Good morning everyone. This weekend we'll mark the one-year anniversary of our first confirmed COVID-19 case in Vermont. I was at a Norwich University hockey game when I received the call and I'm not sure any of us imagined what the year ahead would bring. But as we reflect on this anniversary, instead of talking about the many challenges we face, sacrifices we've made, and the losses we've shared, I want to focus on why I believe we should be optimistic about the road ahead. When we had that first case, nobody could have predicted just 12 months later. We'd already have three safe and effective vaccines rolling out to defend themselves. Think about that. Just one year after the worst pandemic in a century was at our doorstep, caused by a brand new virus never before experienced in humans were able to protect the most vulnerable from hospitalization or death. As of yesterday, 20% of all Vermonters over the age of 16 have now received at least one dose of the vaccine. And as we announced on Tuesday, we're moving into phase five of our rollout, which includes about 75,000 of those with underlying health conditions, as well as educators and more public safety personnel. In a few minutes, Secretary Smith will provide a logistical update on how this rollout will work. But this means within a month, one third of the eligible population could be vaccinated. And all the most vulnerable sphere illness and death will have had the opportunity to be protected. As a result, we should see our hospitalization rate as well as fatalities continue to decrease as they have over the last month. And with the possibility of an increased supply, it's possible we will be able to open eligible eligibility much sooner than we originally could have hoped for. And we're seeing other positive trends as well. Two weeks ago, we began lifting some restrictions for those who've been fully vaccinated. This included travel free quarantine, as well as allowing those vaccinated to gather with another household, even if that other household is not vaccinated. As we said at the time, this change has a lot of ripple effects on other mitigation policies we have in place. Our restart team, which receives guidance from Dr. Levine and Dr. Kelso has been working through these over the last several days. And we anticipate being able to safely turn the spigot in a few more areas beginning next week. But we're able to announce one change now effective today. People who are vaccinated can gather with other vaccinated individuals at their homes. For example, if eight fully vaccinated individuals individuals wanted to get together at someone's house for dinner, they're now able to do so. This can also include one other household that is not vaccinated. Keep in keep in mind, we know this will lead to other questions. And as I said, we're planning to have further announcements next week. So again, as we done from the start of the pandemic, we're taking a cautious, methodical and strategic approach. But with more and more of Vermont is protected by the vaccine. I'm confident we'll be able to make continued progress. Next, I'm pleased to say we have a special guest joining us today from Washington, Senator Leahy, to give us an update on the Senate version of the relief package. I've had many conversations over the last few weeks with Senator Leahy, as well as Senator Sanders and Congressman Welch about what we'd like to see as part of this package. I'm so very appreciative of Senator Leahy's work. We're very fortunate to have his leadership in Washington as he continued to deliver in a big way for our state. So with that, I'll turn it over to my friend, Senator Leahy. Welcome, Senator. Okay, Governor, it's good to see you. Even though it's this way, I was much more than being there with you in person. You can probably see in the background, I'm not in my farmhouse in Middlesex, Vermont. This is a little bit different down here. I'm just a few people. In fact, you've been in this office, you know it, and we're going to be having a lot of votes on it. And Wednesday, I was able to join Dr. Labine. He was in Burlington, and I was able to join him the same way. I appreciate the fact that you're doing this. I have talked with people all over our state, from the north to the south, hundreds of Vermonters in the last few months, as soon as this all began. And people want it to be over, obviously. I know you do, everybody does. They want to get back to normal. They want people to be together. Marcel and I have been very, very careful, even with our own children and grandchildren, until we were vaccinated. We look at the 15,000 Vermonters who infected 200 deaths. But Governor worked with you and with Bernie and with Peter on this and trying to get things through. And one of the things we're doing, we're voting on it right now, is what's going to be in the COVID bill. If I could just fill you in a little bit on that. Vermont received $1,250 million from the coronavirus and local recovery fund. We increased that $400 million over what was in the house. Bernie and I have worked in the Senate. I know Peter worked very hard in the house. We said before it came up, we wanted to add more money. And we have done that. The vaccine distribution, thanks we've raised from the December allocation, $27 million more, $50 million for an all-state minimum for the homeowner or assistant fund. But here's one thing that I really fought for. And you and I have talked about this a lot. We set aside the $100 million specifically for Vermont to be able to spend on infrastructure like broadband. I have talked with so many, thousands, hundreds, actually, of families that kids can't go to school. They're doing it virtually, but they don't have adequate broadband to do it here in Vermont. They do it in some parts of the state, not in others. But you understand it so well. I know the way it is in middle sex, for example, it's sporadic. But this will help. We've got to be able to do that. You know, and I know that a lot of businesses will change in Vermont in our way we do it. There'll be more things remote, but we also have our small ins and our mail order businesses and all they have to have this to work. But the $27 million for vaccination efforts, that's going to make Vermont whole from the December allocation. And I know you and I talked about the fact you were concerned the state had received parallelized funding that anticipated. I know you were trying to make sure we had it. And this will help. And the $15 million, the all-state minimum in the homeowner assistance fund, that's in there. These, I realize these are numbers, but Governor, I mean, you and I have so many conversations, sometimes on weekends and evenings and all about this. I've talked with the Lieutenant Governor a lot about it. But it's the hundreds of Vermonters I've heard all over the state. They don't care whether we're Republicans or Democrats or independents. They just want our state to be the way it was. They want to hug their children. They want to have cookouts with their neighbors. They want to be able to go to church or synagogue. They want to go in the grocery store. And you know what it's like. I don't want, when Marcel and I go to the grocery store when we're home in Vermont, we sometimes take an extra 45 minutes to an hour just because everybody wants to stop and talk. And I learned from that. I hope they do. So I will hush at this point, but we will, we'll be voting until one or two o'clock, three o'clock tomorrow morning. But the path is very, very good. I'll preside over a lot of that debate as President Pro Tem. Although I gave up the chair yesterday to the Vice President because we had a tide vote. I can't break the tide. She can. And we got forward on the bell. And hopefully that relief will be coming soon. But thank you for what you've done. I appreciate the fact you've worked so hard to keep our state safe. And I look forward to see you there maybe in a couple of weeks. Well, thank you very much, Senator Leahy, for coming on and reporting such great news for the state of Vermont. We're very blessed here in Vermont to have such a strong delegation in Congress led by Senator Leahy, always, always staying in contact with leadership throughout Vermont and listening to our concerns. And I'm more confident than ever that by mid July, I mean, things are going to look so much different than they do today. And with your help, with the help of this package coming to us, we'll come out of this pandemic stronger than we went in. I'm confident of that. And and again, Senator Leahy has provided a major piece of that puzzle in order to do so. So thank you again. And with that, I'll thank you and I'm running mouth to report to folks. I know myself watching online and the others my office phone. Thank you very much. Good luck and stay safe, Senator. With that, we'll now turn it over to Secretary French, who's on video for school staff was not held this week. We decided not to hold the testing due to a large number of districts run winter break last week. It's difficult to work out scheduling details for the testing when schools not in session. We will repeat and start the testing again next week. From an operation standpoint, much of our planning work this week was focused on standing up the new vaccination program for school staff. Secretary Smith will provide more information on that in a minute. I did want to share information from the vaccination surveys that we conducted. These surveys were implemented to give us a sense of the interest and vaccination among school staff and childcare staff to help with our planning efforts. We had 15,241 school staff respond to the survey and 92% indicated interest in getting vaccinated. We had 2,229 childcare staff respond to their survey and 81% indicated interest in getting vaccinated. So we're now working closely with HHS other state partner agencies and school districts to implement the vaccination program. We're working with each individual district independent school and childcare provider to obtain specific headcount information into schedule the vaccination clinics. The vaccination of school staff will likely have a significant impact on our ability to offer more in person instruction this spring. As the weather gets warmer and conditions for the transmission of the virus improve in our communities, new opportunities will emerge for creative solutions to challenges such as distancing requirements. I thought I would highlight an example of one such solution from the Windsor Central Supervisory Union. That district working in partnership with the Billings Farm and Museum is now providing in person instruction four days a week for all the students at Woodstock Elementary School. Woodstock Elementary School is a fairly large elementary school with about 333 students in grades pre-K through 6. I visited the school prior to COVID and I can say the school is a very vibrant and bustling learning community with very few spaces not being utilized for student learning. Since the fall it's been very challenging for them to accommodate all their students with the distancing requirements. Students in grades pre-K through 2 were in person four days a week but students of the other grades were in hybrid for the rest of the time. Thanks to the generosity and support of Billings, they were able to move their sixth graders to the activity barn at Billings for four days a week of in person learning. This has allowed students in grades 3 through 5 to have more space in the school and to expand their learning model to also have four days a week in person. So as a result now all students at Woodstock Elementary are receiving four days a week of in person learning. Not all communities have a Billings Fire Museum but all have local resources of some sort that can be leveraged to enact a more in person instruction which is essential to our recovery work. I thought I would expand a bit on thinking about this relationship between recovery work and education versus our goal of more in person instruction. I think this comparison can be summed up by the phrase ends versus means. Our goal or end is to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the education and healthy development of our children. This is our recovery work. To make progress towards our goal of mitigating the impact, we need to implement more in person contact with students. This is why a return to more in person is critical. The sooner we can restore more in person instruction, the sooner we can stop the negative impacts of the pandemic and we can begin the work of the recovery. As we begin planning this recovery work, it's important to acknowledge that although this work will certainly have an academic focus, we will also need to attend to the social and emotional needs of students by reestablishing connections with their peers and their teachers. This socialization is critical to their healthy development and probably the area where remote learning falls short the most. The example of Woodstock Elementary School and the Billings Fire Museum is not an example of just a creative solution to solve space issues, but also can be seen as a very effective recovery strategy in itself. Think back to when you were in sixth grade and try to remember how important the regular interaction with your friends was to your learning in your daily life. Imagine then what it would feel like to spend the better part of your school year learning in relative isolation and at a distance over a computer. And now think about how excited you would be to return to school with your classmates when your new classroom is located on the grounds of a historic Vermont farm and where you are not only surrounded by your friends and teachers, but also a beautiful herd of Jersey cows. I have no doubt this experience of these Woodstock students will be the experience they remember when they are asked by their children someday, what was school like during the COVID-19 pandemic? This will also be the experience they remember when they look back on the school year because they are going to end the year on a celebratory note. These kinds of celebratory and positive experiences are all part of our recovery work. We need to find ways to return to more in-person instruction in the spring to ensure all of our students can end the year in a positive way. Conditions for the virus will likely improve quickly in the coming weeks as the pace of vaccination increases. Also with warmer weather, schools will be able to resurrect some of the creative solutions to outdoor learning that we saw them use in the fall. In short, Vermont will be in a very good position to implement more in-person instruction in the coming weeks. Finally, I wanted to congratulate the Burlington School District for having their high school students return to in-person this week. I know Superintendent Flanagan and his staff as well as the school board have worked extremely hard to find a solution to their facility issues. It was really great to see the enthusiasm of the students for returning to school on the news this week. That concludes my report. I'll now turn it over to Secretary Smith. Thank you, Secretary French. And good morning, everyone. Tuesday's press conference was full of exciting announcements, and this has been another busy week. We are encouraged by the overall progress of the vaccination program. Here's what we want to talk about today. First, I'll provide an update on our vaccination program progress. Next, I'll update on the progress to build capacity to vaccinate even more Vermonters. And then I will provide more information on the vaccination efforts that will begin on Monday, March 8th for teachers and staff in schools and childcare centers, public safety and the Department of Corrections staff. And lastly, as we see the light, the bigger light, it's getting bigger every day, the bigger light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, many families are struggling, and I will share some resources that they may be able to help them during their struggles. So let's start with the overall progress. We are pleased by participation in and the progress of the vaccination program. As of today, 1,013, 100,013, 865 people have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Just to repeat that again, 113,865 people, 52,631 have received their first dose of vaccine, 61,234 have received their first and last doses of the vaccine. As of 9am this morning, among those aged 65 and above, 23,486 people have made appointments. Just to remind everybody, 65 and above is open for registration. If you haven't, please register and I'll talk about other availability of registering as well. But to create an account or make an appointment, go to healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine. The call center for homebound individuals is now active. If you are homebound and have not already been contacted or made an appointment to be vaccinated, please call the Department of Health at, and this is a new number,<PHONE_NUMBER>. I just want to repeat that<PHONE_NUMBER>, Monday through Friday from 830 to 430. That's a different number than the vaccination registration number. The Vermont National Guard has available appointments for eligible Vermonters at the double tree in South Burlington this Saturday and Sunday. Please make an appointment at healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine. As a reminder, Walmart started vaccinations today in six stores in Vermont. Costco received their shipment of vaccines yesterday and will begin vaccinating today. You must register for these appointments through the state website at healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine. You should not call the stores directly. And Kenny's Drugs will conduct a large vaccination event for eligible Vermonters at Spalding High School this Sunday. I believe most of the slots, it's a big event. It's about 1,100 doses, but I think most of the slots are filled, but check Kenny's website to make sure. Also, Walgreens will continue to offer vaccinations through the federal program they participate in. Again, you can choose to make an appointment with Walgreens or Kenny Drugs directly if it's more convenient for you or you can go on our website and make an appointment that way as well. Now let's turn our attention to phase five. Vermonters age 16 to 64 with high risk health conditions. As I mentioned earlier this week, phase five is a large group of Vermonters, approximately 75,000 people, and it's divided into two segments. Phase five a if you are 55 years old and above with an eligible high risk condition, you can make an appointment to receive a vaccine beginning Monday at on March 8. And for phase five B, those 16 years old and above with an eligible high risk condition, you can make your appointment beginning Monday, March 15. A list of eligible high risk conditions is available at healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine. You will make an appointment in our system in the same way Vermonters have done by age grouping at healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine or by calling the vaccine call center at<PHONE_NUMBER>. You do not, you do not need to contact your health care provider or get documentation of the high risk condition to to make an appointment. On Monday, March 8, we will also begin offering teachers and school staff the option to be vaccinated. And on March 15, regulated childcare programs will be eligible to be vaccinated at clinics in their district. Starting next week, our allocation of Johnson and Johnson will not be will be less than what we expected. Therefore, we also will be utilizing Pfizer vaccine to augment and that's extra doses of Pfizer's vaccine that came back through the long term care program to augment supply. EMS, Department of Health staff, the Vermont National Guard, health care partners and school nurses will be on site at vaccination clinics, school districts or in smaller schools to assist with this effort. Teachers and school staff who wish to be vaccinated at the school designated vaccine sites can do so next week. We have seven districts scheduled for next week. They are Harwood Union in the Waterbury area, Springfield, Berry, North Country, Rutland City, Mill River and all Bennington County's district schools. Details are being finalized for at least 28 additional clinics in the next few weeks. As I mentioned earlier this week, we are starting small to ensure we have the right capacity and participants to maximize efficiency. The program will start slowly and will ramp up quickly in the next couple of weeks. We ask for your patience during this process. Now, here's how it will happen. The K through 12 Education Committee, Community and Regulated Child Care program staff will receive information on how and when they will be vaccinated and instructions on how to register directly from their employers. Again, please do not attempt to make an appointment until you hear from your employer. Appointments will be preloaded into the system and will occur over the next few weeks. You can also make an appointment at Walgreens. You will be asked to a test to qualify. Please note, if you make an appointment through the Vermont Department of Health and you end up getting the vaccine at a pharmacy, this is important. Please cancel your other appointment. Lastly, beginning Monday, March, I also want to say that beginning shortly and it will be shortly, we will be registering 1A, qualified 1A Vermonters through the VDH registration system. As you may know previously, you went to your hospital, but in the future and we will announce it when it's ready, 1A will be coming through the centralized registration system of the state. We have not begun that, but we will be beginning that shortly. Lastly, beginning Monday, March 8th, first responders, including police, fire, EMS, and staff who work in state correctional facilities that house detainees and incarcerated individuals will be offered a vaccine beginning this Saturday. Before I close, I do want to acknowledge that in addition to our vaccination efforts, important resources are available to mitigate the toll this pandemic has taken on our neighbors, our families, our communities, the economy, and overall well-being. If you are struggling, please get help. Call 211. They have the resources and can make referrals and for families experiencing hunger, you may be able to reduce the burden through three squares of Vermont. Please visit vermontfoodhelp.com. That's all one word, vermontfoodhelp.com for more information. I want to thank everyone and now I'll turn it over to Dr. Levine for a health update. Thank you, Secretary Smith. I'll keep my comments rather brief since we've had an abundance of speakers this morning. We're reporting 126 cases today, no new deaths. The numbers of deaths continue to be very small in the state over a period of time, concomitant with the incredibly successful vaccination effort of our oldest Vermonters. I'm pleased to add there's also been a steady decline in the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations. 24 people in the hospital, six in the ICU. Our state positivity rate continues to be holding well at a manageable 1.7 percent. There's still much to be done to reduce the number of new cases and to prevent even a single additional death from this virus. Nonetheless, the promising story these numbers tell and the progress we've been making in vaccinating the people of Vermont are reasons for optimism, especially as you just heard, we mark a full year since the pandemic reached into our state. I must say it's been one of the fastest years I've experienced that we've gone from the first case to one in five Vermonters vaccinated against a new virus that never was in humans before in less than 365 days. At the same time, it's hard to believe that it has been that long. I want to state that it was one year ago this week that our public health laboratory started testing for the COVID-19 virus and for quite a period of time they were the only show in town and that was the only place one could get testing. Since that time, we performed 124,674 tests with a combined effort by our lab staff and in partnership with members of the Vermont National Guard. For some perspective, this represents more than three and a half times the typical entire testing volume in a year. In addition, these teams have assembled and distributed over 209,000 collection kits to hospitals, long-term care facilities, schools, health care providers and others across Vermont. The department's public health lab was the first in the state to offer testing. For the first four weeks of the pandemic, the lab staff worked very long hours, seven days a week getting this done before other labs were on board and ready to test. These amazing employees gave and continue to give their all. Each and every one of them represent the best of public health. I owe them and everyone at the department I'm privileged to lead a debt of gratitude. This anniversary is also a time for us all to take stock of where we are today. Yes, vaccinations are being administered but I want to remind people about testing. Testing continues to be critical to people staying healthy and to stop community spread of the virus and the outbreaks we continue to see. And importantly, the everyday prevention efforts are absolutely essential to our being able to end the pandemic's impact in Vermont. This weekend, because of a dramatic uptick in cases over the past several weeks in the Stowe area, we are offering testing in that community at the high school to augment the already high and not fully utilized capacity that we have in Morrisville and Waterbury. And as you know, we've been watching and continue to watch the Franklin County numbers very closely and still have many opportunities throughout that county as well coordinated by the Mississaquoy Valley Rescue. And I've mentioned previously that our numbers in testing were dropping in terms of those seeking testing in Chittenden County and in the Burlington area specifically in response to findings in the wastewater with regard to the new variant. We announced that there were abundant testing opportunities still available within those communities and I reiterate that today. Many of you may have heard how Texas and Mississippi are ending their mask requirements as well as several other states and opening restaurants and other facilities to full capacity as if the virus has magically disappeared. I could not disagree with these decisions more. Now don't amiss to understand me, I do want this for Vermont as well, maybe as much or more than anyone else does. But we only need to look back to last spring when premature actions by many states across the country to open up led to a steep increase in cases and then deaths and having to roll back those policies. Apparently Dr. Fauci and the new CDC director Dr. Walensky agree with me. They are cautioning states to not go too quickly. I previously informed us all regarding the fact that the downturning cases in the nation and region-wide has stalled somewhat and that we don't yet know what the full impact of the variant strains may be. While the B117 UK strain has yet to be found by genome sequencing in Vermont, the wastewater results in Burlington again showed high level of a mutation compatible with this strain. Some of the preliminary results in our own public health lab also were compatible with this strain and we're awaiting the whole genome sequencing from the respiratory samples that we've set. But I fully expect within the next day or several days or week that we can more formally announce we will have officially recorded the first case from a variant strain and no one should be surprised by that. In fact as the CDC has indicated it's expected that strain may become the dominant strain in the country in the month of March. We are tantalizingly close to beating this but let's not fumble the ball on the one-yard line. Remember mass on faces, six-foot spaces, uncrowded places, especially if you're not vaccinated. And now we can add to the list getting vaccinated when it's your turn and your turn will come as you've heard much sooner than you might have imagined and soon we begin can begin to move on to enjoying everything Vermont has to offer. I'll turn it back to the governor now. Thank you Dr. Levine will now open it up to questions. Thank you governor. So the ACLU says that you're responsible for the outbreak in the Newport facility. What's your response to their concerns and could this have been prevented if we had vaccinated inmates? You know we've had a strategy for quite some time to protect the most vulnerable those over the age of 65 from hospitalization and death. We're just getting through that age group as we speak. We're moving on to those with the chronic conditions that's been part of our strategy from day one. We are you know we have to adhere to the supply that we're receiving and we have to make these decisions based on our priority and we do this by the date in the science and the date in the science has told us that we should be should be concentrating on those over 65 and those with chronic conditions and that's what we're doing. So the strategy that with the with the Johnson-Johnson vaccine coming into play which just came through this week we felt we could expand 1A to those which which are included in the public safety system the correctional officers. I feel if we can adhere if we can have the the perimeter of the facilities and have those correctional officers and staff vaccinated then we can protect the individuals inside the facility the offenders inside the facility. So again we we work on the data the science the data that didn't back up the need for vaccinating that population. What you know now now that we're from vaccinating teachers would you consider vaccinating inmates as well? Here's my plan and we haven't fully decided on this but once we get through the education system so we can get our children back into school where they belong and where because of their of their health risks in terms of mental health and socialization and so forth my hope is that we go back to age banding. It's the the simplest most effective way that we have we have found. We're seeing many other states. I've had other governors call and ask how we're doing what we're doing and you can see that many are going to age banding after abandoning their strategy for for other populations. So I think they see the merits. We certainly do and it's my hope and we'll we'll do this. We'll make this decision as a team that we go back to the age banding just as soon as we finish with the education system. All set thank you. Morning. Could you talk a little bit about the doses wasted at the Central Vermont Medical Center? The DIGA report cited the hospital saying it was because they did not have a waiting list or sort of a mechanism to get those 99 doses into arms quickly. Is that something that might prompt a policy change? What are your thoughts about it? Well again I'll ask Secretary Smith to comment as well but from my perspective we've seen great success amongst all the other hospitals throughout the state. CVMC sticks out as the outlier. UVMMC has had a vast distribution of vaccines throughout their system and they've only had I guess 25 or less vaccines that have been wasted. So there's a way, there's a strategy. They're the umbrella organization and I and I would just say that the policy we have in place is pretty simple. If you can if you can find someone within the age group that hasn't been vaccinated you should do so. You should go through the hospital see if anyone there is in need of being vaccinated and from there the goal is not to waste a single dose and I'd say other hospitals have been able to adhere to that and there was just the something with with the policy at CVMC that made them the outlier. Secretary Smith. Stuart thank you for the question. First of all I just want to say that the hospitals have been doing an incredible job in making sure that Vermonters get vaccinated across including central Vermont. They've been doing an incredible job. Secondly if you look at the total dosage wasted here in the state it's minimal it's a fraction of a fraction. We've done about we've administered about 170,000 doses. I think the number that I saw was 488 total in terms of wasted and that includes you know vials that are viable from the beginning there's going to be dropage along the way. In regard to central Vermont I think they've already said they're changing their policies. They in February had a policy which didn't do what other hospitals are doing making that effort to reach out to those that need vaccine and they have subsequently and I applaud them. They said we're going to change and that's something. Just remember we do provide guidance to hospitals as well as everybody that's giving vaccine out there that basically says this. One you vaccinate the group that is qualified. Two if you don't you'd use your call list and vaccinate and bring people in that can bring in that are within that group. Secondly if you can't find anybody within that group you go to 1A which is healthcare workers. If you can't find anybody within that group then you go to what would be perceived the next group if it's for example if it's 65 and older right now it would be you know somebody that would be under 65 and then lastly and only lastly and at the last resort if you have to use that dosage on somebody that doesn't qualify I have said this at this podium use the dosage do not waste the dosage put it in somebody's arm it's better to put it in somebody's arm than waste the dosage and I think by and large everybody is a hearing to those policies and I think you'll see central vermont from what I read in in the article I think you'll see central vermont changing their policy so they don't have the unfortunate situation that they had in February. Okay let me just ask you governor about the lehi news this morning that's a ton of money and 400 million you didn't expect a couple of days ago what's that going to do? Well the details will matter and as I've stressed with senator lehi and the rest of the congressional delegation flexibility is key and we'll see how whether those details will allow us to have flexibility but from my standpoint again we know the needs of our state broadband is one senator lehi mentioned that if there's enough flexibility we think there's a 300 million dollar need for broadband to complete broadband throughout the state so I would focus on that we know things like the infrastructure the the the number of homes that need to be upgraded or built is is upgrade need weatherization we've seen where we've invested in that my budget provided for that but there is a lot of need in the future so there are all the things that we that you may have seen in the budget that I presented that doesn't take care of everything so I would say that we could expand upon many of the initiatives that I put forth and the legislature will have some as well but but again I would resist building a program based on any additional money coming into to the state it should be looked at as one-time investments whether it's in water or storm or sewer or broadband or any mitigation due to climate change all of that is something that we know we're going to need in the future one-time money one-time expense and build a solid foundation for the future but broadband rises to the top from my standpoint yes I mean we know there's a need we saw it with the pandemic it put a spotlight on on that we knew it before but we didn't have the resources to follow through it appears that we would have more additional resources now and that would be my highest priority thank you thanks Rebecca Governor Scott the Islander got a message this morning about what one reader calls quote the horrible way unquote military veterans were treated this morning at the vaccine clinic at the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds in Essex I also spoke to one military veteran who was at the clinic which basically said there were no appointments necessary but it turned out that there were only 400 shots available this veteran was there by 915 turns out there were a thousand veterans allowed into the fairgrounds eventually they were told there were only 400 shots no more we're going to be obtained by the VA or the state or anybody 600 people sent home while hundreds and hundreds of veterans were still lined up in cars in both directions on Burles Creek trying to get into the fairgrounds this vaccine clinic is supposed to run to one o'clock get a seeing no notice telling people to turn back if they're driving over from the northeast kingdom or up from central or southern Vermont and the veteran I spoke to um grow down from Franklin County picked up a vet in Milton and was in line long before the nine o'clock start yet by 915 the police were turning people away now I know the clinic was offered by the VA but it sounds like there was zero coordination with the Vermont health department and Vermonters are always hearing about the great partnerships with the state and the health department rolling out with pharmacies and others I'm just wondering uh it wouldn't have taken too much for the state to figure out there was going to be a log jam when there was free no sign up no appointments and everything like that but yet the state did nothing so I'm interested in your personal response what directives can you take as governor as the CEO of the state to make sure health department and other departments are talking to the VA and others so this kind of thing doesn't happen to veterans or others in the future yeah this is somewhat breaking news from my perspective Mike but but as you mentioned this was a VA initiative there was this was not our initiative this is the VA as I heard this morning as well I think the mistake might have been made where they opened it up to federal employees so they weren't all veterans there and that could have led to an over abundance of demand for the supply we we want to get people vaccinated as quickly as possible we hope some of those veterans who are in the age bands that are already open up in Vermont will take advantage of the 65 plus there are some slots available even this weekend we believe but so we would advocate for them to look elsewhere we will do a better job we'll obviously be reaching out if this is what happened in in Essex we'll be we'll be opening up a conversation with the VA so that we better coordinate but this was not our initiative Secretary Smith yeah Mike is a veteran in that what you just described has disturbed me as you know we have been running a fairly efficient vaccination center at the Champlain Valley Fair through our registration program and through you know the vaccine programs that we've had in partnership with the UVM Medical Center this is the first that I've heard that the it's a two-way street by the way that the VA needs to coordinate with us if they're opening up a a vaccination site that we didn't know about I certainly didn't know about and it's it's a two-way street if they're going to open up a vaccination clinic so I will check into this find out what's going on but in general I would say if some of those veterans that are over 65 want to register at our vaccination site this weekend the Vermont National Guard at the Double Tree Hotel will has some slots I don't know now that I've announced it a couple of times I don't know how many are left but they have when I walked in here they had 106 slots available on Saturday and they had 290 slots available on Sunday so I would urge any of those veterans that are 65 and older brethren of mine that are 65 and older to go ahead and try to register online I will look into what the VA is doing but again I've heard nothing but kudos about what's been going on at the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds with the UVM MC running of the vaccine clinics that are run through the state registration system but let me check on that sure thank you I you know and I understand you can't hear about maybe all of the clinics being offered I mean it was somewhat advertised pretty well but I think I think for most for moderates they don't care if the federal state or local government you know they just want government working for them and they don't care what color the flag is that being waived at that point but yeah yeah and I related and Mike I agree with you and that's why I think you've heard the governor say the more the the less that we have these sort of one-offs and and different federal programs later on top of each other the more confusing it's going to get for the public and that's why I think governors across the nation are arguing let's run it through the state vaccination program and make it less confusing for everybody as we move and I'll I'll stop there okay a related question that actually was going to be my first question until that other thing popped up but it's related to treatment of veterans Vermont is the governor of one of seven states that does not exempt tax and provide tax exemption for military retirees in Vermont there's been pending legislation for something like nine years the you've expressed your support for the exemption included in I think this budget this year but the exemption bill is apparently jammed up in the House Ways and Means Committee and possibly being stalled by just one legislator now appears it's going to miss crossover on March 19th and never get to the Senate this year these Vermont veterans are feeling that they're getting ignored and they're moving to other states is this the kind of message Vermont and its legislature should be sending to military veterans looking to come home to retire their home state yeah Mike this is an issue that I've been putting forward this will be the fifth year that I've included this in and our projections on what we need to keep first of all to thank our veterans here in the state one of only seven states that that doesn't provide relief the taxes military pensions does lead to those retirees moving to other states and and some of these retirees by the way are in their 40s so we need more people in the state we need to have more skilled trades people in particular in the state but from all walks of life so we thought and we still believe that this would would help us gain the demographic the expanded demographic that we need bring more people into the state and and again thank those who who dedicated their life or part of their life thus far to serving their country and the least we could do is give them a break on their taxes so I think the the net return on having more people more military retirees come into the state we would far exceed the the amount of money that we tax them now they would with sales tax and all kinds of property tax all kinds of other taxes that they would be paying if they were living in the state would exceed what we're charging them so again this is a a topic that is near and dear to my heart and that's why I've been trying to advocate for it for now five years and hopefully we'll never say never we'll get it across the the finish line here this year but what can be done in the legislature to break that logjam well on one committee possibly by unlegislator holding this thing up from a full debate folks should call their legislator they should call legislators and ask them to put this forward it's as simple as that thank you very much all of you for your answers today thank you all right thank you um governor when you mentioned you wanted to you hope to return to the age band after the people with chronic conditions would that go beyond 16 up for example after 16 up were vaccinated you would open up to another age band or i just want yes or you can open it up to everyone at that point no it would be continuing the age bands in some capacity my my thought is that we go back to the 60 to 65 first and then move from there and whether whether it's done in five-year increments or 10-year increments from there on it would be my hope that we would go to 1665 60 to 65 but we have not made that decision at this point but we're going to contemplate that and and hopefully announce that fairly soon okay and then dr. Levine you mentioned the clinic in stowe and that there's been an uptick there how big the uptick and and you have any idea why yeah thanks for the question there are no specific outbreaks in stowe driving this so these are more cases and situations but it turns out that over a period of time this year in the two plus months that have evolved the number of cases in the stowe area equaled the entire year before and the magnitude of the cases was on the order of of a city with a population say like Burlington than a city of the size of stowe having said that all we had to do was get interested in it and it seemed to level off so just putting our intense scrutiny on it it's amazing how the growth suddenly began to cease which is wonderful and great but at the same time you don't you can never declare success with this virus until you've gone through at least an incubation period which we've not done yet and you know in the interest of protecting all of those who live in the area and allowing them to all do the right thing testing is the right first starting point there okay and are we seeing a decline in testing statewide and do you feel like people aren't getting tested when they should you know we're not seeing as much of a decline as is being reported all around the country and specifically not seeing as much decline because frankly we have so much exuberant college age testing going on as part of the commitment of the college communities to keeping their campuses safe but there has been a slight decrease yes there's no question not a huge order of magnitude but there has been a decrease that's notable not enough to make us question our percent positivity rate or anything of that sort at this point in time it's you know in some ways it's maybe a good sign because there may be less people who feel like they've been in contact with someone who's a case haven't been exposed to an outbreak are feeling well and don't have a habit of gathering in a lot of crowds plus we're having more people get vaccinated which is always good but again we want to watch this closely because as I said we can't declare victory in the beginning of march when we've gotten about 20 of the state vaccinated to this point okay thank you very much again Lisa I just want to thank everyone in terms of our testing ability the health department and others for their efforts over the last year we're we now enjoy we're like fifth or sixth in the nation per capita in terms of our testing capacity and that's been part of our success because we're able to detect and then be able to mitigate and surround and stop the spread of the virus my fear is across the nation that many have led up on testing which has led to finding fewer cases which hasn't been the case in vermont we continue to test we have a robust testing policy we we've been doing it in our schools for quite some time we've been doing it in our our correctional facilities where no one else has been doing that in the country that I know of of like we have and that again has resulted in and good results so I just want to thank everyone for that and acknowledge that we are high on the list in terms of the number of tests that we've administered okay thank you governor yes I believe this is a question for secretary french the school district in berry has announced that it will go fully remote on march 9th and march 30th to accommodate vaccine clinics for school staff we've been hearing from parents who are angry that their students are now going to miss out on two days of in-person instruction and they want to know is it necessary to go fully remote during these vaccine clinics and our other school districts doing this yeah thanks for the question I think it's too early to tell I mean we're rapidly you know standing up to vaccination clinics and certainly our goal is to not disrupt school operations the greatest extent possible I do know with some familiarity with the berry staffing their staff travel from some distance due to their location so I can imagine it would be challenging to a certain extent but we are trying to schedule the vaccination clinics in a manner that would be at least disruptive as possible at this point I'm unaware of other districts that are having to do this but it's it's early in the process and this is probably for secretary smith um how do private teachers sign up for this somebody who isn't connected to a school district at all maybe child care you said regulated how do people who aren't really connected to a system like that sign up to the to get vaccinated you know the education department uh excuse me the agency education will reach out to both private and public schools to basically give them the information that they need in order to register within a district clinic now the like I said they will be able to come into that district clinic same way with child care the department of children and families under regulated those regulated child care licensed child care facilities will will reach out actually the the instructions are probably going out after this press conference to those license we have the list of all the licensed child care centers in in vermont a list will go out to them on how to register and with a the process for registering there so it will be employer by employer and they will contact their employees in order to get registered okay thank you hi governor I was uh wondering how much the the vaccinating the school staff is your decision making from an economic point of view obviously the the economy can't fully open until the schools are fully open I was wondering how much that that drove that decision as well well it was really about the kids all the pediatricians our own commissioners our health care team just all the experts have said we need to get the kids back into school so that's what drove the conversation and we want to make sure that we do all we can to get kids back in school for in-person instruction we know it's good for them it's good for all of us good for their mental health and their their social life as well so better learning ability so that's that's what drove us to the decision we made and now once we get that side put aside we'll focus more intensely on the economy as well in what Dr. Levine said earlier in this press conference about Texas Mississippi and other states with have you considered at all maybe travel restrictions to those states that have lifted their mitigation guidelines we have not considered that at this point in time okay and lastly I was wondering if I know that Dr. Levine and I believe Secretary Smith are over 65 sorry Mike if I presumed that there have they been vaccinated or signed up for their vaccination I don't want to speak for them although I know Secretary Smith is very eager to get his vaccine so I believe he's made his his appointment already I'm not sure about Dr. Levine in process for Dr. Levine so they're so they're both in process is very safe yes okay all right great thank you very much hi thanks for taking my call I want to follow up quickly on Lisa Rastke's question about Stowe what's going on in Lundbury and Killington as well both of those towns in the latest town by town data show greater than 80 cases for 10,000 people thank you Levine and once again you know most of what we're seeing in Vermont is isolated cases isolated situations showing up at a work site at a health care facility at a school at anywhere um under 20 percent of cases in any of these communities the ones you've mentioned and others are direct impact of any outbreaks that are occurring majority of cases report either household or otherwise contact with a case so again at a time when there's more virus prevalent in communities than we're accustomed to these are how the cases show up that's about all I can say thank you can I just return to last week's report about testing in Bromley when eight out of 237 people yes tested positive I had a reader point out that that's a positivity rate of 3.4 and she wondered why people weren't alarmed by it yeah those I didn't check her math those were at Bromley antigen tests and I I did state at that time that for them we're still being confirmed by PCR and I don't know if they were truly confirmed or not so we may not have all eight that are positive the other thing about that is though that we were looking at it much more as a glass half fold than a glass half empty because the reality is we thought that was a very few number of positives and that the majority of them well there was just a few number of positives period the theory I think that most people were operating on was that there were abundant people coming into the state who were positive with virus and this did not really prove that based on the percentage who were Romaners versus percentage who were out of state so we were looking at it much more that way the stratton results were PCR tests and the number of them was fewer than the number them that were positive was fewer than the Bromley but I can look into exactly how many of the Bromley were true PCR confirmed positives thank you and can I just have a clarification of Governor Scott I heard you say that vaccinated people can gather or dine with other vaccinated people and or with an unvaccinated household but then I thought I heard you say that two vaccinated households and an unvaccinated household could gather can you set me straight yeah Lisa let me see if I can clarify this so anyone who's been vaccinated can gather to any size if they're all vaccinated that's no problem within that group if they had eight or ten people who were vaccinated if they wanted to introduce another household that is not vaccinated they can do so one other household only to that group or one-on-one okay does that make sense and can yeah that does make sense and can I recall a week or so ago I think you said unvaccinated people could as with one trusted household they stay 60 away windows open not yeah one the the household stay tuned in terms of we'll be talking about this more next week but but I think previously we've had one or unvaccinated households one or no more than two could gather and we have not implemented that at this point in time but stay tuned okay okay much and and I just wanted to reflect on whether that's a the number I think the the number broadly the percent positivity rate might be closer over three percent when you think back or think about other states for instance I think there is at one point in time there was one state and maybe on the Dakotas one of the Dakotas was I think it was a 50 percent positivity rate at that point and then we thought it was incredibly high when we heard 20 percent positivity rate so if it is three percent that's still very very low in comparison to to others across the state so or across the country so just a reminder that we enjoy here we have enjoyed from day one a very low positivity rate because of all the actions of our monitors have taken so we get lulled into thinking that three percent might be high or four percent when actually from a in comparison to other states throughout the country that's still pretty low hey I want to know is the J&J vaccine going to a certain population or will it be evenly distributed across the clinics that are available I'll let Secretary Smith answer that thank you for the question what we try to do is line up that the number of people that are eligible within a county and distributed it accordingly throughout that county for example if there's certain amount of 75 year olds if it was a 75 year old age band that's long ago but a seven long ago it's a month ago we you know we would a portion how many 75 year olds are in that county compared to all 75 year olds in a portion of that what we have been doing and what has been successful is that we've opened it up through sort of an allocation formula and then when we've seen things that have been over just subscribed we've added clinics and slots to that to that area so we've been very successful in doing that and accommodating it to keep the time span pretty short in terms of when you can get vaccinated thank you Secretary Smith I do have another question for Secretary French how might vaccinating educators impact surveillance testing in schools if some choose not to get vaccinated will that program surveillance testing eventually go away the in terms of the surveillance testing right now we're planning on holding in next week we are having discussions about its future but we haven't made any decision at this point in all in all likelihood it would probably go away if we were able to get the vast majority of teachers and staff members vaccinated thank you and um one last question um how will people know to get tested um as more and more people get vaccinated and um with these new lists I'm just wondering how people will know to get tested and trying to think how the state will still prioritize testing as more and more people get vaccinated we'll continue to offer testing as we have it's it's open to anyone who wants a test we'll still have our contact tracing as well because there will be a certain number of the population that are not vaccinated there will still be positive cases because it's going to take us a while to work through although a very short period of time to work through the rest of the population so there is still going to be positive cases and the contact tracing and which would we would ask people to get tested at that point uh commissioner levine thank you governor and the only thing i'd add to that is again trying to remind everyone you vaccinate the population but the virus isn't totally gone it's still on the planet earth just like in a given flu season there's always going to be cases of the flu what what the public health world thinks is that there are always going to be cases of covid hopefully very few and hopefully uh not harming many people at all but the reality is even during a flu season some people who had the flu shot may still get a milder form of the flu other people won't have got vaccinated at all and may get symptoms compatible with the flu and physicians are testing those people to see if they have the flu so the same thing will happen with covid testing will never disappear contact tracing will never disappear but we hope it becomes a very small part of the work of public health because we'll be at a point in time where the virus will just be around but won't be having this epidemic level of impact on a population I just want to again reflect on on the johnson-johnson vaccine since you asked about it in a previous question just to remind everyone where we are because we didn't know what we're going to receive in the future for johnson-johnson supply until Tuesday and we still don't know definitively what we're going to get so Tuesday there was a lot of talk about after the authorization over the weekend there was a lot of talk about four million doses being available from johnson-johnson to be distributed throughout the united states as it turns out the white house in my conversation with other governors on Tuesday morning it turned out to be 2.9 million not four million and they told us that we were not going to be getting receiving anything next week and a very limited supply the following week but they hoped to ramp back up come the end of the month in March so we'll learn more as we move forward but that's that's you know a piece of the puzzle that we need to have the answers to before we know exactly what we're going to be doing but it looks as though i'm confident that we'll be receiving more of a supply of johnson-johnson but but i'm not sure exactly when and how much is that that's going to be but we'll we'll find that out week uh week after week thank you rebecca good afternoon governor scott just a couple follow-up questions for me today uh governor i spoke with you a week ago about a nurse in franklin county that apparently failed to feed the advice of the health department when her own family contracted covid continuing to proceed with their daily lives knowing that they could spread the virus uh at the time i helped you be able to touch base with uh secretary french on this and be able to get a little more information i haven't heard from you or or anybody at your office about it you have a little more information that you can share with us uh yeah i don't i don't remember saying that i was going to get back to you on that but maybe i did i don't have any more information i don't i don't even have any knowledge of that's uh situation greg i still don't know anything about it specifically i i guess at some point maybe i can fill your administration in on it uh probably offline uh at what point that the would the state take more of a punitive approach than an educational approach at what point would the state say apparently education is not working and we need to take a more punitive approach yeah i beg i beg to differ i think the educational approach is working very well and uh when you compare vermont to other states we've had a huge compliance uh outreach uh and uh and i think that the vast majority of vermonters are adhering to the guidance and doing the right thing we're in the last stretches of this race this war whatever you want to call it and we've had many battles along the way some we've won some we've lost but we we see the end is near here so i would like to look forward trying to get a number of as much of the supply vaccination into the arm a vaccine into the arms of those that are impacted which we've done and and continue over the next couple of months three three months four months and get to everyone and then we'll be back to normal so i'm i'm very hopeful that we'll be able to progress i'm confident and optimistic about our future and and i think our educational approach our strategy has worked very well and there are and i'm not saying that not everyone is doing it but the vast majority of vermonters are and i would say if there was a way to to gauge that against any other state in the country i would say vermont's on the top in terms of compliance regardless of whether there's i mean new york tried some punitive measures i don't think it worked out very well i think rhod island did others did i don't think they it worked out well for them i think our approach is working and we'll continue with that strategy until we're well out of our way out of the woods in terms of this pandemic well it i've just heard people who felt that it's a little concerning to see a school nurse that continues to go beyond you know within continues to go to work continues to go with her normal day even though people with her own family has contracted tilted but moving on um on tuesday you announced that vermont school would would begin being vaccinated although the cdc has said that schools shouldn't need uh vaccines as a prerequisite for for opening um i i asked if this was an indicator of the strength of the teachers union um i asked that because i'm i'm wondering if there's any sort of um agreement between you your office anybody in your cabinet and the teachers union as the state continues to try to negotiate a change to the teachers retirement program no there's no agreement in any way no quid pro quo on any of that okay uh and lastly i don't think uh you mentioned how you voted on the marijuana issue on on tuesday and i'll i'll leave it at that when we're done i'll take that as your fourth question and i i i uh i voted no i was on the losing end uh in berlin and but i was very grateful for having the opportunity to at least uh exercise my right to vote on that issue and so we'll move on from there thank you governor thank you for your time have a great weekend you too thanks very much if i could go back to the pharmacy participating in the vaccination program if pharmacies are in the federal partner program but they're not willing to participate at the same time with the state portals does that disqualify them from being able to provide vaccinations in vermont yeah i'm going to let secretary smith answer this but this is one of the concerns of myself and many governors throughout the country when the federal government got involved and had their own contracts with the pharmacies it it really did hamper some of our control over where we want to go with this and and even um knowing how much of the vaccine has been distributed uh and uh what they have on hand we haven't been able to find out on a timely basis so it's not a very coordinated effort at times we're working at it i mean everyone's trying to do the right thing but um but i think the federal government made a mistake in going directly to the pharmacies and making their own contracts with them they should have just continue to supply the states with the vaccine necessary let us make our agreements with the pharmacies and i think that it would be a much more integrated much more efficient system had they done so but having said that we're working with all the pharmacies right now they're great partners it's just that they all they have different systems than we do and and it's just it's not working as well as it could but it's working as well as we could hope for let me just let me just add to follow up let me just add to that a little bit if i may we have found that the best way to do this is to integrate the pharmacies with our centralized registration system Costco for example Walmart are all integrated kinnies in a way is integrated they'll be more fully integrated in the months to come where we've had the issue is with Walgreens which is a federal program these all give federal allocations and we well accept kinnies but we direct those federal allocations now and we do have a problem when they aren't associated with our registration system as the governor alluded i think this is a country-wide problem in that we can't integrate what is going on as smoothly as we can for example today with Costco or today with Walgreens as we open it up we're still having negotiations with others as well as we move forward so i i you know i i think it's best if we would integrate through our system and we we encourage those in the pharmacy program to integrate in our system because it's just easier for vermoners secretary if if they if a pharmacy is unwilling to integrate into the Vermont program does the state have the authority to decline having them do vaccinations through the federal through the federal program we could we we have we're working with all including cvs who doesn't have a integrated system yet we're trying but i as i said for vermoners we're trying to integrate the pharmacy system into our own system and you have you yet had to reject any pharmacy participation because they weren't willing to work with the Vermont portal we haven't rejected any pharmacies to my knowledge okay thank you very much Peter Hirschfeld vpr thanks rebecca uh governor why didn't you want uh neat cannabis shops in berlin oh it's just a personal personal preference i mean if it was uh if i had a choice of a locating a vape shop in uh in berlin i would feel the same it's i just wanted you know it's just my personal choice and again i'm not upset about it it's just uh i'm on the losing end and it's legal in Vermont and we'll we'll go from here but it's just personal decision um i don't know if this is for you governor of the secretaries there are uh presumably plenty of vermoners who are under the age 16 who would qualify uh under the list of medical conditions for uh people that are eligible for the vaccine but they can't get a vaccine because of their age will will caregivers of those children be able to get vaccinated so as to avoid transmitting it to them i don't have the answer to that question and i'm not sure that secretary smith does at this point you want to let me give that okay secretary smith uh dr levine secretary smith said he would contact you directly peter i appreciate that thank you hi i'd like governor scott to weigh on this one please if the question about the timeline for getting back to full in-person learning again earlier secretary french said vaccination likely have a significant impact on this but i have yet to hear a promise that prioritizing school staff for vaccines will definitely lead to students being able to go back to full in-person learning this spring so can you and your administration commit that once teachers are fully vaccinated this spring that students will resume full in-person learning before the school year ends no as you uh as you know here in vermont we have a very different school system and in some states in the country and uh they're all individual and so we can uh advocate we can provide for means for them to get back to in-person instruction but uh but i'm not sure that we can force them to do so nor would i think that that's the best approach i believe that the the superintendents the principals the the staff the teachers all want the same thing they all want to get back to in-person instruction for the kids they just want it to be safe in order to do so we think that this was a major obstacle and and providing for that so that's why we decided to go down this path and and i believe that we'll see a number of of schools going back to in-person instruction in the very near future that's my hope we're hearing some rumblings that some staff may refuse to go back to in-person learning even after they're vaccinated citing issues with things like spacing in classrooms or not wanting to give up some of the flexibility that remote learning has allowed them in their personal lives will the choice to go back to in-person learning then ultimately have to be left up to the district or can state in some way ensure that students no matter which district they're in have equal quality of education if their district is refusing to go back to in-person fully secretary french secretary french are you on or muted oh sorry can you hear me now we can still have some audio problems you have to pick up on the thread of your earlier question about vaccination i think you know firstly vaccination it's important for school staff certainly from an operational standpoint but more to the point it just represents the increased supply of vaccine that's coming in with the state overall so ultimately we expect that to have an impact on the operating conditions in our communities for schools which means that the potential is there we predict for more in-person instruction so we want to work on that but it is it's important to to plan for that now and that's that requires particularly in a local control system that we build a broad community support for that particularly among parents and so they can they can have their voice heard in that that conversation at school board meetings and so forth to ensure that districts you know are are doing their best not only for their staff but also for the students so it is it is it's a tricky thing in a local control state to do but back you know back to the earlier questions a few minutes ago about punitive nature requiring people to do things we've had great success in our schools and actually i would argue one of the key ingredients to our success is sort of its decentralized nature to a certain extent because it allows communities to be creative to respond to their specific conditions not just for the virus but of their staffing patterns and the configurations of their schools so again i think you know we're in the last leg of this race based on what we've done so far i'm confident people will figure it out if we want to support them in doing that and ultimately you know as the governor has mentioned everyone wants the best things for kids so i'm confident we'll be able to to do this last piece exceptionally well as if we've done the rest of the response to date i guess some of the foundation for the question stems on this idea that we're kind of rushing teachers to the front of the line at the moment and putting them on the same line as people who are high risk with health conditions who might be at risk of dying if they get the virus so the rationale for this is that teachers get vaccinated kids go back to in-person learning and that helps their mental health but if there's no proof that they will in fact definitely go back to in-person learning i think some people's email me are questioning why we're rushing them to the front of the line well again someone has to make the first step and we've decided with the extra supply that we have now this isn't replacing this isn't putting them ahead of those with chronic conditions this is an extra supply that we found that we had that we weren't anticipating so again somebody has to make the first move we think it's in the best interest of kids i believe most of the the staff the teachers the the superintendents and parents think this is the right thing to do so we feel confident in our approach and we hope schools will follow suit all right i'll leave it there for today thank you hello i think this question is for Secretary Smith some inmates in Newport are telling their family members they are showing symptoms and medical conditions related to COVID-19 but are not being hospitalized is the same standard for admitting members of the community for hospital with COVID-19 the same standard for admitting inmates to a hospital such as temperature high temperatures in the middle thanks alan i'll let dr levine weigh in on this as well because i don't have an md after my name but my understanding is not everyone that has symptoms is hospitalized actually it's a it's very few people that are that have symptoms that are hospitalized so that's not uncommon and that's that doesn't strike me as something that's odd there are certain symptoms that would require hospitalization and the department has been pretty good at responding to that when they see those symptoms as you know and as Commissioner Baker said they have a doctor on site and on call 24 7 up there in Newport right now they've augmented their nursing staff in order to respond to this outbreak there they've cohorted their prisoners their inmates to make sure that they try to reduce any opportunities to spread but in terms of symptoms i'll turn it over to dr levine and just a moment i do want to i do want to respond to something that just came in on an email of one from senator sanders staff person and another from the director of the office of veterans affairs they are reporting that the fairgrounds this is a this is a program run by the va not the regular state run program that's at the fairgrounds but the va program that is being run up there they do report both senator sanders office and the director of office of veterans affairs that they have not run out of vaccine at that site so i'll let dr levine talk about symptoms allen thank you yeah as you've heard and i've talked directly with commissioner baker uh they've augmented the medical staff at the facility there's daily access to care probably far better than you would get if you were just calling your doctor and saying i tested positive for coveted and here's what's going on you're not going to get that level of attention every day and be at their office every day there are criteria for admitting people that do have to do with the state of their vital signs how much their oxygen levels are etc if there's a reason to see to perceive that they have pneumonia or a complication of coveted which could include blood clots or other things i would just trust the medical decision making that's going on there the fact of the matter is everyone who's tested positive is a known positive case and um has access to medical care and if they have new complaints and new symptoms that develop that become of concern they would qualify potentially for hospitalization but as secretary smith said you know right now today we have 24 people in the hospital in the whole state and we tested 126 positive tests yesterday and accumulating over the course of a week we have hundreds and hundreds most of those people do not end up requiring hospitalization and just a quick follow up anyway um is it the same standard for an inmate though as it is for a community member like the oxygen levels in temperature i would sure hope so any human being definitely i would also i would also point out because there was an earlier question today regarding um the aclu and vaccination um the fact of the matter is any inmate that has been in the age bands that have been gone through already has had the opportunity to receive vaccine as well can you tell me how many inmates at the northern state are currently hospitalized or currently receiving supplemental oxygen at the facility i can tell you that i'm not aware of anyone hospitalized i don't know the status of everyone's oxygenation level so i can't give you that information thank you yeah you could connect that information you could connect with the department of corrections and they might be able to give you that information okay we can well um let's see this might be a question for mike smith i have a an early educator an early childhood educator who has um interest in the home child care um rules that are going to be following for the vaccines coming out like next week um or actually it's probably the week i guess it's the week after that um in the schools where there will be teachers getting vaccinated and substitute teachers getting vaccinated will the same pattern follow for the home child care folks as well where um people that they might call upon to be a substitute to fill in for themselves if they are sick or aren't able to be there would get vaccinated and the other um piece of that is whether um spouses or other partners other adults that might live in the same home where there's a home child care would they be eligible to be vaccinated as well it would only pertain to employees that are that are child facing um in this instance in terms of the particulars it would not it would not um extend to a family for example in this in this sort of situation so it would it would pertain licensed child care facilities where there is a employee who is uh uh child facing okay thank you on that um and i guess a question probably for dr levin to pick up on that thread where he was talking about sort of how the virus will continue to to be in the environment to be in in our in our ecosystem to some degree um the vaccines are going to be distributed and given to teachers are going to keep teachers safe and give them immunity but sort of getting around this question of kids going back into school and having them be safe i'm not sure how low you're imagining the age bands for the vaccine to go but i don't imagine elementary school kids are are eligible for vaccines yet that hasn't been hasn't been sort of you know figured out yet um so how do we keep kids safe if the idea is to put them back into schools in larger numbers at closer distances do you what does that look like do they still wear masks are they still being super careful because the germs as you said are still going to be there and and they are still and no kids don't get it to the extent and the severity that adults do but that still is a risk for them so i guess there's parents that are wondering it's great that we're keeping teachers safe that's sort of step one but then what about the kids when they get into school yeah this is these are great questions so first of all we don't have a vaccine that's been authorized for under 16 yet but i do know that at least one of the vaccine platforms is being evaluated in the 12 and up age group so stay tuned on that front because there may be opportunities in the future for kids to get vaccinated with a vaccine that's been adequately studied in their population second thing the um reality as you kind of pointed out is that the very youngest kids and i'll say that's in the uh 11 year old and younger group give or take a year um really do seem to do much better with this virus or be not even able to get significantly infected by this virus and that's still believed to be kind of a physiological aspect of them and some of the receptors in their mucosa of their nose things of that sort so they may be safe much more of the time than we realize just because of the peculiarity of the way this virus impacts us as a species and then the third thing is that the best way to keep our kids safe in our schools is to keep our communities safe so part of that is vaccinating the teachers because that's an immediate community but thinking about the community at large if the majority of the people living in the community in the adult range who can receive the vaccine do receive the vaccine um and have adhered to all the usual public health guidance that's going to go a long way to suppressing the amount of virus that can be transmitted from one person to another and make it much less likely that a child will even encounter the virus in the places they spend the rest of their time when they're not in school and then lastly in the in this future world over these months at least for the rest of this school year before we get to the summer and fall people will be masking and in the schools uh masking will still be uh a part of everybody's life there which will continue to protect the kids secretary french yeah thanks dr levino's oh just gonna add you know we i think one of the things that makes us confident about the spring is that we have really good insight into the operating conditions at any given moment and that's a function you know of our modeling certainly the robust surveillance testing and the other testing that we have is the state but we also have maintained pretty significant resources on contact tracing and just the uh overall epi data that we see on a daily basis and what's going on schools so we know right now our schools are operating very safely and have continued to do so and we have a significant amount of in-person already going on in our schools so i get this question sometimes for parents very similar vein how are our kids safe and i think people should understand it and have some confidence that we have had really good insight in any given moment as to what the conditions are in our schools um and we'll optimistic again that conditions will be improving in our communities in the coming weeks so we'll be able to monitor that very closely but i think we should have everyone should have some confidence that we really have some some good understanding of the conditions and you know the way we the way we opened our schools was using some of the national and especially international data on impact of the virus on kids how transmission occurs uh in the setting of a school classroom and the reality was and i think it's been born out in vermont especially in our younger age in younger grades is that kids are not transmitting the virus to each other most of the time uh it's an adult who is uh our case and if you appropriately isolate that person and quarantine those who are close contacts you don't see any further impact and that um when a kid is infected it's often because of where they're living and who they were in contact with in the community not because of what happened in the school so i do think our vermont experience has really borne that out um and allowed us to do exactly what secretary french said well thanks dr living and secretary french that was um that's very helpful information and a good sort of uh following the logic and the process there so i imagine that you see a covid-19 vaccine someday not too far into the future being just a regular routine childhood vaccine that that kids would get no i imagine that will be true for sure and the only issue will be uh do you receive one vaccine and you're done do you receive it every five years or 10 years like a tetanus shot or or what um all that remains to be understood better right great thank you thank you very much hello thank you very much rebecca uh this is a regarding the vermont veterans home so it could be for you governor perhaps you secretary smith earlier this week the banner reported that 60 percent of all employees and only 39 percent of direct care staff at the vermont veterans home had been vaccinated uh the banner also reported the president of the union representing employees of vaccination mandate to be pardoned he said quote some facilities throughout the country are offering incentives and reinsurance to their staff in an effort to increase the number of vaccinations maybe that would be a good place to start and quote so i have two questions one has a mandate for vaccinations for direct care staff at the veterans home been contemplated or put forward to the union and two what's your reaction to the union president you can staff that vaccination as a bargaining position um well first of all we can't mandate anyone having the vaccine due to federal regulations because it's an emergency order and emergency authorization so it doesn't allow us to mandate that i would hope that as we've seen throughout the state and other long-term care facilities there's been a incredible outreach and inclusion in vaccination and an interest in vaccination i think some i think it was randolph where i saw they had maybe 90 percent adherence to the vaccine and vaccines so it can be done it's disappointing that that they aren't taking advantage of this to protect themselves and those they care for in bennington but but i have no interest in bargaining for this and offering an incentive i think the incentive is protect yourself and protect those around you and that should be enough thank you the question is for like with the doctor levine some new york health departments are seeing people still testing positive for covid up to 30 days after their two week quarantine is this happening in vermont and how long can someone be asymptomatic and potentially infectious so the question is that there are people who have been in quarantine because they were in contact they never tested positive during the immediate period and then a month later they tested positive yeah yeah well i can i can speculate um not knowing much more about these individuals in these cases um normally of course you know we have a 14 day quarantine period because that's the incubation period of the virus we've allowed people opportunity to test out of that earlier because the predominant number of people will develop symptoms in a shorter period of time i guess i would submit that if there's developing symptoms and then presumably test positivity 30 days out they must have had some other exposure or some other reason to test positive during that time period and you know we're in an era now where we're worrying about the variant strains and the variant strains characteristic is they are more transmissible and so people might get actually symptoms and ill in a much shorter timeline so that that goes against the increasing prevalence of those strains as well so i guess i'm saying i don't get it because it doesn't sound to me like it's related to their initial quarantine period at all it must be other exposures post the 14 day period okay and i have a quick clarification about travel restrictions so we're getting some questions from snowbirds who are coming back would they need to quarantine before going to get vaccinated or would that count as a medical appointment and that that basically going to that appointment would be an exemption to lead quarantine for that specific thing if they're coming back to the state and they have not been vaccinated they need to quarantine that's sort of the rule period you're then saying they want to go out because they got an appointment to get vaccinated i would think that would be a rational thing to do they wore a mask and they had no symptoms of covid okay so yeah that's all i was asking thank you thanks for taking my question so i know that dr levine touched on this earlier today but i think it's a good subject to keep discussing um this past week we've seen a shift in states such as texas mississippi canada care and earlier there was florida all go completely or almost all the way back to normal life in regards to masks and distancing and restaurants opening and whatnot um as the virus season winds down when can the rest of our monitors get back to our normal lives yeah we we continue to use a strategy that uh and we'll be able to talk about that more in the coming weeks and be able to describe what our plan is as we work our way out of this pandemic and open up our businesses so we'll be able to share that strategy with you in the near very near future but it's not today and it's just a reminder because the other states have done this doesn't mean it's the right thing to do you know we're a state of experiment our country of experiments in the individual states uh we all have the ability to to make decisions based on what we think is right we've been doing that since day one it's uh it's served us well but um but we'll see i mean i i don't think any of us knows what the right thing the very right thing is to do until this is over and then we'll be able to reflect on that but uh in terms of our strategy i feel very confident in what we've done and i think the the numbers back it up and we'll continue to do what uh what we think is right and take a team approach in doing so um if i may tonight today after what are there any specific goalposts as far as um i don't know rates of infection or deaths or vaccinations that you can share targets that would be a criteria for reopening yeah nothing i can share at this point in time but in the very near future we will be outlining uh what uh what we see over the next uh week a few weeks and uh in terms of what we need to do to reopen the economy in a much more expedited way but i i would say you know we're on the other end of this and the future is bright i'm very optimistic about this and enthusiastic and i believe we'll be able to share that with Vermonters once we get to a point where i feel comfortable enough in sharing it in what we're seeing on the ground and with all the supply of vaccine that we can firmly uh say is in the uh in the queue and that um that we feel confident we'll be receiving okay thanks a lot i've got nothing today thank you no no thank you what the hell is that how's that hi yeah i do have something today um governor you have consistently said your chief priority is to preserve life during the vaccine rollout by targeting those most likely to die from COVID-19 but your administration has repeatedly made exceptions for this right choosing to prioritize certain professions we now have cops firefighters key patrol teachers soon child care providers correctional officers with the new core outbreak demonstrating yet again how easily the virus can spread within prisons i think there's an argument to be made that inmates are among the highest risk group in vermont right now and from the sounds of it we are dedicating an immense amount of state resources to deal with the situation given that it would take about 1100 vaccines to immunize the current in-state inmate population which i believe is roughly a tenth of a week's supply what is the rationale for not taking this up well again it takes a dose away from someone who we feel is in the category the age banding category that we've talked about the strategy is the older you are the more susceptible you are to hospitalization and death and we've taken care of the 65 and over we want to continue along that process the 60 to 65 then in the 50s and so forth the those in the correctional facilities will be able to take advantage of this we've been we've been doing that right along anyone over 65 at this point in time as as either been taken care of or it will be taken care of in the correctional facilities anyone with a chronic condition in the those facilities in the correctional facilities will be taken care of as well i feel we feel that creating a line of defense within the system because there shouldn't be any other way for this for the transmission of the virus to come into the facility other than through staff and and and those who are working from the outside in so once we take care of that we should be able to clear up the problem and we've done so all along the way we work on data in science and the data doesn't prove the fact that they are more susceptible than anyone else well i just want to click back on that a little bit because i'm pretty sure you said earlier in this press conference that we are vaccinating people like teachers not by putting them ahead of people with chronic conditions but by using extra supply but the the rationale you just gave for prisoners is completely opposite of that that you would be viewing that as putting them ahead of the age banding the chronic conditions why are those two things different so every in every category every situation every profession we have dozens and dozens of dozens of people who want to be put in the front of the line even before the offender population whether it be in the retail the retailers that come out and said they'd like you know 37 000 doses for those on the front lines we've had those from the agricultural community who feel those that are in providing for the processing of milk should be put to the front of the line for a lot of good reasons but this won't end and from our standpoint if we can get through this over the next few weeks all on the same level all adhering to the same guidelines i think will be in good shape and we'll be able to quickly move through this and so we have a difference of opinion obviously your opinion is different than mine but we think the strategy is appropriate okay i would you say it's not necessarily my opinion i think it's well i think you said it was your question that i've been hearing yeah no i i mean i think you said in my opinion i would do this so i take that as your opinion i i don't believe i said in my opinion i would do this but anyway moving on it would seem also that this perimeter approach that we're talking about relies on all correctional staffers being vaccinated but as you said we can't mandate that and experience from other sectors shows that take-ups won't be a hundred percent for example we had hospitals with accepting rates below 70 a month into phase one rollout and it also sounds like the state is not offering vaccines to full-time contractors i know of a couple such who are working in the Chittin facility and have been since the summer don't be undermine this perimeter approach well it certainly does enforce the perimeter and i and it isn't foolproof nothing is i mean even the vaccine itself isn't a hundred percent effective there is a margin of error even in that so and it takes some time as well so if you have a two-dose system you could be talking about a dose a month from now and then two weeks before you you get to the greatest amount of efficacy so from that standpoint it's weeks and we'll again in weeks we'll be through a number of the population bands that we're we're talking about today right i just want to bring one other subject up it was brought to my attention the vet that mike had spoken to was turned away in error the clinic remains open for vets with a valid dd 214 they can also look you up in their system so if mike can give us some contact info for the debt for the vet he heard from we'll have the va connect with them directly so that we can rectify that situation governor earlier you earlier you were asked how the state of vermont will spend another 400 million from the federal government kind of switching tax here do you know how the u.s u.s government plans to pay for all of this unprecedented deficit spending and if you know could you share that with us yeah i i don't know but i'm i'm sure that it has to do with our our kids and grandkids and future generations as with any debt okay question for secretary smith or perhaps yourself but senator sanders office has confirmed to us that they asked the department of agriculture to to give the farmers to families food box distribution to the food bank for its oversight um and which sort of pushed some all vermont some all volunteer vermont churches and faith-based organizations out of the distribution network at least at this time um secretary smith said he was willing to have volunteers step forward has his office since heard from any faith-based organizations about participating in this no the answer is no guy i haven't heard from any faith-based organizations about participating in this but as i said last week and and i mean this i mean anybody that can help on um on you know helping those that are in need i'm always volunteers helping those that are in need i'm always all years for that how it would be integrated into this program that was let's be honest with struggling um is something that i would work uh have to work out but you know along a whole host of lines with human services um i welcome volunteers whether it's foster parents to a lot of other issues where we need other areas where we need uh volunteers so if people want to reach out to me i'm fine with that and i'd be more than happy to uh listen to how this can be integrated whether it's in the food program or any other place within the agency thank you governor hi governor scott was your administration aware of cbmc's failure to implement a vaccine waiting list prior to our reporting um if it was why didn't the state address the problem sooner and if it wasn't why wasn't the state paying closer attention to that process yeah i don't uh i wasn't aware of it myself maybe secretary smith was but obviously if i'd known about it previous to that i i have a very low tolerance to waste of anything especially these precious doses of the vaccine so had i known about it we would have reacted differently um and then secretary smith after cbmc the department of health white over junction and burlington district offices had the highest wastage numbers can you tell us what went wrong at those two sites yeah i'm let me uh go back i wasn't aware of uh central vermont but it does indicate that we need to play as a state need to pay closer attention i do want to put this in perspective one more time as we as we look at this this doesn't mean that we have we we shouldn't be um looking at our systems to make sure that it is uh that they are better in terms of where we're going and in what we're doing with inventory but let me just preface this 488 doses to 170,000 doses that have been been administered like the governor said one dose wasted is uh way too much but it is a fraction of a fraction now let me get back to your to to your question what happened at central vermont no i didn't know about it until i saw the until i started hearing about it through the reporting of vermont digger i heard about it from uvm mc or from the health network uvm health network that alerted me to it we looked into it we need to refine our inventory system to give us alerts when things are starting to go in a direction in terms of the other sites i believe in dr levine can sort of confirm this i believe there was those were vials that were not uh viable for one and i think a few were dropped if if i remember and as you know there's multiple doses in vials and a few were dropped this is going to happen by the way in um in a very um sort of labor intensive uh sort of operation that we are going to have mistakes and i can understand that um what i what concerned me about central vermont was the was sort of getting to the end of the day and not having a procedure uh to put uh doses into people's arms that that concerned me more than somebody accidentally dropping vials thank you can you hear me now we can go ahead caroline okay great um so we received a flyer for an anti-flashing uh an anti-mask flash mob um where a bunch of people are getting together with out masks on in chittenden county and we were wondering if you're aware of this um or if it's credible if you are and when it comes to uh big public gathering stuff that's being pushed out on social media and whatnot um are you tracking these things and doing anything about it i am not aware i might ask commissioner shirling if he's aware of anything of this nature he's not on today okay sorry mr shirling is not on uh commissioner levine yes during the course of this press conference we have been notified that there was uh some notification i don't know exactly the uh credibility or the veracity of the notification but about sort of an anti-mask event if you will that could potentially put vermonters at risk if they were uh unnecessarily exposed um we brought that to the attention of the department of public safety and i'm sure they'll be following it up thank you okay thank you very much and we'll see you again on tuesday