 Good morning, everyone. I want to start by recognizing the importance of today's date. As you may know, June 19th has great historical significance, marking the release of the last enslaved Americans held under our nation's brutal slavery system. For being honest, most of us clearly haven't always reflected on the magnitude of the state in the same way we do other anniversaries in days of remembrance that are included in our calendar. And the fact is, this says a lot about how much more work we need to do to have a better understanding of implicit bias or systemic racism even means. And the inequality that still exists in America are the role that each of us plays in order to change it. After all, black history is American history. And we must never forget that our present day prosperity came at an ugly price. When each of us takes the time to consider the impact of the events of June 19th, 1865, not only on those men, women, and yes, even children, who were finally freed from slavery, but also on our progress as a nation, it's easy to realize that we should mark it with the same level of remembrance and celebration as we do any holiday that celebrates freedom and human rights. Like most Vermonters in elementary school, I was taught that President Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves on January 1st, 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation was enacted. It said, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people were of shall then be in rebellion against the United States. Shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free. For many of us, this is when we believe slavery ended. But in reality, it was far more complicated because dismantling the institution of slavery in every state following a deadly civil war wasn't achieved with a simple stroke of a pen. The Emancipation Proclamation was truly just the first step. The implementation of it took years. And frankly, we still haven't eliminated the legacy of that system and the racism that comes with it. On June 19th, 19 or 1865, nearly three months after Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox and years after Emancipation was first announced, freedom finally reached the most remote territories of the nation when Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas. For many slave owners, Texas offered refuge from states that were ravaged by war. By the time General Granger and the 2,000 Union soldiers with him delivered orders, informing residents that the Emancipation would be enforced in Texas, it's estimated that it freed 250,000 people. That's 250,000 human beings still held as property. Their freedom began to close the darkest, most grotesque chapter in our nation's history. Approximately from then on, many African-Americans have celebrated Juneteenth marking the end of slavery in our nation. As we consider what we're seeing across the country right now and the need to listen and learn about one another and better understand the way real legacy of racism in our country and institutions, I think it's fitting for us to celebrate this important event, to better reflect on what it means to African-Americans and for everyone who loves freedom and believes in the dignity of every life and the American promise of equal rights and justice for all without exception. To help us celebrate this holiday, I'm happy to have Representative Coach Christie, Chair of the Vermont Human Rights Commission here to offer a few words, as well as Susanna Davis, the state's Executive Director for Racial Equality with us as well. This opportunity is important because we know 155 years later that we still have to finish the work that was started. We need to look no further than the vandalism on State Street just last weekend to remind us that racism and discrimination are still far too prevalent in America today and in Vermont. And it's important because it's history that too many of us learned as adults. And we must not let the lessons of this history be overlooked or ignored. Understanding the experience and perspective of other Americans and recognizing that those experiences, in many cases, are vastly different and have not been equal or fair. Help us all become better neighbors, better citizens, and better human beings. This understanding will help ensure we act to extend equality and racism and discrimination and move us closer to that more perfect union. We all have a responsibility to create. So now I'd like to turn it over to Susanna Davis to talk about how we can keep advancing equity in the present day. And then we'll hear from Representative Christie about the history of Juneteenth and its lasting importance. Susanna. Gracias, Governor. Buenos dias, everyone. All right, here it is. I'm 31 years old. And the first time I heard about Juneteenth was five years ago. There, I said it. And I think that in some ways that makes me a lot like many other Vermonters, in the sense that we don't know it all. There's so much to know about the history of discrimination in the West, the legacy and the impact of slavery today. And that despite not knowing all the facts, all the dates, the history in its fullness and in its richness, we are still compelled and responsible to act to advance equity and to reduce the impacts of slavery and its impact. I was on a call recently, and a gentleman said, I'm a white man, and I want to be a good ally. But I know that this is not my moment. How can I help? And he couldn't have been more wrong about saying that this isn't his moment. This is very much his moment. It is the moment of all white people in America and in Vermont because it is your moment to act. It is perhaps more your moment than anyone else's because as people who wield outsized and often unearned power and privilege in our society, it's especially important and necessary that you be the ones to exercise that privilege in a way that makes things more equitable for everyone. And the question really for many people is how do I do that? Where do I begin? Well, you can begin with occasions like these, understanding what a Juneteenth means, understanding what Kwanzaa is, understanding what Cinco de Mayo, Ramadan, what all of these other observances are, and what they really mean to the cultures that are directly impacted by them. Not just understanding what the brief blurb on a web search can tell you, but really seeing the cultural significance. I once heard it said that white privilege is that your history is part of the core curriculum and that mine isn't elective. And I think for a lot of us, the remembrance of Juneteenth highlights the fact that certain histories in our nation have been suppressed or forgotten, either intentionally or unintentionally. One of the most important things that you all, that we all can do is to keep that history alive and to keep the lessons that it teaches us alive. Understand these holidays. Talk to your friends and neighbors from other demographic groups. I would say that a good step zero is first lower your guard and open your eyes. Understand that if you're told about your privilege, you don't have to be defensive about it. You don't have to be ashamed for not knowing that Juneteenth existed. I'm a person of color who was raised in this country, and I didn't know it existed until recently. It's not about the shame of not knowing. It's not about the hurt and the discomfort of that history. It's about what are we going to do with the knowledge today so that we don't repeat that history? It's important to listen and learn. The governor has said that numerous times. And then once you have listened and once you have learned, then you defer to the people who are impacted by this work, and then you act. And there are lots of ways to act, lots of ways to get involved. In fact, we recently published an Action and Allyship Guide on the state's website that you can use as a sort of primer to understand ways that you can begin to get involved in equity work. However you choose to participate, however you choose to act, know that you must do something. It is no longer enough just to be neutral and say that that's enough. So I'm very, very pleased, again, that the state has once again recognized Juneteenth. I encourage everyone to read more, not just about this observance, but about all of the related actions and events that took place on the long and extremely difficult road to freedom. Freedom that has yet to be fully, fully realized, but we are all on our way to help making that a reality. As the governor mentioned, we are very fortunate to have Representative Christie with us here today. He'll be joining us by video. So I'd like to pass it over to him. Coach? Thanks, Governor and Susanna. Governor Scott and my fellow homeowners, thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts on Juneteenth. As we commemorate the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth and recognizing our state and nation's continuing struggle for racial equality, it is with mixed emotions, celebration and sadness. One cannot ignore where we are as a country and state. Today, where some of our neighbors can no longer tolerate what they are watching on the news, sadly, the reasons vary from support for racial justice to support for white supremacy. Seeing the division of thought and understanding of systemic racism and its effect on all of us positively and negatively. So let's look back. There is more than one independence day in the US. On June 19th, 1865, General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and amongst the enslaved people were now free. Since then, June 19th has been celebrated as Juneteenth across the nation. Here's what you should know about the historic event and celebration. The June 19th announcement came more than 2 and 1 half years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. So technically, from the union's perspective, the 250,000 enslaved people in Texas were already free. But none of them were aware of it, and no one was in a rush to inform them. Most free people weren't terribly interested in staying with the people who had enslaved them, even if pay was involved. In fact, someone leaving before Granger had finished making his announcement. What followed became known as the scatter. When droves of former enslaved people left the state to find family members or more welcoming accommodation in northern regions, there is so much more as we study accurate history. It is easy to understand the midst of motion this June 10, 1920, some 155 years later. So as we celebrate, on one hand, let us remember, systemic racism exists as we see now is the time to reaffirm our commitment to the mitigation of systemic racism in Vermont. I know how difficult it is to understand how black and brown Romaners are feeling at this moment. So I ask you to think about a fellow black and brown Romaner and consider, when was the last time you were told go back to the jungle? That was what my daughter was told in the school here in Vermont. We still have a lot of work to do, and we need to do it together. Let's start now by committing to join together with your fellow black and brown Romaners to mitigate systemic racism in Vermont. Thank you and happy June 10. Thank you, coach. Thank you, Susanna, for being here in Vermont with us, as well as marking June 10 with us as well. So we're now going to provide our regular COVID update. First, Secretary Curley will provide an update on our latest turn of the spigot, which as I previewed earlier this week includes increasing the size of organized events. And then Commissioner Pichek will present our latest modeling and restart data. We know this virus is still among us, which is why we must keep some restrictions in place to avoid significant spread of COVID-19. And I know how devastating this has been for far too many businesses, especially those in the hospitality sector. Please know we're working every day to find ways to open you up further while limiting the spread of the virus. So now I'll ask Secretary Curley to provide some of these next steps. Thank you, Governor. As you've heard over the last weeks, our approach to reopening and restarting Vermont has been measured and methodical. Each turn has been a delicate balance between data and businesses ability to rethink how they operate to keep employees and customers safe. While we've been able to restart most sectors in the economy, the hospitality industry continues to be one of the hardest hit. Capacity limits and quarantine requirements are making it hard for them to reopen. And in many cases, restrictions do not allow them to operate in ways that make ends meet. We realize the incredible burden this sector has taken on, and we are working diligently to open things up as fast as we can. We hope Vermonters will venture out to support these businesses as they begin to open up. Our announcement today will not make the hospitality industry whole, but we hope it's another step in the return to profitability, allowing venues to plan for summer events as we head into this all important season to our tourism sector. In consultation, the Department of Health and the Department of Public Safety, we are announcing that effective June 26th, restaurants along with events, arts, and culture, and entertainment venues can go from 25% to 50% capacity, up to maximums of 75 customers or guests for inside operations and 150 people for outside operations. Let me be clear, this is the lesser of 50% approved fire safety occupancy for 75 people inside or 150 people outside. It's important that you remember that there should be 100 square feet between you and another guest, and to use an appropriate Vermont analogy, this is approximately the length of a cow. As I said, this is another step in the right direction, and when paired with weekly updates to the cross-state travel map, we hope a path to profitability will continue to emerge for our world-class hospitality industry. You can find the full guidance around these changes at accd.vermont.gov. As we approach the summer solstice this weekend, we know 4th of July celebrations are on people's minds, so we wanted to take a moment and provide an update toward guidance for drive-in events and operations. Town organized fireworks celebrations, if done as a drive-in event with people in their cars and properly distanced, can happen. We know towns like Killington and Fairfax have gotten creative to make these events possible, and we appreciate the work they've done to operate within our guidance and to keep public health at the forefront. With summer now upon us and virus data trends favorable, it is encouraging that we can continue to open our state back up. It's also inspiring to see Vermonters modifying the way they do things to stay connected with their communities. In continuing to be smart and safe in our daily interactions, we hope that this summer, while certainly differently than other summers before, we will still deliver those Vermont experiences that remind us why we all live, work, and play here in the Green Mountains. I will now turn it over to Commissioner Pichak. Thank you, Secretary Curley, and good morning, everybody. This week, our modeling presentation will first look at the most recent data from the Winooski Burlington Outbreak as well as two recent forecasts, both for Vermont and for the country as well. I'll then give an update on the four key reopening metrics that we've updated on every week, and then to provide some more context to these metrics and our warning flags and thresholds that we've established. I'll also compare Vermont's data with a state that has been in the news a lot recently, which is Arizona, which has seen a steady increase in cases of the last few weeks. Finally, I'll provide an update on our regional data from this past week and also update our regional travel map as well to discuss the new counties that are included in the number of counties that do not require a quarantine. As always, for those watching at home, you can find today's presentation on our department's website, dfr.vermont.gov, under our COVID-19 resource page. So over the last week, we did see 27 new confirmed cases in Vermont with at least nine of these new cases traced back to the Winooski Burlington outbreak. We will need more time to confirm, but it appears that we have settled back into a low level case count that we were experiencing prior to the outbreak. Accordingly, we can provide a forecast that shows over the next two weeks, we anticipate having a continued low level case count as we proceed, keeping in mind, however, that outbreaks can and will continue to happen and potentially can skew our data from week to week. For example, last week, our doubling rate went down to eight weeks, but this week it is back up to 32 weeks. So some of these metrics are a little bit more sensitive than others, but our reopening metrics that we'll highlight have been steady and trending positive throughout the outbreak and throughout the reopening process. I also want to highlight a national forecast that we've been provided from our partners at Columbia University that show the next two weeks across the country. The green bean areas where we'll likely see reduction in new cases, the gray bean areas that will be flat or low level of cases like in Vermont, and the red bean areas where we will see increases across the country. Again, we can see that the Northeast can expect to continue to see improvements over the next two weeks, basically across the board, while other parts of the country, including California, Florida, and the Southwest will expect to see cases to continue to trend up over this time period. This is particularly good news considering our travel tourism industry that our region continues to improve, and then it's likely to improve over the next two weeks as well, continuing not only to add new cases or new counties today, but likely to add new counties going forward that can travel to Vermont without a quarantine restriction. Turning now to our four reopening metrics where we continue to see good results across the board. First, regarding syndromic surveillance, which again is the measure of the percent visits for COVID-like symptoms to our emergency rooms and urgent care facilities. This continues to hold steady, bouncing between zero and 2%. Today it's at 0.84% of all visits to these facilities, which is well below our 4% guardrail. Regarding our viral growth rate, here we see the three in the seven day averages continue to decrease throughout the week. Again, a very positive trend and very different from our threshold of sustained viral growth over multiple days period. Our third data point is the percentage of new COVID-19 tests that have come back positive over the past week, and that figure again continues to trend down to below 1%. As of today, we actually have the lowest percent positivity rate in the country based on our calculations. So it shows how quickly that number has come back down once it appears we have the outbreak contained. Again, our guardrail here is 5%, as recommended by the World Health Organization. And as I said, we're well below that threshold. Our fourth and final metric is hospital and critical care availability. Vermont's ICU remains free of any patients with COVID-19. However, we can see that there's been some recent variation as the weather warms, as people get out more accidents are more likely to happen. And we'll see that number fluctuate throughout the summer, but it is below our 30% capacity number, which we would like to see. Again, when taken into in total, all of these numbers tell a very positive story for Vermont and its continued reopening. We've been telling a very similar story now for weeks because our trends continue to be so positive, but we did think it would be helpful to put into perspective the experience of another state that has been struggling recently, which is Arizona with new case growth and run our metrics against Arizona over the past four weeks to give you a sense of what it would mean in Vermont if we saw certain numbers pass certain thresholds. So on the first item, syndromic surveillance, again, I mentioned that Vermont is at 0.84% of all visits. Arizona, however, 5% of all emergency visits were reporting COVID-like illness, 6.8% of all inpatient visits were reporting COVID-like illness well above obviously Vermont's numbers, but also well above our threshold, and it's been above our threshold of 4% for some time. So again, this is what we would see in Vermont as concerning if this were a metric that we were looking at for our own data. On the viral growth rate, again, you see here a viral growth rate trending around 4%, and it's remained steady or it's remained, it's been sustained for that basically two week period. Again, that would be a cause for concern for us. We see that our growth rate has trended down over the week. We would be concerned about a sustained growth rate over a five or so day period. Here, they've had well over that for close to two weeks. So again, a concern for us that they have seen sustained growth over a long period of time. In fact, I think just today or yesterday, they had 25 new cases, 2,500 new cases reported in Arizona. And again, just some context, I think New York State as a whole last week only had about 5,000 cases reported. Relating to testing positivity, again, we wanna see a number that's below 5% on this threshold. Currently, like I mentioned, we're one of the lowest in the country, below 1%. Arizona has been trending over 16% for the last bit of weeks here, well above that 5% recommendation that we have established by the World Health Organization. And then of course, hospital care, this is a critical one because all of these trends would indicate that they're gonna be more need for hospital care as people progress with the virus and get ill and need that type of hospital care. Here we see that they have had over 80% of their ICU beds in use above the threshold that we have established for ourselves. They also have COVID patients in their hospital seeking care, unlike Vermont. So again, those are the four metrics that we're looking at. You can see how Vermont's compare favorably. And also you can see a state where basically they've surpassed every guardrail that we've established for ourselves. And that would be an example of a time when we would be more concerned about what was happening here in Vermont. The final one, which is not necessarily one of the guardrails, but we talked about this last week is the fact that in Vermont, we had an increase in cases related to an outbreak. But you can see in Arizona, comparing our sort of travel metrics that we've been applying regionally just to their state that really their active cases are broad and across the entire state. Again, this would be a concern for us that new case growth was happening across the state, not just related to a single outbreak or even multiple outbreaks that were in the process of being contained. So again, here you can see in Arizona, basically if we were to apply our travel metrics to them, none of them would meet our 400 active case threshold. So those are the things that we will continue to monitor and look for as we go forward. And that would give us pause for concern if we saw them here in Vermont. Again, looking at our regional data, I mentioned that things look like they're gonna improve in the future and they have improved over the past week. We saw 16% reduction in new cases. We also saw an 8% reduction in active cases within a five hour drive of Vermont. Again, all of those things trending well and also telling us that the travel map is able to expand even further. Since our presentation last Friday, we have a net increase of 12 counties that are no longer subject to quarantine. This equals about 1.8 million individuals who can travel to Vermont without any quarantine restrictions. Again, adding all of these counties up, there are now 75 counties that have no quarantine restrictions for Vermont, equating to about 6.8 million residents, no longer subject to quarantine and who can visit Vermont freely. Again, this is about double the number that we had at the beginning of this process just two weeks ago. So it shows you how considerable the growth has been in terms of the number of folks that can come here without a quarantine. The next slide highlights the counties that moved from red or yellow to green so you can get a sense of where they are across a region. You see they're spread out pretty well across the area. And then the next slide, again, previewing what we might see in the week ahead, you can see that a number of counties have moved from red to yellow, where again you see broad improvement, including improvement in the Boston metro area and the New York metro area as well. So really the areas that we're having the greatest challenges are now also seeing improvement and moving even closer to the area where we would allow them to come in without a quarantine. So that again spells good news for the weeks ahead in terms of the travel and leisure industry here in Vermont. So at this time, I would like to turn it over to Dr. Levine. Thank you. So the only additional data I will present today has to do with the outbreak. For those of you who are watching our website as of last night, we reported 101 cases. Again, about same breakdown of adults, 60% children, 40% in that range. You may have wondered how we went from 83 to 101. And it's not because of abundant new cases. So I want to be very clear about that. There were several new cases. There were several contacts who became cases, which of course would be expected. But the majority actually have to do with a redefinition of who was involved in the outbreak population. So this is part of epidemiology as an investigation proceeds over time. We have greater clarity about who actually regarding person, place, time is actually involved in the outbreak. So we had a number of cases that we already knew were cases in the state of Vermont that had already been recorded on our website. But now we have attributed them to the outbreak. So that's really the only difference there. The rate of people who are symptomatic has increased slightly to 27%. But that essentially means still three out of four have not reported symptoms. And again, excellent compliance from the majority of people in both isolation and quarantine with adhering to those protocols. The age range has not changed. It's still youngest was age one. Oldest has been age 82. We can now attribute two hospitalizations to this outbreak and no deaths. I want to sort of bring us full circle to the original topic of the conference today. Susanna mentioned our collective moment. So this is my individual moment to really label racial injustice as truly a public health issue. I've talked previously about our state health improvement plan, which is built on the concept of health equity. Health equity exists only when all people have a fair and just opportunity to be healthy. Especially those who have suffered socioeconomic disadvantage, experienced historical injustice, and other avoidable systemic inequalities that are so often associated with race or ethnicity. In our state and across our country, health equity cannot be achieved without addressing racism, which we're seeing all too well as inherent in our society. Public health is defined as what we do collectively as a society to assure the conditions in which all people can be healthy. So to improve the health of all Vermonters and on a larger scale, the US population, it's essential that we join together to end the structural racism and other forms of discrimination that directly lead to worse health outcomes, just like those that we are seeing now with COVID-19 among persons of color. In a statistically significant way, we're seeing higher rates of illness in the African-American population. In a non-statistically significant way, but still significant way, we are seeing higher rates of hospitalizations and a higher death rate, though these numbers are very small. It is not in Vermont's character to let this be. Thank you. With that too, we'll open up to questions. So there's only a few weeks left before the federal $600 unemployment benefit comes out. Earlier, you said you hope to have Vermont to 100% open or close to it in two to three months. Seeing as how the benefits are running out for still thousands of Vermonters, do you think that's sooner? Well, obviously we want to get Vermont open up just as quick as we safely can. Consideration has been the number of people on unemployment. And what I would say is it doesn't mean unemployment stops. It means the extra $600 is sometime mid to end of July, I believe. Unfortunately, Commissioner Harrington isn't on the line today, but we can get some more answers on the specific dates next week. But I will say again, we're trying to do whatever we can to put people back to work. That's why the economic package that we laid out is so important to many to make sure that these businesses can stay intact and be prepared when we announce more opening up of the region in terms of quarantining coming into the state and leaving the state. I think it's just more important than ever. We can see some light at the end of the tunnel. So we're getting there. And when we can put more people back to work and then we can continue again, unemployment doesn't cease. It just means that in the extra $600 is not available at that time, unless Congress takes action, which I'm not sure what they're doing. I know they're going on break soon, but there has been talk about extending in some capacity, but I'm just not sure what they're doing. Earlier this week, there was a probation officer that was arrested for sexually exploiting something online on parole. So I'm just wondering, I guess, with the widespread corrections in prison reform efforts that the state has been undergoing, I guess, has any progress been made especially since we've seen incidents continue to pop up? Yeah, Secretary Smith. Well, let me just reframe that a little bit because I really want to, this is important. The alleged actions were discovered by DOC staff on May 29th and that staff immediately reported it to the department that day. Within three hours of staff reporting, the department placed this individual, Joshua Rush Ross, on administrative leave and then collected statements and notified the Vermont State Police. He was placed on administrative leave that day, May 29th and DOC Interim Commissioner James Baker was also ordered in internal investigation. This is not gonna be tolerated in this department. We are not going to tolerate this behavior and in fact, we are going to restart and the COVID-19 pandemic had a lot, we really shut down our prisons and we had to stop the investigation at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility as well as all our facilities. We're gonna restart that within the next few weeks in terms of restarting that investigation because we can't allow this to happen. This is not the department that the commissioner nor I envision as we move forward. This is not going to be tolerated in this department and if you are in the department and you want to perform this sort of behavior, then this is not the department for you. Matter of fact, the state government is not the place for you in this. So we are making changes. I am happy with the way the department reacted in this case, which was swift and thorough and moved it on to law enforcement as quickly as possible, but we can't stop here. We need to change culture. And the way that we do that is restarting the investigation that we had and having commissioner Baker, what I would say is put a new ethos into corrections that says this is not tolerated. We've reclassified some known cases of COVID and we've linked them to the Winooski outbreak. Is this outbreak then still to your knowledge contained to the same social group that we've mentioned previously at these press conferences or would these new classifications have that change? That's a great question. There's no change in social group. It's really a change in where an individual who fits into the outbreak definition actually lived. So it had been confined to Winooski earlier on and now obviously there are people with connections to Winooski that live in surrounding communities. So that's how the definition has been brought in. It has nothing to do with the groups of people that we have been following. And then any sense of how much longer this outbreak may go on? I imagine you have a lot of the contacts that you're watching. So at some point one would see rightly effective numbers go down if everyone is quarantined tonight. And currently there's well over 100 contacts. So obviously the number of contacts is pretty much as I've said along close to the number of cases as we proceeded along. So knowing that we have to go to the extent of what an incubation period is, which is 14 days even though most people present earlier in their course, we'd need a minimum of 14 days from the time we stopped seeing any cases. And generally by stricter epidemiological work we like to go to incubation periods. But certainly we want to continue to watch our trends as we have been doing. And as you saw in the slides earlier, though there's been a little bit more activity in Vermont, overall our total Vermont case positivity rate is lowest in the nation. And even when we look at this outbreak in the context of that, it really doesn't look like there's a major new ongoing spike in activity. It's very, very low level activity of people who are still somehow associated with the outbreak. So we do need to give it more time, but I hope I won't have to be providing frequent updates on it because it will be at such a low level to use the forest fire analogies that have been utilized. It'll be smoldering and trying to burn itself out at that point in time. Thank you. Governor, I'm not sure how closely you're watching the legislature is doing, but they seem to be trying hard to spend a lot of the COVID-19 money. And I'm wondering if you might like to comment on some of the large bills that are passing in the housing sector, what you'd like before next week? Yeah, well, again, my encouragement a week ago was for them to get moving on some of the economic packages. It appears that they're doing that as we speak. We'll see where it all ends up. The House has one approach. I think the Senate might have another, but having it, I saw one of the headlines that said the legislature passed the economic package and so forth while that was just one body. It was just the House at this point. So it still has a ways to go, but I'm encouraged to see that they're taking some of these up and we'll see what aligns with the packages that we had laid out and then we'll go from there. Is it enough to keep some of the businesses that you're concerned about? Yeah, I don't think there's enough money there. Even what we propose isn't going to be enough to sustain all the businesses in Vermont that have been impacted by this. We just heard from a lodging group yesterday, as a matter of fact, and they're seeing significant, significant reductions and losses and outside of even the economic package that we pushed forward while they would be included. It just isn't enough for them. So I think their prediction is they're going to see bankruptcies and it's not going to be too far in the future that we'll see that. So they're very concerned, we're concerned and we're going to do all we can. But again, even in its entirety, there's not enough money in the 1.25 billion to sustain all the businesses in Vermont that have been impacted. Lastly, on travel, the number of northeasterners who could come here is expanded, but what about reciprocal travel for remoders who, as much as they love our state, I'd like to get in the car? Yeah, the only ones I've heard thus far, we've asked individuals who are traveling outside the state to respect the other states and what their quarantine rules and regulations are. The only ones we've heard back from at this point, I believe Maine, for instance, will enact this reciprocal agreement. I don't think it's now, I think it's going to be sometime this week, maybe the 26th, but I could be wrong about that. But in New Hampshire, possibly as well. But there is some reciprocity, I believe, in those two states, but beyond that, I'm just not aware. Secretary Curley, do you have anything to offer? I think the governor touched upon it, but I think one point to mention is that our leisure cross-state travel is for both traveling out of state or in state. So if remoders want to go to one of those counties that has the active cases of 400 per million or less, they can do that as well and come back without a quarantine. So just to make that important clarification. But just to be clear that because we've opened up that county doesn't mean that you don't have to quarantine when you get there. I just want to respect the other states as well. Anything else? Mr. Petschek? The only point I would make, Governor, is that in terms of the reciprocal quarantine agreements, I mean, Maine is moving there, as the governor said, on the 26th. But other than Vermont, really known northeast state is allowing visitors that come to their state without a quarantine. So we have been for the last two weeks welcoming 3.6 million and now 6.8 million. So we are somewhat ahead of the curve and just want to recognize that, although obviously not enough for our lodging establishments necessarily, but we are ahead of the curve compared to our counterparts. It was brought to my attention yesterday when I was talking to the lodging folks that New York actually never did close down lodging. Thank you, Governor. You've used these news conferences to comment on the recent police conduct cases nationwide. And Vermont had another police officer arrested last night. Vermont legislature is now tackling the issues of excessive force by police, proper hiring, training, promoting officers and dental discipline and decertification of police. And one proposal is to just continue the secrecy that Vermont state police have enjoyed for 40 years when it comes to disciplining troopers for criminal conduct, ethical lapses, or other missteps. The idea is a lot of taxpayers who employ police actually know what their employees are doing. Just wondering your thoughts about changing that law. So then it's the same for municipal police and county sheriff who are subject to the public records law. And what other depth should the legislature be taking the police right now? I'm going to defer to Commissioner Shirling. He's been more on top of this at this point in time and knows some of the details of what the legislature is doing or not doing at this point. Commissioner Shirling. Thank you, Governor. Thanks for the question, Mike. We have had an opportunity to work with legislature in testimony on a number of occasions. So we have some additional this afternoon. We believe there are more areas of the intersection and opportunity where we concur with the things that they're exploring. As you probably know, early on, we put forward a 10 areas where we think that significant progress can be made. Many of those have gotten traction in the discussions with the legislature. One of those is to make modifications to the way that oversight is done. The exact nuances of that haven't been fully flushed out yet, but we've had preliminary conversations with the Troopers Association, which is a great partner that achieves the sheriff's, the attorney general. And we do think it's time for a change to exactly what that looks like we haven't exactly worked out. But I mean, you had a situation where in Minnesota, I mean, there's apparently a public, but the guy at the 17 misconduct complaints that apparently the public could be told about, state police currently, you can't find anything out about any troopers to this point, except I think there's been a half dozen cases that become public in 40 years, but do you favor full disclosure? As I indicated, we favor revising the system to be more transparent with the public. We do have to balance a variety of interests as you know, but we think the time has come to modernize that along with a number of other areas of exploration. So we look forward to engaging with the public and the legislature and other stakeholders as we do that. So that's just to try to understand that you're in total darkness, so you agree that there ought to be a little bit more light, but you're not telling me whether it's a five-watt bulb or a 100-watt bulb or what level are you looking for? Again, it depends on the circumstances. There's a wide range of things that occur in the world of human resources. So it's not as easy as flipping a light switch on or off. It's something that requires a dimmer switch and it's gonna take a little while to figure it out, but you have correctly hit on an area where we believe we need additional focus to ensure additional transparency in the days to come. So case by case basis, you're saying? No, I'm not saying case by case basis. I think we need a coaching framework where it's very predictable. But there, like I said, there's a wide array of things that happen in human resources and there's a variety of things that need to be balanced as a result of that. Certainly, misconduct is an area where we think we've got some uniform traction with all the parties around making those more transparent, publicly acceptable in the immediate future. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Roy, do you report daily expressed? Yes, good morning. This message might be for Dr. Levine. A couple of businesses up in Newport areas we temporarily close after either staff members or family members tested positive for COVID-19. What are the proper procedures for these businesses to reopen and what do they have to do inside the facility to make things safe? That's a great question. So let's separate the facility and the people because it's more often the people that are the issue as opposed to the facility. The facility would be some very traditional environmental hygiene disinfection issues which are easy to convey. And I think most of the business community is aware of at this point in time. But you're speaking to some small businesses that have small number of employees or perhaps just the owner and a relative or what have you and they're having a test positive situation, perhaps a person who needs to then be quarantined because there's such a close contact. So it's really, I'm gonna reframe your question a little as to what does it take to get them back to work and to reopen their business in that way. So there are several protocols that can be utilized. Some of them have to do with the amount of time you've been free of symptoms, dating back from the time you first developed symptoms to when you stop having symptoms and how many days have elapsed. And all of these individuals, because they're either a case or a contact are closely in touch with the Department of Health. And I imagine many are on Sarah alert as well. So they will be in constant communication. So if they need clarification as to when they are eligible to return to working, that would be very easy for them to understand and they can confirm it with the public health individual they're on the phone with. Well, at least one of them has high outside cleaning crew and the net cleaning crew has to convey and isn't set to clean every item and every piece of merchandise on the shelves. This is probably a rather good size retailer. Yeah, so it all depends on what kind of surface we're talking about and how long the virus persists in that surface to really answer your question well. So it's gonna be hard for me to get very specific about that. Keep in mind, we all wanna be reassured that surfaces are free and have been decontaminated. But again, probably under 5% of infections are acquired through surfaces and the majority are still acquired through the air that we breathe and who we're in contact with. Other appointment momentarily. So if you have questions for her activist, just connect with me. Next question goes to A3 at WCAS. My question is also for Dr. Levine. Has there been any data or research about the correlation between a mask wearing and a positive or negative COVID test? So Avery, are you asking me, are there studies that say that wearing masks will make it less likely for you to be a case than if you're not wearing a mask? Yeah, just data research that talked about how masks wearing correlates to actual test results. Does that clarify a little more? Not especially. Because you're implying, if you're implying a person has symptoms, what's the likelihood of them testing positive if they were wearing a mask versus not? Sure. Mostly, yeah, if some data that, is there data that shows wearing a mask makes you less, yeah, less likely or more likely to contract. Right, so is it protective? So there's several types of data and I have to be very transparent here. Much of it is conflicting. But there's data that looks at actual droplets and where and how they travel and how a mask might protect you from that. There's data that looks at just populations and their wearing of masks and how do those populations fare compared to other populations. And that's usually in countries as opposed to a group of 100 Vermonters who did or did not wear a mask. So population level data is very encouraging with regard to the masks. But like any such study, being a descriptive epidemiologic study, it's not able to isolate masks out as clearly as one would like to. So it's usually masks in addition to physical distancing and proper hygiene and things of that sort. There's a more recent study that actually just came out that a lot of people who are mask advocates have been touting because it actually looked at the experience in Wuhan, China, in Italy, and in New York City and compared how they each fared with the virus. And because of the fact that they had implemented different levels of each of these mitigation strategies with the masking and facial covering being most predominant in the New York experience, they found that the success rate of masking was actually good comparing New York back to Italy, back to Wuhan. There's also some newer physical chemistry, I'll call it data. I won't get too detailed on this for you, but everything we've been saying about masking has been that we are protecting another person. And that is still true. There are two ways that what comes out of your mouth can infect another person. One is through the larger respiratory droplets that generally go a certain distance hopefully less than six feet and drop to the ground rather quickly because they're heavier. The second way is through what's termed an aerosol which will be finer, lighter particles that may travel further and it turns out may linger in the air longer and not get to the ground so quickly. So the traditional teaching we've been giving has been that those larger droplets we are protecting our fellow mankind when we wear a mask because those droplets aren't getting through the facial covering and they dropping to the ground quicker. The newer physical chemistry kind of data indicates that they may also be protecting us from having aerosols released. And so if we are the one wearing a mask and the other person is not and they release an aerosol, we may be less likely to breathe that in and have it come in contact with us if we're wearing something over our face. So it's a little different way of looking at it because now it's not only I'm protecting you from getting this from me but I may be protecting myself from getting it from someone else if an aerosol is the pathway that's gonna lead it to me. So nuanced and it's newer data and like anything in science that needs to be confirmed and studied repeatedly but that's sort of the newer thinking. We would like to err on the side of caution and say that most of the data is trending towards looking like these are actually very worthwhile for us to wear and to continue to encourage people to do that because most of that newer information is coming out in a very positive sense that this is helpful. People are tested in Vermont or they asked whether they've been wearing a mask or with part of like contact tracing and things like that? Certainly not at the time that they get the specimen collected. I suspect that will come up in the contact tracing process but it's not a core question at the time you get tested by any means. Although a core question now is have you participated in a mass gathering? And similar to around the country we're not finding a lot of positive answers in that in our cases. Though we've been encouraging people to get tested and encouraging people to while they protest or attend a mass gathering to be very careful and physically distance and wear a mask but we're not seeing a lot of positive tests as a result of those. Thank you. Yes. I've got one for Commissioner Shirling and one for the governor if I may. Commissioner Shirling, I'm not speaking of history. I'm sure we all know when Nixon changed the BNDD, the corrupt BNDD to the DEA in the early 70s he did it to discredit the opposition. One of his age John Ehrlich met admitted before he died that the best way to silence the opposition which were as he called it hippies and colored people was through this war on drugs. And we've seen this go on and on and on and it's turned into a war on people. And here in Vermont we've finally a couple of years ago managed to see cannabis legalized which is primarily if it's like a white man's drug while the other drugs which have higher sentencing and stuff like that seem to entrap people of color. Isn't it time to rethink this whole war on drugs and maybe think about decriminalizing it once and for all? I, it's a great question. I do think it is, it is past time we have done a variety of work to rethink the way we approach this not as a criminogenic issue as for but as a public health issue. If you look at a document that we submitted to the legislature in January a comprehensive modernization strategy for criminal justice and public health model exists at the back of that document as one of the core things we think we need to work on which in a nutshell begins with prevention and education and then has a stratified approach that very much mirrors the public health approach to not only drugs but a variety of things that end up oftentimes with crime as the criminal justice system as the mechanism to other whole people accountable or try some typically not fully formed way to treat the issue. So I think the issue is actually larger than you're describing that there's a variety of approaches to public health social issues including drugs that do require additional investment and require us to rethink the approach as especially the approach when someone's in crisis and you're calling 911 for assistance. I would stop short of saying that decriminalizing some of the things that are incredibly destructive in our communities like heroin cocaine, opiates, et cetera that could have a variety of unintended consequences but rethinking the approach is absolutely the way to go. Thanks, I mean, we just look at Portugal or other countries for guidance. Governor, thanks Commissioner. Governor, when we're talking about history as I'm sure you know of Wednesday was Bunker Hill Day and it was pretty much the second battle after Concord and Lexington for the independence of this country and there were a lot of people at Bunker Hills who were people of color. The three people who had been locked out of Boston who had formerly worked on the ships and on the docks and we didn't mention Bunker Hill Day. And I mean a lot of what you're saying seems to come up is almost like scolding to a lot of us Lomonders who've been out and grew up with people of color and worked with people of color. And we're the only thing that mattered was if you could do your job, you could do your job and we were all in the same boat but for those of us in the trades like I was the tool and die maker. Aren't you worried that a lot of this seems to come off as scolding to the average Lomonders? Well certainly don't mean it to be scolding more for awareness, trying to be better people, be more understanding, treating each other with respect and civility. It's something I've talked about throughout my political life. So just more of that. And if that's scolding, if someone's taken offense to it, maybe they have to look themselves in the mirror and ask themselves, why? Because I certainly don't mean it that way but if you're taking offense to it then maybe there's a reason. Well I'm not personally taking offense to it. I mean when I grew up we faced prejudices during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We had SWAT stickers painted on the road in front of our house. I guess they didn't know how to make a hammer and sickle but there are life experiences that a lot of us went to, went through. And I mean a lot of the stuff, the human nature stuff goes back to the New Testament and the Old Testament that we are all God's children and that we should all be treated equally and the fundamental principle of our country basically Well I do think, you make a good point in terms of history, reflecting on history, not forgetting history. I look back, I was mentioning this morning a powerful movie that I saw was Schindler's List. And for me it was about the Holocaust and what that meant. And it was a powerful, powerful movie and I think every student, every person who graduates from our schools in Vermont probably should watch it. So we don't forget and we don't gloss over it. So you make a good point, whether it's Bunker Hill, whether it's Juneteenth or whatever day it is, we should just reflect on what's happened in the past so we don't repeat it. Yeah, I mean I grew up with that. My mother was a guest in a Nazi labor camp in Saurbrook and after she fled to Ston's, Ston's communist Russia. But you know, we all have these life experiences and we all can be better people. I just think that should be the core of the message. And as a historian, amateur historian myself, I'm all for more history, the more history, the better. And I guess that's it. Oh, we agree, Steve. Yeah, thank you very much. Tim, Vermont Business Magazine? I think, Governor, this is gonna be more prosaic. I think the unemployment rate, as Calvin had mentioned, it's gone down, it's gone down nearly four points. It's probably gonna be historical records at this point. It's also lower than the US rate now. I'm kind of shooting by that. How much is this good news? Are you considering this good news and what do you attribute it to? Especially against what the US is facing right now? Well, anytime we can move in the right direction and we're reducing the numbers on unemployment, it's good news. Is it, you know, it doesn't solve the problem that we face and certainly, as you remember, Tim, we were at the lowest unemployment rate in the country not too long ago. So, to get, you know, being on the lower end of the scale as compared to the US numbers probably is appropriate in some ways because we were lower before. We saw the long ways to go and I'm very concerned, as I stated earlier, that if we don't help those businesses that are in desperate need, that they won't be there to provide for the opportunities, the jobs that Vermonters need when we open up more of these businesses as well as the areas where we attract more people into the state. So, again, great news in some respects, in all respects, but we still have a long ways to go. The other thing I was wondering about that is that much of the Vermont economy has been re-opened, as you said, not to 100% of course, but what is sort of the internal concern about maybe stagnating at some point, as mentioned, that I'm a favor of the Vermont money we're going to see bankrupted? The weekly unemployment claims actually went up again this week. What is the concern internally about stagnating and fatally? Well, again, that's our whole initiative in terms of trying to provide relief for these businesses, have them survive while we get through this and the numbers get better and we build up our testing and tracing and are able to mitigate and manage this better is going to be really important. So, we're concerned, obviously. We wouldn't have put the $400 million package out if we weren't concerned, but I know it's not going to be enough. Thank you, Disney. Okay, County Courier. So, your recent orders have limited restaurant and other venue capacities by a percentage of the building's fire code. As a governor, who's had significant background rooted in the construction industry, you know that fire capacity varies greatly based on one building to another. It isn't really strictly based on square footage. It can be based on the type of the building, if it has breakers or not, fire exits, how far they are, et cetera. My understanding is that a fire capacity can even be based on if there are hydrants in that area. So, why is basing a capacity on fire, you know, percentage of the capacity under COVID on fire capacity better than basing it on, say, just square footage? Yeah, it was based on occupancy limits, which had to do with the fire as well. We had to base it on something. Nothing is going to be perfect in this world. If we had base it just on square footage, I'm not sure that that would have been fair either. So, again, nothing is perfect in all the restrictions and regulations that we've imposed or that we're lifting. So, we just had to go with something, and it seemed like the best way to adhere to some sort of standard. And so, we just chose that one. Can you explain why square footage might be less fair than the fire capacity? Well, square footage doesn't tell the whole story. It doesn't talk about the number of shelves and petitions and so forth and so on. I mean, just that isn't a good measure either. So, every solution has its set of problems associated with it. And again, there's nothing magical about this, but everyone has an occupancy limit, and we just thought, there's the best way. The other approach, of course, is to get to 100% where we don't have to have this conversation. And we're getting there. I mean, we've gone from 25, we're getting to 50. We're hoping in some areas we're going further than that. Again, the answer is the numbers get better and we get beyond this so that we can open up a business to 100% capacity. It just seems like evaluating a restaurant and saying you can have such and such a number of people, shouldn't, it shouldn't be effective based on if they have sprinkler experience or if there are hydrants within 500 feet of their front door. Again, I haven't heard the pushback like you have, but we're opening up just as quick as we possibly can. Secretary Curley, anything you want to add to that? Yeah, I just want to add, again, if somebody points out a real problem with the way we have proceeded to open up, our ears are open. What we're trying to do is make this reasonable. We want to make it understandable because our goal at the end of the day is to keep people safe and keep them healthy. So in the situation of a restaurant, we're asking people to plan accordingly to try to keep people properly distanced and so we had to set a number and again there may not be perfection here but happy to take it offline with you if you want further information. I will say that both the health and safety teams are involved with the agency of commerce when we have these conversations about more broadly opening. So a lot of this conversation has been had and can probably be explained to you by the experts in those areas. And I just, I think about a local wedding venue that's in a barn, for instance, that because it's older construction would have a lower fire rate versus JP, for instance, it was built five years ago that you're crammed into a smaller square footage but here you have this multi-million dollar business that it's actually allowed to have more people. So, yeah, let me be clear. There is a maximum occupancy limit. So if you're talking about a barn, you still need to make sure that people are 100 square feet apart from each other. So nobody should be crammed in anywhere. And again, this is taking a reasonable approach and looking at your area and if you normally feel like you comfortably seat or put 300 people in there, you should be at a, well, it's inside, sorry, you should be at 75. If you're outdoors and you have a 10 and the 10 seats, 400 guests, you should imagine that you should invite 150, which is our maximum for an outdoor. So again, it's about being reasonable and we're not, we don't wanna ask people to make this more difficult than it is. We just really want you to be safe and be really smart about the decisions you're making when you're bringing guests together. Thank you. Thank you, Governor. Eric, Hans August. Yes, Governor. It appears that there's a lot of anger and denial when it comes to race issues in Vermont. When Black Lives Matter mural was announced on State Street, multiple people went on social media saying that they couldn't wait to the faces. They were talking about wearing bucket of paint to cover it over. Whenever Black Lives Matter is brought up in Vermont, it's immediately shouted down. It's all lives matter. And so I guess, how do you address that? Yeah, by highlighting what that means and how, reflecting on how far we have to go when we have situations like this, when people are just talking about what we're going to do to prevent it rather than just accepting that we have an issue and we have to address it and we have to treat each other with more respect and civility. Again, I think it's going to take leadership, not just on the side of a government and that's local and state and federal government. It's going to take all of us to lead. I've used the example a few times about NASCAR because it's near and dear to my heart, but when the President Steve Phelps had outlined the proposal to remove the Confederate flags from the infields in races and so forth, it was met with a lot of resistance, much like what we saw here in Montpelier with the Black Lives Matter painting on State Street. But they did it for the right reasons and it's going to take leadership from all levels, corporate levels in the sporting community, in the business world, in government and individually, more than anything else individually, so that we're just more accepting and understand history. That's why it was important for me, again, to understand what Juneteenth meant. And it wasn't, when you think about 155 years ago, not that long ago in some respects. That's just not that long. And so we've got a long ways to go, but I encourage what I'm seeing, again, across the country, what I'm seeing here in Vermont, we'll get through this and we'll be better for it once we do. Pete Hirschfeld, BPR. Governor, as you just said, not that long ago, do you think government needs to repair the financial harm that was done to the families that people that were enslaved in this country? Well, again, I think that's a discussion that we could probably have. It's been brought up over the last number of years, but the first thing we need to do is to accept that we need to do things differently. And I think that in itself is a huge step. And I'm not sure how you would ever repay the damage done 150 years ago and systemically since. I just don't know how you do that. Well, people with money, presumably. Yeah, but how do you disperse that money, Peter? I mean, how do you actually do that? I guess that would be a question that people in positions of the kind that you occupy would have to figure out, right? Right. Well, with legislature, Congress and so forth, and that's what I said. I mean, this has been around for a while, hasn't been solved yet. Maybe it will. The discussions are healthy to have, but it's just like the practicality. How do you do that? Thank you. No, Barton Chronicle? I'm going to be picking on Dr. Levine again. We're speaking about the racial disparities and health outcomes. It would mean that at least historically, there's been a real in the way studies of medical treatment and potential drugs are carried out, white males look as closely as at the benefits or potential harms caused to people who, I guess under those terms, are not normal. Is this something that you see changing and is it something that our research conducted in Vermont medical institutions is taking into account? Yeah, thank you. So you're basically asking are the same disparities we see in health outcomes and people who are not white? Hi, looking at the cases in the past couple of weeks, it seems like even when you isolate out the remunercial cases, there still seems to have been a rise in new cases compared to the same type of disease before the loop, the outbreak happened. Does the state have a theory as to why that is? Could it be potentially type of a protest or other factors? I'm going to ask Mr. Pichak to answer part of that from my standpoint. We've opened up more activity in the state. People are mobilizing, getting around the state more. We're having more people come into the state. So I think it's really strictly a numbers game at this point. There's just more people out and about, whether it's at a protest or coming in again from another state or just getting out themselves to work and so forth. So you're interacting with more people. Mr. Pichak. Yeah, Aaron, thanks for the question. I think if you look back to last five weeks or so at sort of what was the weekly count of new cases, a few weeks ago we had 20 new cases. A week after that I think we had 24 cases and then we got into this sort of period where there had been an outbreak and I think we reported something in the 52 range and then the 84 range and then this week, 27. If you pull out the cases related to the outbreak, today this week we only announced 18 cases unaffiliated with the outbreak. That we know of today there could be more that become associated with the outbreak. So again, if you just look at the long perspective we had 20, 24, we went into this period where it was higher during the outbreak and now pulling out the outbreak cases were back down to under 20. So it seems like the cases have been relatively flat when you pull those out over the last five or six weeks. If I could just add, can I just add a line to that? I think you should be very reassured by the data because we talked last time we were here that in a seven day period it was almost 10,000 tests that were performed. So during these time periods where you heard Commissioner Pichak talk about the numbers of cases that were developing, the number of testings were just incredible. And looking as hard as we are for the virus, we weren't able to find it in a lot more places. So I think that's reassuring. If our testing performance was not so good and we weren't getting anywhere close to the metric we've set for ourself, which we've now exceeded for testing, I would be very worried about those numbers. But knowing that we're doing so much testing is just much more reassuring in that regard. Well, just a follow-up on that. I don't know if you mentioned how many tests were performed in the latest the outbreak. I heard about 3,000 on Monday. Are there any updates about it? Yeah, so Monday it was over 3,000. I can refer you to our website which will have more exact numbers but clearly we've been doing in the 2,300 a day I would say numbers. So I'm sure it's much closer to 4,000 at this point but it's in that range. And that's of course on a portion of the state as opposed to all of the statewide testing that this represents as well. Yeah, I was gonna ask if you knew if there's been an increase in testing outside the outbreak? No, and the answer is not necessarily an increase in testing outside the outbreak but a stable high level of testing across the state. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Okay, and then I was wondering if you know we're talking about racial equity in a lot of different elements today including COVID. If Director Davis had any update on the study into the majority of data for COVID then what was going on with that in the truth? So we don't have to leave Erin but I can maybe connect you. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, that would be great, thank you. But we do have on our weekly update for COVID-19 on our website the up-to-date racial data with regard to number of cases across races, number of hospitalizations and deaths. Sorry for you to that. Okay, yep, thank you. Erin, if I could just add as well the racial equity task force that we put into place and are formulating at this point in time one of the charges was to take a look at some of the COVID cases and so forth and how it relates to race and so that's going to be something they're looking at. As well, I wanna back up again. I just want to forewarn everyone I've been saying for weeks. The more we open up the economy, this virus is still among us. It hasn't gone away. I mean, it's mitigating but it's still here. We don't have a vaccine. The more we open up the economy the more our expectation is that we're going to see more cases as well with a dramatic increase in the testing capacity in this state over the last month or month and a half, two months. It leads you to finding more cases which is a good thing in some respects. So again, I think we're doing remarkably well but we're watching the data and the science to make sure that we're moving in the right direction. Yeah. I mean, part of the reason I asked about the rich disparity data is I've noticed as the Winooski outbreak reached its peak and then teared out, the racial disparities has become far wider. And I was wondering if the task force was specifically studying Winooski. But it sounds like I'll have to call for David to talk about that. Yeah. Yeah, I think that'd be a great idea. Thank you. Hi. This might be a question for Dr. Levine. I read a really excellent piece of reporting last night from your previous questioner, Aaron Satango and Katie Jigling at ZT Digger about the UVM basketball game that they determined through a survey they did was a major spreading event. One of the parts of their reporting they said that three of the attendees who tested positive for coronavirus later died of the virus. Just following up on that, I'm curious, did the health department know that those three men had attended this game and is the health department reviewing that in light of this reporting? Yeah. Commissioner Levine answered that. But I just want to remind everyone that game was well in the infancy here in Vermont of this pandemic before the state of emergency and so forth and there was a lot of steps we took in rapid fire after, but that was before that happened. Dr. Levine. Thank you, Governor. I do appreciate the reporting about this incident and we're really talking about reporting about a disease that was new to the human race right at that point in time. We certainly have learned a lot about the virus in terms of how it spreads and the reporters retrospective look at this incident is really helpful for us in public health because we can take a step back, take stock of what we did, what we did right, where there might have been gaps and where we could have improved. But as the governor just alluded to, remember where we were in early March. First case of COVID in the state, March 7th. Second case of COVID in the state, March 11th. Date of the UVM basketball game, March 10th. At a time when no one associated with that game wanted it to be canceled or were concerned that we had an epidemic raging in the state. We know, of course, how it works now. We know how to contact trace. We've always known how to contact trace. Our efforts to investigate, to educate and box in the current outbreak that we're doing in Manuski and Burlington are an example of that. We were not aware on March 10th, as I've just alluded to, to community transmission of virus. We had one case in the state. And even in the country, things were beginning to move, but certainly not here in the Northeast. So questions about where a positive case came from were limited to one person at that point in time. And they were usually limited to asking about contact with a COVID-19 positive person or travel to a high-risk area because that's where the country was. There was no sense that there was community transmission occurring. Obviously, protocols changed quickly once everybody realized community transmission was occurring. And now, of course, we ask positive cases, questions about their whereabouts in the two weeks before symptoms even developed because we know about the infectious period of the virus which nobody knew about back then. And if they don't have symptoms, we still try to trace back how they might have become a positive case. We have a lot of access to testing. We had no access to testing in the vicinity of that game at all. And we hardly had a dashboard because we didn't have any cases really. So we've come a very far away is what I want to point out. And the reason we can be so effective in the Burlington and Winooski outbreak is because the boxed-in strategy can be played out to its fullest extent. It all starts with testing. Without testing, you can't even begin to presume a boxed-in strategy. And then it goes on to isolation and quarantine after contact tracing. So we're in a very different place now. Obviously, we feel terrible that people have died. We feel terrible that people were infected. But at the same time, it was a very different point in time in a very different set of circumstances. The good news is, whether we had been even able to contact trace at that game or not, it was only three days later that that sequential and rapid action mitigation strategy interventions began to occur in Vermont. And all of the things in the government's, the governor's executive order began to play out sequentially over just a few days, not colored by the fact that we knew about this basketball game at all, just looking at circumstances that were occurring in our state, in our region, in our country in a rapid action fashion and looking at all of the data that we've been portraying for you and seeing where we were on that curve. So clearly, whether we had known about things around that game or not, it didn't really change our actions, which were quite rapid and quite decisive at that time. Call up on that. Did the health department eventually determine that these three men had attended this game or was it really, you know, Digger's reporting that revealed this and, you know, basically how did the health department not know, I guess, that so many people who had attended the game got sick? And what does that say about the state's contact tracing ability? Again, it doesn't say anything about the state's contact tracing ability and it says more about what the circumstances were like around the time of that game and the fact that majority of those people, even in the survey, were not being tested at the time they left the game. This is data that's now more retrospective as opposed to real time during that March 10th interval. So it's a very, very different way of approaching it and looking at it. Obviously, we can only deal with what we know about at the time and people came to a game dispersed and had various things happen or not happen to them that we're now learning about retrospectively. That's all I can say. Thank you. Lisa, another visitor? Hello, this question is likely for Dr. Levine. It's a question from readers about testing. I know that people who have been at protests for large gatherings are being first to get tested. Even if they're not symptomatic, make sure that they're not silent carriers. What about people who have been strictly observing protocols, staying six feet away, wearing masks, not going out in public? Is it still appropriate for them to get tested and if so, since I would only show a snapshot in time, should they be using up a state test when somebody else may need it more? The people you're referring to at the end of your question are still people involved in protests and mass gatherings? No, no, these are people who have never participated in a mass gathering and who are wearing masks everywhere they go. Oh, okay. I mean, they're in contact with others. Right, so truly asymptomatic people who might be curious, but certainly don't feel ill. That's who you're referring to. Correct, there are readers who will test on that. Right, so we have effective testing capacity now for those people to be tested. That doesn't mean we're strongly encouraging every Vermonter to walk into a testing facility to get tested. I think as you'll see over time, everywhere, not just Vermont, we are trying to be very strategic about testing as well. We've had wonderful data that one of the previous reporters just questioned us about over the weeks before the outbreak, showing that with the testing strategy that allowed anybody to get tested, we had 24 cases a week throughout the entire state. And that's with over 1,000 tests done per day many days. So the yield is very, very low and that's set in. And that's been very reassuring to us. So that data is actually helpful from a health surveillance point of view and to reassure Vermonter's point of view that there's a low level of virus but not zero in the state. But being more strategic means let's look at some of the populations we really do wanna make sure we use our testing supplies for. So that includes the residents and the staff in long-term care facilities, vulnerable populations. You've heard about our testing and correctional facilities. That's a vulnerable population. We've talked about testing people who are in high contact with the population, whether they be a healthcare worker, whether they be in our commercial business or what have you, if they have a tremendous amount of contact and are concerned. As we now identify cases, our newest policy is to make sure that not only is a contact identified and dealt with appropriately in terms of the advice to quarantine or not, but that contact now can get tested immediately. So strategically speaking, there are ways that we wanna make sure our testing supplies get utilized if nothing else ever happened. Make sure those ways get happened. But at the same time, there's still room for Vermonters who may have attended a protest and are concerned and may wonder if they should get tested to get tested. So I'm not speaking out of both sides of my mouth. We wanna be able to still allow that kind of testing to occur, but be as strategic as we need to be with the vulnerable populations that we clearly wanna protect and do more testing in. Questioner's left, if we could just speak those to one question. Thank you, Elizabeth, BT David. Got it, that. I have a question for you about, with the vandalism of the Black Lives Matter mural and the destruction of the sign of in South Burlington, I believe, have you considered or have you already deployed or considered deploying more security around Black Lives Matter events? Well, I think what we've seen, certainly in the case of the situation in my pill year, for instance, it was done in the middle of the night. Vandalism, in some respects, a bit of a cowardly act, but thankfully, no, nothing during the event itself. So we would, obviously, will provide for any security to protect the lives of those participating in any way we can. I think we've done that at protests and so forth, making sure that we're there to protect those who are participating. But I don't know that we're going to be providing security around property in those cases where we haven't seen any issues. Okay, and a very quick follow-up. There's been calls since the, with the recruiting members of the racial identity task force to extend the application period. Some folks have said that it was too short and raised concerns that it would sort of be more about hate rather than substance. Have you considered extending the application period on that? Well, we were concerned at first that it was a tight timeframe, obviously, but this is important work that we need to get started on. So when we put that out, we were concerned and we were contemplating whether we would have to extend it if we didn't get the number of applications that was acceptable. But I'm pleased to say we received 164 applications in that short period of time. So I would have to assume that we will have, I mean, we have a number of people to consider. So I think at this point in time, I will obviously accept their involvement in the aftermath, but we want the task force to get to work. Thank you. April, Burlington Free Press. April, star six on you, call for April. All right, once again, thank you very much for tuning in and happy June teeth day. And we'll see you on Monday.