 Good morning, everyone. Six weeks ago today, we presented phase one of a $400 million economic relief and recovery package to help employers survive this pandemic and build a foundation to grow and thrive in the future. These funds came from the Federal Cares Act, which was packed by Congress for exactly these purposes. Although we ended up with less than I requested and more strings attached, I do appreciate the legislature's efforts over the past several weeks, and I look forward to working with them to do all we can to save businesses and jobs throughout the state. Now, it's important to note that some of the funding was in the bills passed last Friday night, which haven't gotten to my desk as yet. So to be clear, today we'll be talking about the grants in S350, which I signed on June 19th. Mr. Goldstein will go into detail about who qualifies and how to apply, but rest assured, I've instructed my team to make the process as easy as possible in order to get the money out the door quickly to those who are in need. For example, even though there are several programs for different sectors, we've created a single point of entry for those applying for or looking for information. I've also instructed the Agency of Commerce to host a series of webinars to help applicants and answer questions as well. Now, for those employers listening of all sizes and in all parts of the state, the fact is, even though we've begun cautiously and methodically reopening our economy and putting more of our monitors back to work, I realize that many of you, especially our small businesses, are still on the brink of ruin. Family businesses have been around for decades and still don't see a path out of the red. Young entrepreneurs and innovators who just months ago had so much hope have had to put their work on pause. Many restaurants, cafes, breweries are struggling to pay their rent. Employers who care deeply about their employees are wondering when they can bring them back or worse yet whether they can even open their doors again. I understand the challenges this pandemic has caused through no fault of your own. I helped grow a small business for over 30 years, so I know how devastating and helpless it would be to see my life's work crumble right before my eyes and not know what to do to fix it or how long it will take to get things back to normal. And the fact is, our businesses and their employees from hard-hit sectors like tourism and hospitality drive our economy, put food on the table of Vermonters. They pay taxes, and let's not forget all the contributions they make to help their communities. Helping these businesses survive right now is essential. Our many jobs won't come back and will face a long-term economic crisis. And state and local governments will face budget gaps for years to come. Even though this economic relief will help, I know it's not enough. And recovery will be long and hard. But we've seen the strength of Vermonters and what a powerful impact we have when we stick together. Please note that my team and I will continue to turn every knob, pull every lever we can to help families and businesses survive and recover from this crisis so we can thrive in the future. Before I conclude, I want to especially thank and recognize those employers and their teams who went the extra distance and found creative ways to keep their doors open while keeping everyone safe. I'm so impressed with how this state responded to this once-in-a-century challenge. Let me close by reminding Vermonters as we head into the holiday weekend we must continue to take personal responsibility for preventing the spread of this virus. This means avoiding large groups and crowds, maintaining physical distancing, washing your hands a lot, and wearing a mask whenever you're in public and cannot maintain physical distance. This is literally in our hands. We all have a role to play. And if we do our part, we can prevent the spread of the virus and help get things back to normal. So with that, I'll now turn it over to Commissioner Goldstein to share more details about the programs. Thank you, Governor. The Agency of Commerce and Community Development and the Department of Economic Development have been working tirelessly over the last few weeks to propose and work with the legislature, legislators on an economic relief and recovery package. At the legislature, we advocated for the business community and urged the legislature to act quickly to get immediate financial support to businesses to help them survive. As the Governor mentioned, our initial proposal was altered significantly by the legislature, but with each step, the entirety of our internal team at ACCD and DED have been all hands on deck to create a grants portal application and management system from scratch in order to process these grants in a quick but responsible way. Today, we are happy to announce that the path forward to getting this money into the hands of Vermont businesses in need, just 12 days after the signing of S350 and 5 days after the passage of H966, which is headed for signature. The Economic Recovery Grants Program application process will open on Monday, July 6th. The program will be ministered in a couple of ways. If your business files rooms and meals or sales and use tax, you will apply through the MyVTax portal at the Vermont Department of Taxes. These grants primarily support the most hard hit sectors of lodging, restaurants, and retail. All other private businesses and nonprofits will apply through a new grant management system set up by ACCD over the last week. We realize there are a lot of moving parts to the multiple pieces of legislation that have been passed over the last few weeks with different implications for different sectors. The legislature also created many carve outs for specific organizations, which may leave many businesses confused on how to access these much needed grants. Given that confusion, we hope the resource center that we've set up at the Vermont, at the ACCD.vermont.gov website will work as a central place to direct businesses to the right application. Whether they are rooms and meals taxpayer, a nonprofit, a private business, a women or minority owned business, or a business that has suffered either a 50% loss or 75% loss during any one month period from March through August when compared with the same month in 2019. The grants will be allocated on a first come first served basis, and the maximum grant award, whether going through tax department or through ACCD will be $50,000. Each business or organization applicant may only receive one grant. The formula for the grant awards is also on our website. It is our goal to distribute these funds as quickly and as seamlessly as possible within weeks of an approved application. There are a few exceptions we want to make sure Vermonters are aware of. The recovery grant programs for healthcare and agricultural businesses will be administered by the agency of human services and the agency of agriculture respectively. They will not be processed through ACCD or the Department of Tax. Details on those programs will be forthcoming from those agencies in the weeks ahead. There is also a working lands enterprise grant fund program that will not be implemented through ACCD. I do want to remind everybody that many of the details of these grants came together at the 11th hour of the legislative session last Friday. So we are continuing to work through what they have passed and trying to ensure our system works for all businesses. There may be a hiccup or two along the way. It is a systems development project which typically would take months and we've done it in weeks. But we know businesses need the support as soon as possible and we are working to make that happen. Again, we plan to open the application process on Monday, July 6th, but we strongly encourage businesses to go to our website, accd.vermont.gov, to get guidance on how to prepare so that you have the proper documents ready ahead of time. You know what the eligibility requirements would be and more information about the grant formula and process so that businesses are prepared when we launch. ACCD will be hosting a webinar tomorrow afternoon, July 2nd, at 3 p.m. Information for accessing this webinar is also on our website. We realize that these grants are not enough to make businesses whole, but we do hope that this influx of cash can help them survive as Vermont continues to reopen in the months ahead. I will now turn it over to Dr. Levine for a health update. I'm going to provide a brief update, talk a little bit about testing and talk a little bit about sources of outbreaks. Did not bring my screen this morning because two days ago since we last met, there were zero cases on one day and two cases on another, so not a lot to report over the Vermont cases. In terms of the Vermont outbreaks, the two predominant ones that were following Burlington Winooski and Fairhaven, there have not been any new cases in seven days. Winooski stands at 114 cases, a total of 222 involved, meaning cases, contacts, or contacts that turned into cases. Fairhaven continues to stand at 12 cases, only two of which are Vermont, 22 total involved. Additional information about that small outbreak is that, as it was a workplace outbreak, all are adults, median age 35, and a 50-50 mix symptomatic or asymptomatic. Moving on to testing, our rolling seven-day test average has been 1245 with over 8,700 total tests done in seven days. When we look at all of our counties, Vermont counties have had from slightly less than 6% to 11% of their population tested. Keep in mind that's a one-time testing and represents the status of an individual on that day that they are tested. We were heartened to see a report from NPR and Harvard Research yesterday that reported four states where testing was occurring at a sufficient level to actively suppress the virus. We were one of the four states, the other three were Alaska, Hawaii, and Montana. Lastly, I'm frequently asked that these press conferences actually about the source of outbreaks and clusters. And I've stated that it's very challenging work. Frequently, we're unable to provide an answer. I want to provide a more national perspective on that because yesterday in its weekly update called MMWR, the CDC published a study on the characteristics of adult outpatients and inpatients with COVID-19 from 11 academic medical centers across the country. They interviewed a total of 350 patients, and much like we are doing in our contact tracing, went back 14 days in their histories. Out of those 350, only 46% reported recent contact with a COVID-19 patient. So that's under 50%. The majority of the contacts were, as you might expect, either within families, 45%, or work colleagues, 34%. So needless to say, their conclusions were, because cases frequently lack known contact, the process of case investigation, contact tracing and isolation are critical to limit community transmission. And more important than ever become the concepts of physical distancing and mask wearing, especially from this study in the workplace. I'll turn it back to the Governor now. Thank you, Dr. Levine. Mr. Goldstein, we'll turn it over to questions at this point. Governor? Thank you so much, Dean. Question for Mr. Goldstein. So in the application process and the process for rolling out these grants, what sort of internal mechanisms does the state have to make sure that there won't be fraud or waste or abuse within design? Yes, there will be a unique identifier. So applicants will need employee identification number, also their Vermont tax identification number. And there is a way that we could cross reference to ensure that the applicant is indeed kind of the owner of that number. Stuart? Governor, can you speak to the hazard pay provision that I guess is headed your way, the $1,000 a month, the two months? Does that mean you're approving it? Yeah, we're still sorting through that. I mean, I refer to Secretary Smith on that. It's for health care workers at this point, frontline health care workers. I'm not sure how it works, so it hasn't really, I don't believe I've received that one yet. But we'll take a look. Secretary Smith? Stuart, we're putting the mechanisms in place right now. As you know, we did do some distribution of monies for essential workers, hazardous pay, during the height of the pandemic, for designated agencies and specialized services agencies. We expect that it will be similar to the process. This is much broader, of course. It talks about nursing homes. It talks about all other aspects of health care and those people that are on the front lines. But I suspect we're going to be rolling out various announcements here in the next few weeks about how these various programs are going to be work. We have the Health Care Stabilization Fund, which I hope to announce in a week or 10 days of when that's rolling out in the application process for this. And we'll also be talking about the hazardous pay provision as well. Two separate things, but we'll combine them in one sort of announcement. And if I could follow up on the national spread. Now, 31 states have seen a huge spike. And there's a lot of conversation about whether we should need national policy on face masks. You've addressed this, I know, a number of times, but is it time or beyond time for national policy to wear face masks? Well, again, a national policy would be easier to adhere to than having it done sporadically. But I have to say, we look at our numbers and how well we've done and look at the low positivity rate. And we're one of the number of cases in Vermont we're fourth in the nation. And we have a lot of accolades in terms of our testing and so forth. We have a very robust testing and tracing program as Commissioner Levine had just talked about. So I feel good about where we're at. But we're going to continue to push forward. I think wearing, for all those listening, wearing a mask when you can is a good idea. It's altruistic. It helps others. I do it. I think many people do. And we need to keep this effort up. We'll be engaging in a campaign here in the next weeks to come. It has already begun, actually. And we want to make sure that people understand why and do it willingly. Because when you try and just mandating as they're seeing in other states across the country, it doesn't make it so. It doesn't make it happen. There's a lot of friction, controversy, like a defense mechanism, the government telling you what to do once again. I would rather educate, lead, and inspire people to do the right thing. And right now, this is a good thing to do when you can in those conditions where you can't physically distance yourself from someone else or you don't have a health condition that prevents you from wearing a mask. Because some people just can't wear one. So I think we're doing the right thing. We'll try this. And we'll see where it takes us. We also, we have mandated for those riding public transportation to wear masks. We did that a number of weeks ago. We also allowed four communities, cities and towns to do it on their own if they want to restrict further, which some have done a handful. But giving that latitude, I think, has given us, again, a way of approaching this that may be different from in other states. But we can't argue with the numbers. Police fire rescue have been on the front lines since day one. And the Harrow, Rutland Harrow reported a case impacting several police officers in Rutland City during an arrest. I'm wondering if you can give us some numbers as far as how many police departments, how many fire departments, how many rescue squads, and the personnel that have been sidelined due to positive tests from COVID-19. Thanks for the question, Mike. We have actually been asking departments to provide that information on a daily or several times a week basis. And there have been very few reports, actually so few that we have not tracked the overall number. So I can check with the folks that may have that information and get back to you. If any Vermont state troopers have set your department, do you know any of them sidelined during this time? No, not that I'm aware of it. And we have been up until just a few weeks ago, we were tracking daily sick time and trending just to ensure that we weren't seeing any unusual trends. And we did not find any. Thank you very much. Wilson to AP. Good morning. I have two questions on completely different topics. The first one, Secretary French, what do you make of the US Supreme Court's school funding decision out of Montana? There are some, admittedly, the advocates who say that this could start requiring Vermont to start sending money to religious schools. And secondly, for Commissioner Levine, I saw some reports recently about it, just in the last few minutes, actually, that all this testing surge, if you want to call it a surge, could create another shortage in testing equipment or supplies. And those are my questions. This is Secretary French. Thank you for the question regarding Montana decision. Honestly, I haven't had a chance, really, to evaluate the decision or to determine its applicability to Vermont. The decision is based on circumstances in Montana and specifically their constitutional construct, which is going out different in Vermont. So I haven't had a chance to evaluate its relevance to Vermont yet. OK, thank you. On the second part of the question, I just, I was on the SEOC call this morning, the State Emergency Operations Center, and this subject was brought up. Apparently, they are going to be diverting some of the testing supplies to the hotspots that are erupting throughout the country, understandably. But I was told during the briefing that we had a 52-day supply at this point in time. So I think it's good news for us where we can continue at the pace where when we've increased the testing capacity, we're averaging over 1,000 a day at this point. And it appears we can continue to do that for the next 52 days without any supplies coming in. But we are going to further trying to replenish our supplies through other means. And I believe at some point we'll be getting supplies back from the government as well. Dr. Levine? Just to add to that good news. So the principles that we're really operating under, principle one is to have diverse platforms. So not just one way to test on the PCR test for the virus, but multiple ways. So our public health lab has two platforms. UVM has several platforms. Plus there are the commercial labs which actually use different platforms. So all of those platforms require different sets of reagents and equipment to do the assays. So that principle we've really tried to adhere to here. So we wouldn't be overly dependent on one. And then if we lost the supply, we're like dead in the water. Second principle really is that we work with the federal government and really allow them to help us as much as they can. But recognize that they have other priorities too so we can't be totally dependent on that supply chain. So as the governor just said, one of our platforms that we use a lot of is the spigot is being turned the wrong way. And the only way we will be able to get more of that supply is actually working with the manufacturer themselves as opposed to working through the federal government. So we already have channels open to try to accomplish that. And then I guess the third thing is the concept of stockpiling. So you heard me have a 52 day supply and obviously that's at the rate we're currently doing. If something happened and we needed to vastly increase that rate, it would give us less days but we'd still have the capability of doing all of that testing. So making sure we have enough on hand because this is going to be important for many, many more months, unfortunately. Thank you. Okay, I thank you all. Thank you. Thanks Wilson. Avery, WCAS? My question is for Secretary French. Are school districts holding summer school either online or in person this year and how is the state following up to ensure safety guidelines are met? Yeah, thank you for the question. Yes, we put out guidance beginning with summer to give districts the necessary guidance to open summer school and districts are allowed to do that. I think it's the voluntary issue but I've noticed that some districts have taken that on or others are more concerned particularly around the public safety health issues around doing that. So it's been very uneven I think statewide. It's certainly been different than typical summer programming but I would also say that summer programming includes a lot of different types of programs not just remedial academic programs but also recreational activities and so forth. So I think communities are doing their best in terms of navigating their options and working with their local community partners provision those programs. We do not have any mechanism really to supervise that per se. We do have oversight of a program that we call 21st century community programs that we do have some more direct control over but a larger number of programs out there we're not supervising their implementation necessarily. And there's a quick follow up for you and to Governor Scott, Senator Ash and the Vermont NEA are calling for reopening to have work to be used to develop some strategies for the fall. What is your response to that? Well maybe I can start and let Secretary French finish up. Secretary French has been leading a steering group for quite a number of weeks I think since April to contemplate how do we reopen? There have been many, many people at the table experts from every field those in the pandemic community those who have the expertise in that area as well as from the NEA themselves. I think there was probably four representatives that were involved in this since April. They meet every single week and have been going through some of these guidelines and doing a lot of good work. I thought it was unfortunate that two days after the legislature had adjourned that they called for more oversight. I would have thought the committees of jurisdiction and the House and the Senate in education might have wanted to check in and if they had some questions about how we were moving forward because we announced we were going to open up again two to three or four weeks ago. So this is no surprise but I would have thought that the committees of jurisdiction would have had some interest as well in what we were going to do in September. So again, this is politics, it's a campaign year there's a series of elections in November and August so I'll leave it at that but Secretary French maybe go into detail about who was in the meetings and how many times you've met. Yeah, thank you, Governor. Yeah, when I received Senator Asher's letter I mean, my first reaction was I wasn't convinced that he was aware of some of that other activity going on. So in my response, I did try to play out the description of the governor did of what has gone on previously but we have had a regular group meeting every Friday consisting of members of the Superintendent's Association and the Principal's Association, the Independent Schools School Nurses Association, Vermont NEA as the governor mentioned that's figured prominently in that work, the Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators, pediatricians, pediatric infectious disease experts from UVM, schools psychologists, state director of our National Association of Directors of Pupil Transportation so the state transportation folks, some of the agency and of course the expertise from the Department of Health. So we've had a large group involved in designing the guidance I guess, you know, certainly interested in the proposal to a certain extent but I might think you know, having been a superintendent and involved in sort of implementing guidance. So I think we're turning the corner now where we have to be focused on the implementation of the guidance. I think the guidance has stood up very well both from state review and national review. It's considered high quality and I'm certainly interested in working the school district, you know, across the state to understand how they implement the guidance. So we're gonna be focusing our efforts on implementation. So to me, it's remained an open question to what extent such a committee, what are any super seed work that's going on? But more importantly, I think to an extent would support the practical implementation of the guidance because that needs to be our focus right now. Thank you. Greg, the County Courier. Hi, Governor. I wanna start with a quick update. I don't know if you had a response. Somebody asked the other day if the guidance still can be called up. Is that in something we haven't answered on yet? I believe so. I did reach out to General Knight and referred him to, in fact they had a Facebook live event. I think it was last night or the night before to talk about all different types of issues with the guard. So I put him in the right direction. I believe he answered that. But from what I gather, it was the alert status date that was in question that might have been delayed. But that doesn't delay the deployment, I don't believe. So probably a better question for him just to clarify and I can have him contact you, Greg, directly if need be. But it was a terminology that something has been delayed but it doesn't delay the whole deployment. Okay, I can reach out to him, Ted. And my question, Ted, for today, seemed that we're five months in. I understand that you don't wanna give away timelines because they change. But without giving away a timeline, how far ahead are you and your staff planning? And I'm thinking, like are you, I know you're responding to the numbers, but do you have plans months and years out or are you looking just in the next couple of weeks? No, I mean we plan out much further than that. Obviously with the colleges, universities coming back in in September, that's been part of our planning opportunity as well as the K through 12 public schools and private schools throughout Vermont. So we're planning for that. And we're looking ahead, we're trying to contemplate what's going to happen. Again, once we can get to everyone to a 50% opening, which was our goal is, and then try to continue to watch the numbers and open the spicket just a little bit more every week or two and pay attention to the numbers and make sure we're not opening too fast. But we look out obviously with some of these events that are coming up to contemplate for that as well as when it starts getting colder. There's a lot of, we watch other states, other states around the country, but in the region in particular and what's happening with them. It's good news right now, but who knows? It was good news in some of those in California, for instance, it was good news about two weeks ago, but not so good news today, as well as with Arizona and Texas and maybe Florida. So that can change quickly. And obviously we don't want to get too far out over our skis here, but we're doing pretty well in the state and we want to continue to make sure that we're keeping people as safe as possible while opening up just as quickly as we can. I think a big, you know, a big, you know, I will add as well as particularly for your region, Greg, as you're probably more aware than most, once the border is opened up with Canada, that's going to increase trade. There's going to be more people coming into the state which is desperately needed for your region in particular. I appreciate that. So what is the part of the stuff you're looking at this point? You know, you have to get more specific. Like what is it that you'd like? Well, I'm just curious. Are your contingency plans, are they set, you know, two years out, assuming you're re-elected? Are they, are you kind of capping it at six months? Are you capping it at a year? Like, I'm just curious, how far has the planning gone on this sort of response? Well, again, you know, we've done this all without a playbook thus far. So we've developed the playbook as we move forward. So we'll continue to do what we've been doing. And if something happens, I mean, we try and, you know, we have to look out every single day. I mean, every day I wake up and write down all the numbers of all the regional states and what's happening with them, watching what's happening throughout the country, watching what's happening across the world and then trying to make sure that we're still, you know, adhering to our good, our small positivity rate in our tracing efforts and so forth and just constantly monitoring what's going on in our state and making sure that we're not going in the wrong direction. So, you know, it's twofold. Obviously, we want to get back to normal. We want to get back to 100% open it. I, you know, it's just really hard to say at this point, but I think we've moved along reasonably well over the last couple of months, but it does give you a pause when you're seeing other states who thought they had it in hand as well. You know, Arizona in particular, they went ahead and opened up when they thought it was over. They had somehow missed it and now it's affecting their state and their economy, Texas and Arizona and having to actually revert and close things down, which I do not want to do. If we have to, if we see the numbers change dramatically, obviously we do whatever is necessary to keep our monitor safe at this point in time because we've been so cautious and thoughtful in doing so, we're on a good course here. So, I feel good about where we are and we'll continue to monitor through the situation and open up just as quickly as we can and keep looking down the road just as far as we can, but hard to know. I mean, who would have seen, I don't know if you saw what was happening in Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, and then thought that was going to happen. I certainly didn't, but maybe you and others did, but I wouldn't have seen that happening. Thank you, Governor. And thanks for your time. Take care of your thoughtful response. All right, Ed, Newport Daily Express. Yes, Governor. Good afternoon, and then I can just play the starts. I mean, the legislature appears to be making quite a leap of faith by targeting $106 million in federal funds to fill the Revenue Gap and the Education Fund. What will happen if the federal government says, no, you can't do that? If you, if we keep the budget for the artist's land, understanding that our residential tax rate will rise from three cents to 22 cents. Yeah, you've got the numbers. You've got the numbers right. I mean, if we go to, you know, if we had to fill the $100 and something million gap in the Ed Fund alone, I mean, if you just had to backfill that with property taxes, we'd really go up to, you know, almost 25, 25 cents, which is, you know, we can't do that, obviously. And as far as the leap of faith, I think what can happen in the Education Fund in particular, we've set the rate now. We can continue through the rest of the year. We can deficit spend in some respects in the Ed Fund. Maybe we wouldn't want to do that in every fund, but in this fund in particular, we could. But it would give us a little bit of time, a little bit of breathing room, because I still believe that we're going to have to find ways to save money. We can't do this by raising taxes alone. We can't do it. We just, we're taxed the capacity now and asking Vermonters to do more during, especially during this time, this economic crisis that we're facing today would just be not something that would be beneficial to us as a state. So we have to look for another approach, but this does give us a little bit of breathing room. It's not immediate, but again, there's going to be other, there's other budget shortfalls as well in the general fund and so forth. So to the tune of, this could be, you know, it's gone down a little bit at one point. We thought it was going to be four to $500 million in total with the Ed Fund, but it's now could be maybe two to 300 at this point with the Ed Fund as well. So we'll know a lot more as we move forward, especially getting to September, let's say, and we'll know better where we're at. But that's why we did this with the legislature's help. I mean, we were working together on this to do a quarterly budget to get us through this initial stage, and then we'll figure out what the federal government's going to do and whether there's any more money that is going to be coming from the federal government and then just see what our need is at that point. We'll have a better idea of the revenue sources, but suffice it to say, we are going to be, there's going to be a budget gap regardless of what happens. So I think we have to face it. We're going to do it on through the administration. As you know, I froze any raises in the executive branch so that to give Vermont a break and it just wouldn't be the timing isn't appropriate for us to give raises to ourselves in the administration and the executive branch. So we'll continue to do what we can, limit the expenditures and try and live within our means here. Very good, thank you. Cat WCAX. Hi, so I was looking at the availability of pop-up testing and notice that all of the pop-up testing appears to be booked in the state until July 13th. And if you look at the Burlington area specifically, if you want a pop-up test, you're going to have to wait three weeks until July 21st. Is there a discussion about adding more pop-up testing opportunity since there appears to be a lot of demand? But Dr. Levine, I'm glad you asked that now because one thing I forgot to say are my opening comments. When our team reported out today from the Burlington-Wanuski area, they were so hardened by the positive feedback they were getting from the communities that were being served by the pop-ups that are happening pretty much every day in those communities and the access to testing that they felt they might not have had but for the pop-ups. So it concerns me when I hear you say that there may be a 12 days period where someone couldn't obtain a test, we have an entire testing team and task force that looks at this all the time. So I'll make sure that they can verify that and see what contingency plans are being developed. Much as I talked about earlier from an earlier question about not relying on one platform for testing, I wanna expand that to talk about not relying on one site for testing either. The pop-ups are really ideal for two sets of circumstances, minimum of two sets. One set is someone without symptoms who wants to get tested and that person may just wanna know or that person may be a traveler who wants to on day seven try to have a negative test and then not be quarantined anymore. In the other set of circumstances are these more special times when there is a focal cluster or outbreak in the area of the state where we wanna provide more abundant testing to get a handle on that area and to allow the population to know if they indeed are at risk or not at risk. So those are pop-ups but then there's obviously testing that can go on within our local health offices on a periodic basis around the state. There's testing that can go on in commercial enterprises and in doctor's offices and in the healthcare system. So what we're trying to do actively is broaden the portfolio so that there are abundant options for someone. Pop-up, local health office, their local hospital or FQHC setting which I wanna say are doing abundant testing for us. Whether they wanna go to Walmart and whether we can expand the number of Walmart's or in active discussions with pharmacies that are national pharmacies to see if they would open up for business in Vermont like they've done in other more highly populated states. So the number of options are quite abundant and our goal is to actually provide as many of them as possible. So if someone says, you know, I can't get into one of those pop-up tests but yeah, I traveled and I wanna have my quarantine early. I wanna go get a test and I don't have any symptoms. Should they be contacting them at their doctor's office? That's always a good option. And we've been encouraging those in the healthcare system to actually be offering the testing for those who have the concern that you just raised. We also get a fair number of those calls into our operation center and at the health department where we have people who can answer that and try to problem solve with the individual. That health department's website, the pop-up testing map goes through July. To confirm, will these pop-ups continue in August? I can't imagine us stopping the strategy knowing that they have provided such an important outlet. So you've seen a schedule through July. I just don't think what has been developed yet that goes beyond that. That's a good question here. Are there ways to get the test results back faster? Have any of those rapid results tests gotten good enough that the state would consider using them? So that's actually two questions. Let me take the first because that again came through on our SEOC and Health Operations Center meeting this morning that there's been an entire team assembled because of the concern about not getting negative results conveyed to people in a rapid enough timeframe. So there are extra people who call the individual with the negative result so that they don't have to wait for the mail to arrive. So that's one aspect. The other aspect is we're still a little reluctant on the point of care tests from the Abbott machines based on the FDA themselves coming out and not fully endorsing those and cautioning the clinical community about the limitations. But I do think there will be other point of care platforms that could be utilized because it's such an active market right now. So our hope is that that would become another option. I'd become aware of an option that's being used actually more locally here that I have some concerns about and we'll be discussing with those that are using it because a lot of these tests have come on so fast that in their zeal to allow us to use them, the FDA created these emergency use authorizations which is fine when you're in a crisis like a pandemic but now they're having time to go back and say how do these tests really perform? And not all of them are actually passing muster on that criteria. So we have to be very careful not just take something because it happens to be out there and available and marketed well but we need to actually make sure that it's gonna benefit the people who are seeking to use it. Thanks for all your questions. Thank you. If I could just add Kat as well and Dr. Levine can correct me if I'm wrong but if you can travel and you're from another community you can sign up at different locations. So you wouldn't have to be for instance from Burlington to get a Burlington test. You could go to Barrie or wherever else they're providing a test if there's an opening. So when people call into our system we try to help them. Okay. And apparently they do try and help at the health department to provide them with the tests at a different location. All right. John. Thank you. Thanks. Question for the governor and for secretary French. Just to clarify governor do you have all of the CRS bills the legislature passed on Friday night? No. Do you have possession now? Yeah. The speaker's office said they set them over yesterday. Well what I'm saying I guess is I don't have all the bills from Friday night. They were passed Friday night. I don't have all of them now. Now they don't all come from the house. As you probably know, John if they're S bills, Senate bills they come from the Senate secretary. If they're each bills they come from the house wherever they originated from. So some we may have gotten all the house bills I just don't know but that doesn't mean we received all the Senate bills. And for secretary French US department of education says that Vermont schools are in what they're calling these intervention status with regard to special ed and they're saying Vermont got low scores for students with disabilities coming out of secondary education and in the length of time it takes to resolve complaints involving students and performance on national assessments they get for lagging as well. So I know special ed was a particular problem with folks learning at home during this time period. And I'm wondering what you're doing or what the state's response is to this elevated concern from the fed. Yeah, thank you for the question. It's not a concern that we're unaware of and we were expecting to be elevated with status and actually involve their and welcome their involvement in terms of technical assistance. Yeah, the issue basically boiled down to data reporting to a certain extent and fairness to districts some of the measures that you mentioned they haven't received adequate feedback from state law on their performance like dark. So we, I think we have the issues well in hand but we are sort of digging our way out of several of your problem. But we have, I think a good plan to do that and look forward to working with the federal government to ensure that we have good oversight of our special ed system. Okay, and if I could for the governor on sort of an education or the task force related question Are you saying that the pro tem was fine politics with the issue as you referenced the upcoming primary? Well, I just think that it's just unfortunate that they were in session last week and they've been in session since January and we've known about this issue for a few weeks now. And to my knowledge, I don't believe the committees of jurisdiction, the education committees in the house or the Senate have engaged on this. And then we adjourn and then we get a letter. So I just think it's unfortunate in some respects that we didn't engage earlier, although we've heard about some of the concerns that the NEA has. But again, the committees of jurisdiction have been in session and if they had concerns they should have probably brought them to our attention so we could work them out. I also would like to add, John, in terms of special education, I think this just reinforces the need for us to get the kids back to school so that they don't slip through the cracks further, slip through the cracks. This is when you can in person instruction as we know is better than what we've been facing over the last two or three months. So I think, again, this reinforces the fact that we need to get back to school in September. Okay, thank you. Sean, the Chester Telegraph. Thank you. This is a question for the governor. We're looking at figures today and Vermont continues to lag behind most of the country in responding to the 2020 census where something like 47 out of 52 jurisdiction. Can you speak to the state's efforts to get Vermonters to respond to the census going forward? Yeah, this has been a source of contention and frustration for us. We've had our director of libraries heading this up. In fact, we had a part of our press conference last week who was on this very subject. It's risen to that level. We're pleading with people, take five minutes, fill out the census, call in. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it's fairly easy to do. So we need this. This has an effect on our budget in terms of crisis, in terms of emergency declarations and so forth. This has an effect on all of that. So if you're listening, please, please take the time to fill out the census. It's just an easy thing for you to do. It takes five minutes. So are there any other efforts by the state to get that message out? Yeah, I'm not that big. Yeah, yes, all kinds of efforts. And I can get that information to you and would love for you to talk about it a little bit more in your area as well. Anything will help in any one of those on the call from the media sources. And I know some of you have, so it's been helpful, but we need more assistance here and we're doing all we can, but we'll get you all the information that we have. And if you have any ideas on how to get people to engage, we're all ears. Sean, I can connect you directly to Jason Brought and who's heading our census efforts. Colin Lane, BT Digger. Happy Canada Day. With a closed border and everything. I know it's tough to celebrate. I was wondering, yes, commissioner will seem to talk about the criteria, I know there was talk of businesses showing a certain amount of losses to qualify. It sounds like that type of criteria that's not going to be part of it. So I was wondering, truly anyone can apply for it? Yeah, there are criteria. And that was one of the problematic areas where I believe in some areas they wanted 75% loss where we had asked for a little bit less. Commissioner Goldstein. Yes, thanks for the question. So S350, Act 115 permits those with 75% loss in any one month from March through September as compared to any of 2020, as compared to that same month in the prior year in 2019. And so that is what is effective right now. As soon as H966 becomes law, then the requirement will be 50%. All you'd have to show is a 50% loss, the same time interval between March and September of 2020 as compared to 2019. You have to be a business that does not have more than $20 million worth of revenue in any one given year. You need to have at least one employee. And there's a couple of other criteria, but you have to be have been in business before February of this year. And there are other criteria that have to do with use of CRF funds. So we have that listed on the site now, but hopefully that took care of your original question about you do have to show a loss. You do have to show a loss. That is a requirement. When does it switch over from 75% to 50%? What is the mechanism for that? As soon as H966 becomes law, we will have that question in the system. It's been very, very challenging to kind of figure out how we do that just so that, you know, we were working full steam ahead on 75% and the bill was passed Friday night. It's virtually impossible to have that, you know, 100% ready right now as we speak, but we're working toward having that ready in time for when the bill gets signed. It's just basically you'd have to answer two questions. And the $50,000 is sort of a one size fits all type of thing. Even if there are certain thresholds for how much you need to have lost in order to qualify for the $50,000, for example, if you've lost 75% but your company was only making, I mean, is that also available to everyone? The maximum is $50,000 irrespective. So it's basically the formula is revenue times 10%, but with a maximum of $50,000. It's really just a way and mechanism. We know that we're not gonna have enough money for everybody, so we need to put that in place until which time we could see if there is leftover funds. Maybe we could reconsider about it at this point. That is our maximum. The revenue times 10%, sort of the guiding amount. Correct. Thank you, Governor Scott. I was wondering if you could talk about this mapping campaign that you said you have plans? Yeah, could be somebody from the Department of Health or maybe Secretary Smith could talk to it in more detail. But we've been working on this for the last couple of weeks and I think they're rolling it out as we speak. Secretary Smith. Thank you, Governor. Thank you, Colin. The masking campaign, the education campaign, as we'd like to call it, will be, it's starting to roll out first, sort of some aspects of it through the health department, but here's what we're trying to do. We're trying to make sure that Vermonters know the reasons why it's important to wear a mask. We're trying to make sure that they know what are the time, when should they be wearing a mask as we move forward. So we're going to do this on a broad platform basis. It's not gonna only be the health department that rolls this out. It's gonna be across state government. So you go to state parks, you'll see the message about masks. You see the road signs. You see some of the road signs now, but those messages will continue to change. We'll have Vermonters talking to Vermonters about why they think it's important to wear a mask. What do they feel in terms of why they think it's important to wear a mask? So it's gonna be on a broad platform. We're gonna roll it out. You'll probably see the start of it this week and the sort of the general rollout next week on educating the aspects of the benefits of a mask. And one of the things I think is essential is making sure that we hit all those groups that may be reluctant to wear a mask and have them make that decision themselves. That it's important for them to wear a mask based upon the information they're getting and the decision points that they make. I think if you internalize it, if you socialize it, if it becomes important to you, you will do it. And that's sort of the basis of the campaign across all of state government. I gotta say, the partners that we've partnered with, the health department sort of having a critical role in this, but the partners like ACCD, A&R, transportation, AG have just been tremendous in helping us put this program together and then rolling it out in the next few days. And is it safe buying TV time or Facebook ads or how are all these messages gonna get out? They're gonna go out through multiple platforms. Of what we'd like to see is Vermonters talking to Vermonters and promote Vermonters talking to Vermonters about the various aspects of wearing a mask when to wear a mask and how important it is. So we're gonna use social media. We're gonna use paid and earned media in a way. But those details in terms of the budget have not been rolled out. The camp have not been determined how much will go where, but it's definitely gonna be social media. It's definitely gonna be posters and those sort of things. And there will be earned and paid media at some point. Any sense of how you're gonna gauge the success of this campaign? My understanding is the administration doesn't really have any data at this point on masking or social distancing compliance. And I'm wondering without a baseline how you sort of figure out whether this is effective in any way. We'll know it when we see it. I mean, this is a campaign. This is a campaign. This is a campaign that you will see the results. And we'll know it when we see it. That seems like a different way than you generally operate AHS. I mean, this is a data-driven administration. That's a different approach to the additional thing. I don't think it's any different. I mean, these are public awareness campaigns. And when you do a public awareness campaign, whether it's tobacco, I mean, we will eventually see the results of this campaign. We will see it in a whole host of areas in a public awareness campaign. So I am optimistic that Vermonters, given the aspect of why it's important to wear a mask, allowing them to socialize why it's important to them. Because to many people, it's a different reason, whether it's important that they keep their family safe, whether they keep their parents safe, whether they keep their coworkers safe. We have to make sure that we internalize it because as the governor said, if we don't do that, if we don't change sort of the social norms in wearing a mask, it's not gonna make a difference whether you have a mandated mask policy or not. Enforcing it is almost impossible. So we're taking this approach where we really wanna socialize it with the individuals, with Vermonters, and have them make that personal decision to wear a mask because it's good for their own interests. Speaking about now and it's about the USDIF furloughs, his office has put a number on it that there's 1,111 in Vermont. And I was wondering, that's about a couple of days ago, but what sort of the administration is doing to help alleviate some of the pain from it? Yeah, that's a number that I haven't heard as yet in terms of that's the number of furlough they're expecting, 1,105. 1,111, 1,111. A furloughed employees. Yeah, that's right. In Vermont, specifically. We will definitely contact Senator Leahy's office about this, but obviously this is, if that is the correct number, that would be, again, another blow to our economy. We're going to see a number of these businesses who are no longer going to be able to operate. We've already seen, we have 40 to 50,000 people on unemployment right now. We're trying to reverse that trend. So obviously, the quicker we can get back to normal, the quicker we can open up the border, the quicker we can get people, even in immigration, back to work. So we'll do whatever we can to assist them, as Secretary Curley had talked about earlier. All right, I think it was on Monday. But again, we'll check this out. I just don't know. I hadn't heard that number. I would be surprised if it was that high. Thank you very much, Governor Scott. Thank you, Secretary Smith. Guy Page. Governor, you were asked last week if you would veto the Global Warming Solutions Act bill, if it gets to you. Now I have the house version with a million dollars in funding and a standard version with no funding. Will your decision on whether to veto depend on whether the final version is funded or not? Or are there other veto worthy concerns there? Yeah, you know, we were, I think as I stated earlier, we were on a path where I thought we found consensus where we could work together on this. There is some problematic areas in the bill in terms of funding and so forth. And I haven't taken a look at it at this point. But there's many areas that I have concerns over. But we will contemplate that over the next few weeks. Okay, also one of your competitors for the GOP nomination has asked the city of Montpelier for permission to paint Liberty and Justice for All in red, white and blue letters on State Street next to the Black Lives Matter sweet mural. What do you think of that idea? That sounds very patriotic, fitting for the 4th of July. I wouldn't say it's inconsistent with Black Lives Matter message. I think they're almost one and the same. So if the, you know, we're in a unique situation here in Montpelier where the city of Montpelier obviously is the host for the Capitol and they take care of the street in front of the Capitol. And if they came to us with another request for another type of message, we would consider it. I don't see why we wouldn't do something of that nature if they saw fit to pass it. Okay, thank you. Governor, just, I'm sorry, to get back to the global warming solutions. What are some of the other issues besides the money that you have with the bill? Well, again, the lawsuit, you know, being able to sue the state if we didn't meet certain benchmarks is a problem for me. Yup, okay. Thank you. Brittany, Local 22. Just a quick question. I know you touched a little bit on Monday, but you said local times in front conferences in the past that, you know, Vermont is not an island. We need to be looking at other states and just to see if you would say the uptick in cases in other states. Are you considering it all, you know, going back on tourism and inviting out-of-stateers to come to Vermont? Not at this point in time, Brittany. The Northeast is looking much better almost every week looks a little better. I watched again the numbers of New York and Massachusetts in particular, and they are doing much better than they were a week, two weeks ago, three weeks ago. So with the metrics we put into place with our modeling and opening up safe counties, we've been able to open up tourism into Vermont by, you know, hundreds of thousands of people. We have seen an uptick in traffic, which is good news for the hospitality sector. And when the border opens up with Canada, which I expect it will soon, or I'm hopeful it will, that will, you know, bring more trade in from the North that others don't experience. I mean, we seem to be a destination for many in the Montreal area and in Quebec in general, and this would be beneficial for us. So at this point in time, again, we're watching the numbers. I see no reason to move backwards. In fact, we want to move forward. Thank you. Erin, VT Digger. Hi, so Commissioner Levine will remember our conversation about commercial testing, where it was mentioned that the only commercial testing site that you were aware of was the Walmart in Derby. That day, we were informed that Walmart was closing that testing site down for a lot of interest, essentially. I guess that needs to confirm that there are no commercial testing sites in Vermont. I also wanted to know, you know, what are the options for people who want to get tested in the Northeast Kingdom? Because the only top-up site that we've seen so far would be in St. John'sbury, which can be kind of a select for people who are, you know, in different areas of the Northeast Kingdom. Geez, I don't know for sure what the schedule is, but I've seen pop-up testing in Newport as well, I believe. I've been seeing it in Island Pond, so I believe we have been on some testing, but maybe we're not on the schedule right now for that. Dr. Levine? Regarding Walmart, I'd be disappointed if that were true. So I'll have to follow up on that, because I know we've been talking with Walmart in general about expanding, not contracting. The other part of commercial, though, that I've mentioned earlier today is pharmacies where we're still actively engaged in those discussions, but you're correct. There are no pharmacies currently from the national chains that are offering that. With regard to the Northeast Kingdom, there are a number of federally qualified health center sites, all of whom expressed and follow-up through, actually, on their tremendous enthusiasm to do testing, and they're all available with sites to be able to access for those people living in the Northeast Kingdom. So it's not just relying on a pop-up that may not be there every week or every day or whatever. The healthcare system that's part of the fabric of the Northeast Kingdom is actually providing testing. It comes to these remote regions of the state. Is there anything that the health department is considering doing differently to consider the distance people might have to travel to get a test or containing an outbreak in a rural area compared to urban areas? Sometimes rural areas have workplaces and family gatherings, too. Yes, absolutely. So let's use Fairhaven as an example. Never had they seen a test site prior to having an outbreak. And even though people can travel to other communities like Rutland, like Bennington, they're not exactly next door, and that would not be very convenient for them. So we worked with the town and created a site at a convenient time for those in the community to attend, and we had almost 250 people get tested there. So that's an example of what we would do in the setting of a concern about a part of the state that was having an outbreak or even just needed access. We're very responsive to that. So the schedules that we set up are not they're strategic, if you will, so that if there's a concern or a need, we're certainly willing to work with those regions to accommodate that need. House, in the health department, testing numbers broken down by county or region? Yes, we have it broken down by county. Have you considered the leaps in those? Yeah, I was part of your data related? Yes, literally, I literally got them on my desk 24 hours ago. So we will have them available. I look forward to checking those out, thank you. Thank you. Andrew, Caledonia record? I'd like to express my interest for seeing those county by county testing numbers as well, so if when they are released, they could be done so via the website, that'd be great. I believe that's going to be the case, Andrew. Excellent. He mentioned last week the prison system was considering adjusting protocols for intake of new prisoners by possibly consolidating the quarantine activity to two facilities in the state. One of your staff plan has been further developed and if so, have you identified what facilities may be used for that purpose? Thanks for the question. We haven't identified what facilities are going to be used for that purpose. As I said last week, we're looking at one or two facilities for the intake of various prisoners as I had mentioned last week. Our greatest threat is from the outside, not the inside. By the way, we just finished testing Marble Valley down in Rutland again for the second time in 10 days. I think we're still just trying to sort out the various tests with names and making sure, but I think there was 198 tests, 197 of them are negative. The one, it doesn't mean it's positive, it's just they're making sure that the name is correct. That's both inmates and correctional officers as well. We are still in development of that process on intakes into our system. I think you'll probably see, we're trying to figure out how to sort of reduce travel between the time that we have to transport from the arresting facility to a correctional facility so it'll probably be a multiple of at least two facilities, one in the north, one in the south as we're looking at it, but it hasn't been determined where those facilities are located. I also wanna just mention, we had mentioned last week that we're gonna start rotating on a weekly basis, testing each week one facility. That will begin right after the holiday on July 6th and that one facility that's going to be tested next week will be Northwest. So stay tuned on what facilities we will do the intakes with in terms of quarantining incoming inmates. Okay, thank you. And another one for the governor if I can, you mentioned a little bit earlier that the threshold for qualifying for the grants was put a little bit higher than you had originally hoped in terms of the losses. With it at 50%, are you concerned that there are businesses that maybe suffered a 40% loss that aren't gonna be helpful by this program and there's still a lot of economic pain to be felt out there? Yeah, I'm concerned with all the businesses actually. And in particular, I thought about all the businesses, some of the restaurants who had decided to do whatever they could to stay open curbside service and so forth and obviously hurt their bottom line but thought it was important to stay open. And I'd hate to see them penalize in this way just by trying to stay open and having the revenue coming in but their bottom line is fully depleted. And so I'm just concerned about some of those businesses on the fringe, so to speak, that are really in danger of, or on the brink of ruin as I said before and won't be able to continue without some support. So just wanted to see some as much flexibility as possible in doing that, but we have another round to go. Hopefully we can get through this and we'll disperse, I have no doubt, we'll disperse all the money in this round and probably won't have enough even at 50%, but we'll go back to the legislature when they come back in the session in August, September and if we see that we need more dollars, which I expect we will, we'll be asking for that. Anything? Do you have any sense? I'm sorry. I was just going to say, do you have any sense of how many businesses have permanently shuttered at this point and how many are at risk of doing so in the near future? Yeah, I don't know. It's only anecdotal. I just don't know. I think we'll learn more as this program unfolds and we'll get a better sense when the numbers are coming in and when we have these webinars as well. I believe we'll get some feedback from many groups. Mr. Goldsman. Thanks, Governor. I think you covered it really well, but what I just wanted to say, the difficulty and the enormity of this crisis is that the losses are still unfolding. So unlike other disasters where you could capture a point in time and what the impact was, this is still alive. It's still with us. We have no idea it'll get impacted again, but I guess to answer that question, we would have to know how many businesses do we know that could survive at 50% capacity? I mean, some of them struggle at 100% capacity. So it is a very dire situation and we would love more flexibility and we'll see what happens as we start this process. Thanks. And is that 50% revenue loss offset by businesses that received PPP or some of the other financial aid packages from previous efforts? So no, what we did and we had a significant amount of guidance on how to interpret the federal guidance and where we came out is that the subtract, we'll take revenue times 10% subtract at any business interruption insurance proceeds which we're pretty confident nobody received. And then the maximum is 50K. We are not subtracting out PPP nor are we subtracting out IDLE, but there is sufficient warning and text about avoidance of duplication of benefit and all that means to individual businesses to ensure that you're not using these funds for things that you've already paid for from any of the other amounts that you've received. So we're pretty confident that since, you know, recipients will have until the end of December to pay these funds. And again, this is an ongoing crisis. So we do think the loss is outstrip and the need outstrips whatever assistance was available. Thanks. Thank you, everyone. Tim from our business magazine. Hi, John. Just following up on that, I was sort of literally back in the envelope and at $1 million revenues say that would average to be 17,000 businesses. And I would guess that it would be pretty hard to find 17,000 businesses that suffered 50% loss. That is tremendously significant as you have suggested, a lot of businesses are fairly making it 100% revenues. And, you know, what is the universe of total companies that we're looking at? Yeah, I mean, the entire number of businesses in the state is something like 70,000. But we think that, you know, we've done modeling with the tax department. That's how we arrived at our original ask. And we had originally asked for about $250 million worth of financial assistance. So we're working with a lesser number. You know, we know going in, we're not going to be able to help everybody, which is a terrible position and feeling to go about doing this. But we're working with the team we have. I mean, this is what we have and we have to make the best from it. But we are empathetic and understand that this is not going to help everybody and it's not going to save everybody. And just to be clear on the money, the first package as I see was 70 million and the second is 100 million. So the 170 million you're able to work with at this point. Yeah, the way it'll break down is the first, the Act 115 funds are 50 million for tax and 20 for ACCD. And the second tranche will be 56 for ACCD and 26 for tax departments. So total kind of 76 each. It's the PPP and the other programs also some limitations. You know what, what you can pay for these unlimited grants that once you get the money other than that stupid thing you mentioned, you could use it for anything. Yeah, it has to be related to the COVID, either the response or the impact or the costs or, you know, the losses. So it has to be directly related to COVID crisis. But we're not lining up the exact, you know, that has to be this particular fixed cost or a variable cost. It is fairly broad. And when again, when businesses could expect to actually, you know, going through the process that really is they could expect actually to get some money. Yeah, so we're hoping it'll be weeks and we'll see. It's going to be dependent on volume. So the greater the volume, probably the longer the time. But we're expecting to have kind of disbursements once a week. Well, good luck on that. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Steve, any KTV? Hello, can you hear me? Again. Thank you. A couple for a couple for the doctor, maybe one for the governor, if I may. Dr. I had a question from one of my viewers that said, what direct proof do you have that face coverings reduce the risk of COVID? So there's actually a wealth of published studies. They don't all agree. They don't be candid about that. But clearly they do agree on one thing, that if these are going to be protective, they are protective because they prevent large respiratory droplets from getting transmitted from one person to another. And the concept of how viruses are transmitted, respiratory viruses, the ones that cause respiratory symptoms and that are introduced into a person through their nose, mouth, or eyes, that's well known over many viruses, not just the current coronavirus. So the data that we use is really much more long enduring data than just unseen by this coronavirus epidemic. So it has to do with respiratory droplet transmission. Do you think it's coincidence that we're seeing the waves of new cases, particularly in the south and southwest, just weeks after the waves of protests, or could it be that in the southern areas that it's a result of spending more time indoors in an air conditioned environment? Yes, so, you know, there's been another analysis just done in the last couple days of all of the protests around the country. And though public health officials were in fear that this was going to set off the next wave, the reality is very hard to document abundant cases coming from protests. The consensus about what's going on in the south and the west is multifactorial, but things that are included are the fact that some of those states reopened pretty much all of a sudden and all at once to a very large extent. Some of that has to do with the younger age demographic congregating indoors and frankly not using facial coverings when they do so because they were in locations like bars and restaurants where they're talking and drinking and eating so they wouldn't have facial coverings on and because the mass gathering size at those indoor settings was large. Again, it all has to do with how many people you're trying to get together and what size arena, if you will, and how much time they're spending in the activities that they're doing there. I think people actually, this is not a study because it wasn't done as a clinical trial, but if you look at the difference between being inside as we just were talking about and able to transmit virus and not wearing a facial covering versus what we've seen country-wide, which is a lot of people outside engaging in active protests, but wearing facial coverings, I think that's good news for the facial covering as a possible preventive for transmitting virus. So I think we should look at that very, very carefully. And if I could pick up on the secretary's earlier comments about the campaign and the masks. We all agree that you can't just tell people this is important to do, so just do it. We never would have gotten anywhere in our country's history if that was the entire way we went about our business. If you look at the example of stopping smoking, if you look at the example of maybe not moving from alcohol to marijuana to prescription opioids, these are not things that people just see and add and they go overnight, that changed my world and I'm going to definitely do what I need to do to stay healthy. These are behavior changes that really do take a fair amount of time and energy and sometimes there's conscious lot, sometimes it's more subconscious, it's just you keep seeing it over and suddenly it sinks in at one point based on an experience you've had. And we do have great data. We show that some of these campaigns reduce the number of people who are actively smoking. They reduce the amount of alcohol use in a certain age demographic, etc. What we're asking for now though is so different because none of those other behaviors generally are going to cause you to be significantly impaired in the next two days if you don't change them and you often have months or weeks or sometimes years but eventually you may change them. But now we're in a pandemic and a pandemic really does warrant us to try to do things in a much faster mode because this is when we can help each other the most. We hopefully won't be in this pandemic forever and hopefully we will have a much easier time in the pandemic because we've been actively working to help each other every step of the way by doing all of the things that we're always talking about up here. So a lot of the kind of campaign is going to come out on so many different types of media and much of it appropriate for certain demographics within our society, people of certain age or sex or background or what have you because you need to do what appeals to them. The difference here though is we have to do this in a very rapid fashion just like we had to get testing up very, very quickly because it doesn't do any good if you don't have it when you need it. So all of this is just on a very advanced timeline so there won't be as much time to get all of the data and follow the data that we need because we have to sort of do things very, very quickly but it will be apparent all around you but depending on who you are and what age you are or what have you you may not see it all just because it's not coming out towards you. I think you had a question for the governor as well. Yeah, thank you. It's funny that you mentioned cigarette or tobacco cessation because I mean you can judge that by the decline in sales of cigarettes at $10 a pack but on the other hand a lot of smokers realized that they could roll their own with a machine for approximately 5 cents a piece so the numbers don't always be lie what's really happening but governor, if I may with the numbers being so good and we're opening more and more don't you think that the spigot could be opened a little more to allow these businesses to try and come back on their own rather than have to jump through all these hoops to try and get essentially a welfare check? Yeah, if I did, Steve, I would open it. So we're not there yet? We are, you know, every week I think we get a little bit better but then we have, you know, there's some concerns we have an outbreak we see some of the numbers growing in other states and so forth so it gives me a little bit of pause and I'm just trying to be cautious, methodical and not go backwards the last thing I want to do is go to get to a point where we say like Arizona has done and Texas has had to do and start closing businesses again I'd rather continue to move forward rather than retreat Sure, I can see that and you mentioned that you would be okay with someone painting liberty and justice for all would freedom and unity be okay? Yeah, that's our motto, as you know, Steve so, you know, if you want to go to the city council and present that, we'll see what they have to say Yeah, but if you abbreviated it it would show that our forebears have a sense of humor that we probably still don't get All right, thank you very much Thanks, Steve Joe Barton, council Hello You spoke earlier about colleges opening up and given the fact that it appears that many of the increases in current cases in states where we're seeing large surges are among our younger population Has a lack of given to recommendations to colleges when they open and if so, what kind of advice are there being given at this point? Yeah, there's going to be a whole host of restrictions and guidance put into place They've been working on this with Rich Schneider who is a former president of Norwich University leading the charge, so to speak and working with a number of colleges and university presidents and so forth along with our health department and our ACCD team in developing these guidelines So we're getting very close to making those public but I would say probably I would say sometime next week if we continue down this path we're getting closer and closer to being able to do that but there's going to be a whole host of restrictions, Joe Very good Also, I've been honoring the agency of education regulations regarding the opening of elementary through high schools in the fall and it's clear that these are going to require schools to put out a lot of money that was never anticipated in earlier budgets I know that the legislature asked the secretary to wait Joe, I guess today to submit a request for funds to the federal government how much how about you asking for, how much do you hope and expect to get to support things like masks, disinfectant and all the many other unexpected expenses that are going to come with reopening schools Secretary French Yes, thank you We did, I would say school districts received approximately $50 million in the legislature's action last week through the coronavirus relief fund so we're working to turn that guidance on so we can get those funds up for the summer reopening class If you're having about the federal government delay the request wasn't that we delay our request to the federal government because we received approval separate pot of money all together what we call the ESSER fund We're in the process of putting that application out to the school districts as well so we'll have additional funds but the immediate needs for reopening schools will be met through the coronavirus relief fund appropriated by the legislature and that's approximately $50 million Thank you very much Ethan, Burlington Free Press Ethan, Burlington Free Press Can you be right here? Yeah, we can hear you now, Ethan Yeah, this is a question for Governor Sagrada with the State Auditor Hofford's recent report on one care per month Yeah, you faded We got the auditor from one care Yeah, we're just curious about your thoughts on the recent report you released I'll ask Secretary Smith to comment on that Actually, I thought it was I want to be complimentary to the report I thought it pointed out some areas that we need to improve on obviously the two recommendations were to the Green Mountain Care Board and not to the agency I understand it's going to be a series of reports there coming out but, you know I've always said this, if there's room for improvement we're looking for room for improvement and there were two recommendations in that report that, like I said again, were to the Green Mountain Care Board but I think generally we need to sort of look at how we're improving our all-payer model our structure as we have put together the all-payer model and the ACO as we move forward as you know, I asked for more transparency at the ACO level operating as a non-profit to apply to the Internal Revenue Service as a non-profit I believe they're in the process of doing that but even if they don't get that designation to actually operate in the disclosure like a non-profit with the 990 so I don't have any qualms with what the auditor said in that report I thought it was informational I thought the findings were fine and we have to correct some of the things that he had mentioned in that report that concludes the questions I want to thank everyone for turning in before we sign off I wanted to let you know that there will be no press conference this Friday in observance of the fourth it was hard to believe that we've already had about 15 weeks of this three times a week two-hour briefings so starting next week we're going to move to Tuesdays and Fridays at 11 so with that I hope everyone enjoys this holiday weekend please remember to be smart be safe and help everyone stay healthy in order to keep our economy open and rolling along so again I thank you all for tuning in change in the time it will be Tuesdays and Fridays after we get back from our little break. Thank you very much