 Good morning, everyone. As you can see, I'm not Governor Scott. But he'll be joining us shortly. He is currently on a call with fellow governors and White House officials discussing vaccine distribution. And when he is done, he will join us for the question and answer portion. Today, I'll start by giving an update on Vermont's vaccine rollout. Commissioner Pichek will present our weekly modeling. And Dr. Levine will provide a health update. As of this morning, over 55,000 Vermonters have received vaccines. 35,500 Vermonters received their first dose and 19,500 Vermonters received their second dose. That means nearly 10% of eligible Vermonters who can receive the vaccine have been administered at least their first dose. We have now registered 34,170 Vermonters. As of this morning, 75 years and older who are scheduled for their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine over the next five weeks. So far, more than 14% of Vermonters, 75 and older, have received their first dose. That's up from 6% last week. The Health Department COVID-19 Vaccination Clinics are proceeding as scheduled today. If you have an appointment to receive the vaccine today and you are concerned, you can monitor the weather. But as you can see out there, the weather has turned in a little bit in our favor and we haven't been getting the snow at least in the central to northern parts of Vermont that have been anticipated. So those who want to change their appointments because there are snow, you can call 855-722-7878 to reschedule, you'll be given a new appointment for the same time on a day later this week or you can ask for a new appointment on a different day. We have not had many cancellations. As of this morning, I heard that we had about 21 cancellations. So people are looking at the weather and making the decisions based upon what they're seeing outside their window. Let me just move on a little bit, turning to additional locations because I want to keep you updated on additional locations. Currently, there are 87 available appointments in Windsor County, although they may not be on your preferred date and time. We are looking at adding appointments at Mount Escutney Hospital coming available next week and perhaps additional allocations of vaccine to Springfield Hospital soon. We've added a clinic in Alburg to serve that area and the upper portion of Grand Isle County. In early February, we are planning to add capacity with available appointments at Grace Cottage Hospital in Wyndham County and later in the month with Copley Hospital in Lemoyle County, Northwest Medical Center in Franklin County, North Country Hospital in Newport and Gifford Medical Center in Orange County. On the issue of homebound, we have been waiting for CDC guidance on transporting vaccines. For those that are homebound, as I have mentioned, we plan to use home health and the EMS providers to deliver vaccines to those individuals. We've developed several different methods from going to the home with the vaccine to arranging mobile clinics, depending on recommended guidance from the CDC. Last night, we received preliminary guidance so that by the end of this week, it is our hope to start delivering vaccine to homebound Vermonters. We have also established a working group to look at the best time to begin the process of opening up long-term care facilities to congregate dining and other activities once a sufficient time period has elapsed to fully allow the vaccine to build up the body's immunity to the virus in the resonance of these facilities. Our seniors living in long-term care facilities have been isolated for far too long, and it is our hope to reestablish those social connections as soon as possible. All 37 skilled nursing facilities have received their first and second dose of the vaccine, according to schedules, as well as 87% of residential care facilities and 94% of assisted living facilities have received at least their first dose with many receiving their second dose. In all, a total of 85% of long-term care residents that include skilled nursing facilities, residential care and assisted living have elected to receive their first dose of vaccine. This successful, I can't say this enough and I'll repeat it again, this successful statewide vaccination effort has many people to thank. It has the state employees across multiple departments and agencies who have worked hard to put this program together, our health partners who have partnered with us to provide vaccination sites, loved ones, neighbors and friends who have lent a helping hand, not only to sign people up, but to transport them to the vaccination sites. It's been because of all these people that this has been a success. It's been no one person, no one department, no one agency, no one individual. It's been a concerted effort of all Vermonters to make this happen. And again, I say thank you. Lastly, for those who have not signed up for your vaccine, I would urge those Vermonters 75 years and older who have not yet done so to register for the vaccine. Please do so by going online at the health department's website at healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine. That's healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine. Or simply call our registration call center at 855-72-7878. I'll now turn this presentation over to Commissioner Pichek, who will give you his weekly update on trends. Thank you very much, Secretary Smith, and good morning, everyone. This past week has brought continued good news and further reasons for optimism as favorable trends across the country persist. With cases, hospitalizations, and even deaths continuing to decrease as we climb down from our most recent peak. While we certainly appreciate this good news, we must remember, however, that cases and hospitalizations remain very high across our country, and January was the deadliest month of the pandemic to date. Closer to home, we also have reason for optimism and reason for caution. Our region continues to see significant improvement, and in Vermont, our statewide cases remain stable and have continued their gradual downward trend. However, that experience has not been universal, as trends in Bennington County have not improved, and in fact, over the past week have worsened. Over the last three weeks, national seven-day case rates have trended down and have continued to do so at a very rapid pace, representing a more than 40% decrease over this period of time. And we're still continuing to see widespread improvement with every single region of the country seeing their cases and their hospitalizations trending down. The CDC's most recent forecast, which is a combined forecast of all the best modelers across the country, anticipates that cases will continue to go down over the next three weeks as well. While the improvement in cases is certainly very good news, we again must be mindful that we are continuing to report an additional one million new cases across the country in less than one week's time. Looking at our regional data, we see that we are seeing some significant improvements as well with close to 30,000 fewer cases reported this week compared to last. For the first time in over five weeks, New York reported fewer than 10,000 cases in a single day, and for the first time in over 10 weeks, Quebec reported under 1,000 cases in a single day. And this is the third straight week in which cases have seen decline in the region, and it's the far fewest, it's the fewest number of weekly cases that we've seen in the region since November 23rd. However, as you can see from this chart, the case counts continue to be elevated and the risk in the region remains high. With the improved cases and over 2.7 million tests performed across the region this past week, it has driven our regional positivity rate below the 5% recommended by the World Health Organization. The first time it's been under 5% in over three months. Again, continued positive trends and good news. Vermont's case trends also continue to move in the right direction, with us reporting 82 fewer cases this week compared to last. And our seven day case rate continuing to gradually fall down 29% from its most recent high. We're also seeing improvement in the number of active cases in Vermont with the number trending down for the past three weeks. But again, just like with regional cases, we must remember that there are still a significant number of active cases in our state. Far more than we experienced during the spring and far more pretty much than any other time during the recent surge. So Vermonters must remain vigilant. Not only are our overall cases on the decline, but so too are our cases among our highest risk populations. Again, we're paying very close attention to cases that occur in the 65 and older population, since this is our most vulnerable group in terms of severe illness and death. Over the past two weeks, the number of high risk cases has decreased both in the aggregate and as a percentage of our overall cases. Meaning we are less likely to see severe outcomes compared to where we stood just four weeks ago. As we mentioned last week, we have also been seeing fewer cases in our long-term care facilities. And as you can see from the outbreak chart, we have far fewer current outbreaks as well. As we've said many times, protecting this most vulnerable group of Vermonters remains a key of our strategy. Again, with fewer cases among this high-risk population, we're seeing fewer deaths in our state as well. We saw the number of fatalities drop by 60% compared to December. And as we vaccinate more and more of the vulnerable population over the weeks and the months ahead, we anticipate seeing fewer and fewer of these high-risk cases. And as a result, less severe illness and fewer deaths. Turning to Bennington County for a moment, this county continues to stand out compared to the rest of the state for three reasons. First, it has a disproportionately high percentage of active cases. It has sustained growth in these cases that dates back to early December. And recently it's seen an increase in its hospitalizations. Regarding the hospitalizations with the overall number of hospitalizations continuing to increase in the state, we can see that this is now being driven in part by Bennington County. Hospitalizations across the rest of the state have been trending down since the middle of January, as our case trends have been slowly trending down over that same period of time as well. But in Bennington, they have been trending up along with their increased case counts. Again, looking at the regional heat map, we continue to see that Bennington is likely influenced by the counties to its west, which have a much higher case load than the counties around the other parts of Vermont's east and southern borders. And we must remember also that Bennington is an older county, meaning its population is more at risk of having significant health outcomes if they contract the virus. So again, while it's important for all Vermonters to remain vigilant, certainly this is particularly true for those currently in Bennington County. Turning to a minute to the college restart, we again wanted to illustrate the more challenging environment our colleges are facing in the spring semester compared to the fall. These two regional heat maps show the relative differences between the start of the fall semester compared to the spring. On the right is the spring, and on the left is the fall. The active cases in our region are almost 10 times greater this spring semester as compared to college restart back in August. So we should expect to see more cases on campus compared to what we saw in the fall. And this week we're reporting 65 new cases across all of our college campuses. Turning to our Vermont forecast for the next six weeks, we continue to see improvement with week over week projections continuing to decrease. And although our most recent case data suggests that we will beat this forecast over the weeks ahead, we do expect cases to remain elevated for much of the month of February. So it's something for all Vermonters to keep in mind. And finally, as Secretary Smith said, we've made great progress on the vaccine front. Vermont continues to stand out nationally, ranking number two in the Northeast in terms of vaccine administration and number six nationally on that same mark. At this time, I'll turn the presentation over to Dr. Levine. Thank you, Commissioner Pichek. And I will probably reinforce some of the same points you made. So you've seen that our cases seem to be reflecting national trends easing their way down. Today we're reporting 108 cases in a low seven day positivity rate of 1.9%. As you just seen, modeling projections don't see the state counts going much lower over the month of February. We're also seeing deaths increase at a much lower rate, which of course is also good news in contra-distinction to some of the rest of the country. I've mentioned previously, and we sent evidence for that, that this has to do with fewer cases in long-term care facilities in January as compared with December. The one thing that still remains a concern is in comparison with national trends as well, our hospitalization rates. Hospitalizations were at 60 yesterday and are at 64 today with 12 patients currently in the ICU. As you've seen, a large portion of these are in Bennington County. The rest of the state is actually exhibiting some stability. Fortunately, Southwest Vermont Medical Center is coping very well with this added clinical load, and tertiary centers in the region have accepted some of the highest acuity patients in transfer. We continue to monitor that situation very closely in addition to the higher case numbers generally in that part of the state. Our data teams have not pinpointed any one cause for the spread in Bennington County, though we did know of some larger gatherings in early December before the holidays that led to some small outbreaks. Additionally, a percentage of these cases are related to New York residents who either work or receive their medical care in the Bennington area. Examination of COVID-19 case activity in this county looks much more like the adjoining New York counties you saw on the heat map than those of Vermont. We're also seeing that out-of-state ski business accounts for some of the cases as well, but because many of these are visitors to the state and they're only here for a day or two, all we see are the impacts of spread to restaurants or work sites. We're working to ensure that Bennington County has sufficient testing and information to help slow the spread of COVID. What we're seeing tells us we must work harder on the containment front, which begins with access to testing. The test sites in Bennington are often busy, but frankly, not filled to capacity. We are working to pilot other sites throughout the region and perhaps later expand ski resort testing in the county as well, and we are looking to move to a site in the northern part of the county to increase access for that population. We've been very focused on vaccination lately, a complex yet extremely positive stage of our pandemic response, but we simply can't ignore the work we've been doing and still need to do to stop the virus. You know it by now, and it's as critically important today as it has been for almost a year now. Six foot spaces, masks on faces, uncrowded places. We also still need to avoid gathering with people we don't live with right now. Thousands of cases and dozens of outbreaks. We know this is a highly infectious virus and we can't always know if someone has been exposed. COVID does find its way into gatherings and once it does, it spreads easily and one person can easily infect one or sometimes two others. And then it spreads again from person to person into households, workplaces, houses of worship and beyond leading to more concerning community spread which is exactly what we see each night in our case counts. We've worked so hard at this for so many months now. Please don't slip up now. Not when we're so much closer to being protected by a vaccine. And speaking of which, there is even more positive news on the vaccine front this time from Johnson and Johnson. We expect possibly later this week that they will be seeking emergency youth authorization from the FDA. Early information indicates that the vaccine which has the benefit of being administered in a single dose was 72% effective in the US at preventing moderate to severe COVID-19. 85% effective in preventing severe disease and completely effective in preventing hospitalization and death as of day 28. This was across races, ages and multiple variants. The trial enrolled almost 44,000 participants and included 468 symptomatic cases. There were no cases of anaphylaxis and interestingly from a scientific perspective there were actually more serious adverse events in the placebo group. We're also still watching the cases that have surfaced at colleges and universities. A number of athletic teams have had outbreaks and had their seasons paused including UVM, Castleton and Norwich. With regard to high school sports competition we have just barely reached the day 14 mark since opening phase two. Our epi team is in the process of preparing analyses of cases both before we opened phase two and since. We will look at both team cases, impact of cases on teams and impact of cases on schools. Our one university outbreak continues to be Norwich which has now reported 94 cases. We understand that many students travel to Vermont from other parts of the country which have higher prevalence of COVID-19. They then encountered further risk through the actual process of travel. In some cases they learned that family members tested positive after the student had already left for Vermont. We expected to see more cases in the spring semester than the fall knowing how much more virus activity has been happening throughout the country and region. Though these cases are concerning this is exactly why we require returning college students to be tested and quarantined. This helps us identify cases, ensure they isolate themselves and ensures that their close contacts quarantine before the semester even begins. The university appears to have sufficient isolation and quarantine housing and their new president and administration have delivered effective messages and guidance to students detailing their responsibilities in quarantine. In some instances disciplinary actions have been taken. We are working closely with the university to refine testing protocols especially for close contacts on top of the surveillance testing already in place. We're examining the specifics of cases and the potential spread on campus to guide our recommendations. Our outbreak response and prevention team continues its work with the school with containment as the goal. I will say that the marked slowing of case growth in the past several days may indeed be an encouraging sign. The health department is also in the process of submitting some specimens from these cases for genomic sequencing to see if any involve new variants which are mutations among the COVID-19 virus. I do not yet have any update on results of this but with the spread of these variants around the country we do expect to see one or more in Vermont eventually. On the national scene the experience is three variants 471 cases and 33 jurisdictions. The CDC is now looking towards a new goal of sequencing 7,000 cases weekly. I'll stop there and turn it over to the question and answer. We'll take questions and questions right now. Thank you, Secretary. So probably starting for Commissioner Harrington I understand there's been a bit of a mix-up with some of the 1099G forms. I'm wondering first off if you can give us an update as to how many forms and how many people have been affected how long it's going to take the state to send out new forms and potentially how much it's going to cost as well. Right. Commissioner Harrington did you get that question? Let me do my best to respond and I think this is a good opportunity to just reiterate some of the information that was provided yesterday in a media briefing as well as on our website. So we had a situation where when information from our mainframe system was processed and then printed in the printing and mailing process of our 1099 tax documents that go to individuals who receive benefits during the 2020 calendar year, that file was corrupted and what ended up happening was individuals began receiving 1099 documents from the department where the name and address were incorrect either on the front of the document, the part on the envelope, or once opened it had incorrect name and social security number on the inside. So the department became aware of this early yesterday morning and immediately started working on a response plan. At this time we are asking and planning to recall all of the 1099s that have been sent out to date. That's roughly about 80,000 1099s that were mailed. Of the 80,000 that were mailed, approximately 55,000 were corrupt and then a smaller subset of those included a corresponding name and correct social security number which leads us to believe that there is the potential for some incidences of the improper release of protected information from the department. So we are working right now to communicate with claimants but the instructions to claimants are if you receive a letter from the department of labor and the name and address is incorrect or any portion of the name and address is incorrect on the envelope. Please do not open the envelope and set it aside. You will receive follow-up communications along with a letter and a pre-stamped pre-addressed envelope for returning that 1099 to the department. If the information on the envelope is correct and you open the envelope and find out that the information on the 1099 on the inside is incorrect and that it either doesn't have your correct name or correct social security number we ask that you put that aside in a protected place and again you will receive a communication and mailing from the department with instructions for how to return that in a self-addressed stamped envelope to the department. For those individuals where we have been able to identify that there is the potential of a compromising situation of their data including their name and social security number we will contact those individuals separately and walk them through a process for how to protect and monitor their information but also how to enroll in ID protection services through the department. We expect the immediate notification and recall effort to occur over the next two weeks along with the outreach notification of individuals where their information may have been compromised and enrollment in protection services if requested and then we also have the process of reissuing new 1099 under a controlled process by the end of the month. So again a couple different actions taking place over the coming days and weeks and we will be communicating that both on the website as well as to individuals directly. Kelvin did you have a follow-up? So it appears if I'm hearing you correctly commissioner it sounds like this is another problem from the UI mainframe how do we make sure this doesn't happen again? Yeah so it isn't necessarily directly related to the mainframe although all roads lead back to the integrated systems. Traditionally here at the department we would process somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 1099 and people would receive one 1099. Obviously 2020 had presented a much more difficult and complex problem in that we are now issuing 180,000 1099 in total and instead of one 1099 people will receive multiple 1099 due to the extension and expansion of various benefit programs and the problem is that all these programs don't reside within one system they reside in multiple systems and part of that is obviously due to the age of the mainframe. The other issue that is impacted because of the age of this system is that many of our processes include manual steps in those processes and the transmission of data to and from the mainframe and to various other ancillary programs and systems and so you know unfortunately given the complexity and kind of the outgrowth of these multiple systems and steps and processes we simply expanded the opportunity for failure actions to occur and missteps to occur in each one of these processes due to the level of manual effort that occurs so we are looking at additional quality control and quality assurance measures that can be put in place both to review the incidents that occurred so that we can learn from it and correct gaps in the system we are also looking at long-term quality control and quality assurance efforts that can be implemented again to ensure that once we have received the 1099s that were improperly sent reissuing 1099s that are true and accurate so we have a lot of work ahead of us over the coming weeks and months and we are neck deep in trying to move through this process as quickly as we can to get information to claimants and impacted individuals in an expedited manner I made just one more so Commissioner potentially there is quite a few social security numbers that were sent out to the wrong people I guess in an instance like this what does accountability look like? I didn't guess the last part of that what was the actual question part what does accountability look like? Accountability the department's perspective is we obviously have an obligation under the law to notify the Attorney General's office as well as the IRS but more importantly we have an obligation to notify the impacted individuals you know from an accountability perspective I think our investigation of the process of what occurred will bear out where the failure in the process occurred but obviously at the end of the day they are mailed from the department which means I am accountable for what needs in the department and we'll review that process and different pieces that were involved in that process on going I think at this point it's certainly too early and I'm not really a big fan of pointing fingers we've got a very talented and committed crew here that worked tirelessly over the past month to get this effort out the door and certainly there are always the opportunity for mistakes and if we find that there was something intentionally done or someone did not follow a procedure we'll identify that and move forward but at this point I think we're all focused on how to know exactly as quickly as possible how to get them the instructions they need to move forward and how to get them new information and obviously for those where there may have been an improper release of their private information getting them the protection as quickly as possible and that is our main focus right now. Thank you Commissioner Commissioner since you're on the line is your department ready to be as transparent as possible as far as how many people actually were affected and if there were any data breach or stealing of identity at all? We will be as transparent as we can under the law and within our capability and the reason I say that is I can tell you today how many 1099 documents left the building and we're putting them out to see how many people that represent at the moment because we have people who were of those 1099s that were mailed there were incidences where three of those 1099s could have gone to one person and so we will have to do a much deeper dive into the mailing of the 80,000 1099s to understand what the true population looks like I think the other piece and the part that makes it a little bit more complex is that you have the Department of Labor in the unemployment insurance program you also have our technical team that works with our mainframe and pulls the data from the mainframe and then we have a series of other individuals whether it be the print shop or here at the department who are working to print a massive amount of 1099s and then stuff those envelopes and mail those envelopes and so there were many people involved in this process from various departments and agencies working to get the 1099s out the door so that just adds a layer of complexity when we're trying to fully understand where the separation was in the process and the failure in the process was but we'll be conducting that review and certainly provide whatever information we can I guess for you Mike do we know what the number of vaccines going forward for the next few weeks or have you heard from the feds we've had the 10,300 that we've heard for the next two weeks that we've heard from the feds obviously the governor's meeting with the feds right now but we're going forward with that number we haven't had any commitment beyond that number obviously as you know we've done all our modeling on 8,800 doses as we move forward but we hope to hear some more have you heard from the guard at all or has the governor approach the guard as far as distribution goes we have the guard in reserve for distribution if we got a massive amount of vaccine we would deploy the guard in our planning we've actually planned to have the guard as a reserve in case we do get more vaccine than we had anticipated so the guard is a very important partner in this if we get more vaccine thank you thanks secretary Smith can you tell us when school teachers are going to get vaccinated well I think what the governor has said and I think this is the way that we've approached this we have done age banding and the age banding from 65 to 70 and 70 to 75 and 75 above we're in the 75 above now which is the first age band and then we've talked about those with underlying conditions from 16 to 64 and then the governor said he's open to discussions about what comes next I have said that we'll be through 65 by the start of the spring and I still believe that's the case we still have to get through the 16 to 64 with the underlying conditions that we had talked about so we're open to discussions after the age banding and the underlying conditions and to talk about that at some point so start of spring I don't know how long the 18 plus with the underlying conditions might take but as you know the NEA is talking about an April timeframe is that in the realm well we'll continue our discussions with the NEA actually with them tomorrow to have some discussions with them on various aspects of the vaccine program I think it's too soon really to talk about specifics given the fact that we don't know when Johnson and Johnson is coming we don't know when other vaccines may be coming to the market but we're certainly open to talking to various individuals about various things I know that teachers want to get back to classroom teaching five days a week and I know that students want to get back five days a week in fact we need to get students back on all levels the grade school levels we're doing fairly well at we need to get back students at all levels and the sooner we can the better it is for everyone so we'll go in with that mindset as we look but it's important Stuart I don't want to lose sight of the strategy that we have reduce death and the strategy we have is through the age banding to reduce death, reduce serious illness and get us back to a place faster with this strategy than we would in sort of a scattered shot strategy Alright just listening to Commissioner Herrington thought occurs and we like everybody else I'm sure have been hearing from people who are not happy about the 1099G mess up is there anyway if I get somebody else a social security number and I go out and try to create an account or do something phony can you will you know that you sent somebody else a social security number to me is it possible in some way don't you want to put people on notice not to do the criminal Commissioner Herrington so thank you Stuart appreciate the question you know the immediate thing is that anyone regardless of this situation but obviously in light of this situation people should monitor the activity on their account whether it be banking accounts or credit card accounts additionally they should also consider security freezes on their credit reports and credit scores just given rampant frauds that is occurring across the country right now specific to this incident I completely understand people's frustration I want them to know that I share in that frustration this was you know something that you know I could never have imagined would have occurred coming out of the process we had in place and they have my unwavering commitment that we will review the process correct the process and make sure we implement safeguards to prevent it from happening in the future I think along those lines we do have a way by the population where we sent a 1099 that has a person social security number and that same person name on the same document and where that document may have been delivered to someone other than the name and social on the document and in cases where the name and the social match was not that person we will be notifying the person whose identity potentially could have been compromised in that sense and I say potentially because it may not have been opened and released and part of our protection measure of having people return these documents to the department so that they can be destroyed properly and we will also be reaching out to those individuals to offer additional support services for identity protection thank you thank you good morning looking at the hospital data recently it shows that despite declining case numbers and hospitalizations the number of people in the ICU has increased in January and looks to stay elevated to the end of this month why is that and is it possible to provide the demographics of those who are hospitalized and those who are in the ICU Commissioner Pichek or Commissioner Levine one or the other I'm glad you asked a question about hospitalizations because either I misspoke or I misspoke but I was notified that I may have said we went from 60 yesterday to 64 today but we went to 54 today so I'm not sure what I said 54 so seeing more people in the ICU obviously that implies an increase in severity of the condition of the person the reality is most of those patients probably belong in an ICU I know we had said at one time that there are times that an ICU room provides an isolation room in a negative pressure ventilation room which are criteria for what we want for a COVID patient being hospitalized but we should assume most of these patients just have a severity of illness greater than would be warranted for someone on a hospital ward the nice news about that is rarely occasionally though ventilators are used for these patients you may recall from early in the pandemic we were we as a country were panicking about ventilators and all kinds of entrepreneurs were out there trying to convert whatever business they had into building ventilators now ventilators aren't such a big issue we've learned a lot more about the care of the patients the way to manage their oxygenation needs and their ventilation needs that don't always involve using a ventilator itself and we have medications we can administer that may interfere with some of the inflammatory response of their body that had led to a respiratory distress syndrome related to the virus so I think we said during our presentations that we showed in fact Commissioner Pritchek had the slide that showed where the Bennington cases were going on an uptick and the rest of the state was pretty stable and that is really the pattern that we have so I'm not sure I can give more granularity to your answer than I just did the ICU usage is obviously not just in Bennington it's all over the state but it's again distributed so it's possible to provide aggregated demographics for those who are in the ICU to avoid potential hits of violations if they could be aggregated from December to the end of January oh just over time to see an aggregate for the state how many were in an ICU at one point in time versus another oh I'm sure and their age band and their sex yeah why don't we get back to you with that sure that would be great and my next question is also for you Dr. Zovey could you elaborate here on your comments Bennington and ski resorts and visitors who are leaving COVID behind yeah so I mean the reality is we have a lot of visitors to the parts of the state and we know that there have been not only on the site of a ski resort but in the communities that are part of the ski resorts cases that show up in worksites and in restaurants to the point where in one or two towns although those had to close due to staffing issues so we can only hypothesize that there are more cases in those areas providing the NIDIS for community transmission to occur in those areas at a higher rate that seems to be occurring in some other places so that was the intent of that comment and is it possible to quantify that or those cases it's really challenging to do that because once community transmission is occurring it's hard to know from whom to whom did it spread and was it from somebody who actually doesn't live in Vermont versus somebody who is part of the community in Vermont so it's a challenge to do that we know that in Bennington County I believe it was close to but under 20% of cases seem to be from the New York side but that doesn't mean those were skiers, those could have been people who get their care in Vermont or who work actually across the border in Vermont so it's a little hard to quantitate you know from one set of people here for a certain purpose if you will Thank you very much and I'll reach out via email on the other deck Yeah, good morning sorry I'm late I just wanted to jump in quickly before we continue answering questions I was just on a call with the National Governors Association and White House officials discussing vaccine distribution amongst other topics it was a very productive conversation and I appreciate the Biden administration's engagement with my fellow governors and me this is part of their promise to update us on a weekly basis so unfortunately today was part of our connected with our press conference but we did hear some good news our doses will be increased another 5% that's in addition to the 16% increase announced last week for a total of more than 20% if you do the math and compound and so forth it's probably around 22% it's not 21 but 22 over where we were several weeks ago they also reiterated that this would be they would promise this over a 3 week duration which will be tremendously important to us as we plan ahead that's what we had asked them to do and they are following through on that promise so for the next 3 weeks we'll be receiving this additional 5% on top of again the 16% from before so in addition to the 20% increase they will also be providing us with the tools to get the extra dose for the Pfizer vaccine which is potentially about 15 to 20% I think more per vial so that's not included in this but they are providing all the tools we need to do that and I believe they did that this week but they are going to continue to do that in the future they will also be retroactively providing 100% reimbursement for certain FEMA approved operations I think National Guard in the beginning we were at 75 25 the states had to provide 25% reimbursement the Biden administration when President Biden was sworn in one of the first actions was to commit to 100% at that point and now it's going to be retroactive back to January of 2020 which will mean millions of dollars for Vermont we don't know all the details and we'll look into that and hopefully be able to update you on what that could mean safely say it's millions of dollars that will be coming back to Vermont in some respects also beginning in the next couple of weeks the federal government will also be delivering additional vaccine directly to pharmacies this is somewhat of a pilot project based on what they've done before in 1A so this is the first phase will be about a million doses throughout the country it will be distributed on a per capita basis so that's another 10% that we should be getting so I would say around 900 to 1000 doses that will be distributed to the pharmacies to be utilized here in Vermont so again every little bit helps this will be substantial and we'll see how it works but we expect that to happen over the next two weeks so again this is just preliminary information hot off the press so to speak and we'll have more details in the days to come but suffice it to say this is good news for us here in Vermont and throughout the country so I appreciate the collaboration with the White House and look forward to receiving more doses so we can vaccinate Vermonters as fast as possible and start getting back to whatever normal is so I thank you and we'll get back to questions at this time hi morning or afternoon everybody Governor on your 22% more vaccine Secretary Smith gave a number earlier can you put a number on that figure how many you expect to be how many doses you expect to be receiving for the next three weeks well again if you take roughly we had at the beginning we added 16% on top of that then you added another 5% to that so I think we're probably around 11 11,000 I would I'm just doing it in my head so I'm going to look over at my paycheck what's that 10,800 so I'm still able to do math in my head so around 11,000 good for you I need a calculator anyway my other question for Dr. Levine you touched on this a little bit and the question from Lisa Lewis touched on it too touched on my question what is the theme running through your contact tracing community right now is there anything to point out and is it ski areas is it small group gatherings or is it just community transmission randomly passing someone on the road who is expelling virus I would agree with community transmission though your description of it may not be complex enough because it's probably not from random events like that it still probably is from more concentrated exposure to an individual within six feet for 15 minutes in duration but yes we look at our reports every night and we see continuing involvement to a high level of worksites around Vermont but again these are an individual at a worksite they're not an entire worksite brought down by the virus and closed up we find it in houses of worship we find it in schools occasionally we find it in our healthcare facilities whether they be long term care or other healthcare facilities so it's just manifestation of the fact that when we look at the graph that we saw earlier today where we are in the last several months is way different than where we were in the summer and early fall with regard to how much virus is prevalent across the state and you're going to see community transmission under those circumstances we are still following we're still following a fair number of outbreaks but I would say that the outbreaks are not driving the cases the outbreaks may be responsible for 10 or 15 percent of all of the cases but the rest of the cases do not have any association with an outbreak and then the theme I've asked several times over the last few weeks I'll ask it one more time although it might still be early have you seen any empirical evidence yet that the vaccines are working and reducing the incidence of the disease that's a huge challenge at this early juncture to be honest I would love to say that what we're seeing in the long term cares is related to the vaccine but that would be a little guesswork and a little premature but again our most vulnerable part of long term care is the skilled nursing facility and I believe now the majority of them if not all have completed dose two so they are in that stage where a few days beyond or a week or two beyond dose two those people should be relatively well protected from developing significant COVID disease so I think we're going to start to see that impact and that's why Secretary Smith and I are really moving full speed ahead on a project to see how we can have that benefit pay off in the long term care facilities with regards to bringing life there a little bit back to normal whether it be with regards to communal dining visitation group activities things of that sort there is a pathway to go forward working with the federal government and CMS and testing to make sure that we do it the right way but we'll be we're beginning to have those discussions now that we've just finally reached the end of the second dose for those particular facilities. Okay great thank you very much as always Secretary. I think it's also important to note in terms of contact tracing we have actually increased our ability to contact trace with the help of the National Guard and others and we built upon that over the last couple of months where some other states many other states have had to put away their contact tracing because they were overwhelmed I think New Hampshire did as well I'm not sure if they're back but Vermont was well suited for this and well prepared and I think that it will go a long ways towards trying to mitigate this as best we can. Okay thank you. Governor the house is working on a yield bill today that reduces pretty significantly the property tax increase from what folks have been anticipating or looking at a few weeks ago but doesn't eliminate it altogether. You said in your budget address that you don't want to see any increase in statewide property taxes and I'm wondering what the mechanism you propose what the mechanism is that you would propose achieving that. Yeah I'm going to give a lot of credit to the house for putting that number out there I think it's a good sign to the communities throughout Vermont that we are having a substantial increase and I believe we will get down to not having any increase at all and I would say that they might agree with that but a little bit too early at this point we'll see as time goes on the education fund I think will continue to be overflowing in some respects so I don't see any reason to see any increase but it's too early for them to do that but this ends a signal to others that we're pretty close but your sense is that we're going to see revenues improve such that you don't have to have any sort of outside intervention to achieve a zero percent increase. That's my feeling yes. Thank you. I'm going to go to Mike Donoghue but just a quick time check it is 12 to 10 and we still have 17 almost our entire queue left to get through. You didn't do very well while I was away. Mike Donoghue the islander thank you Rebecca and first just a quick thank you on the follow up when Dr. Levine couldn't remember the other day which hospital had the outbreak in mid-January turns out it was Hopley Hospital Morrisville the health department told us finally so thank you very much for getting back to us today I'd like Commissioner Harrington the islander has received multiple inquiries from across the state about the major problems on the 1099 and I know you addressed it earlier with Calvin but one woman in particular was really upset noting this is at least the second known time in just a few months that the Vermont Labor Department has sent her personal identification information including social security off to some unknown stranger and she probably others wonder when the state can stop blaming phone systems and computers and actually hold somebody accountable you did say manual labor was involved in the screw up you also said you don't like the point fingers but isn't that the problem that nobody has ever held accountable it's not their social security number or data birth floating around out there maybe used for criminal conduct or fraud you have an estimate on how much this latest Labor Department problem is going to cost Vermont taxpayers thanks Mike appreciate the question I'll again extend my sincere regret an apology for the situation that occurred you know I'm hesitant to associate blame because we are still in the midst of reviewing the situation that occurred when we talk about accountability it is important that we do hold ourselves for individuals accountable for the quality of their work and so I'm not trying to dodge the question there but it's really early in the process right now it's been about 24 hours a little over since we were made aware of the issue I think we're continuing to review which file was improperly handled and who handled that file and certainly we can talk about accountability at some future point but I think right now the priority is notifying these claimants and correcting the issue you know I certainly understand and I think I said earlier you know we can talk about the impact that the targeted systems and multiple systems and manual processes have in contributing but they are not the sole issue here and I think it's really hard to lay blame on any one system or individual in this process although we will conduct and are conducting a thorough review of the process to figure exactly where the disconnect happened and the failure occurred and I'm happy to share information as we learn more about how this unfolded unfortunately it's probably likely the most simplest of processes that lead to the largest impact and it wouldn't be surprising in this case the amount of data that is needed to be transferred and handled in multiple different ways in order to conduct the types of complex processes we're doing so in terms of accountability I will own that although I think what people really want to know is where did the failure occur and why aren't there better control mechanisms in place for assuring quality and that's what we're trying to get to and we will move forward with that eye on quality control and quality assurance okay thank you and Secretary Smith thank you very much for your efforts in trying to get the vaccine sites finally brought to Grand Isle County after the health department ignored it but we heard this morning there'll be vaccine shots at the Alberg volunteer fire department on February 12th wondering if that's the only time we unfortunately we've heard other vaccine sites in Grand Isle won't be created until sometime in March which is well beyond the deadline for 75 year olds to get their shots and the health department told me multiple times the vaccine will only come to Grand Isle if the state gets additional shots from the feds but clearly vaccines are near mark for Grand Isle residents driving to Burlington or St. Alden and it was good news to hear the death of Ada Whitehouse is promising more vaccines so I don't know if Governor or Secretary Smith can there be a pledge that Grand Isle residents will actually be assured they will get their fair share in this extra dose yeah I mean Mike this is Mike Smith we we have established a vaccine site in Alberg my impression was that it was ongoing I will double check that just to make sure if it's ongoing then it solves what you're talking about so we will Grand Isle residents will there be others I know they were looking at Grand Isle school and the health department stopped at the South Hero school yesterday but looks like it's not going to be in March which again 75 year old deadline for getting their shots Mike you brought you gave me a week to get the first one up let me see what I can do with the second one how's that Karen I'll give you a week thank you everybody yeah good afternoon Dr. Levine could you just provide a little bit more clarity about the state you're made they would be opening up some of the assisted care facilities to allow people to congregate is that only going to be for people who are current residents or can family members visit during those times and do they have to be vaccinated as well yeah thank you for the question what I did was try to give you a glimpse at the future not at the present for one thing so none of this is operative now and all of this has to be in compliance with CMS Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services guidance and regulations so a roadmap is what I'm describing now that we have the skilled nursing facilities completely vaccinated with regard to those who live there this is the time for us to now try to find the way forward you mentioned assisted living there's assisted living and other residential care facilities that are in process still so many of those people have not received their second dose yet so they're at a little later stage of development in terms of the way the progression went for vaccinating long-term care facilities but there must be a way for us to move forward even before family members get vaccinated because obviously while many family members may actually be old enough or qualify otherwise to get a vaccine in the near future there'll be I'm sure plenty that will not have yet received their vaccine but that doesn't mean we can't improve the life for those who are living in those facilities with the activities and social arrangements that can be made within the facility and it also doesn't mean that we can't move forward because obviously we did do visitation mostly outdoors with distancing and masking before the winter arrived and we clearly can still move in that direction again as long as we do all the boxes getting checked for CMS and do the right things so that's just a glimpse of the future and we're hoping it's the nearer future not the distant future but it's a simple question I asked it before but I still can't seem to get an answer there were three temperature monitors at the Springfield hospital and we understand that two of them read within the acceptable range of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius and one read 9.1 and we're trying to find out which was accurate which was unaccurate I'm going to ask Dr. Levine if he can I'm not going to answer your question I don't have data that I don't have in front of me but I do want to comment on the whole incident if I may and it will get to your question in a less specific way if there's anything that this episode reveals it's the complexity of what's going on right now and the complexity in an environment that's moving very fast so you have a new vaccine you have new storage requirements for vaccines that are generally different than ever before you have new healthcare partnerships in terms of the delivery of the vaccine to the population you have a new vaccine manufacturer who's actually not done vaccines ever before and you have some federal partners who are in new territory as well so I just want to emphasize this is very complex we shouldn't be pointing fingers at Springfield by any means because this could happen anywhere and a lot of things were turned up so basically we understand that when something like this occurs you need to do what we call a root cause analysis to really understand all of the processes that play and where corrections need to be made and where things are going smoothly the health department's immunization staff did in fact do a site visit after this event occurred there were issues regarding first storing the vaccine in a freezer and then a refrigerator that were uncovered because we preferred that start out in the freezer there were issues with the refrigeration system and that is being replaced there were issues about the thermometer and you're talking about the sensors and there's actually now a new device that will allow the health department in its immunization program to monitor the temperature real time from afar and provide alerts if the temperature wavers outside of the range that it's supposed to be in the hospital has been very cooperative in providing us with the information we needed correcting its storage and management practices and monitoring and basically the bottom line is things were all that awry there as I tried to point out earlier from an immunization program that for decades has been monitoring the whole array of immunizations that people get nowadays this was not an unexpected event seen frequently throughout the course of every year with different types of vaccines and it was great that we could find it early in a course of our working with these new vaccines as well so I can't tell you exactly which sensor was at play but I can tell you that the system has essentially been updated and will provide us with the information we need real time to prevent issues like that from occurring again Does someone know which of the sensors we're working and could they let me know what that is I can get back to the people who actually conducted the site visit That'd be great, thank you Yeah, this is Derek, can you hear me? Yeah, go ahead Derek Okay, yeah, this question is for the governor Last week New York State Attorney General issued a report that criticized Governor Cuomo's handling of nursing homes during the pandemic in a few ways and one of those ways was the decision to grant civil immunity to long-term care facilities for problems related to the pandemic and the attorney general there said that that civil immunity clause may have incentivized these homes to make financially motivated decisions, for instance admitting patients who may not have had the staffing to care for them adequately We have a similar provision in your executive orders here I'm wondering if you've given any thought to when you may rescind that immunity We haven't had a discussion about that provision in particular and we can confer with the general counsel and others amongst the senior staff and interested parties but I would say we want to get out of the executive order completely at some point in the near future as quick as possible so everything that we're doing with the vaccines and the vaccination rate and mitigation steps we're taking will lead us to that point which will then eliminate the executive order altogether I'm hopeful it's within we're not talking a year we're talking within months before we get to that point but we haven't had a conversation specifically about the civil immunity Okay, and as a follow-up obviously there were some problems identified in one home in Elderwood I'm wondering if you're aware if you've been hearing complaints or reports of problems I'm okay I may refer to Secretary Smith on that to see if he's heard anything Derek, I haven't heard of anything specific about various homes we did recognize and you may recall we did recognize that when we had this second wave or third wave I guess it would be here and it started hitting skilled nursing facilities and others residential care and assisted living as well that it was having really impacts on staffing levels at various institutions so we as you know we established the staffing pool at the state level to sort of intercede and help out with those staffing areas and that has helped tremendously we also have the teams at the rapid response teams that come into the facilities to help out but I haven't heard of anything specific in terms at least at my level that has come up to me of concern about a specific nursing home okay thank you both existing law provides immunity the executive order just clarified that that existing law applies to healthcare services which is our interpretation of the existing law Malia Burlington Free Press Hi my question is for Secretary Smith we had a reader who said that when she tried to sign up for the vaccine online she's lived in Vermont for many years but she was rejected because her cell phone number has an out of state area code and she was able to get her appointment when she called the number online but I was wondering is this something that other people in the state are having problems with are people able to sign up online for the vaccine if they have an out of state code or do they have to go through the number and how is the state sort of addressing that? I don't this is the first I've heard and I'll let Secretary Smith comment as well but first I've heard of any situation where the telephone number disqualified anyone from signing up and I would imagine that we had a number of people who have area codes outside the state hopefully this is just a one off type of situation but I have not heard of any others at this point Secretary Smith Thanks for the question and I like the governor have not heard of any sort of situation where a phone number that does not have the proper area code is rejected but let me look into it you know I get a report on different things every night this is one that I haven't heard of as an issue and if it is an issue we'll correct it but I think I would have heard if it was widespread issue by now Great, okay, thank you Thanks Rebecca I have a question for Dr. Levine about parades and events and that sort of thing but just to clarify with Michael Harrington if you received one of these 1099Gs whether correct or not you want them returned and preferably unopened is that correct Michael Thank you for the opportunity to clarify that is correct we would like to have just to minimize confusion across the board we are asking that all 1099Gs that have been mailed and received get returned to the department the department will mail instructions and self-addressed stamped envelope to individuals who received these 1099Gs and return them we will also have other methods for returning if that becomes an issue I think what I don't want people to do is inadvertently not open a piece of mail from the department that could potentially be a benefit check in some way and so that's where it's likely if the name and the address match and you open the mail but find out that the information on the 1099 is incorrect we would ask that you keep that in a safe place and then return it to the department using the method we've implemented but again if you get a piece of mail where it's clear that the name is incorrect on the envelope or on the front and it doesn't match the address that's a clear indication that this is one of the 1099s that was part of the mix up but even if it's correct do you want it returned also even if they open it and they find that it is correct because we do know that there were others that were sent out that were correct and had valid information on them but again to minimize confusion we would just prefer that all 1099s are returned and we will issue new 1099s from all our programs and that way there's no mixing up at the individual level of which ones are good and which ones aren't so if we have them return all of the ones they have received to date and know that the department will reissue new 1099s later this month okay great thank you Dr. Levine I'm getting this like third or fourth hand who knows what an event organizer said that you told them that there's a between a 0 and 1% chance that events and parades will be able to come off in their usual forms and whether that's correct or not what's your expectation as we go forward in the summer and fall for events and parades? I really didn't give them much of a chance 0 to 1% I don't recall the question or the answer that I was quoted as saying but to answer your question specifically I want people to really look with optimism towards the spring and summer there's no reason why they shouldn't look with optimism and we're going to have more and more people vaccinated during those time periods we're going to have still at least in the spring continued adherence to masking and distancing but that doesn't mean we can't start to do some of the events and you mentioned parades was that the other thing? Yeah exactly I wouldn't count them out it's just a matter of how early would we get there and that's a little bit of a race if you will because of the fact that we have to have more enough vaccine coming in and these indications of some bright lights in that tunnel is really good so further expanding them adding in the Johnson & Johnson if it does achieve emergency use authorization adding in perhaps another one if that competes well and does the same so I don't think we should discount that at all I'm trying to think of a parade that would come up in the near future I guess certainly there won't be St. Patrick's Day but there will be Memorial Day I'm not saying that we can have parades Memorial Day but I'm saying that'll be a time that'll be pretty interesting because it's late May we'll have a good idea of what percentage of Ramoners have received vaccine we'll have a good idea about how the warmer weather has changed our case mix and our numbers in the state and we'll see where we are at that time I wouldn't want to discount anything like that might be a little early but again it might be just right a lot of factors to put in the equation great thank you now thank you very much this question is also for Dr. Levine but it's about Johnson & Johnson's vaccine some people have told me that they don't want a vaccine that doesn't have the same level of efficacy as the Pfizer or Moderna shot will people have the option down the line to choose which vaccine they receive and then what would you say to the people who are looking at that efficacy number and then see it as less desirable thank you I do think it's human nature that all of us would look at that number and go I want the better one and that's the sort of reality of how that looks when you only evaluate that one number and that number was the key to the end point of the study which was moderate or severe COVID the real thing that the vaccines should be really held in high esteem for is their ability to prevent people from getting really sick so severe end of the illness spectrum and then hospitalizations and deaths and the fact that this vaccine performed so well in those categories is really what people should take home as a major take-home message then if they want to add into the equation if they need more to make it seem more attractive to them they should add into the equation the fact that nobody had anaphylaxis they should add into the equation they do not have a high percentage of serious adverse effects they should add into the equation that across at least preliminary data that we have across various demographic groups whether they be racially defined age defined or illness defined the vaccines seem to stand up the other factor that people will start to want away is of course how these vaccines do against the variants and that's going to be challenging because that work is really happening real time right now and even at a time when most of these variants aren't at a high percentage of our cases in the country never mind the state of Vermont and we're going to hear that certain ones do better certain ones do worse but as Dr. Fauci has said the formulas for the mRNA specifically and what goes into that what it's helping our body react against can be tweaked so with further experience a vaccine can look a little different than it did when it first came out because it's been modified to be effective against a broader category of virus variants so all of those things are going to be part of people's decision making but I wouldn't want people to look at the 72% and say forget it that's really not what we want because any of these vaccines will do a great job at preventing us from the most serious outcomes and in concert all of the vaccines will do a great job at getting us to that level of community immunity and that level of enough people not able to contract a serious case of the virus that life will be much better in that future so that's how I'd like people to look at it both of your questions I'm not sure I answered the first part Claire coming back to the first part of my question so people will or won't have the option to choose which vaccine they receive yeah right now I don't see that as being part of the formula I'd love to have a day that comes about where that would happen but if that would happen I wouldn't want people to just on their own sees on a number or sees on a specific attribute of the vaccine I'd really want them to do that with really strong public health guidance and that guidance could come from me but I mean it would come I would hope on a more national stage even an international stage for that matter so that if there were really compelling differences that would warrant allowing personal choice that we would make those factors very clear for everyone and then the last follow up question I had on this line was should the state consider prioritizing the higher efficacy vaccines down the line for higher risk groups so like someone like me who's young, healthy, no conditions would be maybe a better candidate for something like the Johnson & Johnson shot versus someone who might have a more serious outcome if they were to contract the virus or if they were to have a vaccine not work as well on them Interesting question and my answer tongue in cheek would be we should be so lucky that we would be able to do that because we it would be like going to the supermarket and having three different kinds of cookies that you could buy and they're all available and we could just choose from them so probably an unlikely scenario to occur but I don't think that will happen at least with these three vaccines mainly because of the attributes that make one stand apart from another versus one look more like the other. I don't think there's anything super compelling right now and any of them that would predetermine one should be used for the most vulnerable and the other should be used for someone less vulnerable. Thank you As well I think it's important for everyone to understand these are still in the trial on a trial basis and they still have to be approved by the FDA and CDC I'm sure we'll get more information. We're not the only ones thinking about this right now. Others are as well some of the health experts from around the world will be looking at this and they may have guidance for us and I've even heard Dr. Fauci had said there may even be a booster beyond the first dose of the Johnson & Johnson that would bring it up to that same level so time will tell there's still a lot of information that we're all eagerly waiting for to get right to their questions. Thank you Rebecca. I'll try to make this quick good afternoon Governor and Staff I'm wondering about the likelihood of having any sort of indoor winter sports season this year. Governor are you committed to making sure that indoor sports will happen in one form or another? You know we're still again collecting that data that we talk about and seeing what's happening on the ground we know that we're going to have to make that determination soon because they need to put that into place but I envision that there will be some sort of winter sports program but it all depends on us getting together and agreeing to this or not because the safety of Remoders comes first and we want to make sure that we do it for the right reasons it's hard you know we need to use our minds and not our hearts in this situation and it's difficult because I know kids need to get back to that there's an emotional component of this that we have to recognize and what is best for all involved so again I know we're having these discussions almost on a daily basis and we have to make that decision fairly soon so that the principal's association can move forward with something or not so stay tuned we'll probably have more information on this on Friday when we give our educational update since Tim kind of opened up the can of worms on having a percentage can you give us the percentage the likelihood that it would be cancelled or the likelihood percentage wise that it would go on in one form or another somewhere between zero and a hundred thank you this is Secretary Moore I just want to flag for people that we have created an approach to path forward for both small size competitions for outdoor sports as well as virtual competitions for indoor sports we recognize this doesn't get a team-based sports like basketball and hockey but are working very hard to create opportunities they may be non-traditional opportunities but are opportunities all the same for as many athletes as soon as possible thank you Governor and glad to see you got an A in politics, mathematics 101 twice today I've had to do math good afternoon I guess I want to press Dr. LaVine a bit on the question that Ed Barber asked earlier I have a letter from a reader who has a very specific situation she has had both of her COVID vaccine shots and has a left one in a nearby nursing home she is very worried because she says her loved one is failing and she believes that part of the problem is the lack of the ability to socialize with her family since both the person in the nursing home and the writer have had the vaccine she has asked the nursing home if she can visit once the time needed for the vaccine to take full effect passes and they don't have an answer does Dr. LaVine I'm going to let Dr. LaVine answer this but I just want to reassure everyone this is on the front burner for us in fact one of the many meetings I had over the weekend was on this very subject how do we get to a point where we're allowing more visitation in some sort of getting back to normal for those in long term care we know this has been too long for most of them and the emotional drain on them is overwhelming so we this is something we take very seriously we want to do this we know that we've already gone through the first and second doses in many of these facilities and what that will mean for them that are in these communities that probably is now the third time in this press conference you've heard that this is top burner front burner and we're working hard on it I have to say in the sense of whatever facility this woman's relative is in they are regulated and for their regulations they are probably saying the appropriate thing they need the pathway forward that we're hoping to find in compliance with the regulatory environment but also using common sense and understanding where we are at this point in time I don't know where the nursing home is located but much of the regulatory environment involves what the percent positivity rates are county to county in Vermont so it's more complex than just her vaccination status her loved one's vaccination status there's a whole host of other factors so we're putting all that together so you can reassure the reader if they're not listening already that we regard this as important as she does and this to me is one of those things that we should be able to do early in our way out of a pandemic if vaccination is going to provide that pathway so that's why it is one of the first things we're looking at thank you I have one other question that came in a similar fashion from someone who is very concerned about the lack of races where a person in Essex County can be vaccinated right now there are locations I guess around the edges of the county but for older people and of course those are the people who are eligible to be vaccinated right now that means long trips in bad weather and I just didn't know whether Secretary Smith knows of someone galloping to the rescue I don't know about galloping to the rescue horses don't really like me for some reason the one thing that I'll do is check on this I know we have an FQHC up there that's poised for vaccination we have hospitals on either and St. John'sbury of Essex County we got St. John'sbury and we got a new port up in that area as well but let me just double check Joe before I say something that may be incorrect thank you very much I would also add pay attention to this what I had announced earlier that the administration had told us during this time to implement this next phase of pilot in some respects with the pharmacies so there's going to be another 10% another 1,000 doses coming into the state going into through the pharmacies directly I believe from them we'll get more details on that but that could help out as well yes thank you good afternoon I will stay on that very topic thank you Joe for opening it another question I wanted to ask Essex County has less than half the vaccination rate as the statewide average right now according to the clinic plan that I've seen from the federally qualified health center there's only 200 doses allocated to the county in the next two weeks which would still leave Essex County well below the statewide average as it is today unless where it will be at the end of those two weeks so I don't know whether there's galloping involved but Secretary Smith you mentioned additional allocations and clinics in your conversation with Mike how much of that type of planning is still going on also Secretary Smith will answer this as well but I just want to caution everyone when you're looking at the data some of this was front loaded a lot of the long-term care facilities were located in other regions with a higher population so some of them were accounted for in the early beginning so it may be skewed just a bit when you're comparing one county to another based on some of the some of the density and not just population but density of the long-term care facilities and how that's skewed it just a bit Secretary Smith thank you for the question and the governor's right if we get more dosage obviously it helps everybody not only Essex County but Orleans and everybody else in that area what we did is tried to be fair about this and look at the number of 75 plus year olds that there are in every county and proportionately use the you know a proportionate amount for the vaccine going to how much your 75 year olds are a portion statewide so we really tried to do this sort of on a per capita basis and look at a fair way of doing this so that we could be equitable throughout the state I think the governor's right if we get more vaccine you'll see those numbers go up and secondly the long-term care facilities probably do skew those numbers a little bit as well but let me look into it and go down that road as well I can't put a vaccination site into every town but what we're trying to do is something similar to testing is that bring the drive time down to 30 minutes as possible as much as possible now obviously a vaccine supply is a big thing in doing that and the ability to store and administer those vaccines in a way that's safe but let's look into that and move forward in your area as well and while you're at the podium Secretary Smith we have 110,000 nearly 110,000 doses that we've received thus far with 74,000 administered are those and the 110,000 are those all first doses or is that differential of 35,000 second doses that are already spoken for and being held for the appropriate time? Yeah the 109 doses and I'm coming right from the straight top of my head are both doses you have both first and second doses in there on the 70,000 doses the math works but it splits down to 35,000 first doses and 19,500 second doses remember the second doses are two doses there so so the 35,000 or so that have not yet been administered a good chunk of those would be second doses that are being held for the appropriate time? Yeah they'll be second doses in that amount and do you have any clarity yet on when you'll be opening up registrations to the next group if you're already 34,000 registered for 75 and above? We're having those discussions right now so please stay tuned in the next couple of weeks. Thank you Hi my first question is just a quick clarification about registering so if someone is trying to register with their spouse they can use one email they just need to do the registration twice or how does that process work we had a question from a viewer Secretary Avery there's two ways of doing this each person has to register but there's two ways of registering first you can register with your separate emails that's one way or you can call and have the person at the call center take your information and do two separate applications in terms of registration the other way is there's a dependent button up on the registration site and you can click the dependent button and that will queue you to put in information of a spouse for example but it will probably ask for it will ask for information again on that particular spouse because they have to register with that This viewer just said they put the dependent in but when they went to follow up to call about the appointment they were told they only had one person registered do you know why that would possibly happen no I don't I haven't heard of that instance we've had 34,000 people register and I haven't heard of that I've heard of people saying they had to do another email address in order for that to work but if we can go offline and if I can be assistance to that person let me know I think they were able to get an appointment but we just wanted to make sure for future figure we might get future questions and my follow up is also for you about your comments about the NEA meeting are you getting different groups approaching you to lobby for priorities in the vaccine lineup after we get through the folks with chronic conditions and how will you keep that process transparent I've got everybody lobbying me on different priorities and I'm willing to hear everybody but we're committed to preventing death and we're committed to this strategy of making sure that we get through the age bands as the governor mentioned get through those 65 to 16 with underlying conditions and then we will develop a strategy of where to go from there but we're committed to the strategy we've got now but we will listen to anybody that wants to come and talk Governor the National Federation of Independent Businesses represents a thousand Vermont small businesses they want you to stop increases in unemployment taxes saying they weren't responsible for the forced layoffs they also want you to limit their legal liability from legal challenges related to COVID-19 assuming they followed all the safety requirements can you do these things I think I've committed to the increases in unemployment assessment in the near term I think I've said that during my state of the state or the budget address one of the two so I'm committed to trying to follow through on that I believe we'll have to get agreement with the legislature on that but the unemployment trust fund is in pretty good shape I mean we're down about half or a little bit less than half at this point in time which is pretty significant we've already been a year and I would anticipate that the fund will be in pretty good shape as we move through the rest of this pandemic in terms of the other liability we have not considered that at this point in time but happy to do so and I'm sure the legislature will have to be engaged as well my other question was going to be do you plan to swim in the lake from agon winter swim I do not plan to no all right thank you yes this is for secretary smith when talking about cancellations due to snowstorms you said there was 21 does that mean there's 21 wasted doses what happens to those doses in a situation like this where people can't really make it to their appointments yeah again unless secretary smith's going to answer something different those doses aren't wasted we anticipated this and we will not waste any doses as a result of any cancellations due to the storm today okay thank you an older thermometer who has a number of underlying conditions so she feels like she's at a high risk of getting the virus or having complications but it also had a reaction to penicillin a long time ago and was denied the vaccine because of the potential for an allergic reaction I was hoping maybe Dr. Levine probably would comment on at what point does the risk of getting the virus kind of outweigh the risk of having an allergic reaction and where is the state concerned about liability in those kind of cases sure so always challenging to play doctor with a patient you've not met and don't have all the information on but I'll do my best to answer your question first of all I would want to know who told the patient they could not get the vaccine if it was their own physician if there was a specialist in the allergy field in the state of Vermont at the registration site or at the time she actually came in to get the vaccine because we do have questions about allergy and anaphylaxis they pertain to the actual COVID vaccine or the ingredients of the COVID vaccine and they do not pertain to a prior antibiotic allergy like a penicillin allergy there are times when someone's own physician might be nervous about it in the context of the person's whole medical history and would want to have an allergist consultation to make sure that this was indeed a safe pathway so we are not in the process of denying people whose only allergic history is an antibiotic allergy from getting the vaccine though certainly we would welcome them being nervous themselves and wanting to explore their allergy further prior to getting to the site to get their vaccine administered so I don't want to oversimplify or over complicate but the reality is there are some clear contraindications and that is having had the first dose of COVID and having anaphylaxis or having anaphylaxis history to a component of COVID vaccines which we've made the ingredients known to people then there are not contraindications but things that should be considerations which would include other allergies but the majority of those other allergies don't actually prevent a person from getting COVID though they might warrant them getting there of COVID vaccine in a very supervised setting doing anyways with the wait times the presence of epi-pens and things of that sort okay just to be clear this woman was turned away at the vaccine clinic herself and she was told to visit her primary care doctor to get the vaccine her concern with that it appears that her primary care doctor doesn't have any vaccine at the moment and she doesn't know when she's going to get it at this point so if you would get her permission and then have her send the material this whole issue to me we can look further into that specific case because it does seem a little against our common guidance at this point okay thank you hi I was wondering if there was any discussion about potentially new restrictions on skiing in light of the cases that we're seeing in Bennington that you mentioned earlier again we are watching the situation obviously with contact tracing we are not seeing elevated cases due to the skiing itself so at this point in time we're not contemplating any further action but we're monitoring that on a daily basis okay it sounded like there was something related to skiing was that could you just clarify that maybe Dr. Levine answer okay the issue is it's not related to the sport of skiing or the engagement in that activity the question is is it related to people who are coming to those parts of Vermont who may actually have asymptomatic cases of COVID and test positive but it's not because they're skiing or because the ski resort isn't physically distancing and working their lifts out correct etc got it okay and then my other question was I know there's been some discussion over the last week or two about phase 1a vaccines and from the sounds of it starting this week hospitals will be resuming those after a week pause I'm just curious whether the state has any estimate on how many people might be left unvaccinated in the phase 1a group at this point Collin Mike Smith I don't have an estimate of how many are not vaccinated at this point we are allocating a portion of our weekly dosage to make sure that we do get 1a I I will take a guess and it's an uneducated guess we're definitely on the downside wrapping this up in terms of where we are we've allocated about 960 doses this week for 1a also 1a is on the call list if we need to bring in various people because we have extra doses at the end of the day so between those two I think we're going to be wrapping up 1a in bulk we'll never wrap up 1a as we would never wrap up probably you know the various groups as people you know as there are groups there'll be new nurses for example there'll be new doctors but we'll never wrap it up but I think we're on the downside of big allocations going to 1a after a few weeks here okay and then just one last follow-up I understand the hospital's made some requests last week as far as how many phase 1a doses they would want for this week was there any criteria given to the hospitals on what to base those requests on like I understand there was about 2800 or so doses requested throughout the state but I under the impression that there are far more phase 1a people than that who remain unvaccinated do you have any idea what those figures are coming from were they told to request doses of the specific thing like perhaps the number of people they've had requested or anything along those lines? yeah I haven't heard those numbers at all that you just mentioned but let me get back to you Colin because that's we usually have those conversations with the hospitals and in those conversations we decide how many vaccines they have on hand how many they may need are still available out there in terms of 1a but those numbers that you just quoted just don't jive with anything I've heard so let me look into it and let me get back to you great thanks hi can you hear me we can great one for the governor and one for the doctor if I may the governor you mentioned set aside for the BIPOC community and I've wondered about indigenous peoples what would no tribal federal tribal recognition and reservations or anything like that how would one qualify as indigenous do you see Elizabeth Warren standard with high cheekbones or did you just take people's word for it I'm going to refer to Dr. Levine I'm sorry to do this to you Dr. Levine but so we have a number of advocacy groups in the state that very well represent what go under the rubric of indigenous and we work with those groups as part of our health equity work all the time so those populations are actually well represented to us and we hope equally that we are as responsive as we need to be to them so there's nothing to do with federal recognition it has to do with more practical and pragmatic concerns so it's a statewide thing great doctor at the last conference you had mentioned the WHO task force or whatever finally being allowed into China over a year later and one of the people on this task force is a guy named Peter Taz Dezak D-A-S-Z-A-K excuse me he ran a eco health alliance and actually channeled money to the scientists in Wuhan and there's a professor Richard E. Bright he's a professor at Rutgers and a biosecurity expert he said that D-A-S-Z-A-K was a contractor responsible for funding high risk gain of function on SARS related bat coronaviruses at Wuhan and a collaborator on this research and he has spent the last year publicly defending this scientist known as the Batwoman in China with this kind of conflict of interest and is cozying up to the Chinese government and the conflicts with with his company also how can we how could something like this happen shouldn't there be neutral parties at the WHO yeah you've certainly done a lot of research on that issue so I'm going to make the assumption that your research has borne fruit and this is truly what the case is and my response would be that it's not a one person operation that the WHO pardon me the team the WHO has sent an entire team there of which I know there's at least five or six if not more people I don't have the number so I would hope that like anything they do an independent assessment and they come up with the conclusions they come up with and if there's a outlier and it's this person their views can be represented in their report they should show what the consensus report was of the team so I'm hoping your concern won't lead to any you know lack of transparency about what they actually did find it's about all I can say well what would this do you support this gain of function research I mean at one time we used to have above ground nuclear this question quite a bit and we're running pretty late today we have one more caller okay then well thank you very much I appreciate your time Devin local 22 are you able to hear me we can apologies for being muted earlier I promise I'm not just trying to go last every time my question is for Dr. Levin this is something that came up in your call with the Biden administration so the administration made a deal with an Australian company for what's eventually going to be millions of at home covid tests they would be $30 which can obviously add up if you're testing an entire family and it's unclear when they'll start to be commercially available my question is at this point in the pandemic when there's still the long vaccination process ahead of us do you think this step is a sign that the availability and affordability of these at home tests is going to improve enough in time for that to become a preferred and realistic option to in-person testing and be a valuable tool going forward I can first comment on the call with the National Governors Association the administration this did not come up on that call specifically it could in the future obviously testing is still part of our mitigation plan as we move forward so I'm encouraged when I see these types of developments when you have self-administered tests that are maybe 95% effective from what I saw but the price tag is problematic for many but in the future I think this might be part of how we get back to normal where we are able to have these tests and maybe at a much reduced cost competition takes over and there's more on the horizon and more available Dr. Levine I get to have my phone call at 6 o'clock tonight with I don't know what they're calling themselves now but the equivalent of what was called the coronavirus task force in Washington and I'm sure this item will come up so I can't really give you the complete answer now because we haven't heard from them but I do agree with the Governor this is one of those things like vaccination that is being looked at as the pathway forward and the pathway out of where we are if people could have access to something that was inexpensive easy to use, reliable and could be done at home it could certainly govern their actions that day and in other days so that it does seem like a great idea and I know that there's more of these being formulated every day these at home tests but they haven't been very accessible and certainly not accessible if you don't have a lot of money I'd like to think of them in terms of the government's role like with the Binax Now antigen cards where they actually purchased with their purchasing power a huge number and provided them free to the states and then thereafter we're able to provide a more discounted price if you wanted more it would be nice if this could work out the same way but I'll give you more details if and when I get them thank you thank you very much for your patience today and for tuning in and we'll see you again on Friday