 Good morning, everyone. I hope everyone had a safe, happy and COVID free Thanksgiving. And anecdotally, I get the sense that many stepped up and kept their Thanksgiving small. I also want to acknowledge we had, unfortunately, three more Vermonters who lost their lives to this virus. I share my condolences with their families during this difficult time to the rest of us. Please remember, this is the consequence of more virus in the community, which is exactly why we've taken the steps we've taken. There's no doubt 2020 has been a long difficult year. Since February, we've battled a pandemic that circled the globe. As a nation, we've seen our lives change in unthinkable ways as we struggle to contain and control a virus that's already taken the lives of over a quarter million Americans. And we'll continue to disrupt our way of life in the months to come. In Vermont, we met this challenge with the same strength and unity that has guided us through so many other challenges in our history. We've proven that listening to the science, following the data, and working together, can prevent the worst impacts of this virus. That doesn't mean we've been spared from hurt or loss because we know that's not true. But Vermonters have sacrificed to protect our families, friends, and neighbors by limiting the spread of the virus in order to keep one another as safe and as healthy as possible in these incredibly challenging times. And this should not come as a surprise because we have a history of leading the nation in important moments. From the civil war to civil rights, our brave little state has lit the way for the nation. This time is no different. And as we find ourselves facing what we all hope will be a final surge, our example is needed now more than ever. That means paying attention to the guidance in order to slow the spread of the virus, save lives, and keep our health care system from being overwhelmed. I know how hard it is. I know how hard it will continue to be as we make our way through the holidays without the normal get togethers and sense of closeness we all want. But with the recent news on vaccines, we now know there is light at the end of the tunnel. We will get through this and we can see there are brighter days ahead. And that spirit and in celebration of the coming holidays, I think it's time to lift the spirits. So I'm asking everyone to help Vermont light the way. Not only in our efforts to combat this virus, but to literally brighten our communities and neighborhoods by asking you, if able, to decorate your homes and businesses with holiday decorations and lights, starting this weekend and throughout the holiday season. Let's get creative to show the world that Vermonters are here for each other, that we care about one another, and that even through these dark and difficult times, Vermont lights the way. Now, growing up in Vary, I remember my parents would pile us three boys into the family truckster. You probably remember the wood paneled station wagon made famous by Clark Griswold and his family in the National Lampoon movies. Well, my mom and dad would load up our Buick station wagon, with wood grain sides, by the way, to explore the many hills of Vary and see all the homes and businesses decorated for the holidays. It was really a great time, which made for some great memories. We know the holidays will be different this year. We know the holidays will be different this year. So let's make our streets and side roads special, lit up with decorations and lights all across the state. Now, some communities are already doing this. I saw that Stowe had posted something similar on social media, and there may be others as well who are way ahead of us. And I thank them for doing so. And this will only add to that as a joint effort. Of course, knowing that social media could use a whole lot more optimism and hope than we're seeing these days, we'll also be asking you to share photos and videos of your homes and favorite decorations on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram by using the hashtag VT Lights the Way for the rest of the world to see. And we'll be working with businesses, nonprofits and media partners to help us spread the joy as far and as wide as possible. But we need Vermonters to pitch in. And that's really the key. Together, we can celebrate this season and remind each other that there are, in fact, brighter days ahead. And I believe it's not that far into the future. We can make a once in a century pandemic holiday season a truly unique and memorable one for our kids in a fun and positive way. And we can show the nation that, once again, Vermont lights the way. With that, I'll now turn it over to Secretary French for this week's education update. He's joining us by video. Secretary French. Thank you, Governor. Good morning. We completed the first phase of our surveillance testing for school staff last week. The preliminary data indicated approximately 9,389 tests were administered and the test identified 21 positive cases of COVID-19. The logistics behind the surveillance testing in schools are complex, involving teams from various state agencies, including the health department, the agency of education, the agency of transportation, and the department of safety. The Vermont National Guard also played a critical role. Our school districts manage the rapid deployment of testing very well, and I want to thank them for their work in this effort. It was a good example of how our state and local partnerships have served us so well during this pandemic. Michael Clark, the superintendent for the Grand Isle Supervisory, sent me an email describing how things went in the district, which as folks should know, has some fairly unique geographical challenges from a logistics perspective. In his email, he wrote, as a small S.U., disappeared like it was going to be a huge lift for the Grand Isle Supervisory, mostly because of the timing and the sense of overload and we're all feeling. However, our district nurse and I successfully ran four surveillance testing clinics and four different buildings through the support of the health assistant of each site. While they were minor glitches, everyone who participated was grateful and expressed appreciation and the sense of comfort that we were all participating. Raman, AOE was a solid partner in helping us pull this off. Our AOE project leader was Jill Briggs Campbell, and she was fantastic at answering questions and helping us smooth the AOE, AOT, and National Guard side of the logistics. AOT and National Guard also really came through. We tested 91 faculty and staff members, which is more than 50% of our faculty and staff. Overall, the project was a great success for us. At the AOT, we are now organizing the next phase of this testing with our partners at the Department of Health and that testing will take place in the month of December. We'll take the lessons that we learned from the first phase to make improvements in the logistics and also the communication support to school districts. During this next phase, we'll test 25% of our districts each week, starting next week. Each testing group will include a sample of our districts from a geographic perspective, so we'll have insight into the problems in the virus to process data on weekly basis from the testing. The surveillance testing will be an important strategy for us to ensure the safety of our schools during the holiday operations period that began with Thanksgiving and now will extend through the first of the year. We provided guidance to school districts on Monday on how to implement the recent addendum to the Governor's emergency order that prohibits multi-housel social gatherings associated with holidays. Our guidance allows schools to include a question in their daily health check questionnaire and multi-housel social gatherings. Our guidance also allows schools to exclude students and staff who have participated in such gatherings from attending school in person until they have satisfied quarantine requirements. We believe it is important for all homeowners to be responsible during the holiday season and follow the gathering requirements the Governor's executive order. Schools are concerned that not all members of their communities will do so. Our guidance is designed to provide them with another tool to help them keep our schools safe. Now, being said, it was reassuring to see in a recent New York Times article this week that about 80 percent of homeowners plan to celebrate Thanksgiving with just the members of their community at household. This was one of the highest rates in the country on a survey, second only to Washington state. I think this underscores how willing homeowners are to do what it takes to keep our communities and our schools safe. Our focus for the next several weeks through this holiday period will be to ensure the safe operations of our schools for in person instruction. As new information about vaccines comes out, we'll begin to make plans for putting more effort on addressing the educational impact of this emergency on our students. The key aspect of that work will be to assess the impact. We learned this week that the National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAPE, will be canceled this year. NAPE, which is sometimes referred to as the nation's report card, is the one assessment that is administered in all states. We've been waiting to a certain extent for the resolution of the presidential election to pursue further discussion of state testing policy, including the administration of our Smarter Power now assessment or SBAC. They are now starting to have those discussions in partnership with other states. There are two main themes to these discussions. On the one hand, the data from state assessments like SBAC help identify equity gaps, and we know COVID-19 has most likely exacerbated the equity gaps. On the other hand, schooling for the last eight months or so has been far from normal, and we know the results from state-owned testing will represent those challenges from an accountability perspective. Also, as I'm clear at this point, what school will look like from spring when these assessments are typically implemented. So at this point, we'll have to see how testing policy will be addressed at the federal level. It's too early to decide how Vermont will approach testing in the spring, and to a certain extent our decision will be influenced significantly by the federal government. At the same time, we need to start planning for how to assess the impact of this emergency on the education of our students. And I would define education broadly to include not only academics, but also their social and emotional well-being and overall empty development. I expect that word to begin in earnest after the holiday period. That concludes my update. I'll now turn it over to Commissioner Shirling. Yeah, Commissioner Shirling, you're on mute either on your end or on ours. There you go. I think we've got that sorted out. Thank you. Star six on you, a new teacher here in Vermont. Good morning again. I'd like to take an opportunity just to provide a couple of brief updates first on health and safety assessments that have been occurring over the last two weeks statewide. Over 1,200 have been conducted. Just a handful have resulted in findings of issues that relate to health and safety that have been followed up on with businesses primarily focusing again on lodging and restaurants. We expect that those proactive assessments will come to an end later this week and we'll remain in a reactive mode providing education based on tips that come in both to public safety channels and via the Department of Health. On a slightly more somber note, I'd like to take a moment to highlight a situation that emerged over the last few days and they've all been spared to the state's least. This is an example of innocent vectoring that can occur and why the health and safety posture that's been created for Vermont is so essential. This event started with a significant other of a trooper who was in the health care system getting a surveillance test not based on any symptoms but a normal surveillance test that occurs in the health care system and results that were received on the 21st just last Saturday indicating a positive COVID test. The trooper who is affiliated with that person immediately went into isolation however going back into what could be a period of time where that person was could potentially spread the virus to others. We determined that there were two contact events where 15 minutes of contact with folks well on duty occurred. One was the interview of a person that occurred on Friday the 20th and the other was an operational briefing that occurred prior to the test result coming in on Saturday the 21st. The person who was interviewed has been contacted and in that informational or operational briefing that occurred for 15 additional employees who were present working on the execution of the search warrant those folks as a result of that potential exposure were also in isolation which of course impacted the operations of the St. Alvin's barracks requiring that teams from other areas of the state police back build coverage. We anticipate that those folks will have reached their seven-day period where they can test later today but they'll be tested with results hopefully coming back within the next 24 48 hours and I think I'd get one of the most important things was that the Sherbrooke who had an exposure didn't test positive that test occurring on Monday the 23rd with the results coming back on Wednesday the 25th. A final note we have added some additional operation of posture changes to ensure additional safety measures going forward for all public safety operations but again this incident highlights the the importance of all the health and safety guidance that's in place now and despite the fact that we have a strong operational posture and procedures in place to try to prevent vectoring of this of this nature sometimes the timelines interfere with that and these kinds of events can happen so that's why it's so important to follow the guidance as it's been prescribed by the health department. Thank you that's my I think that we turn it over to Dr. Lee. I hope everyone who's listening had a great Thanksgiving and found creative and novel ways to both enjoy themselves as well as stay connected with friends and family and maybe even contribute in some way to the pleasure others less fortunate may have had. Regarding the holiday and its potential impact on Vermont's future COVID case counts I like Secretary French was heartened by the New York Times survey conducted through the country which stated that only 27 percent of Americans plan to dine with people outside their household that survey was slightly less than a number of other surveys that have been conducted by other entities that estimated about a third of Americans planned to do so. Such surveys probably underestimate reality as people don't always want to freely admit doing what they've been told not to do and of course airports as we've seen have been at their busiest since the national emergency began. Nonetheless the three regions in the country with the fewest people planning to dine outside their households were Washington DC, Washington state and Vermont at about 20 percent. From my viewpoint I hope we achieved even lower. We will learn more in seven to 14 days. Most of us in state government observed the different feel of the holiday this year, the lack of traffic, the airports reported lower holiday and pre-holiday activity. My request to Vermonters who may have participated in travel and or multi household gatherings is simply this please quarantine yourselves at home and please get tested now and in seven days. In terms of our case counts on Wednesday there were 72 cases and as the governor just stated three deaths reported. Two of those deaths occurred on November 24th and one on November 22nd. The individuals ages were 76, 81 and 94 and one passed away at home, one in a hospital and one at a long-term care facility. We express our sympathies to their families. This brings our total deaths to 67. Yesterday there were 99 cases and no deaths reported. This brings us to yet another landmark, the 4,000 case milestone, unfortunately 4,005 cases to be exact. In terms of hospitalizations there are currently 16 Vermonters hospitalized with COVID, none under investigation, two in an ICU, none on a ventilator. The health department and I are becoming more and more concerned about the increasing number of cases that we're seeing in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. This is causing more patient illnesses and hospitalizations and even deaths, more staff illness and required quarantines and frank staffing shortage in a time of national shortage for these facilities. The most recent skilled nursing facility to have an outbreak is Elderwood in Burlington where included in yesterday's positive results were the results of facility-wide testing. Their current case numbers are 14 residents and two staff. We all know the way COVID spreads through such vulnerable facilities in an often stealthy manner and almost universally the virus comes in via an unsuspecting staff member who may have no symptoms at all or who develop symptoms but might have worked as usual for the two preceding days before their symptom onset because that's how this virus takes advantage of us and operates. So I raise this issue today because I want to again re-emphasize the major way we have to protect these facilities is by protecting our communities, lowering the ability of the virus to spread from one person to another and that is by continuing to avoid gatherings of any sort especially multi-household gatherings as well as of course avoiding all non-essential travel and certainly if one does have to travel avoiding travel without subsequent quarantine. Obviously all of our same guidance continues to hold and continues to have increasing validity to it especially the masking where more and more evidence is coming out and being published almost on a daily basis regarding the success of that initiative. In addition we'll be increasing surveillance activities in the long-term care facilities as well as in other healthcare settings and speaking of surveillance you heard Secretary French comment on the teachers and school staff with 21 positives out of almost 9,300 individuals that comes out to a 0.24 percent positivity rate. Through the 24th of this month our average percent positivity rate over a seven-day period was 1.24 percent. That literally means a little more than one in a hundred chance of being positive on a test. Now a lot of people talk about the fact that the more you test the more cases you find and in Vermont we are finding cases at higher numbers than we have before. We are also doing incredible amount of testing and now that the college student testing will be diminished because they've gone home on break we will still have abundant more surveillance testing in the populations I've already mentioned as well as our on-demand test sites throughout the state. Keep in mind that someone who has no symptoms can test positive at one of these sites so we feel pretty comfortable with our low percent positivity rate at this point in time because even as there's a surge in the country and in the region and even in the state to some degree we're not just learning about the people who feel ill and want to get a test because they felt ill. We're learning about people who went to get a test because they may have been in a gathering they may have traveled or they may have other concerns that indicate that they were in contact with someone with COVID. Some of them will have no symptoms but test positive so our percent positivity rate gives us a very nice finger on the pulse of how much COVID is present in our state. Now I'll turn it over to the governor. Thank you Dr. Levine. We'll open up the questions at this time. All right we have 23 in the queue today and we'll start in the room Mr. Calvin. Thank you Governor. So the proposal from earlier this week to have schools ask students if they gathered over the break we're already hearing from a number of districts that are choosing not to ask students next week. It's gotten of course they've seen it's gotten some national attention as well. I'm wondering what what you make of the response to this policy and maybe in a sense that you think it's backfired. Yeah well I don't think it's backfired at all and I think it's important for us to reflect on what we're asking. A lot of the folks who are watching today may not understand this and may not have kids in school but for those who do understand the process very well. We have a health check that is implemented and utilized by every student going back to school every single day. Health check on whether they have a fever, whether they've been sick and and other a series of questions. When we when we determine that we're going to push pause on any travel into the state a question was asked added to that health check. Have you traveled out of state? That that was on the form as well. When we determine that in Washington County over like a month and a half period of time the 71 percent of all the positive cases were coming from social gatherings we determined that we needed to limit the number of social gatherings especially with Thanksgiving coming up especially what we saw happened in Canada. The incredible rise in the number of cases as a result of travel and mobility around their holiday. So we asked the districts to add one more question and if you had determined if you were going to have a gathering with with households outside of your household we're asking you to be to tell us that and you don't even have to get to that point. I would say if you have had one of those gatherings yesterday that you shouldn't send your kids to school next week that you should quarantine your kids for at least seven days get a test and then we'll move forward. We did all of this to try and protect Vermont try and prevent the rise in number of cases. Now admittedly there was a lot of reaction to this. We saw it on social media we've had many many calls. I think you can chalk that up to either hitting a nerve it's either a guilt nerve or just a resistance a nerve but the the intent was really protect Vermonters and because we're seeing so much community spread that we had to put a stop to it somehow. So this is something the districts can do or don't have to do but we're advising that they have it as part of the questions but again I will reiterate if you had a gathering yesterday that was where you had people outside of your households I would quarantine your children over the next seven weeks or seven days and then have a test and then you don't have to be asked the question but as well I mean for those who are listening this isn't something this isn't like an interrogation of your kids for most most districts do this online they ask the parents to to attest to this so the parents are the ones who do fill this out and then they do it online now if they don't do it online it does get down into in person or a notice sent in with their with their children to the to the schools but for the most part it's all done online and it's done by parents. Today's obviously Black Friday tomorrow smell business Saturday and a lot of Vermonters are probably planning on spending some money at our local retailers in the coming days. How can they do so safely? Yeah you can adhere to the guidelines we put into place many of the the retail operations if they can just make sure that they're spaced apart and do so in a safe manner everyone masked up and if you if you're sick if you have symptoms don't come in don't shop just take the necessary precautions because we we understand that especially tomorrow with some of the smaller retail operations small business Saturday is important to retailers and I would contend you can do it in a safe way but it's not going to be the same way you've done in the past but just follow the guidelines a simple procedure and we'll all and not crowd into the retailers themselves will have to determine how many people can come into their their place of operation but I'm I'm confident we can get through this and and I think everyone's taking this seriously but we don't want to inhibit them their ability to shop either or for the retailers to do business. Are you encouraging people that do more online shopping this year then just because of the pandemic to social distance? I think what I am saying is we need to spread this out maybe not everyone do it all at once and to use every day as an opportunity if they want to do it in person especially with some of the small retailers just don't do it all on Saturday maybe you can do it on Sunday or Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday just spread it out a bit and going during times when it's not as busy then it's just going to have to be a little bit more creative I've seen some businesses that have used their entrepreneurial spirit and creativity to do things in a different way that's going to be unique and but at the same time I think it will keep people safe. Oh sure go ahead. Okay yeah I think you had such a great insight I just wanted to share with folks who are listening that Vermont retailers have worked incredibly hard to try to provide customers different kinds of access than they have in the past they've upgraded online shopping platforms they are happy to take orders over the phone and provide curbside as well as some delivery so we are really hoping that folks do support our local businesses who are who are relying on you this this holiday season but again as the governor mentioned we want you to do it as safely as possible and again look forward to a variety of ways that will prevent you from gathering and congregating and creating large crowds. Yeah thank you Secretary Curley. This could be for you governor Dr Lavigne we have seen the increase we actually got tipped a little bit on some of the nursing home breakouts. Are you concerned or what is the strategy here have have either health care workers drop the drop the ball a little bit or drop the guard or is it folks coming into these facilities that might be the problem here I mean what what's the concern as far as where we're at with that. Thanks Steve I would say it's neither the visitation policies still remain pretty strict and as the weather has cooled off and the rate of disease in the communities has increased it's only gotten stricter. With regard to the health care workers I would hate for anyone to point the fingers at the health care workers because the reality is as both the governor and I have said today they all have lives away from work in their communities and I don't believe they're indiscriminately attending social gatherings that they shouldn't be or leaving the state and coming back without quarantining they're just subject to the same forces we all are that they may come in contact with people who have the virus who have no symptoms and don't know about it and that's just the reality of where we are. The nice part about the data I gave you on teachers I think if we looked at the overall data on health care as we pick up the surveillance there we would find something similar that we're going to have a very low rate of positivity in those groups because they're really invested in keeping their worksites clear whether it be a health care worksite or an education worksite. They don't want to shut down the operations that any of those or impact their colleagues who would have to quarantine if they were in contact with them so I think it's just the sign of where we are really in the whole region with regard to COVID. Thank you. I also add is Dr. Levine reminds us that when this disease is prevalent in the community that we're going to see more of these outbreaks it's just part of the nature of the virus. As well this virus is so crafty with a number of people high percentage being asymptomatic so people are unknowingly going to work but are positive and can be spreading unknowingly to others so it's not as though they're doing it intentionally but that's why we've continued to upgrade and to branch out in terms of our testing on-demand testing that we've done over the last week and continue to do over the next few weeks just to get to more people so that we can end the surveillance testing which will be really instrumental in trying to get a handle on this. WCAS? Good morning. I actually have another question about the long-term care facility outbreak as well so it was some really helpful data that on Tuesday that broken down really nicely about which facility had cases how many there were could you update us on that data today how many facilities have cases right now which of those incidents are considered outbreak? Yeah I don't know if Secretary Smith might have any of that information or it may not be upgraded today because of the Thanksgiving holiday I may ask Secretary Smith if he has the answer to that. Yes Governor you're correct it hasn't been updated today it would normally be updated but Cadet hasn't been updated because of the holiday what Dr. Labien gave you was the addition of the long-term care facility at Elderwood with the 14 positive residents in to staff I don't have updates on the rest of them. Got it well I've got you on the line Secretary what can you just reiterate to people what the visitation policy is at the moment for long-term care facilities like are there any facilities that are actually allowing in-person visits at the most indoors or given our case counts that we pretty much stopped doing that at the moment. Given the case counts we've pretty much stopped doing that at the moment most if not all skilled nursing facilities have restrictions on visitation and so I think those will continue until we get the prevalence of the virus in the community under control. We also have stepped up testing in long-term care facilities to weekly now and may even go even more further than weekly so we are testing staff weekly we have put fairly significant restrictions on visitation just to keep trying to keep these facilities safe. Thank you Joel the Burlington Free Press Joel it's star six on mute our last call for Joel we'll move to Mike Donahue at the Islander uh yeah my star six seems to be soft dude can you all hear me now yeah go ahead Joel we'll we'll get back to you Mike. Okay um yeah governor uh it sounds like um in the medium term like in the coming year there is caused at least cautious cause for optimism with the vaccines and so forth I was wondering uh when your administration might begin or maybe it already has begun um establishing what protocols might be useful to implement and have ready for the next uh the next pandemic if it comes in five years ten years um what what aspects of the economy and the health establishment uh or health professionals anyway might be put in place in anticipation of something that is almost certainly going to return um or is your administration just so caught up right now and what's working now and what isn't uh but I'd be interested in knowing how how state government is is going to change as a result of this and whether or not some some things are being bookmarked anyway for for the future yeah um you know you can look back uh to the start of this and and how we've evolved since the very beginning we've learned so much and we've tried to be strategic in some of the the guidelines restrictions we've been putting into place of late because we know what works what doesn't know how the virus acts and and learn more every day but we're going to have to continue to evaluate after this is over to see what we do in terms of protecting ourselves for the future as well you know we're going to be uh through every type of situation whether it was Irene we we learned a lot from Irene and we've put in a lot of steps and you know mitigated a lot of areas of concern in terms of flooding and and so forth that we're continued to do today so we learned from that and did things differently so we didn't end up in the same situation if they had another when and if there is another flooding event as well with this virus we're going to do things differently across state government for instance I think being remote working from home is is going to become more prevalent that even after we have the vaccine in place and and we get back to somewhat normal that will be the new normal and for a lot of folks across state government so we'll we'll take we'll glean as much of the good all the silver linings and there are many throughout this pandemic we may not see them right now but they will surface as we as we move our way out of this and then we'll we'll learn from this experience and we'll learn what works and what works better and we'll continue to do that so again it's a little too early to plan for that but at the same time we're keeping track and again we do this every single day to reflect on what's working what isn't and what we can do to help ourselves mm-hmm well I understand and we'll all stay tuned and thanks very much for your time I'm going to let Dr. Levine add to that just just to give a tiny addition um you're right there will be another pandemic I hope five years is not as soon as it comes but looking at the pace of things over the last 20 years possibly but the reality is I think the lesson that needs to be learned the most is a national lesson and again I'm not pointing at one administration or another because this spans a number of administrations over the last 20 years to be accurate we're funding for a pandemic preparedness an emergency preparedness from a public health standpoint has not been valued and it's actually been actively taken away over time so I think the country needs to learn this lesson because a state like Vermont like every other state in the country is dependent upon federal funding that usually filters down through the cdc and then gets a portion to all of the states and these activities are valued and important but they can only be as robustly funded as the federal funding that comes into the states to help support them so I think that that lesson will be clearly learned because other pandemics or potential pandemics they didn't really impact anybody in the way this one has whether we're talking about the h1n1 flu the zika virus ebola virus none of those have any kind of impact compared to what COVID-19 is all about so I think as a country we'll learn that lesson in the states like Vermont we'll be able to have even a more robust response not that we didn't to the beginning the next time around all right well thank you very much Mike Donoghue the islander thank her by that first thing that we get a clarification from big nurse shirling on the st. alvin's uh they flee back in these 15 people I think were involved in the search warrant uh just trying to confirm they were all complete members or were there agencies like st. alvin's want please share a federal agency or any drug cash force that have other police departments represented sure commissioner shirling yes uh thanks governor thanks Mike yeah it's just uh 15 folks from uh within the state police that were present at that briefing okay good thank you uh governor there seems to be some confusion if indeed deer cam visitation is still a quarantine situation as originally announced and with the deer season coming to an end this co-worker is going to be returning to work and we've heard employers are now saying that only those exposed to a confirmed COVID case of deer camp need to be quarantined because of that believe some have already returned to that quarantine much to the dismay of some of their colleagues uh read her out for clarification would be greatly appreciated and benefit the general population yeah um from my perspective if they were returning from deer camp with members of different households they would have to quarantine but Dr. Levine is shaking his head yes that's correct okay thank you and the second question is probably for commissioner french the uh three of the state's registered police court requires people engaged in across Vermont with students having the benefit of in classroom experience and some who in long distance and some hybrid first is a distinct possibility that coming week that some schools will shut down while others continue and there is a distinct difference between in-person learning versus on-distance how does the agency of education in the state of Vermont plan to ensure children do in fact at the same level of education as required by the Supreme Court and can you actually give specific not just generalities a specific talent get a different permit and a barrier to get the same education as spending in Brattleboro apart from whoever I think that's a great question Secretary french yeah thanks Mike um yeah I think it's important to note that learning of all students I think it's going to have personally affected as I mentioned in my remarks today I think the first step in doing that is going to be some focused time on assessing the impact unfortunately right now it's really hard for us to do that until we have more in-person instruction so the priority right now is going to need to remain operating our schools safely as best we can particularly through this holiday period but I hope to turn the corner on that particularly with the advent of the vaccine so that we can put more focused efforts on first assessing the impact and that's why the conversation about testing is so important on the one hand it's hard to contemplate how that testing might provide useful information from an accountability standpoint but on the other hand we need to have some commonly used assessment tool across the state that allows us to begin to prioritize the impact particularly from an equity standpoint so I think the first step will be that assessment be so we're not going to be able to start that until after the first year thank you all very much appreciate it thank you guide page chronicle of the Vermont State House Governor the Supreme Court ruled a couple days ago that the state of New York may not restrict religious practices as part of it it's a COVID regulation uh what effect will that ruling have on your executive order regarding religious services yeah guy we're trying to to assess that at this point in time from from our initial standpoint it appears that this reaffirms that what we're doing here in Vermont is the correct path that we haven't done what New York has done and that we've restricted based on occupancy rate but not those caps that that New York did so I believe from again from my standpoint I think it's good news for Vermont and and just reaffirms that what we're doing is correct okay so you're saying because it's occupancy rates and not caps we're probably ever clear with that yeah I mean it's it's based on equity and and we're doing it across the board so it's not as though we're pointing at one particular sector okay thank you second question is uh I understand uh could you tell me what the development of your thinking is on whether vaccination of COVID will need to be mandatory at some level yeah we're it's way too early for that again from my standpoint just as we see some of these vaccines come into place we have to prove that they're safe and and effective and we're going to learn a lot and we don't have enough for everyone at this point in time it's going to be many many months before that that is even the case but I think it's important and Dr. Levine can probably speak to this better than I can but it's going to be important for us once we determine that there are some safe vaccines out there that we ask for monitors to to do this voluntarily so that we can get above a certain percentage because we don't get above a certain percentage it's just not effective to counteract this virus so there's a there's a rate there's a magic number somewhere I think it's around 70% where if we can get above that then we'll we'll contain it with this herd immunity of sorts so Dr. Levine can you add to that yes governor the number isn't a 70 ish percent range give or take a little it's it's not precise but based on what I told you earlier about the percent positivity rates in our testing we know that there are not going to be large numbers of the monitors who have already acquired some immunity on their own by coming in contact with this virus so the vaccine will have to in a parallel pathway add to that number from a federal standpoint from all the plenty of advisory panels that are out there there is no talk of mandating the vaccine use in the country so if a state chose to do that that would be different but again I think it's so early in the game to be talking about those things I really do think we need to see the uptake I had a call with a number of hospitals today who have informally surveyed their staff and they're coming up with 50 to 60 percent of their staff at this point in time would say that they would line up first for the vaccine now somebody say well that's not very much I'm a class half full person I would say that's phenomenal because I don't even know anything about the vaccine yet they've had a few news reports talking about 90 effectiveness and what have you but in terms of really an informed consent process where you know everything you need to know about the vaccine so you can make the right decision you and your health care provider or you on your own that's really phenomenal that people already are thinking so much of this that they're putting themselves in that pool of people who were taken so I think that will only grow with the confidence that I hope will come from an accurate news reports about what is coming out and what it's capable of doing and the fact that there may be very minimal adverse effects as we're hearing in the preliminary when seems like a fairly safe vaccine to you so far what you've seen so far it does you know except for the usual things about discomfort at the site of the injection and perhaps a day of low-grade fever or fatigue and some but not many but again I don't want to say that that's gospel at this point in time because we just haven't got enough information to to be accurate about saying that okay thank you Greg the Bennington banner thank you for that my questions are I believe in for Secretary French if that's okay sure okay my first about the surveillance testing I will bring you to tell us where those 21 positive test results came from in terms of which district and whether any were concentrated in a single school yeah I agree the health department will be providing more reporting on that so I don't have the specifics of where they were but they were spread out on the state okay do you know if anyone who's the two tell me from my account I don't have that data with me at the moment okay my second question then is about the the the question asking folks about multifamily gatherings and having a quarantine otherwise but then indication of how many districts opted out of that question and what did they reach out to you on that or their discussion about that sort of the process and also wording of those districts decided to opt out here in the southern two counties yeah I don't have specific information on opting out or not I think you know that'll likely be some work clear on Monday after Thanksgiving but we did have a lot of contacts with districts as we published that late Monday afternoon okay can you tell me generally what those conversations were like in terms of what their concerns were you know I think it's you know starting on when the executive order is down and was published on Friday districts have many questions as to you know what their role would be in implementing that particularly I heard from super tenants who were struggling with the idea that some parents might be less than truthful so we used efforts to provide some additional guidance for them that ultimately culminated in the published publishing of our guidance on Monday but this balanced districts are trying to strike between sorry home safe enforcement but more in the lines of implementing the guidance as a tool for them to keep their schools safe so on the one hand schools fell challenged I think to go beyond what would there be their traditional authority on the other hand they do have authority and responsibility for ensuring that everyone in their school building could stay so I think it's something some of the media coverage there were some super tenants who were looking for more specificity their additional tools to guide us from the state where others felt within their own current authority that they had the ability to navigate the issue so it's hard to challenge the issues the governor alluded to but ongoing was I think we're just trying to keep everyone safe and the quick schools the tools they need to do that okay thank you very much that concludes my question Greg the county courier good afternoon governor just a quick follow-up on the state police situations that all of them so is that linked to any long-term care facility outbreak I don't have that information I think commissioner shirling I think you said that there was a connection with the health care worker but I don't know in what setting that was that's correct governor it is a health care worker but that's all we know I don't have that level of granular detail okay and I guess my second question for the day that we've heard about an outbreak at St. Albans health and rehab I'm wondering what you can tell us I obviously the outbreak at the rublin facility wasn't disclosed until it was brought up by media so what can you disclose about the outbreak in St. Albans again I just want to correct the record on that one Greg we did disclose that the problem regional had an issue as it was unfolding I mean it happened quickly so I think Secretary Smith did mention that during that briefing but but again it's spread he did respond to a media member's question specifically asking about the outbreak so I guess I'm wondering what's going on in St. Albans because it seems like you know we don't always hear about the outbreak so they're brought up in the media sure Greg we have also just for the record added the weekly update which was presented on Tuesdays with all of the long-term care facilities with an outbreak secret issues for the you know it's okay Secretary um and governor you're absolutely right I mean that the situation was breaking I was getting text during this during the press conference on that situation was breaking as we were holding the press conference the question came up I answered the question in terms of what I knew at the time so we weren't sort of the situation was a breaking situation at the same time St. Albans does I'll leave it to Dr. Levine to update but I I don't I don't have an update but I think there are some cases in the facility that you've just talked about but Dr. Levine thank you I don't have an update for the last day or so but I was aware of a case there and it was again very similar to what I've described today in my opening remarks somebody who worked while asymptomatic only to become symptomatic and find out that they were indeed a case so again I think rather than pointing at one facility or another we need to just accept the general theme that there's a prevalence of virus in the state and in our communities and people no matter where they go to work are going to go to work feeling fine not realizing they're capable of transmitting the virus to others. So am I hearing from you that as far as the state knows it's only one case at that facility? No only as far as I know this moment I suspect we may know more than that I just don't have that information in front of me right now due to the holiday. Okay perhaps your office can get back to me on that today. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you Governor. Meet Herstle, BPR. Dr. Levine the 21 positive results from the surveillance testing of public schools have any of those results initiated in investigation by your department into a possible situation or outbreak in any individual district? So any positive result in a facility like a school obviously gets one connects with the individual who is now a case. They are given the proper guidance about what they should do and then we determine based on the time we think they may have been infectious what else needs to be done in terms of contacts to that case that might be quarantined or what have you. So these are handled like anybody who became symptomatic at the school and wasn't a surveillance test but was a case finding exercise where they had symptoms and wanted to see if they had COVID and then we find out they do and we do the same thing. So it's an automatic when there's a situation in the school that we pursue that. Fortunately it's almost never resulted in more serious consequences within the school which is great. But you don't have any concerns at this point about a potential outbreak in a district based on the results of that first rapid surveillance testing? No not at this point in time. And then a quick one for Commissioner Secretary Brunch. I understood really clearly what the upsides would be to standardized testing i.e revealing potential increases in inequities. What exactly is the downside to standardized testing? Well I think you know as reference to the name standardized the idea that we would get some predictable uniform results and I think you know the conditions for learning that's so unequal across the state it really becomes hard to sort of start to do the inferential comparisons you know apples to apples so to speak when we've had so many different configurations. I think the other aspect is really about logistics of the testing I alluded to briefly. It's not clear yet at you know what will the circumstances we like and will actually be able to implement the test. The SPAC for example is a computer-based assessment that I still believe requires in-person instruction or implement or not able to necessarily implement that assessment in a remote capacity. So you know those are sort of the big questions you know sort of the uniformity of the conditions that we're assessing and also logistical implementation of the assessment itself. All right but it's not that districts might be subject to some kind of section of penalty because they didn't perform very well? Yeah I don't think so as much. I mean the as every student succeeds that act is fundamentally different in that regard from the no child was behind that but certainly you know has a focus on identifying those schools specifically from a comprehensive needs perspective so that we can allocate additional federal resources to assist but the accountability structure is basically fundamentally different than it was under no child behind it. Thank you very much. Mark, VT Digger? He said we're all kind of grasping for some kind of hope out there but I'm wondering if they think this idea that there's light at the end of the tunnel given that really brings the specifics that you laid out earlier in the week and you know aren't you providing false hope and isn't this pretty mature? Yeah no I don't think it's false hope Mark. I believe you know with the vaccines that have come out at a record pace this is really remarkable from I think all of our perspectives so that's hope that's good news. What we're doing here in Vermont has been remarkable as well that we've been able to even though our case numbers have increased over the last month we still are the lowest in the nation in terms of many of the measures that we've been highlighting over the last number of months as well with what we're learning what we're doing we're increasing our testing we're increasing our surveillance testing and on-demand testing so that if you want to test you can get a test I mean there are all kinds of things that we're putting into place in learning so that we can better control and mitigate this virus so again I think again from my perspective there is hope out there and again with the with the vaccines they're coming into to a full view to so far possibly a third and there are a number of other vaccines behind them that are being tested at this point as well so again maybe it's a half a glass half full perspective but but I think we need a little bit of hope and I think this provides it. Commissioner Levine anything you can add to that gives you hope. I think we've learned so much and we've come so far as the governor points out we've really been leaders in the country in this and not that I want us to learn how to live with the virus and still think our lives are normal but to some degree we've been able to do that in Vermont for a pretty long time and now if we find the vaccines become a game changer that'll only get us there that much faster so I do think that the pace of knowledge and the pace of that knowledge being usable is really really important just to give you a few examples where Vermont has played a direct role Vermont for that one report about contact tracing and how many minutes cumulative you were in contact with someone instead of just the straightforward 15 minute rule six foot was a game changer for the country in terms of being able to really help protect more people the CDC is talking now about letting people get out of quarantine sooner than 14 days and Vermont has for a long time had the rule that you can test out on day seven if you have no symptoms up until that point in time and that's really stood us well along this time so we've done a lot I think to try to really improve how we have to deal with the virus and that should be something positive and we continue to grow in that way because optimistic as we are about the vaccine we know that not every person is going to get the vaccine before Christmas and it's going to be a number of months that go by in 2021 that we have to endure kind of doing everything we're doing now plus getting more uptake of the vaccine but that should be a positive sign for everyone because it really does mean we can sort of start to play in our futures again and I see that as something that's very reality based at this point so stay tuned okay the second question for the governor governor yesterday that the president said that he would honor the results of the electoral college and actually move out of the White House a recent poll at 52 percent of republicans but the Trump rightfully won the election so what degree has his actions and comments undermine the integrity of the electoral process and what should be done to restore that and did the national doctors association do enough on that well again I would classify myself in that 48 percent of those who feel that the election was a little legitimate and we should move on I think this is a sign again I think if you went back maybe two weeks ago that number was higher so the percentage is moving in the right direction I think you know we need to move on from this all of us even individually and focus on what's really important to us at this point I might say the pandemic is the highest priority at this point and having the president elect come in and and communicating that having the congress be able to to really focus on that as well and give us some of the help we'll need some of the stimulus we'll need to to work our way out of this as the vaccine is distributed is going to be incredibly important to to America and you know as far as what the national governor's associates has done I think we have tried to work together in many different ways but I'm not sure that we could do anything different than what was done I I believe the the election was legitimate was safe effective and the results will stand and and I think the the more governors who come to that conclusion the better off will be and we're seeing them every single day and we're seeing other leaders across the country come to that conclusion and it appears that President Trump has at least come to the conclusion that he will not be in office after the end of January so you don't think he's undermined the integrity of the electoral process I don't I I think he's put it into question but but I think as time moves on we will move on as well and and and I'll determine that this was a legitimate election and we'll see what happens in four years but from my perspective I think again I don't think it undermined it but it did it did put a bit of a bruise on it but but I don't think it undermined it thank you Tim from our business magazine I governor I have a question about after it's leaving an eye content but I have a just wanted to clarify the reasons the three reasons death it appears that one was an early and two were in the county I just want to make sure that's correct I don't believe that's correct but I don't have the data on that I I just don't and we'll we'll have more as time moves on but and we can get that to you but but I don't believe that's correct as far as the math query is concerned there's more and more chatter about now that that people who recovered are starting to pile up there's a lot more people saying oh I don't have to wear a mask anymore because I've had COVID I've recovered and therefore I've been in good shape and no one else is going to get it from me etc etc and I just wanted maybe Dr. Libby to clarify that a little bit especially if you go inside or you just got to be increased yeah I think it's important to clarify that because I don't think there's been enough data to show whether you can get it again or whether you can get it again and transmit either we just don't know enough about the virus and I'll concur on I wouldn't want people to think that they're totally invincible if they've had a case there are more and more cases in the literature being reported of reinfection sometimes with a actual different strain of the same virus so I think to protect everyone wearing a mask is probably not asking a tremendous amount if you've had an infection previously but it'll also save you from being questioned yourself if you're walking into stores without a mask or into gatherings where people would have masks on probably save you a lot of explaining and issues like that but I think with our knowledge of the virus being what it is it would be premature for people who have had an infection that was documented to think that they don't need to wear a mask or for that matter don't need to engage in any the other guidances that we talk about in terms of physical distancing etc. Is there a data about whether you're still a carrier or not willing to be a carrier just a transporter of the virus? So there is this phenomenon called persistent positive person which means that even three months after you presumably resolved your infection you felt well for weeks and weeks but you get tested and you still test positive. Most of those people we believe are testing positive because the test is accurate enough to find fragments of the virus but the virus is not viable and able to infect anyone else. So that partially answers your question I'm sure to the best of our ability at this point in time but doesn't mean people months down the road have the ability to infect somebody else and that we feel pretty comfortable with. Can I just add one more thing because we are entering cold and flu season and the mask might prevent you from either transmitting or receiving a cold or a flu. So we don't need to complicate things right now and having the flu symptoms is similar to some of the covid coronavirus symptoms so it'd be better if we just all wore the mask for now to take you know to help prevent the overwhelming of our health care system in other regards as well. Wilson, the Associated Press. Hi everybody. As usual happy Friday. It's Black Friday at that. I'm curious I guess to talk to the people or whoever who might like to answer it. Going forward as people start to get vaccinated and presumably then they will be able to 90% of them will. Has there been any thought about providing people with cards saying I have been vaccinated? You know similar to the the inoculation of cards we used to carry with your passports years ago and if not you think those would be helpful to have for things and any numbers that you could use for your traveling to Canada or going into big events or who knows why. So it's a wild question so I'm probably not a lot of pessimistic but I'd be curious how you're talking about that. Sure. So from a health standpoint we're going to have to learn what exactly that means so if you get the vaccine we would probably want to prove that you have antibodies that your body has now generated that could fight off the virus if you got exposed to it and then we want to know how long those antibodies would be measurable and still stay good etc. So that's the kind of stuff we're looking to these trials to help us figure out because the trials will begin to show over months and months what the person's antibody responses like how effective it is in the long term. Early indications are that this vaccine would not have to be re-administered you know several times in the next year or what have you it could go years and years but obviously this is the kind of stuff we have to learn which would make it very important to if you were going to have a policy of giving somebody a card you'd have to know what exactly that card meant because just showing a date of vaccination may not be sufficient. So we'll look to some of the national and regional advisory panels to help us with that part but from another vantage point I could perceive governments whether they be state, national, international maybe having similar expectations and if you get off a plane in a European country would they want to see the fact that you had your card with you or not that's a different level of of an exercise when it comes to the policies that governments would would actually put up. Hopefully they would be as informed by the kind of information I answered the question with originally from the public health and medical standpoint so we know exactly what they were looking for was reasonable and realistic and was going to protect their population in the way they wanted to. So I think you're a little early with your question but it's a great question and it's one that everyone needs to be able to answer shortly after these vaccines come out. Well yeah that's why I asked I mean this is starting new presumably I mean that is a new year but along again I said that there's going to be an avalanche in the number of the people who will have been vaccinated and they might want to go to Europe or Montreal or whatever. Exactly. So okay thank you. Yep no they might want to do all of the above and that's why the trials themselves will help inform the answer to the question. Okay thank you. James V.T. Digger? We can. Can you hear me? We can. Thanks for taking the question. So the state and the recent weeks you've taken steps to prepare for kind of the continuing possibility of the surrogate cases including the testing over the past couple of weeks in building field hospital and medical extension. You also mentioned the sort of new focus on long-term care testing. Now wondering what the kind of possibility of continued high cases going forward what additional measures to be considering to account for the possible surge? Well again I believe I'm getting the flavor of the question is you know what we're doing in anticipation of the next surge. We're hoping we're in that surge and it may be an elongated surge but we're hoping that this is one of the last surges before the vaccine's in place and that's why we're ramping up. The on-demand testing isn't fully implemented. We're doing that. The surveillance testing that we've spoken about isn't fully implemented but we're expanding that. So we're going to continue to do what we're doing today and continue to watch the data and the science and and then make a determination as to if we need to do anything next. Our hope is that we don't that this will work. We'll see in a couple of weeks as Dr. Levine had alluded to in his earlier comments. We'll see in a seven to 14 days what effect Thanksgiving had on us and what what is what does that look like. So we'll continue to just monitor the situation and make changes as we need to but at this point in time we're hoping that what we're doing is is going to work. Dr. Levine? And the only thing to add is we're also on an ongoing weekly basis augmenting our contact tracing workforce so if there is more to deal with in terms of a fallout from a holiday we're prepared to handle that. I would prefer that the new workforce be just twiddling their thumbs and have nothing to do. So hopefully that prophecy will come real but I think in terms of other kind of mitigation measures I think we've taken the appropriate set of mitigation measures and we we will go with them and see what the data shows. I was also wondering if you're able to quantify how much you're hoping to have to think in long-term care facilities in the coming week the way you mentioned you're going to do. Sure. Now let Secretary Smith augment anything I say but first of all we want to make sure that at a minimum weekly testing of all of the staff in these facilities is accomplished. We're also investigating perhaps the opportunity to do more daily testing in our more vulnerable settings possibly with use of antigen cards in those settings. Yes and Dr. Levy you get it right on the head here. The only thing I would add is that remember if we have one positive of a resident we do a series of facility-wide testing as well so until we feel comfortable that we have a good understanding of the prevalence in the virus of the virus in that facility. Thank you. Joe the barbing Chronicle. Hello President. Can't see what we know now about the state's resources assuming nothing changes radically between now and the legislature coming back into session in January. Are there any requests that you plan to make to the legislature in its early days that you hope to see carried out quickly? That's to be determined we're still working on that and at this point in time we're still trying to get through December. We may have a request or two to the joint fiscal committee if we find additional funds that have not been spent thus far with CRF funds we want to make sure that we implement them in a way that's most effective and most helpful to the most vulnerable and to our businesses and so forth so we'll continue to work along that line but at the same time we're still building our budget we're still building some of our policies and if we see something that that we'd like them to take up we will. I would add one of them would be town meeting day what are we going to do and if this this virus it appears will be still prevalent on Vermont and from my standpoint I'd like to see if we can implement some sort of mail-in ballot type of approach and much like the general election that we do it for town meeting so I would hope that we would have something along those lines that would have to be addressed early on the session probably within the first two weeks. Thank you very much. My question is for Secretary Smith. We're wondering if we could get an update on the housing of the population and the motels hotels and what's the latest data on that. We have about 1700 people that are now housed in our hotels that's an approximate number including children that are in our motel so we have a fairly robust hotel voucher motel voucher program that's going on as we enter the co-months we also have various facilities and ramping up those facilities right now for those that are COVID positive cases that are that are in our motel hotel voucher system so that if you become positive we will move to various facilities that we have around the state but it's approximately 1700 people that are in the hotel motel voucher program and I can get specific number and matter of fact I will get you the specific number after the restaurant and just a quick follow-up. What is the same thing about safety in these areas? We have a safety officer that looks at all these facilities there are issues with the facilities the recommendations from the safety officer is is taken into account and moved that and if there is a safe unsafe condition we will move families out of that unsafe situation. Thank you. Andrew, Caledonian record? Sorry. Yes good afternoon thank you. This is probably for Dr. Levine for the the surveillance testing on the school staff seems like great news for schools but I'm wondering from a public health standpoint in the sense that it's tool as a surveillance test is that providing a representative sample and the general public in the state's testing has been coming back at above one percent and to follow on the topic I'm wondering if there are testing opportunities and strategies that the general public could adopt that might bolster surveillance testing in the sense of you know whether there's a good point to encourage households to have at least one member tested every so often or encouraging businesses to see if they can find employees to volunteer to get tested on a rotating basis. Great so your first question you know the teachers are and it's not just teachers we should expand that it's teachers and other staff who work in the schools that that is just a segment of our population so if they were the only population we were testing that would be of concern I'd like to think though that teachers and kitchens staff and custodial staff etc are representative of our communities in many ways so I'm kind of heartened by that data the reason that number is different from the overall positivity rate in the state of course is because by definition the population you're doing surveillance testing on has no symptoms and is feeling fine whereas the population you're doing the overall testing on includes those people plus includes people who have symptoms and aren't feeling fine so you would expect it to be a higher number but I think it's really important that we get at this rate of how many people who have no symptoms but have the virus are out there and so this is pretty helpful I know teachers have a wide age range many of them though are very young and might be in the group that might not have a significant illness and think they're feeling fine so I think it's reassuring but of course you know we have a whole body of people in long-term care facilities a whole body in the correctional system the whole body in our greater health care system so we'll get we'll get at the the truth if you will the reality of the truth by having multiple populations that all give us surveillance information with regard to a general vermoner recommendation I really would have a vermoner really evaluate closely the life they're leading and their ability not just because they want to be good about it but just the reality of their ability to comply with all of the guidance that we give in terms of their own personal hygiene their own ability to distance at all times their own ability to wear their mask their ability to not engage in activities that would be in a crowded setting or in a location where there's multiple gatherings and people might have their mask on or their travel history all those things should go into the things that they factor into making a decision about getting a test on any given day or with any regularity and I think we recognize there are people who are in very public-facing professions the person who drives the bus the person who works at the grocery store etc all of our retail workers for that matter many are able to keep quite separate from their clientele but at the same time they may have concerns based on things that may be unavoidable at their work site so I think if a vermon is just weigh all of these things in the balance they'll come up with a comfortable answer to the question about should I get tested or should I get repetitively tested and I think in the answer we could all respect I think they should err on the side of leading towards testing that rather than not if they have any question though because again this virus is so stealthy and at times unpredictable hope that answers your question thank you a quick one for Secretary Friend the guidance to the students or as part of the check-in about whether they were part of a social gathering is they in line with that guidance that if the answer is yes a student is expected to quarantine that those days of quarantine would be considered an absence and the school wouldn't necessarily provide remote education opportunities to the kids on those days no thanks I think school districts if that's the case should endeavor to provide remote learning to those students that they're unable to do so then it would be an absence but if they are and we have specific attendance provisions for remote learning that they are able to do in accordance with those provisions that would not count as an absence um and so we have some at least one district in the kingdom that's on a hybrid model with alternating school names and then in a message that families have indicated that because the school does not have a fully remote operation the days in which the kids would typically be on their in-person lessons they are not in a position to be able to provide curriculum lessons on those absence days so that does that stand up to what your expectation would be yeah I mean you could imagine those kinds of situations districts would struggle to reach out and provide additional supports of those students but there certainly are ways they can do that but once again it could could result in an absence that districts aren't able to do that but certainly I think with the increased ability for remote learning that we have now at most of those students but have their needs met okay thank you everyone all right and the queue got a little out of order sorry about that so we're going to go back to chris boy and after chris will be cam davis so chris go ahead yes good afternoon I guess this goes back to the governor's open remarks and now that we're in the holiday season how can people stop engaging friends especially when they can't go to their loved ones and their family um what and what advice your family's be looking out for one who they think somebody might be being depressed and their extended family um maybe you could just give me that question again I don't I don't know if I got the whole thing yeah sure what is the holiday season people get depressed anyway that now that they may not be around as much as they can if they were their extended family how can they prevent depression and what your family looks for if they are if they believe they have a family I love what who is depressed yeah depression is a huge concern especially throughout this pandemic but especially during the holidays and what we're seeing in terms of lack of social interaction so it is on our minds I believe we have and we can get you some information on that I don't know if secretary smith is able to provide any of that but we we'd be happy to do that we should probably talk about that more as time moves on anything anything secretary smith you can offer right now if not we can we can take it up again because I think it is important yes governor the department of mental health has been very active in this area and we can get some information and you're absolutely right maybe at a subsequent press conference we can bring it up again. Dr. Levine anything you want to okay thank you that's awesome okay one thing I would just know is there is an exemption for individuals who live alone together with one other family and that targets some of that social isolation for those individuals okay great obviously all the measures we put into place we hope aren't long term we want to get back to at least where we were before of this increase in number of cases came into place after after halloween so hopefully we can get back to where we were pre halloween. Dr. Levine just to add a couple finer points you know you know everything I did as commissioner of health prior to the pandemic almost seemed to revolve around the concept of reducing social isolation because social isolation leads to some of the feelings you're discussing in your question leads to what we see in the world of adolescent substance misuse things of that sort and necessarily by being a pandemic this does somewhat interfere with all those initiatives but I want to bring to everybody's attention the fact that during the pandemic nothing has shut down when it comes to mental health counseling opportunities and availability even if by telemedicine which has worked extraordinarily well for that population nothing has shut down in terms of the activity of recovery centers with regard to substance misuse and the opportunities for people to obtain treatment for their substance use disorders and the Department of Mental Health does have on its website a number of links to just the kind of answers you were looking for chris with your question about if you're having certain kinds of feelings that are brought about by this prolonged dealing with a pandemic where can you turn and what kind of resources can you access so I would invite people to link to those thank you hi and I just want to add to Dr. Levine on the website of the Department of Mental Health there's a there's a really under the COVID the coronavirus section there's a thing it says a section that says you're not alone and it gives you all the various listings where you can reach out to get help yeah and chris I want to thank you for bringing this up as well and we can individually act we can call our family and friends and check on our neighbors just give them a call and just you know just a few minutes of time I can make all the difference in the world just someone you they can have as a sounding board and it may be just listening to them and just interacting so anything we can do again each of us individually would be well received by many so and that's part of what we're trying to do with this campaign so to speak of looking forward to the holiday season and brightening Vermont up and lighting it up in a lot of ways so if we can bring some of the hope and cheer along the way in that regard that would that would help as well everything you know mental health is is uh is as serious as physical health now go back to hand Davis from Vermont Journal hand Davis can you hear me we can thank you I just like to I've got two part questions I mean I just like to reference the question so the thing that the my questions here are really nothing to do with the I think the transparency of the the performance by the whole but the governor's team has been outstanding I think that the evidence for that is all around both as a result especially in the Vermont numbers my question is that this seems to me much less knowledge in the system about what was on downstream from the from the top team and in that like my question is too far question was a story recently about a ship and shipment of I think antibody anti-clonal antibodies or whatever they are shipment of vial to Vermont okay and the story was a company by a statement that the that Governor Levine Commissioner Levine did not think this stuff should be used my question is what the hell does all of that mean I mean is there somebody who is sending these this stuff this these vials and these treatments to Vermont where they is Vermont asking if they come to Vermont how do they where do they come they come to the pavilion that means that they come to Dr. Levine's office and then once they get there if it's point in fact Dr. Levine himself okay our own very own Dr. Fauci thinks that this stuff should not be used then what do we do with it I mean it was just being sent out if somebody actually using that downstream we had some kind of crazy stuff downstream the Manchester high positive that turned out to really mean nothing so so what goes on out in the field medically I think is uncertain and I just like Dr. Levine to address that if he's willing thank you yeah I'm very willing to thank you and it'll clarify some things too so this is a monoclonal antibody that you were talking about which has a name that no one can ever pronounce but it's something like Ben Leneva and the federal government determined that this is a potential major landmark drug that can prevent people with mild to moderate COVID illness who are not in the hospital from ever having to get to the hospital and there is a significant study from the New England Journal that does support that to some degree though there have been a lot of criticisms raised around it my comments the other day related to the fact that both the infectious disease society of America and the national institutes of health had come up with a lukewarm endorsement of this therapy basically saying that they didn't feel enough of the evidence was in yet to make it a standard of care if you will and coupling that with the fact that it is a bit cumbersome because it requires an infusion center requires several hours of infusion and requires you to take and otherwise a room that would be used for delivering chemotherapy or other medical medications into a COVID room so reduce the opportunity to even administer it around the state but having said all that I was not pushing back and saying this should never be used and Dr. Levine's position is it doesn't work don't use it far from that I was just showing what expert panels are putting out in their own guidelines which was less than overall embracing of the therapy having said that though the government the federal government is sending an apportionment out to each state and trying to set up a future schedule with the states we chose to have ours go to the UVM medical center which will probably be one of the few places around the state that would be able to dedicate a room for the administration of this we continue to have active discussions with the academic medicine community both general medicine and especially infectious disease and critical care medicine who would be charged with delivering this medication to the patient and helping us as Vermont take what we know on a national basis and adopted to Vermont in terms of guidelines and I have to say that our discussions have changed because of what these national bodies have come out with so originally you know open arms ready to receive and administer and we'll get over all of the logistic hurdles we need to deliver this that's evolved into a little bit more circumspect approach and there'll be meetings next week again to again help us pin down what our Vermont approach should be based again on using the evidence that's out there and coming to inform decision-making so I don't want people to think I've sort of said send it back we never wanted it in the first place far from that but we do need to engage in this ongoing real important discussion about how we should respond as Vermonters and as a Vermont clinical community in trying to provide the best for our citizens so I'll ask you to stay tuned because I'll have more to say probably within a week but we've not sent anything back by any means we still have a number of doses here in the state and we're not giving them up and we've actually just talked with the federal government the day before Thanksgiving again on all of those issues which they were well aware of because they didn't anticipate all of them would come up either and these societies and expert panel guidelines have only recently made this made the scene. Did you say you had two questions? Thank you very much even that most almost all I appreciate that very much like the question I have is really is that the Vermont delivery system the medical delivery system is not a monolith and you know working it out with the players at UVM or the players at Dartmouth then it strikes me as the absolutely right thing to do but what I'm curious about is what happens if you get requests from three other hospitals smaller hospitals that say we want to have to send it to now the question is how to me is how strong is the how strong are the controls the medical controls on the way to treatment for something as tough as this virus flow out through the system that's what I'm really looking for but I think you but I think I'm not I don't think you can answer that now but I appreciate your answer I think it's a huge question. Yeah thank you very much and across all of our hospitals these things get connected as well and clearly if somebody wanted to administer this they'd have to have the facility to do it with or they'd be sending the person to Burlington so we have to iron out how that would work as well but the same discussions are occurring you know with the federal government with vaccine and making sure that the distribution system to the state is one that works for us not only in terms of being able to get it quickly to every corner of the state but also making sure that the storage requirements for the various vaccine are available everywhere we need it to be. So it takes a huge coordinated effort a lot of things going on behind the scenes that you or anyone in the public wouldn't actually even recognize at this point because it's all in preparation for when we start seeing vaccine hopefully towards the middle or latter part of the month of December. Thank you sir. All right Keith the Rutgers Bureau. Hi there is a I believe a draft report out on the Vermont State College system that seems to suggest further consolidation name of its main castles and then Northern Vermont University plus obviously giving it more state aid. I'm just curious if um then I realize that is a pretty early report but I'm wondering if there's any thoughts on what that looks like now. I know in the past there's been a lot of talk about that system having a change but that seems pretty drastic also I don't know if anybody's seen that or thought about it or what. Yeah Keith I have not seen that report as yet but what I expect we'll probably see it the next couple of weeks. I really don't have much to say about it other than we know pre-pandemic that the state college system had its challenges and uh and this is uh highlighted the fact that there's got to be have there's got to be some system changes in order for the system to survive so look forward to whatever they have to offer and I'm sure the legislature will want to weigh in as well. Thank you. Colin seven days. Hi thanks I'm curious to do um probably for Dr Levine or maybe Secretary Smith um give us a recent outbreak at the nursing home facility. Could you tell us if there's any lessons we have learned from the spring when we had um some similar situations at Birchwood and Burlington Health and rehab? Have we learned anything that helps us better um respond to these situations? Since I'm the one in the room I guess I could start. Is that okay with you Secretary Smith? Go right ahead. Abundant lessons, abundant lessons um which we've actually had in implementation and practice for six months now. One of the key lessons uh is that the moment we know of anyone positive whether it be a staff member or a resident of the facility we immediately test the entire facility and get a good handle on what the state is on the ground right then and there. That enables us not only to begin to understand who's got what but it enables us to do the appropriate infection control throughout the facility making sure that patients who have test positive or staff who test positive are appropriately isolated and we use a term cohorted so that staff that are taking care of positive patients are only taking care of positive patients and vice versa those who are taking care of negative are only taking care of negative. We also make sure that in places that have people on different floors or on the same floor but in different units or wings on those floors that we try to make sure that uh there's strict isolation between all of those settings so that if a outbreak occurred in only one floor or one wing it can be limited to that area alone. Visionally besides the initial facility-wide testing we uh with the CDC pioneered an entire protocol of testing every several days over a 14-day period so that we don't just accept the first test as what's going on but we have an ongoing surveillance and can try to act again decisively and quickly if we find another positive along the way whether it's on day three whether it's on day seven what have you because we know that's how these things tend to evolve. The other lesson we learned is that sometimes the risk to the facility is not the staff but it's the admission of a person who came either from a hospital or even from another home setting but was it not symptomatic but actually harbored the virus so we initiated quarantine protocols so that in addition to testing that new admission several times we also had them in a quarantine situation so that if one of their tests did turn positive along the way they would already have been isolated and not risk put anybody else at risk within the facility so those are very very important take-home messages that we've learned along the way and have really been pioneers we have a healthcare outbreak and prevention response team that the facilities around the state give kudos to but have also received some national prominence for the good work that they've done many many ideas on their own some in concert with the Centers for Disease Control Secretary do you have anything to add to that? You stole my thunder Dr. Levine so that I have nothing more to add. Well then maybe I'll give you one more chance, I was going to ask about staffing shortages as well. I think we're aware of at least one facility that's asking for volunteers to come in and help their staff use curation could you just give us an overview of what you're hearing from these facilities as far as staffing goes and what the state might be doing to help them out? Yes it seems to me when we have an outbreak within this facility the the initial the initial problem is within the the first 24 or 48 hours because you're you're losing staff because sometimes staff is involved in this so in order to stabilize it we have through Dale and Monica as the commissioner of Dale have met with various long-term care facilities to try to help them out in terms of staffing for that initial period it seems that if you can get through that initial period there is some stabilization that happens whether through travelers or other personnel that can be that can be gathered but in that initial period there seems to be a a staffing shortage and and we have been working with various facilities to overcome those staffing shortages and those staffing shortages. One of the things that we have been doing is helping through the SEOC the state emergency operation center as well as close communications with the university or Mont Medical Center is trying to find various nurses and as you know nurses are hard to come by these days but trying to find nurses throughout the state that can fill in for those short period of time we've been successful in doing that on numerous occasions but I've got to admit it has been a challenge as we have had these outbreaks in various facilities and do we have any facilities in that 24-48 period right now that are that are dealing with this? Yeah we do we have one and that's the one we mentioned earlier which is elderwood. Okay thank you and lastly is there anything about PPE shortages? No I have not heard of any and in fact we have sufficient PPE to and we have been shipping PPE to these facilities in order to maintain adequate supply. Thank you. Courtney local point to person regions are opening this weekend I'm wondering if the state has provided any specific guidance to those resorts? Yes we work out an agreement with the ski areas and and provided a path forward very restrictive I might add and accomplish them for them so I might ask secretary Curley if she could add anything to that because they were instrumental in negotiating with the ski areas. Absolutely happy to. Yes the Vermont ski areas were great partners in coming up with a safe plan for operations for this winter. The guidance is actually posted on our website at apcb.vermont.gov and you'll find it under the restart section but some of the highlights that are there are that the ski areas are going to provide a great deal of education to folks that are coming to the mountains making sure that people understand that we have a core need requirements for state travel also as well as the Vermont or to be of less sustained combat. Their occupancy on the care list has has been reduced there's a variety of different things too many things to lay out college and just on the face and but I would just direct you to our website and then give me a little finding and feel free to email me. Okay thank you. That's it for today. Thanks again for tuning in we'll see you back on Tuesday.