Stuart preempted me by asking about the no new cases that was going to be one of my two questions but I also noticed that there hasn't been I mean it's kind of a follow-up I have two questions there seems there hasn't been a fatality for a week which would seem to be another piece of good news my second and broader question is the testing system that you're working to roll out over the next several weeks is that something you developed here in Vermont among yourselves or is this something you work with other epidemiology professionals to do or did you get any guidance from the federal government to do it or it basically is it all in the house and that's my question I'm going to let Dr. Levine answer that I would have to say probably all of the above but I'll let Dr. Levine answer and please don't let me take away the fact that you feel really good about the statistic that just came out but I will piggyback on the governor's comment a day does not make a trend and we're in this for the long ball and we really have to watch trends watch data on a daily basis watch for the projected resurgence of disease and everything we've outlined today is to help us get through those future periods with regard to the development of the testing it's really it's really been as I mentioned very strategic there isn't tremendous amount of federal guidance and the approach one takes the guidance is more increase your numbers that's been the focus from a national standpoint many, many parts of the country have not even been able to test all of those who are symptomatic forget about the asymptomatic and other vulnerable groups they haven't even had the capacity to test the symptomatic we've been blessed by being able to do that all along and we want to continue to maintain that capacity but we do want to be very, very strategic and by being strategic I mean really looking at groups that would benefit the most from having this additional testing on board and help us with all of these future efforts in terms of reducing an impact on the healthcare system improving our ability to sequentially and in a phased way restart for want and deal with all of the kinds of harsh policies that we've had to be living under that people are tiring of but at the same time been very cooperative with and wanting to have us ease up on so this is all really done from a very evidence and science-based standpoint not tremendous amount of guidance from the outside in terms of the federal government certainly the CDC we're always in communication with and they're a good sounding board if you will for some of the things we come up with and this was really within the health sector of state government but also across sectors in state government in our ability to really work as a team and be strategic is that an answer to your question? It does thank you very much as always two things I'd like to add as well when we talk about trends and it is good news that we just had zero positives as of today but that doesn't create a trend nor does if we and my prediction is as we open up the economy if we have more people going to work as we again ease up on some of these restrictions I believe we're going to see more positive cases so that doesn't create a trend either and what we need to do is manage that level and that's why we're doing this tracing and testing and becoming so heavily involved and taking a more proactive approach because we want to make sure that we control that so I predict that we'll see more but that's something that we have to consider as we open up this bit a little bit more as well Stuart I didn't finish my thoughts on the border issues in Maine and so forth you know we're in a different position than Maine because we're just depending on where you are in Vermont we're just 100 miles or less away from the epicenter right now which is in the Massachusetts area Boston area they're still going through this they've had 400 deaths over 400 deaths over the last four days as well New York isn't done I mean they had I believe over 1200 deaths over the last three or four days as well so right within reach of us is a problem area and we may have zero positives today but it only takes that one ember to get across into Vermont that would explode it explode the numbers and increase our numbers dramatically so that's what we have to pay attention to just because of our proximity Hi Governor my question is about the agricultural community with milk prices drastically declining I'm wondering what your administration is doing to support farmers and in the ag community in Vermont and specifically what would you say to those who are relying on agriculture for their livelihood it's not like farmers can just stop milking and you know go on unemployment yeah I'm very concerned about agriculture and I know that there was some news out of of congress in terms of assistance and aid for them of late but that's not going to solve the problem again like other sectors take our state colleges agriculture was in a bit of trouble before this pandemic and this has not helped them at all I'm very concerned about the farmers themselves I'm concerned about our food supply we need to protect that it is on our list I know Secretary Tempitz has been talking with us about some type of program that might provide relief and something we should consider again it's in the list of things that we're where we need to to provide assistance but we don't again know the magnitude of the problem at this point and where the money the resources would come from so I don't want to over promise but we're not ignoring this and they're too valuable to us they're part of our tradition in culture and we want to do everything we can to protect them because they protect us one of our basic needs is is our food supply and as we've seen across the country with other meat packing plants and so forth they are essential to us in numerous ways so again my message would be hang in there we're going to do everything we can to support them but this is a very trying time for them you say they're on the list are they high on the list what what comes before them on the list yeah everything is on the list I don't think there's a priority in terms of the the number of demands that we have in all sectors and and trying to again contemplate what resources are available to help making sure we get them to those who already have them available and and then find out what is it we can do with the some of the resources we have available at this point in time so I would not I would not prioritize this list in any respect they're all important to us and we're we're doing everything we can to help everyone thanks governor yes hi thanks for taking my call this is this is a question for either Dr. Levine or Dr. Kelso I saw an estimate this week from NPR that put the need for contact tracers at about 30 for every 100,000 people in the state which would mean that we would need probably more than 180 here in Vermont I'm wondering if you folks are planning to ramp up the number of contact tracers we have and if so where you expect them to be coming from yes I'm happy to take that one thanks for the question we know that contact tracing does take a ton of work we currently have 53 staff on our team who have been trained and doing this work for weeks now they're well on top of the burden of the illness that we've been seeing but as the governor and the commissioner have said we do expect that to increase we have a plan to ramp up 40 or 50 additional staff to the contact tracing team if necessary and based on our calculations of each staff person managing two new cases and all of their contact every day we think we're prepared with that number for the worst case scenario should we see that okay and just a quick follow-up you mentioned that we're going to an electronic system the SARA alert did you say something a little bit more about that and how this is being done to also protect the sort of privacy and confidentiality of Vermonters I can say a little bit more about this system and then turn it over to our ADS colleagues who can speak to the security um the system what we've been doing is reaching out to every case doing an interview to find out who they were around while they were potentially infectious so that we could then do contact tracing on them and for cases also providing information about how they need to stay in isolation until their symptoms have resolved and they can get back out of isolation and then with the contacts we've been providing them information on what they need to do to quarantine for what period of time and again if they need resources where they can reach out and what they should do if they develop symptoms during their quarantine what this SARA alert system will enable us to do is be in daily contact with contacts and with cases to be more on top of them on a daily basis and getting information as their situations may evolve and then I'll turn it over to ADS for the more technology questions All right thank you Dr. Kelso this is Kristin McClure I'm the Chief State Officer so regarding data security and privacy this will be maintained through encrypting data at rest as well as in transit and it'll also be maintained through role-based access control because certain roles will only have certain access to specific data that they need to perform that function Okay thank you very much Pat WCAS? You talk a lot here about turning the economics bigot I know many people are wondering though when we can turn the social bigot because staring at a screen to talk with someone on Zoom or Skype is not the same as seeing them in person However on Monday I believe I wrote down a quote from Dr. Levine that said social distancing is here to stay So my question is when can people have what they would consider normal gatherings again you know things like having friends over for barbecues as the weather gets nicer or their kid's friends over for play dates is that going to be after May 15th or should people expect that they can't get together with others in person for the whole summer? Yeah again I think what we're going to do is rely on the data again and seeing where the trending is occurring putting people back to work right now is our primary effort and seeing what happens is a result of that but we are fully aware and sensitive to the fact that we need to socially integrate more we need to get to see our family get to see our friends and so forth we want to put everyone back together as quick as possible but again our primary focus at least for this week is to try and get more people back to work and then next week we'll take a look again seeing what the trends are doing what the trajectory looks like and then make determinations based on that and as you mentioned the 15th is when the stay home stay order officially ends but we'll be contemplating what to do next and how that would interact but we want to ease restrictions just as quick as we can but it has to be safe in order to do so A follow up to that then is it going to be difficult to continue to get buy in from people when they don't have a sense of when it will be over well again I think we've been fairly measured I think I've been having these press conferences three times a week trying to provide information from our cabinet and others experts and so forth to try and be transparent about what we're doing what we're seeing and how we're doing and for those who are watching again we want to do this as quickly as we can as safely as we can without doing harm to others and so we'll continue to do that obviously I'm concerned about people complying with the measures as we put people back to work it's up to them I would say I mean I'm going to put it back on individuals as well if you're not complying if you're going back to work and if you're in those settings where you're not wearing a mask and you're not socially distancing you're only hurting the cause and that's going to result in increased numbers and that would preclude us from getting back to some sort of normal so it's in all of our hands I talk about this a lot making sure that we're wearing a mask when we're out socially distancing to stay apart separated from each other as well as just disinfecting and keeping things clean and being aware of what you're doing so if you do all that we'll get back to normal much quicker than if you defy everything that we're providing for guidance last follow-up on this particular idea so there's this idea that has come up several times at these press conferences about there being a 10 person limit on gathering can you clarify who that rule is intended for and how it fits in with a stay home stay safe order well again that was something that we came to the conclusion late we had started at whatever it was 150 then down to 10 based on federal guidance and so we have maintained that so we're just trying to again guide people into making sure that we don't exceed that whether it's at the greenhouses that we've opened back up or any gatherings that we've opened back up that you don't exceed the limit of 10 it's just a rule of thumb so to speak so I'm not sure at this point what more I can tell you about that I guess the clarifying question is this is that that is directed then at businesses and not at individuals who are in their own home well at this point yes that's right it's it's more for those situations where people can gather whether it's whether it's in business settings or whether it's in any of the the guidance that we provided where we've opened up different sectors just trying to to prevent people from gathering more than 10 by Newport Daily Express yes thank you good morning I've been getting some words this week that some of them on it could return to work if they had daycare and I'm just wondering and they are there wondering what can be done to help those individuals if you're going to allow daycares to open and if they can't if they can't return to work do they potentially have will they lose their jobs and can they continue on unemployment yeah let me just say broadly that this is on our radar screen again as we open up businesses and open up jobs and open up the economy we know this is a factor that might prevent someone from going back to work and I do believe there's an exemption in the unemployment rules that would allow people to continue to to qualify for unemployment benefits if they didn't have child care but I'll let Commissioner Harrington answer that yes a great question and very timely so the department is and does have information on its website regarding what we're calling refusal to return to work in those cases where an employer has offered an employee the ability to come back to work at their normal pay in their normal hour there are a couple of exemptions to that one being if the person is sick person themselves is sick or isolated if there is unreasonable or undue risk of exposure within the place of employment if they're caring for a family member who is sick or isolated or if they're caring for a child who's out of school or does not have child care and so under those exemptions they could continue to collect unemployment insurance benefits however if one of those exemptions does not apply and they are being offered full-time work at their regular rate of pay or their or at least the number of hours that is what they left the workplace with then there there is an obligation on the claimants to have to accept that work and go back to work and if they refuse to go back to work they're jeopardizing their eligibility for benefits another condition is if the employer can't return to work for what we just spoke about for example a lot of child care again the employer consider that consider that a five they a five they quit from their job I'm sorry great question it is the question that is before our legal counsel in terms of whether that could be considered a quit and again I think you know we're we're constantly pushing towards education voluntary compliance and trying to be as understanding both on the claimant but also the employer side as much as possible that there are people who are in these positions again this is an at will state so they could choose to terminate that person not sure they could consider it a quit but again that may mean that because they terminated this person we'd have to look into the legality of being having that have an impact on their experience rating or not okay thank you I have a second quick question if I may we've heard some about a second round of this that might be coming up towards the fall and winter we're looking at another round of complete closure or is there too early to tell yeah I think it's way too early to tell I know that Dr. Fauci I've heard it on the national level I'm going to let Dr. Levine answer this as well but we've seen that there is a concern about the second wave coming but we don't know that to be the fact at this point but we have to prepare for that at the same time which is why we're taking some of the steps we're taking I think we'll be if there's a second round comes we'll be much more prepared for it than we were before there's so many advances in testing and antibodies and so forth that are coming about each and every day hopefully we'll be in a position where we can deal with this much more effectively that we don't have the shutdown so we've had before but we don't know at this point in time and again everything we're doing today is to prevent that from happening in the fall Dr. Levine yes thank you most of the public health community believes there will be some kind of resurgence again that doesn't mean what we've just been through as a state and as a country it could be a far reduced level it's a nice question to ask today as we unveil our new testing strategy because that's the one place where the state nor the country was poised for action as we entered this COVID-19 epidemic or pandemic and I don't have to go through the stories regarding why that was true in terms of the supply issues as a country and the approach now that we have that approach we have the capacity we will have a little stockpile as well we will be able to enter a period of resurgence if that's what we're destined for and I'm not making that a guarantee we'll be able to enter that period of resurgence with a containment strategy already in effect the country missed the opportunity for containment and had to go straight to social distancing and all of these non-pharmaceutical interventions that we are now living with doesn't mean that those wouldn't need to come back at a more modest level but at the same time we have the opportunity to contain the virus now and I didn't say it as specifically and I'll say it now many of the populations that we've been talking about testing some of whom we've tested to some degree already are essentially asymptomatic populations so you're actually finding people who in a pre-symptomatic state could be capable of infecting others and you're finding them very early on doing containment with them and with those that you contact trace so the opportunity for that curve to go as high as we have projected for the initial experience with the virus is much more limited and hampered and dampened down if you will and the opportunity for that curve to come close to exceeding the capacity of the healthcare system to deal with it is much more dampened as well so all of this is a way of saying that if it does come it will probably be less severe than the first go around and we will be poised to do a lot more containment there are some public health I'll call them experts in the country who do see these mitigation strategies like social distancing as something that gets turned on and then turned off turned on turned off periodically over periods of time knowing that this won't be the last time we see COVID-19 it's still a novel virus for the human race so it remains to be seen if some of those predictions would be true or not true it's really hard to guess on that count because again starting with containment you've already got a much more strong fighting chance to deal with things and hopefully don't need to bring in as many of the other strategies that we've all been seeing evolve over the last one or two months thank you All right Patricia Bennington-Banner Hello can you hear me? I can I'm wondering if this might be a question for Dr. Livine or the Governor depending on who I'm wondering how confident are you that the state has the essential supplies for this increased testing I seem probably pretty confident because you guys plan to roll this out and how did this increased testing capacity come about I would imagine it's probably too early for it to have come from the increased testing funding provided in the bill that was signed into law last week so I'm wondering yeah how do you get this testing capacity and how confident are you in it Yeah well I'm confident because Dr. Livine and Dr. Kelso have said that that we have the supplies necessary to do this so I rely on the experts for that and I'll let Dr. Livine answer the rest It gives me an opportunity to do my testing from A to Z course in one minute or less so to do optimal testing is a very complicated process actually the reason we've been able to get to this point is through resourcefulness frankly and creativity and working multiple supply chains working with multiple federal partners and private partners but to do testing first of all the person has to be involved with the healthcare system and have a test order provided that order needs to include a location and we certainly have locations throughout the state and we've shown our capability to pop up locations when needed in times of need at that location one needs personnel who can obtain the test from the patient depending on the type of test you're obtaining you may need a sophisticated level of PPE you need a collection swab something to stick in the nose or in the mouth or depending on which test you're using you then need to put that swab in something think of it as like a test tube or a little container that has some kind of media that the virus can live in so that when you eventually do your laboratory test the virus is transported in a way that it's viable still and we can detect it you need to transport that media to wherever the testing location is under the right circumstances which may require some temperature regulation may require some sophisticated materials to package it in then gets to a laboratory first it gets to our triage center at the University of Vermont and then it gets to the laboratory it's going to be evaluated in there you need what's called an extraction kit because this is a nucleic acid based assay and we want to get the RNA type of nucleic acid out of the sample then you need to have a PCR step which is the step that actually detects the virus as COVID-19 and not some other type of virus based on its RNA genetic code so you need that set of reagents and chemicals as well so it's a very sophisticated process requires really a supply chain across a whole host of areas and we're very confident that we not only have that supply in the hand now and we have some element of a stockpile but that we'll be able to get more but we are always challenged by this and it sort of goes if you've been burned once you're always conscious of something and as a country we were in such a tentative place six weeks ago or seven weeks ago that we don't want to be burned again so we've been looking not just at a platform of testing but multiple platforms of testing at our public health lab at our UVM lab at the commercial labs that we send out of state they're actually all on very different kinds of analyzers and we are you know very heterogeneous in our approach to make sure that no one pathway gets shut down and the whole operation suffers likewise on the collection side we have capacity within our labs at public health and at UVM to produce all of what we need there but we have to have our eye on that ball all the time and in just six weeks seven weeks this whole technology is changing as we speak so right now we are hoping to use nasal swabs which are a little more patient-friendly and comfortable but it turns out right now you can't use them for people who have no symptoms so we have to use the other types of swabs but there's talk about using saliva there's talk about testing that can be done you know on the scene and point of care versus in a laboratory and different kinds of technology that may require less materials than what we've been using now and certainly less PPE to protect the health care worker than we're using now depending again on how the samples are obtained so we just watch that with great interest and are on top of it all the time so that as innovations occur we can take advantage of them and hopefully reduce that complexity that I just illustrated for you all thank you doctor 30 number and some of these people have had the issue some of them have not but even the people who have had it resolved form of identification so it's not that the state doesn't recognize it it's that the system did not recognize it so these were individuals who may have applied for general or traditional UI and may not have been put into the PUA system yet it could also be that they had filed a claim and when they went into the if you will for traditional UI that either their claim had an issue on it in which case the portal would not have their claim because it's been held up many of those have been resolved or it could be that they had already filed for a week and so they didn't have any current weeks to file for and therefore the system would not have them an open file an open week for them to file so their their social security number may not have been in the portal to recognize them so there's a whole host of reasons it's not that the department didn't recognize their social security number in its entirety it's that whatever portion of the system they were going to did not have their social security number on file and that could be one because of an eligibility reason that could have been because of a technical reason it could be that you know it's part of the adjudication process or it could be that they're part of this group that will be moving over to the new system in the coming days and then their their social security numbers will actually populate and be found in the system so again it's not a social security number issue it's just the way the system is designed applying for the PUA this was prior to that these are people who were applying for a traditional and I think their concern wasn't necessarily bothered by that but information about what the problem was and what they could do to deal with it which left them in some degree of anxiety I do want to point out that we have sent information to those people that we have email addresses for with regards to when they get the notice that their social security number is not found we also have that information on our website on the homepage you know so again we are when we hear of these situations and especially if we hear of a significant portion of the population with a reoccurring issue we are trying multiple methods to reach out to people to let them know that either it's a system issue that we're working to correct or that it is just part of the process and here's what they need to do as a follow-up so I do know that we have emailed claimants information about what to do when their social security number is not recognized we also have posted that information on our website thank you Hi my question is about lodging properties some of them do in fact seem to be taking reservations for before June 15th and some in one case on May 15th and I was wondering either maybe something has changed that I hadn't known about or is this is this allowed or are they supposed to wait till June 15th um our guidance had said June 15th if they were in the system before it wasn't as though we'd asked them to take them out but uh but we had asked them to stop taking reservations so I'm not I'm not clear as to what the issue is in this regard but um but our guidance has said the 15th of June so that means that they could in fact have guests who are coming and staying if they had made a reservation before to come on May 15th for example they could still come well again I'm not sure the specifics of that but uh anybody coming into the state if they're coming from out of state would have to quarantine for 14 days so if they had a reservation for 14 days I'm not sure whether they would be allowed to come or not under those conditions but most of our lodging properties are are closed at this point yeah okay um that leads me to my other question which is that a few weeks ago I know that the Department of Public Safety was was starting to go and talk to businesses that were open when they shouldn't be and I was just wondering has there been any enforcement action taken against any business in Vermont for being open in violation of the executive order I'm going to ask if uh Commissioner Sherling might be on the line I know the Attorney General had talked about citations and so forth but uh Commissioner Sherling we're not aware of any direct enforcement action that's been taken by the Attorney General there are a number of reports that have been referred over there for review and again the hope was that a renewed educational effort reinforced by the ag's team would would solve the problems so and and uh bottom line is maybe a contact maybe calling the Attorney General might get your answer yeah um okay that's it for me thank you Mike Newport Daily Express yes hi good afternoon thank you very much uh I'm going to veer off topic just for a quick moment I have two quick questions um the first uh Governor can you speak to uh Jeb Spalding's upcoming uh resignation this evening yeah um you know I I can't say that I'm surprised by the action but I would uh I would also offer that uh that Jeb has done a uh had a long history of public service uh in fact he was a Washington County Senator before I was I took his seat after he decided not to run and then he became treasurer uh was well respected did a lot of great work in that regard and became uh Chancellor after uh stint with the Schumann administration um I've always had a great relationship with him great deal of respect for him and uh and I know his heart is in the right place he uh had taken on this issue with the state colleges this was not of his doing he had come to me a number of times saying that we have a problem and that's why I included funding in my budgets over the last three to four years for just that reason because he convinced me that we did indeed have a problem so um I uh it's unfortunate we're in the position we're in this was not again his doing this uh and this was uh pre uh COVID-19 where they were struggling and uh COVID-19 unfortunately was the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak so uh other colleges universities throughout the country are facing this very same issue I think we're going to see a sea change throughout the country in terms of higher education and and what it means in the future so and we'll see others falling as well so we'll um we'll see what happens but again I want to make sure that I don't believe that Jebs Walding was the blame for this I think that he did all he could he was a huge supporter of the Vermont state college system and any of the events that I attended well he was uh a chancellor and he was always uh um rising the occasion to try and elevate the state college system and do all he could to protect it my second question goes back to the topic at hand uh COVID-19 I was reviewing some footage last night of uh what our current administration at the federal level has been doing uh during this and this is a direct quote from the president of the united states when governors call me they say thank you you are the greatest president that's ever lived end quote I'm wondering a and I I know take this with a grand salt have you heard of any governors saying this or b why would the president say something like this I can't answer either one of those questions I would say that there are a number of governors throughout the country who are very big supporters of the president many who aren't and I don't know why why he would say that the chester telegraph hi thank you this is a question for dr levine in the past you've spoken about antiviral therapeutics and it would seem that those would be would make reopening the economy that much easier can you speak to how these are developed and what the outlook is for having them become available sure so there are a number of antiviral drugs that are actually already in use and on the market one that has been showing I will put the word slight in front of it slight promise is called remdesivir again these are being used for the sickest of the sick people in intensive care quite generally in hospitals but the whole field of antiviral therapeutics goes beyond specific drugs it also goes through strategies if you will for treating people generally again we're talking about those who are the very ill and not people on the mild end of the spectrum so one press conference a while back I got a question about chrome positioning whether the person beyond a ventilator or not on a ventilator an early use of oxygen and this is still actively being studied but prone positioning has been a portion of intensive care for quite a while often with patients who have what we call acute respiratory distress syndrome ARDS and it's being used in this virus because often that is a final common pathway as ARDS related to the virus there's also trials that are ongoing regarding the donation of people's plasma people who have had the infection and now want to try to do some good donating plasma that could be used to help quiet down the infection and people who again very ill these are being done in clinical trial settings so it's not just the first thing people jumped doing to treat somebody who's ill with COVID but it's clearly as part of a clinical investigation and another important strategy I don't have I don't want to give false hope to any particular pathway except to say that all of this is being done like everything with COVID on a very compressed timeframe and we're hoping to see some results of trials these kinds of trials and these kinds of novel therapeutics I'll call them are going to be tested a lot faster than a vaccine and if they prove useful to certainly go in front of the public a lot quicker than a vaccine may you've also heard probably about other older drugs that have been talked about a lot in the national news like hydroxychloroquine azithromycin these are again drugs that do not have a prominent role right now they're being studied again in this setting people are being cautioned about using them and stockpiling them because at the kind of dose levels that would be used in a state where you're already ill from COVID they can have some very unanticipated and adverse effects that would not be helpful so I'm here just to deliver the news not to give you any false promises or hopes about anything but it's very active area study and we have hopes for that it is about schools and if we're like if they're planning to reopen in the fall and what that would look like what plans are being made if they come back will deaths be six feet apart will cafeterias be closed will they not have assemblies just wondering you know what's being talked about right now from the fall I'll let Secretary French answer that but I would also add that things will be vastly different I would imagine when and if that happens Secretary French yes good afternoon Governor yes it's a little early to address that we are working now on producing guidance for next week on end of this school year and end of year celebrations and graduations even in formulating that guidance we're largely relying on the public health information to make a projection on the next six weeks alone the next couple of months but you know it's too early to to address that but we will you know large large part of that will depend on how the virus tracks and our ability to manage it thank you it's Tim Vermont Business Magazine Governor you've talked a lot about what's happening in Boston in New York before that how much is that guiding the reopening of Vermont more than what's actually happening in Vermont at this point that I have a follow-up to yeah well a great deal in some respects because again as we open up our borders open up travel into Vermont this could have ramifications here and that's what you know my biggest fear is that we'll have a few of those embers come into the state and then erupt and we're not prepared for them and then we have a full-blown pandemic right in our own backyard so we're just watching this and again there on the and I'm in contact with Governor Baker on a regular basis it does appear that they're plateauing maybe falling plateauing maybe even seeing some relief reduced numbers so that's good news as we've seen in New York City numbers are starting to drop but but again I just want to emphasize that they're still seeing a number of deaths they're still seeing positive cases so this isn't over for them and they are literally in our backyard the follow-up Governor is do you have a go or no go date on things like Ann mentioned before the hospitality and the lodging institutions or even the colleges both of which bring in a lot of out-of-staters is there a time frame when you might say the colleges will be allowed to reopen I wouldn't say that there's a date at this point in time is that not a go no go date it's for us it really is about tracking this and making sure that we're making decisions based on the data we're seeing and and as we again open up that spickage just a little bit more and we put you know a thousand five thousand ten thousand people back to work we're watching to see what effect that will have on the number of positives and so forth and so that's why it's really important for us to track this as well as to do what we're doing today announcing more tracing more testing so that we can be proactive play a little bit of offense rather than just defense and and I think that's part of the answer and that's why we want to do everything we can to to do increase amounts of testing and tracing in order to open up more of the sectors that we can get back to some sort of normal in the future I was wondering if President Garamella or one of the other college presidents has said you know governor I need to know by a certain day to let the students know and the staff know if they can come back that was that was sort of the basic yeah I'm sure there are a lot of questions like that where whether it's the higher education or whether it's the summer camps or whether it's whatever where they need to know at a certain point in order to know or even events you know parades and so forth to know whether there's any opportunity any chance at all so there's the list is long on on those opportunities and we'll just make the decisions as we as we can I don't want to give anybody false hope but I do want to give people some hope that we are doing the right things and then we're seeing the benefits of that and that that will lead to opening up the economy and a much faster rate thank you Dr. Levine others which is about 70 more than the average in previous months other states have reported that March deaths were also beyond their normal total do you think the increase could be partly attributable to unreported COVID-19 deaths given given this number of COVID-19 deaths in March was significantly less than 70 something more like the mid-30s yeah so that's going to take a lot more scrutiny and statistical analysis than would allow me to just give you an off-the-cuff answer right now but it is an area that I think has been in the national news especially in New York and California specifically and it's something that we need to consider we haven't seen based on information today at the level of the medical examiner huge increases in total deaths over the course of the whole time period that we might have expected to see if there were a lot of cases that we weren't aware were COVID but one of the parts of your question is are some of the deaths that might have been attributed to another cause actually a COVID-related death where the COVID infections stressed out the system in a way that it caused some other underlying disease to appear to be the cause of death but that might not have killed the person at that time if they didn't have COVID we're going to have to do a lot more investigation into that to really understand and give you the kind of answer that would be more data-driven and science-based than I can give you off the cuff here and can you talk a bit about what the process might look like for handling suspicious death the post-mortem testing that's representing counts yeah so there's a lot of actually post-mortem um COVID testing that's been done in the in the deaths that have occurred with a huge index of suspicion now that we're well into this pandemic question about before is a little harder to answer but certainly now it's always considered and I think often communities as well as families want to have some idea so when it's appropriate and it's not that there was an obvious cause of death that clearly wasn't COVID and a person who had no symptoms of COVID when it's not obvious the medical examiner has been quite liberal I would say and making sure that post-mortem COVID testing is performed off of the deaths in Vermont facilities and I'm wondering do you think that the administration might have acted more swiftly or done anything differently to I'll start if we turn the time clock back and go to like day one of when we knew we had a problem in Vermont and what needed to be done literally the first if not the very first certainly in the first slew of policies that came out of the administration and certainly that were recommended was to severely restrict visitation in facilities where the most vulnerable would reside so that was done so early in the game that I think we did very well in that regard I do agree with you that a proportion of the deaths that are related to those who resided in some nursing home facilities certainly is significant and that's a tragic outcome of this COVID epidemic however if I could make it a half cup full and not half cup empty proposition we have been very blessed by the fact that we have not seen statewide outbreaks of COVID in a whole host of either long-term care facilities assisted care facilities senior high rise departments etc most states when you start to really dig down they'll have perhaps one that's very severely affected and prominent in the news and then one by one they'll have other institutions that follow and sooner or later you find that there's a high proportion of the number of facilities in the state that have been impacted I'll knock on wood but I know that has not been what we have seen in Vermont at this time and some of the issues I unveiled in the discussion I had on the new testing policy are only meant to make that even less likely in the future I'll let the governor add to that if you'd like to or Secretary Smith I just the only thing I can do is reiterate what Dr. Levine said when we first started this one of the things and you get understand how how many lives we affected with this decision when we said no more visitation to these nursing homes in some of these long-term care facilities we really impacted people's lives when we did that and we did that to save lives and so we did that early on when we saw what was going on in Seattle we've also taken taken the proactive step if there is a positive or and we'll be talking about this later in terms of what we're doing with expanded testing well we've already talked about it what we're doing with expanded testing on those long-term care facilities in terms of our ability to look at them from three to seven 10 to multiple days that we'll be doing testing on this one of the things that we did in the veterans home you've been reading about in Massachusetts a tragic result of the veterans home in Massachusetts we were right on that case when we had an employee that was tested positive a month before and then told about it we came in and tested the whole facility so we've been very aggressive with long-term care facilities with that said we've had two places were tragically we have lost Vermonters in long-term care facilities but if you if you do what if you to reiterate what the doctor said if you look across the state and you look at other states and what what has happened in other states we've been blessed and and fortunate as we as we look at this and it is safe to say that as rehab opening steps occur that allowing visitation and nursing homes will be one of the last step yeah unfortunately I think that's going to be the case that's going to be one of the last steps so you know that is where we are that's where testing is focused that's where the most vulnerable are probably will be the last step count if I could just add there's no playbook on this and it's something that we learn from in every crisis every emergency everything we do we take whatever we learn from that event and try and do do better in the future and I'm sure that we'll learn a lot from this that we'll be able to utilize in the future as well after the 27 flood I'm sure we learned a lot there after Irene I know we learned a lot and we prevented some flooding in the future as a result it'll be no different here and you have to just go back to where we were in the beginning when we didn't have as much testing capability as we do today and and so we want to make sure that we learn from that and that's why we're doing all the things we're doing today is to bake a more proactive approach play offense and and trying to do whatever we can to make sure we we take those smoldering embers and we isolate them and put them out immediately please keep that in mind Avery WCAX this question is probably there for Governor Scott or Dr. Levine a reason for the shutdown was that we didn't overwhelm our hospital capacity and it appears that strategy now is have the virus not spread at all is that possible to do and are we prolonging the shutdown longer than we do I'm going to let Dr. Levine answer that but you may want to repeat the question could you repeat the question it was a little hard to hear I think I caught it I think the question was is our goal now to just eliminate spread altogether because previously it was set to be just to flatten it enough to not exceed hospital capacity right so we have so we have multiple goals now we could call the period we're in a period of low viral activity in the population because we're not having a lot of symptomatic people present for tests or have positive tests and the percentage of tests that are positive now is very very low so part of the strategy is to maintain what we'll call this period of suppression of virus another part of the strategy is though still to make sure that using the Ember analogy we make sure that any time virus is discovered we try to put it out and contain it and make sure that as few Vermonters get affected by it as possible and that that containment strategy continue on into the foreseeable future another part of the strategy obviously when you combine all of that is eventually going to impact the healthcare system and so hopefully the healthcare system will see far less severe manifestations of COVID and be open for business in other ways and not have to worry about its capacity being exceeded in the midst of a severe outbreak and then finally and I think this is a very important one we do want to keep this period of suppression going for a very very long time so those antiviral therapies we were talking about in a previous question won't even need to come into play but more importantly so that if a vaccine gets developed and it's effective and safe to use in the population we all have the opportunity to receive that vaccine without having gotten to the point where we were severely ill with COVID in the first place does that answer your question good afternoon Commissioner Levine so the first attempt by the health department at town by town numbers proved to be seriously flawed and positive tests were placed in wrong towns not only in Swanson St. Albans but we're starting to hear from other towns that don't believe zero to six category used by the state very town Georgia middle barrier among those doubting numbers and we've also heard from Vermonters throughout the state who say they're questioning whether they can now really believe earlier an ongoing COVID stats from the state so I'm wondering a couple people ask they're wondering why out of all the positive tests in Vermont it seems odd that not one single case involves an out of stator as the health department assigned them to a town where they were visiting or in the case of a employee like at the prison who lives out of state or they assigned to a town and you touched on this a little bit but public safety and first responders have told me recently they believe the COVID death numbers are off they note that a lot of people under medical care at a respite house have died were buried no autopsy aren't those going to be a little hard to check as you go back and try to reconfirm these numbers Mike this is Mike Smith let me just I've become the photographer here through no fall of my own but let me just talk about that we're taking another we're refining the map as you as you have alluded to there were some prisoners that were reported in Swan that's not the a proper town it should be St. Albans we're looking at other things we're also looking at how we can sort of refine the zero to six so that we can give people at least an indication of whether there's been case within a town so maybe if there isn't a zero where we may not be able to do that as in Essex County but we'll check that out because it's so small of a population but we'll check that out in terms of you know I'm going to defend the health department as vigorously as I possibly can in terms of their statistics they try as much as they possible to get things right we tried to get everything that I've seen from them has been absolutely on the money in terms of what I've seen for statistics and what I've seen for reporting out statistics this map was an ad hoc sort of of trying to respond to various requests that people were making in these press conferences we will get it right but it is a one-off adventure that we had not anticipated doing that we're starting to do now in terms of the deaths I'll let Dr. Levine talk about the deaths just the two other parts of your question that I could answer number one and out of state individual who tests positive for covid doesn't show up in a town they are an out of state case that state actually takes credit for that case the second part is if you died in a hospice you mentioned a respite house you're probably in the hospice because you have a very clearly defined and severe terminal illness that when you eventually die which probably is going to be in a matter of days or weeks from the time you arrived sometimes it's actually hours it's going to be clear to everyone that your terminal illness is what killed you however having said that just like a judgment is made about a person who has symptoms should they get a test or not a judgment is made by a healthcare professional about what goes on the death certificate and so the death certificate will clearly have the terminal illness on it but if there's a belief that there was actually another illness on top of that terminal illness that was the straw that broke the camel's back like a severe infection that will be listed as the cause of death in the setting of having these other chronic illnesses and perhaps terminal illness so that that would be again a healthcare professional's judgment at the time they record the death certificate you had mentioned that you do reach out to the hotspots and working with them and the Swanton Health Officer told the Islander on Monday that the health department never reported that it was a hotspot much less that they were number three in the state now granted the numbers have changed here in the last day or two but when I spoke to the town administrator and the police chief they also were miffed that they hadn't been told and if you had reached out Mike some of those flaws in the report been caught and who by name in the health department is responsible for reaching out to these individual towns or hotspots and where do the local health officers which are part of your network fit into this crisis so when you talk about hotspot are you talking about a facility or a town well I assume a town 6,000 when they end up number three on the state list might be considered a hotspot for right so so again the process through our epidemiologic infectious disease people is that every case that's recorded there would have an immediate contact would be told what to do for themselves in terms of getting the right health care and isolating themselves and would have contact tracing done at that time so all of that would actually occur no matter where they are in the state and when this occurred if the hotspot was actually a long-term care facility in St. Albans or Swanton or a correctional facility or what have you then obviously that would happen at a facility-wide level as well generally does not happen at the level of the entire community in terms of the kinds of statistical look you're you're trying to describe there by any means so 44 cases in Swanton show up you the health department does not feel it needs to reach out to that town of 6,000 and say wow you're number three in the state and you're right so so again I think you're mistaking the fact that the majority of those cases were probably part of the prison so all the appropriate steps were taken with regard to that population in that facility as opposed to that the town had a huge problem on its own that's how I'm interpreting what you're what you're saying well I'm just trying to understand that the town the town doesn't seem to get notified the city of Wellington didn't seem to get no I don't know if they were ever notified about their problems I'm just wondering does the town have any right to expect any information from the state of Vermont when some there's a major number in their community right that's all I'm asking no absolutely right and so when when the numbers are in facilities that are in these specific towns the town is quite aware of what's going on and are looped in completely all right and we still have five colors and it's almost one of them I guess you're if I can just follow missing the point I'm talking about outside the facility when Swanton or whoever has a large number and whether they're in the prison or not I'm talking about a large number in a community where do your local health officers fit in and your network getting to being told about this so you're mistaking the role of the local town health officer they have a very discreet specific job description and this is not generally part of it they're not part of our contact tracing workforce they're not part of our infectious disease epidemiology workforce that workforce is appropriately deployed and I would invite you to speak to the mayor of the town where the nursing facilities were affected who's been looped in on a number of occasions when those issues occur Mike we have to move on to the other collars no no that's fine thank you very much appreciate it thank you Andrew Caledonia record yeah either Mike raised the subject so I won't really ask a question on it other than just to offer the comment that the town by town map I know the northeast kingdom residents and readers we've heard from would love to see that map produced with with a little more detail seeing as every town in the kingdom is blank but with that said I'll go on to my question which was alluded to by secretary French earlier a number of our schools are trying to plan for graduations and you mentioned the end of school year guidance coming out can you just speak to what that guidance will cover and will it be definitive will be will will school boards be able to use that guidance and and begin to make their plans next week secretary yes I would hope yeah hi yes I would hope they find the information useful but I can't speak to what's in the guidance yet because we're still in the process of developing it but it should be out next week it will be out next week okay so I mean some of our schools are are making plans some are you know talking about a like a drive-in movie theater type of graduation others are postponing so if if basically they just wait until next week you know will that guidance be in place for the end of the school year can they assume that what is going to be released next week will be enough information for them to be able to develop their plans yeah and for families to anticipate going forward yeah that's the intention of the guidance and the timing of it all right thank you Joel Burlington Free Press Joel I no longer put it go ahead Joel yeah uh hi uh I would like to say something witty and and poignant about um how journalists are masters of brevity but the cat's got my tongue but Dr. Levine I have a question about the possibility and maybe the probability that um the state will see an increase in new cases due to the gradual opening up of the economy and the increase in testing and I was wondering for everyone's peace of mind if if there is such a thing anymore if um there has been any way to model or predict the extent to which we might see a rise in cases because I suspect that people are looking at the case Cali like a scoreboard and um might see it as a failure at any number of levels if if if the case number rises so yeah my question um in short not that short but is there any way to predict and even quantify what might be the increase thank you for those questions that was relatively short and I'm going to make my answers relatively short too first we are expecting that there will be some rise in cases just as a result of people being able to become more closely contacted with one another than perhaps they have been up to this point and work environments and what have you but the real underlying part of your question has to do with how often is COVID present in an asymptomatic person and the person is actually doing fine may not realize they're infected at all but they're walking around in society and have the infection but they've been blessed by not having a severe manifestation of it and then how often are people in that 48 hour period before they do come down with true symptoms where they are pre-symptomatic and infectious to others so you know based on some of the surveys that secretary smith talked about earlier where we were at the veteran's home and a few other selected facilities that were higher risk in vermont and how little we found we wonder how much asymptomatic infection is out there but by the same time we're not by same token we're not naive we know that asymptomatic infection does exist and that's just a matter of quantitating how much I hope that in the ensuing several weeks we can go back to talking about that other type of testing that we purposely avoided today the antibody testing which will again give us a little bit of a view of how many people have had contact with the virus but didn't even realize it and understand that so that's what we'll see the modeling part of your question we have not sort of said success we helped preserve the healthcare system we've limited the number of people with COVID and with that so we're done the modeling exercises are actually ongoing and they will continue they will have a little more uncertainty about them because of the fact that no one knows about when or if this second peak may arise but they will be the modeling studies to be most precise and that's why ours have become very precise are based on sufficient testing occurring in the population and a sufficient trend in the numbers of new cases on an ongoing basis to draw their information from and that's why when we got to where we got to in the last week or two we were getting more and more confident that we were not in the worst case scenario but we were in fact in the best case scenario as to how we dealt with this first episode of COVID in the community so hopefully that same kind of modeling can be done in as an informed way because our data will be very rigorous there'll be sufficient testing and it will be consistent over a time period where it can inform the model as well so there's no thank you doctor it sounds like there's no easy way any way to say well we anticipate a an x percent uptick or it's possible we'll see an x percent uptick no there's you're right there's no easy way but at least early on in these next weeks we'll get a much better sense of how much asymptomatic carriage of the virus is out there and I think that will in fact inform us significantly so maybe not today but over the next several weeks we could have a better predictive ability to tell you that kind of percent okay hey thank you very much good afternoon I'm wondering about what the plan is for expanding testing within the general population as you're basing in this expanded testing approach I think the general population is going to be included in some capacity but let Dr. Levine answer that there's so many of the groups that we've talked about some of them are indeed very specific and very vulnerable but many of them really do reflect the general population whether we're talking about healthcare workers in the healthcare workforce whether we're talking about people who are identified as a contact because they had contact with someone who was a case I think we're going to see a lot of more general population than we have and even in the testing we're doing now over these last number of weeks where the rate of positivity has become much lower I think that we have found that there are a lot of Vermonters who are by definition more mildly symptomatic and still haven't had COVID but they do represent the general population in terms of mild symptoms nothing that would put them in the ICU that night and then whether they turn positive or not they're reflective of the general population we're certainly not forbidding the general population to be tested with all of these targeted initiatives they are still part of the underlying strategy I guess I was just trying to get a better sense of as you're talking about expanding testing and more specifically to healthcare workers and nursing homes and whatnot just trying to get a sense of what the community's spread of the virus looks like outside of those facilities and congregate settings where disease transmission is more likely so just trying to wondering if this testing expansion is aimed also at giving you a better sense of what generally the virus spread looks like outside of those facilities and settings Yes, the answer is yes Okay, thank you I'm hoping to fit both of the remaining two callers in so please keep it brief Guy Page Scooter, the other paper can you hear me? Yes, this is Scooter McMillan with the other paper We've talked to someone who has seen a USPF United States Postal Service Delivery person taking packages into a senior living facility without a mask when they questioned the driver they said they were not required to wear masks or other PPE and I talked with the USPF official who confirmed that although they recommend that their drivers delivering packages should wear masks and gloves they cannot require it and he said that changing the contract would happen at the national level and take months maybe even a year to renegotiate however he did say that when local or state ordinances mandate the wearing of masks and gloves the drivers are required and do wear gloves or masks so my question for the governor is are you concerned about delivery people wearing masks particularly into senior living facilities or other places where residents are immunocompromised and do you have any concerns about and or any plan thoughts about an executive order requiring for USPF and other delivery drivers to wear masks yeah thanks for the question first of all yes I am concerned about anyone coming into one of those long-term care facilities without a mask and possibly harming anyone in the building so we'll take a look at that it's the first I've heard of that so we'll take that into consideration and maybe we'll talk with the long-term care facilities and see if there's another path forward or whether we can we should and we certainly can provide for that if need be but thanks for bringing it up we hadn't realized thank you all right thank you very much marathon session today we'll see you on Friday