Vermonters have done a lot to suppress this virus and help us contain the small number of outbreaks we've had to prevent it from gaining much traction. But looking across the country, we continue to see a forest fire spreading in the south and west, and things could shift back towards us. So we have to keep our guard up, because I know every Vermonter wants to move forward, not backward. As I said, that's why we're closely watching these trends and working to protect the progress we've made if this fire does spread back towards us. And alongside these national trends, we know our colleges and universities are getting ready to restart. And we want to have K through 12 schools open for at least some level of in-person instruction this fall. So it's crucial we keep community spread low as more people begin to interact with one another. We fought back against this invisible enemy since March, gaining more ground each week methodically, step by step. But each of us must do all we can to protect the gains we've made so we can continue to open the economy. Over the last weeks and months, we've been working on ways to strengthen our ability to suppress the virus, including increased testing and contact tracing. We've also made it clear that we expect buyers to be compliant with our safety measures. As other states have warned, these establishments are contributing significantly to the resurgence they're seeing. We've opened in a measured way to keep from having to take a step back. But again, as we welcome back more college students, we're looking at methods and strategies will help prevent increases that exceed our ability to contain spread. I'm sure it comes as no surprise another option we're considering is expanding our existing mask mandates. As I've said, this is a tool we have in the toolbox. And with every help decision we've made, when to use that tool will be driven by the data. My concern has been that a mandate will create unnecessary conflict. And with the numbers we see in Vermont, particularly in our most rural areas, the data hasn't yet supported a change to the status quo. And while that still may be the case, as we look ahead to more people coming into the state starting in September and knowing verminus will be getting together inside as the temperature drops, coupled with these troubling regional and national trends, we've been trying to anticipate the appropriate time to deploy this tool, as well as others so we keep one step ahead of the virus and don't meet the same fate other states are experiencing right now. And if it continues to look like this fire could be headed back towards us, an expanded mask policy will be part of the mix. We'll have more information by Friday when Commissioner Pichek presents the regional data. Again, Vermonters have done a great job protecting each other and made tremendous sacrifices. But I know many are tired of doing so and just want things back to normal. But the fact is, this virus is going to be with us for a while and will be until a vaccine is in place and distributed. What we're seeing in states that open too quickly to just flip the switch is a cautionary tale for us here in Vermont. I know how concerning this is, I get the frustration but the smarter we are, the better off we'll be. This means keeping six feet apart, wearing a mask when around others whether it's mandatory or not, washing your hands a lot and staying home when sick. It also means being smart about where you travel and only go to places we've identified as low risk and quarantining for 14 days if you're traveling from any other locations or if you're taking a flight or other public transportation to get here from anywhere. Following this guidance and being smart about how we interact with each other is the best way to control it. If we do, we can keep things open, get our kids back to school in some capacity, protect our healthcare workers in the healthcare system and continue to lead the country in how we respond to this virus. It continues to take all of us working towards a common goal and as I said many times, this is literally in our hands. I thank you all for what you've done and what you'll need to do in the future and with that I'll turn it over to Dr. Levine for a health update. Thank you Governor. I'll start with just a very quick update on our data. 1,366 cases as of yesterday, 1148 recovered, that's 56. Slocal decurve unchanged and the slide I want you to focus on especially for when I discuss the Bennington-Wendham County experience later in my comments is just noticing the numbers of cases on a daily basis not radically different in the recent weeks since they have been over a period of time. So Vermont has made the national news again but in a good way, not that we're accustomed to celebrating such events but before the weekend Vermont recorded over 30 days without a death with none since June 16th and from a national standpoint I believe this is unprecedented. I look at our surrounding states and they are doing so much better than they've ever done but they still report on deaths daily or almost daily. If we look at Vermont's rate, nine deaths per 100,000 that compares with anywhere from 29 to 165 per 100,000 in the entire northeast region. As you're aware from previous discussions I've had on the topic a slight majority of the Vermont deaths have occurred inside of long-term care facilities like nursing homes and we have since instituted very strict protocols for these facilities including only recently relaxed outdoor summer visitation opportunities and a rigorous testing procedure for newly admitted residents that requires them to be tested four separate times over the course of two weeks before entering the facility. We certainly credit the directors and staff of these facilities for instituting intense measures to protect the vulnerable populations they care for as well as the families that have sacrificed visiting their loved ones and we must recognize that the very phased and gradual reopening of the state coupled with the level of virus suppression we have achieved through the cooperation and hard work of all Vermonters has led to less active cases which means less opportunity for hospitalizations and serious life-threatening illness. Turning now to education, the health department continues to work with the education sector and constantly refine K-12 guidance and listen to the abundant input and provide the most science-based guidance possible. I cannot emphasize enough how Vermont's COVID landscape looks so different from the many other states that have surged yet are still discussing reopening. Our state of viral suppression and our testing and contact tracing capability make the timing right here. Colleges and universities likewise are working very closely with the document that we discussed with Richard Schneider about two weeks ago on this podium and they are problem solving together refining the many stipulations regarding student quarantining, testing protocols upon return to campus, visitation policies, dormitory life rules and regulations, and more. From an informal survey I conducted today on my weekly call with the health centers at these colleges and universities it appears that most of the campuses in Vermont are preparing for a large majority of their expected student population to return and we will be prepared for that. Next regarding outbreaks, there are really none to report on of significance and almost and most of those that I've previously reported on are stable without new cases. I do want to discuss however the Bennington-Windom County situation which is not an outbreak. A total of 65 patients have tested positive at Manchester Medical Center. The Health Department has completed interviews on all 65. In addition we have subsequent PCR testing data on 52 of the 65 or 80 percent. 48 of these 92 percent of those have tested negative while four have tested positive and are being considered confirmed cases. These four are not epidemiologically linked to each other though they make up two pairs who have linkages to one another. Through interviews and lab data we've determined that 59 of the 65 antigen positives are not cases. In addition during the time period that elapsed between Wednesday and Saturday of last week through pop-ups, through hospital testing, through testing at local health offices, 1,613 individuals in those counties were tested. Most at the Manchester and London Dairy pop-up sites and all but five were negative. The percent positivity rate in the two counties remains as low as the state overall below two percent. Therefore we do not believe community transmission of COVID-19 is occurring. The clinicians at the Manchester Medical Center continue to work cooperatively with us and are just as concerned about finding the explanation for the discordant test results between antigen and PCR as we are. As we speak today my epidemiologic and testing staff are meeting with the CDC to follow up on that. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Levine. With that we'll open it up to questions. About the six hundred dollars running out. As you said Congress is working on it Republicans they want some three billion dollars or a student they want a billion. Democrats want some one billion. If Congress can't come up with a deal or we don't really know what's going to happen I mean what is the plan for when that six hundred dollars runs out and her monitors are faced with the financial flip? Yeah well unfortunately it will just run out we don't have the resources to backfill that but we will continue to supply those in need with unemployment benefits as well as the PUA that will continue it's just the additional six hundred dollars on top of that. I still believe that there will be some sort of agreement in Congress to continue in some capacity but but again we'll have to wait and see if they're able to be get to the table and and negotiate this. And maybe more of a follow-up for Commissioner and Heron to be on the phone but I guess kind of a two prong question first part just hoping to hear where we are in terms of our trust fund going into the next few weeks and then also whether this six hundred dollars is tax and potentially how many monitors are having their taxes with television? I'll answer the first part of that maybe Commissioner Herrington can answer the the second half or somebody from tax but I believe I believe it's tax but having said that our trust fund is in pretty good shape we benefited from a strategic strategic method of making sure that we bolstered our our trust fund we had over half a billion dollars in our trust fund when this started and to date I believe the last report I received was we're down to about 300 million at this point so we're in good shape for another few months if this continues. So again with the number of you know steady decline in those on unemployment as we open up the economy that's helpful but again we're seeing you know we're leveling off and we should be again okay for a number of months. Commissioner Herrington do you have the answer on the tax question on the six hundred dollars whether that's taxed and collected by the state or not? So yes and you are right on about the trust fund balance as of the 18th of July it was two hundred and ninety nine million nine hundred and eight thousand two hundred and thirteen dollars. So I would say eighty two thousand dollars off.  The uh with regards to the benefits all U.I. benefits are taxed uh they are taxable. Do we know how many homeowners are having uh taxes withheld? I would think that all of them I mean that we had almost 80,000 at one point and they're 50,000 almost 50,000 now so I would I would imagine all Vermonters are having taxes withheld is that correct Commissioner Herrington? So yeah so U.I. benefits are treated like wages so they are taxable. Not everybody elect to have taxed taken out at the time the benefits are distributed so they will be required to to record those as earning clinic held or taxes next year. So I can get that number but I don't have it off the top of my head about how many have elected to have taxes taken out up front. We can take a look at that Calvin. Governor we keep hearing from viewers about the mass policy and the logic behind it and the just seems to be uh what's he waiting for wouldn't wouldn't a mass policy in public raise compliance and raise the rate at which people wear math what would be the again the uncertainty uh in in some respects I can appreciate um but um you know the frustration that many have experienced throughout the country when they've initiated the mass policy has been concerning and and I and I believe that we could avoid that and we have thus far again I go back to the data I'm not convinced and it'd be hard to prove or disprove admittedly but but I'm not convinced that if we've had a mandated mass policy two months ago that our numbers would be any different than they are today so my question would be why not uh continue to do what we're doing um because it's proven to be successful and to use that tool keep that tool in the toolbox and utilize it when it's necessary and as I said when I'm seeing uh this wave possibly coming back towards us we'll know more on Friday and if it looks like uh that's the case as well as uh anticipating more people coming into the state in September uh then it might be necessary and we'll do that but you know mandates um people resist mandates they've resist being told what to do particularly for monitors it seems as though I'm I'm I'm familiar friends with you know uh with many uh who bristle at at the prospect of the government telling them do something again educating uh gives us uh better compliance I believe um but we may be at a point where you know with other people coming into the state it's not just for monitors we have to worry about um so this might be the right time to do so so again I would say I put our numbers up against other states uh and uh right now we've been successful doing it just the way we're doing it and it may be necessary to implement uh follow up with that there's a report that New Hampshire is seeing some spike in children uh rolling schools uh what I guess are fleeing cities are fleeing other places and higher rates of COVID have we seen any of that uh yet? I not not that I'm aware of um and I watched in New Hampshire's numbers they've been fairly steady um if their positivity rate is increasing it's not rising dramatically that I can see at least on a daily basis I mean obviously they're much higher than we are but um in every uh capacity but but it's not alarming no I mean children who uh children with parents who may have vacation homes in New Hampshire for example who are choosing to enroll their children in New Hampshire schools are we seeing anything equivalent of not uh not again not that I'm aware of um but um but I don't know if Secretary French might have the answer to that but I it may be too soon to tell. Secretary French are you on? Yes Governor I had uh start to start hearing stories I don't know if we could keep the question a little bit. Yes Stuart was just asking he said uh that in New Hampshire uh there's been some rumor that many people from out of state are coming into New Hampshire and enrolling their uh kids in uh New Hampshire schools I'm wondering if we're seeing any of that here in Vermont. Yeah I'm not sure uh that we understand that if that's a trend in Vermont yet or not that's something certainly uh we could ask school boards uh they're the ones that would be seeing uh those those requests for residency is actually I think usually we would start to see more of that activity a little later in August but that's something certainly we can keep an eye on. Governor D given the numbers right now and where do we stand now as far as uh possibly turning the spade in the jobs area with different areas of the economy? Yeah I say we're in a holding pattern at this point. Again the numbers that we're seeing in California you know I watch their numbers on a daily basis and about 10,000 positive cases every single day. They have been third in the country or second in their second in the country in terms of the number of positives. New York by far has been that has had the most positive numbers but California is catching up my prediction would be watching the numbers next week they will they will exceed New York's numbers. So New York I mean California, Arizona, Texas, Florida what we're seeing in the Sun Belt is concerning to us and last week as we showcase on Friday starting to see a little bit of migration Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and so forth so it it appears it could be coming back our way so that's concerning concerning enough so I don't want to open things up any further because I don't want to retreat I don't want to go backwards I want to move forward so we're in a bit of a holding pattern at this point okay so at about 50% is where we're at right I was thinking along the line yeah well again with manufacturing we're open 100% in manufacturing so there are jobs available I believe and and they could continue to open up but as we're seeing the economy throughout the country being impacted it has to be a place to sell your your product so they may not be up to capacity because they don't have any place to to distribute whatever product they're manufacturing so that goes for everything you know we're all tied together in some way especially here in Vermont we're you know we're at the the whims of a worldwide regional and and national type of economy good morning these questions are for Dr. Levine over the weekend the company that makes the antigen test Friedel just revised its sensitivity to 96.7 percent I guess I'm struggling to reconcile what you're saying are a lot of false positives in southern Vermont with a test that numerous sources say is really more likely to land you with a false negative result I guess how accurate do you believe these antigen tests are and then how accurate are the PCR tests that we're doing thanks cat so you're absolutely right we worry about false negatives more than we do false positives when the FDA first approved these tests their false negative rate was at least but probably much greater than seven percent and possibly in the 14 or 15 percent it's not believed that most of the PCR tests have that lower sensitivity on the other hand the specificity the likelihood that if you don't have the disease you're going to test negative you know seems to be very high with a minimal false positive rate that was done though on a very select group of symptomatic patients and that was done on a smaller sample size if you will because in this fast moving pandemic the emergency use authorization EUA process is streamlined so that capacity for the country could increase the specificity has been listed as almost 100 percent now anyone who's practiced medicine for any period of time knows you there's really no test that has a 100 percent specificity but it's believed to be that great so one would not expect any of the Manchester positive results to be false positives if one used that kind of a logic however as i pointed out after significant epidemiological as well as laboratory investigation it does appear that these positive results do not represent true positive results so there's something else going on that i'm pretty sure we will uncover as an aside i've spoken with a colleague in another new england state and they have a small series of individuals who had a similar situation occur where they all tested positive on the exact same testing platform and subsequent follow-up testing of these totally asymptomatic people came back negative i also want to make a point more for the public at large just in terms of how we test people in general this principle of screening for disease and this has big implications because of the proposed use of these antigen test platforms generally one wants to screen for a disease meaning that you're screening someone who has no symptoms feels well but you just want to know do they have something or not similar to what we do when we advise people to have mammograms or to have colonoscopies or what have you we're screening somebody who has no symptoms but we think it's in their best interest to have the test to find something before they develop symptoms so when you screen for disease you want a test that is very sensitive meaning it's going to have a small number of false negatives you're willing for the positives to have some false positives because then you're going to follow up that test with a confirmatory test that is so specific that it pretty much tells you who's a true positive and who's a false positive the process that's going on with these antigen test platforms concerns me in a sense because many times they're being used for a population of people who have no symptoms who are in a setting like Vermont where the prevalence of their condition is very low from the start so it makes it challenging to use those tests as a screening test the Health and Human Services Administration in Washington is now poised to be sending a lot of these machines out to nursing homes albeit nursing homes in surge areas where we would expect the prevalence of disease to be higher because they're in a surge but again if people at the nursing home have no symptoms we have to be careful how we interpret the test result that we get in those settings and I think what's going on here in Vermont and perhaps in one other New England state can be greatly informing as to some kind of systematic error that's occurring with this testing process that may inform the future use of these machines not meaning these are no good just meaning that we'll learn where the Achilles heel really is be able to have that worked upon and make them a much more reliable platform for the uses that they're being proposed for did I cover everything you wanted well so to the other part of my question what's the percent accuracy rate on a PCR test that we're doing and do you feel that the PCR tests you got in southern Vermont were accurate sure so I'm not sure I can give you a final number because I don't even think the FDA can give us a true number of what you're calling accuracy and it does vary from one platform to another and unlike these antigen tests where I believe there's only two that have been approved the PCR tests there are a legion number of antibody of PCR tests so it's hard to characterize we think the sensitivities are probably greater than greater than or equal to 95 percent so making the likelihood of a false negative very low and we are using them as a confirmatory test meaning that we think that the likelihood is that if it's negative it's truly negative the test the 1600 tests done in southern Vermont were done either at the state lab the uvm lab or the Broad Institute in Boston just like the majority of our other tests that are higher priority tests in the state so we're pretty confident about the reliability and I think looking at a total of 1600 makes us even more confident with such a large number. Garnett the company that's one of them is running them here in Vermont the antigen tests as they have reached out multiple times to the health department's offer to run PCR and antigen tests side by side they say that you've told them that you're not interested in doing that given the desire for more testing and a faster turnaround time on test results why wouldn't the health department want to at least see if this could be a reliable way to supplement our testing capacity. Yeah so first of all I haven't actually said what was attributed to me that we're not interested but the follow-up it was another health department representative okay but the follow-up to that is actually I certainly at this point would want to put a pause until this situation is resolved especially knowing that it's now involving colleagues in another state as well and once that pause is over because there's a readily determined cause for the discordant results certainly be gamed for these. Again I do think the antigen tests have a have a role but if you look at the guidelines that the association of public health labs has put together and the WHO they are heavily emphatic on the symptomatic person who again you want to define pretty quickly know what you need to do with that individual and not wait days for a test result to come back so if you have an accurate test result in a person who's symptomatic in an area where there's prevalence of disease you'd want to be able to move on that quickly so I do think there is a significant role for such antigen platforms but we do have to really understand their pitfalls and problems clearly before we go full full steam ahead. Our next question Eric. Thank you along the same line is that other new English-based medicine? No. So do you have advice for Vermonters? It seems kind of obvious but in how they should be tested? Advice for Vermonters and how they should be tested? Or what kind of test I mean versus the antigen test or the PCR test? Sure. So as of today there aren't that many opportunities for them to be tested on the antigen platform. There are going to be increasing opportunities as these machines get deployed more and more but the probability if they just wanted to test is that the PCR tests would be available much more to them than the antigen test and because the PCR test has now been utilized so extensively both in Vermont and nationally and internationally I would certainly say they should be able to rely on that test and give it a little time and they'll be able to rely on the antigen test I would hope to. My question is for Dan French. The Islander is hearing from readers across three counties about concerns on reopening in their communities and one major concern is parents trying to keep their respective jobs so they can pay taxes, mortgage, whatever but continue child care options when their kids are not in school. As the Education Agency mandated encourage whatever discussed having a simple rule that children in the same family go to school on the same days so that the number of child care days would be reduced and parents better chance to keep their jobs. Thanks Mike. No we haven't contemplated ending that from the state perspective. I will say districts are going to have flexibility in deciding you know to what extent they utilize in person remote learning or what we're calling high rate or some combination of the two and I think you know put the emphasis on district decision making that's precisely I think where that type of feedback should be considered and it's most appropriately considered so parents you know should definitely be having that conversation with school boards and vice versa and that's a very important consideration but I think you know from the state perspective we would have difficulty I think managing such an approach and we think you know that's left to the hands of local leaders to respond to the needs of their community. Great thank you and a follow-up to Dr. Levine. If Governor Scott is going to possibly move to mandating on that which he mentioned earlier probably needs some research and not just that feeling to make such an order. I'm wondering what research or investigation the health department has undertaken in an effort to better understand the problem by large numbers of monitors refused to put on masks in public places like at convenience stores and other public places. What research is being done by your contract tracers or other employees to get to the bottom of the problem? Sure let me go back a step first Mike and just talk about research about masks and facial coverings. So the Governor would be standing on firm public health ground at this point in time even though you've seen the nation go through oscillations since March where first public officials were saying don't wear a mask often because they didn't want masks to be actually used by the public because they needed to save them for healthcare providers because of the PPE shortage and then suddenly the public was told to start using a mask. The research is continuing but the research has been more positive now in the direction of masks and the research regarding both droplet transmission and aerosol transmission of virus has been more compelling with regard to why a mask might be protective. So there's that in the background. I'm not aware of a lot of research that compares mandating a mask to just recommending a mask so we should just leave that because that's probably work yet to be done and as this pandemic continues to evolve. When it comes to why a vermoner would choose to or not choose to wear a mask some of the research we've had to date I believe shows that about 85 percent of vermoners will put themselves in a category of always or most of the time would wear a mask. So it is a significant majority. There is a minority that have a variety of reasons for not wearing a mask and they're really all over the place. There's not one compelling reason. There's a small group that just don't believe in them or want to have the right to decide for themselves what to do but there are others that are just not clear on you know if there really is a difference that it would make. There are others who feel that they can't wear one for a variety of perhaps health related reasons etc. The health department has worked with a marketing firm to try to get even more solid information about this because when we get that kind of information we can tailor our communication and educational approaches to the public in a way that meets the need so that we'll get at whatever demographic group has whatever reason for not wearing a mask and try to address it directly in a very fact laid in way that will perhaps show an understanding from a behavioral approach as to why there's some resistance again to try to again through education work that through so we're actually working with the entire state government right now in a major communications campaign regarding masks which you may have seen and we'll see more of but then there will be some future guidance coming based on this marketing research which is very new so it's not something we could just learn yesterday turn around tomorrow into a a new an even broader campaign than the one i've talked about because this takes some intelligent design behind it and some psychology do you have copies of their investigations or their surveys yes get them yes i talk to uh i mean they this is talking to vermanus this is talking to vermanus a random survey of vermanus okay so like standing outside a convenience store where as we talked in the past there is a very low percentage of vermanus wearing masks when they just run into buy their beer sandwich cigarettes whatever they they've targeted places like that or are they going to supermarkets or where's the research done on the phone yeah a lot of this is not standing in a in a setting like you're describing so then i'm seeing first hand they're just hopefully finding people to stay there right it's it's self report okay and last thing is would it make sense to have mandatory masks in place before the large number of university students arrive in vermont to cross vermont yeah i think the governor's opening remarks alluded to that completely talking about students coming back talking about foliage seekers coming into the state in september anticipating that but looking at the data that we have at this point in time and where that data directing us to and we can get that data this afternoon or today sometimes the data that the governor is referring to you'll see on friday from commissioner p-chat the data that i was referring to regarding the survey i will make sure my communications team forward you because we have a brief on that yeah okay thank you thank you very well this is a question for secretary branch i have two questions but first one for secretary branch have you seen any trend of vermont parents in response to the pandemic requirements moving away from the public school system towards home schooling or other private schooling options hi gay guys yes we have seen an increase in homeschooling applications just to tell you to what extent that will play out as a trend i think in particular it was only last week when we published our guidance on hybrid learning so i go so i understand the options that are available you know we could expect the data to change accordingly and how would you assess the i guess the rate of it of increase a lot of you 40 30 what yeah i think i don't have specific data currently but i would say it's on the order of like a 10 to 15 percent increase oh okay and will will the public schools be able to in some way help people who choose the homeschooling option i mean are there resources that would be available to them from the schools if they homeschool not necessarily the way our regulation functions the homeschooling the parents are more or less have to compile their own plans school districts are required to have a policy that describes to what extent homeschooling parents can access or take advantage of activities operated by the school such as athletics or coming in for a one-on instruction on a certain course but that's that's really described the nature of that relationship between the two okay well thank you mr secretary governor do you have any information about when the ramon state house will be reopened or any sense of the process what's going on with that you know i don't a guy i'm i'm confident they won't be opening up for their september or august september session i believe that they will still be remote interactively remotely meeting but i don't know about the i think they're in the same position we all are in trying to determine where we're going to be in january and whether you know a lot will depend on on national spread as well as whether we get this contained and whether there's a vaccine available so i think those are questions that no one has the answer to at this point in time but that'll be a consideration in the in january but i'm i'm quite confident they'll be meeting remotely in the august september session okay thank you thanks my career hi governor uh go a little easier on you today than i did on friday uh i first was curious if there was an update on the state's response to the u.s. c.i.s. uh layoffs or or job losses temporary job losses and uh what the state is doing to prepare i believe they're a little over a week away maybe two weeks away a little less than that yeah i may have uh commissioner herrington answer on that but what a from what i understand we're having difficulty a receipt getting the information from the federal government about who specifically is going to be laid off and and getting information to them so it's uh it's been problematic in some respects commissioner herrington can you elaborate on that sure thank you governor um so first off with respect to the the layoff of the furlough you know under normal circumstances with a typical employer we typically especially one that's laying off a large number of employees we would seek to receive um information for each of the employees that would help us expedite the unemployment insurance claim process for those employees um specifically because this is a federal agency that process can take a while because we have to actually receive uh confirmation of wages from the federal government before we can pay out benefits so we have requested on multiple occasions to receive uh the uh detailed information for each of the impacted employees and as of yet um usc is and the federal government have denied our request for that information we we continue to reach out to them to see if we can we can get that information but have not uh to date um with regards to services being provided uh we are through our workforce development division working with the local state usc is uh state office um to not only provide uh information to employees um through usc is management but also uh we are providing virtual rapid response services uh either through live uh meetings or recorded meetings that essentially walk the employee through um what services are provided through re-employment services and workforce development services while also walking them through the unemployment insurance process and how to file and what they can expect through that process um so again those had began last week and will continue leading up and even following um the date of separation but you know our biggest concern right now is that this is a large number of employees who are going to be impacted uh and right now um we're concerned about our ability to turn around uh those claims in a timely manner due to the lack of information we have uh with regards to the employees uh thanks for to be checked uh labor secretary anyway uh moving on to my prepared question um i've been made aware of an individual that traveled from arkansas on friday arrived in vermont by airplane went out to eat with family members in a restaurant in burlington saturday saturday i believe went to a fairly large outdoor wedding limited to no social distancing um i believe it was last week or the week before governor you said that um your executive order to have people quarantine for 14 days when traveling outside of the approved areas uh is is rather unenforceable um your executive order was enforced uh in the earlier part of the year on a on a gym owner who stayed open and can you just clarify why you know it's easier to enforce that type of behavior and not necessarily uh a travel ban and and if there was enough information you know couldn't law enforcement uh you know do a little bit of investigation and finds who is and is not obeying this executive order yeah gregg i understand your point but you know common sense would would tell you it's much easier to see a gym owner on main street in in ruttland that's open with the lights on and people coming in and out and showing uh outward defiance to the law uh than someone who is coming in uh through our through our airport for instance when we have i don't know if we have 380 flights a week coming in and out of burlington uh to use law enforcement to track all those i mean then just do the numbers i don't know how many are on the flights but let's say there's 385 flights and and there's um 10 people that would get you to 4 000 people pretty quick uh i'm not sure that we have enough law enforcement to track down every single person coming in there are signs available uh we're trying to make sure that we uh we communicate what our expectations are but it's not a perfect system and we just don't have the capability to do that nor do we have the capability of stopping people i mean uh you know the canadian border is one thing that's closed down but i don't know how we would close down we can't close down our borders into new hampshire and new york or massachusetts um and and then to track them down so to speak uh would just would just not be feasible or possible uh without a lot of other people in the spring time the state had a tip website up for uh gathering information on on businesses so we're not following the executive order is it not possible to do some sort of tip line or or uh online systems for people to yeah greg i think it exists um so if you want to send a tip and um feel free it's on the i believe on the public safety website but maybe i could ask mike shirling which which site is that on mike fill up on the public safety website uh although we are in the midst of exploring a potential pivot to a different mechanism and if it does get replaced with something else uh there'll be a flag up there to indicate uh how else to make a report but it's still up it has been up correct it's still up yeah it is correct over of course we're actively uh following up on those tips depending on the severity of the tip yes okay all right thank you governor thank you uh everyone hello can you hear me we can great thank you um dr levine um regarding the the rise in the uh in the caseload in some of these harder states it isn't it isn't it also true that the uh that the uh their fatality rate is exponentially lower than the the three states that had uh had lockdowns uh like new jersey new york massachusetts and how could we explain that um i'm going to let dr levine answer some of that but uh you know we've learned a lot over the last three or four months and when you compare i think new york who has the highest number of positives highest death rate i think there were 33 or 34 thousand people who died of uh of the coronavirus in new york alone and then you compare it to states like california and as i said in my remarks or i answered a question earlier i believe that california will exceed uh the number of cases positive cases exceed uh new york and uh in the next week or so but their death rate as you said uh death rate is far far lower down around i mean still a lot of deaths i mean seven thousand deaths i believe as well as in texas and and uh florida their death rate is down so we've learned a lot about protecting the most vulnerable and what we have to do to to make sure that happens but maybe uh dr levine can elaborate on that thank you yeah not a tremendous amount of elaboration but uh part of it is the relative youth i'll put youth in quotes of the population that's been impacted in the most recent surges part of it has to do with believe it or not and i think a lot of us haven't really kept up with this um the management of an ill patient with covid has evolved and there are actually for the very very seriously ill um more innovations and how they are managed in the hospital and in the icu with or without ventilator use that have occurred there's also now uh at least two drugs that people will hang their hat on remdesivir and dexamethasone for again the very ill who are in the hospital um which um makes a big difference and using those drugs in ways that weren't really appreciated well back in march april even may i would say uh so that has evolved as well and part of the more uh numbers in youth involves the fact that they are less likely to get hospitalized at all but having said all of that we do know that you know if we look at july 4th as a major time frame two weeks after july 4th would be in the july 18th range so end of last week we would begin to see over the next week or 10 days if there's going to be a use the word surge in in deaths in some of the states that have had a lot of disease activity because we know that that sort of decline in the health of the person who has covid and is going to get seriously ill for that subset that begins to occur you know two three weeks down the road from when they first became ill so we need to continue to watch that closely sure uh doctor i've got a question from one of my viewers uh they had asked about if if the virus is so prevalent and we're worried about uh you know the droplets and and everything i guess this goes to math too um why do they need to go way back in the back of your sinuses to get a sample if it's that prevalent wouldn't it be you know wouldn't it be present and in saliva and and wouldn't mass only prevent uh you know stuff from that part of your sinuses coming out only when coughing or sneezing yeah all all all good thoughts so um the the sort of traditional we'll call it now and time on her test is the nasopharyngeal swab which goes to the very back of the nose um and some of the test platforms still insist that that is the sample that their statistics are based on for performance and that's what's accepted but we've learned more and more about the utility of nasal swabs which are in the front of the nose and can be done by the person under observation still have a specific technique and time frame they need to occur in it can't just be a little q-tip you put in and take out and send to the lab it's a little more complicated but not that much and so you know our hope is that the nasal swab technology will be the technology to go with because it's so much more comfortable for people and it seems to enjoy good accuracy as well like everything with the covid epidemic there's a separate supply line for the right kind of swabs the right kind of containers for saline or culture media that those go with so you have to still be very careful about having the abundant supply to do that with regard to saliva i'm really waiting for some real landmark publications to come out soon because a lot of labs are looking at this and if they can demonstrate that that method is as successful as the nasal and nasal pharyngeal method that will become very very popular because obviously spitting into a cup is a lot different than having something invasive if i could call a nasal swab invasive and i think would please people in the public a lot more who need to get tested so so that's something to consider again that may require its own set of needs from a supply chain standpoint but we should watch closely in the literature to see when that becomes something that's real time finally you know the the method of how you infect somebody else um you know it's it's in the air so whether it got there through a droplet through an aerosol or what have you um the the facial covering should protect anything if it's applied correctly should protect anything from the nose down to the mouth so to me it wouldn't really matter which way you were producing things the fact is the velocity of what you produce is going to be different if you're talking versus singing versus coughing versus sneezing so it's really important to have that in place to prevent all of the above from being the cause of how one infected somebody else and how many particles then got through to the atmosphere because none of these even the n 95s it's called an n 95 because it filters 95 percent of the very smallest particles none of them are going to be 100 percent but they're all going to be dramatically impactful in people who are actively ill or don't even know they're ill okay sure uh in governor i from what i'm hearing i i think you might be right with uh the mandatory mass thing uh again with an old yankee saw they said that uh that a yankee will do whatever they're asked but nothing of what they're told so um i i think that uh from what i'm hearing uh the voluntary mask request might yield more compliance than a mandatory one but that's just what i'm hearing anyways thank you all very much yeah we're hoping the educational component will be helpful uh regardless of what we do i mean i and i believe that we get compliance when people want to do the right thing so sometimes it does have to be their idea but we're hoping they they'll get the right idea very soon local 22 hello can you hear me can hi um so not sure the best person to answer the favor if you guys have the answer over there but um just in regards to college students returning for the fall obviously college students come from all over will everyone need to quarantine for 14 days and will colleges be providing uh covid testing for them yeah there's a whole protocol that's uh being contemplated at this point in time i think uh different colleges and universities have different approaches but uh but yes they will be required to have some sort of tests as they arrive maybe um i don't know ted brady or or secretary curly might be on might might have that information yeah governor sir curly um it's hard for me to quote exactly what's going to happen but there's a college research program that i'd be happy to share with you for me um it is uh certainly following the state guidelines for quarantine in terms of where people are coming in from and requirements and quarantining um there's a host of testing that's required in some of the colleges and universities are choosing to go over and above the levels that we have established but more than happy to share that with you that that's planned with you with this helpful oh yes that'd be great thank you perfect you bet yeah perfect thank you chris roey newport daily express yes good afternoon i realize you can't stop it but do you discourage the modest i'm going out of state on vacation knowing what you know today it depends on where they're going chris um you know that's why we have the um the modeling that we've done uh and it shows some of the the counties throughout the northeast that are safe to go to or as safe as we are and uh so i would say if you're going to one of the counties that are green on our on our map that's okay but but if you're going to a county that is yellow or red then you need to take precautions and you need to quarantine when you return so green is okay yellow and red is not so take a look at the map before you travel most of most the main is okay there's one county there that's been problematic around the portland area and most of new hampshire as well and i think there's one county in the southern part of new hampshire and and some of uh massachusetts has opened up and a lot of northern new york as well so there are other places you can go visit but just be smart about what you do and take a look at the map and and adhere to the guidance because it'll keep us all safe okay great thank you so following on on uh mr roe's question what has the state been doing to let people out of state know about the regulations i know that as you come in to vermont there are signs saying to look things up on the state's website but um had any effort been made to let people who are contemplating come to coming to vermont know um what the rules are i know i've had people contact me from out of vermont asking whether they can come to vermont and i explained things and they always seemed very surprised um so what have you been doing yeah i mean obviously you can go to our eccd website and that will give you all the information anyone traveling into vermont our lodging establishments are directing people and pointing them in the right direction as well and we have signage on the interstate obviously but you know marketing is difficult and expensive we've we found that out over the years when we try and market vermont in any respect the money doesn't go far so for us to get out especially with the changing data is difficult admittedly difficult so i'd ask commissioner secretary curly if she could maybe elaborate on what what initiatives we're taking but we're trying to do all we can hopefully the media does does this part as well to tell especially those who cross into other other states to let people know what our regulations and guidance is and tales yeah governor to elaborate our our tourism and marketing teams are regularly using any of the outlets they have for travel to broadly share our quarantine and our cross-state travel policies and also we fair hosting the travel map on our vermont vacation site and any link that that they can that is connected to the vermont vacation website as well so as you mentioned there's a variety of ways we hope to get it out there we do receive a fair number of folks who are inquiring inquiring about it so we hope to catch as many people as possible to help them understand what our expectation is thank you i had one other it's not exactly a question it's a request but if dr levine would be kind enough to forward the information that mr donahue asked for to me as well i'd be most grateful thank you i bet he's kind enough to do that well that's good to hear hello thank you for taking my question these questions are probably for dr levine uh no perhaps governor none none taken great okay thank you thank you um i do have more than one question i hope you'll indulge me considering uh that i'm reporting to folks who are affected by what's going on here in southern vermont uh i'll try to be focused uh there's a dr levine there's a fair bit of confusion about when asymptomatic people should take a test and when it would register an accurate result and i wondered if you have any guidance to share on that as to for example is there a window from when you think you've been exposed to when you're most likely to get an accurate reading from either ptr or nanogen test yeah thanks for asking these questions uh because i'm sure lots of people in any part of the state want the answer so um if you feel you've been exposed and want to test the likelihood you're going to develop symptoms uh would occur with most probability on day four through day seven or so um so we're generally recommending people get a test on the seventh day if they can but obviously depends when you can set up a test etc so just keep that time frame in mind the um again the antigen test for someone who doesn't have any symptoms and may not have any exposure history or whatever uh would have a higher false negative rate than a pcr test so again if you're asymptomatic and want to test the pcr would be preferable but let me just say that we have done pop-up testing for months now actually across the state and in asymptomatic people we're not finding many positives people who just want to know their result they don't have an exposure history or anything and in fact we're testing a lot of asymptomatic people because they must be tested they might work in a sector that deals with vulnerable people so they have a testing protocol they may be a healthcare worker they may be of a monitor who did leave the state and wants to come back and on day seven of quarantine wants to be released from quarantine with a negative test so there are lots of reasons for people who don't have symptoms to still want tests um and those we would recommend be done uh by pcr with our current state of knowledge perhaps this is a question that might not have an easy answer but um so many of these do not why would a test of an asymptomatic person result in a positive finding if in fact COVID-19 is in fact not present I guess that's that's sort of the mystery about the antigen test that I'm trying to figure out and I wonder if you have any has there any indication as to why that would be the case right so this gets down to what are the many theories about what's going on in our current situation so I'll try to be very brief and crisp about this right here you go through those theories yesterday on um on vpr so if you want to if you do want to distill though that's fine yeah so um you know an asymptomatic person can have a positive test on whatever platform because they're in that so-called pre-symptomatic phase 48 hours before they begin begin to feel ill and so during that time period they feel fine but you could find active virus if you if you did a test so there is that possibility and that would be uh what i'm calling a true positive test again in this situation we've interviewed most of those people now many days later and they don't seem to satisfy the case definition for a COVID positive person uh and they've had the additional negative pcr test which confirms our suspicions but you know if there's something wrong in the actual testing protocol that's been going on that led to these positives whether it has to do with the machine itself whether it has to do with calibration of the machine whether it has to do with the environment and contamination of the machine there are many many possibilities which again don't speak to the fact that this test should never be used it's just this particular situation and perhaps the one elsewhere in new england that i refer to um may have uh been suffering from it doesn't mean that the test should be thrown away and never used again um these these tests will have a role for sure and we just need to get to the bottom of this one to be uh extremely transparent about what's going on and how to prevent that when future uh clinicians use these platforms all right uh really quickly can you tell us which other new england state is having a similar experience management test yeah it was main main okay thank you and um lastly in pcr testing what's the protocol for determining a positive test that is is there any allowable presence of COVID-19 that would still count as a negative test in a pcr test or i mean so i'm trying to figure out if there's a tolerance or if there's you know if there's allowance for uh what the allowance for error is there and you know whether it's set up to detect a large amount of genetic material or if it's set up to be very sensitive sure so so you're you're sort of asking me um what does it take for somebody who actually has COVID to have a false negative pcr yeah yeah so you know what we know about these tests the the pcr process itself it's been described as exquisitely sensitive so if there's a number of copies of the virus present in the secretion that is being tested that pcr test should find it but that doesn't say how well the test does in practice just says if i go into a lab and have a certain number of viral copies will the test pick it up almost certainly so the story really is how that's applied clinically and could there be a problem with how the sample was taken could there be a problem with where the sample was taken could there be a problem with what the sample was then put into to transport it could there be a problem with the temperature conditions of the transporting or some other condition of transporting and then could there be a problem at the lab itself with the initial step of adding a reagent to try to separate out the nucleic acid that's going to then undergo pcr so there are so many steps along the way that if a test doesn't perform as well as you might have anticipated then um a number of things could have gone wrong so the rule of thumb would be for a clinical person if you're confronted with the person that you're convinced has the disease you may say your test was negative today but i'm really concerned i need you to continue to stay isolated we're going to repeat your test in x number of days and see what it looks like that because sequential testing can usually then deal with the issue of why did this person come out negative when i really thought they were going to be positive all right so we were speaking what one more quick follow-up i promise is that uh you were speaking only if rebecca says it's fine she says it's fine apparently okay thank you rebecca um you're talking earlier about the the lack of a hundred percent reliability for any test true and i guess in a situation where where people have well-founded concerns about the severe the potential severity of this illness um the lack of that there's a lack of certainty that that comes with it and i think maybe that's maybe what sort of plays into folks anxiety about what's going on i wonder if you could sort of speak to that and try to reassure folks about sort of the nature of of medical testing and and and the fact that we have to accept that there are no 100 percent certainty yeah so um dealing with uncertainty is is part parcel of what we buy into in medicine when we practice medicine we always know that nothing is 100 percent certain but on the other hand if you're thoughtful and you apply different tests in different uh rationales you'll you'll come up with the right formula so in this case we've uh had at least 80 percent of those who had a positive antigen test get a subsequent pcr and they and they turned out negative so we can reassure them we've gone through extensive interview process trying to see if all of these people fit the clinical definition for the disease that the cdc has accepted and many did not and we've done just dramatic amount of pop-up site testing throughout the communities involved and not found an underlying level of viral activity that's noteworthy um and that would indicate community transmission of virus so that's about as reassuring as i can be you know putting all of that together in one package uh together i think it provides a very very compelling case and then we'll have what food is born hopefully from our conversations with cdc and other federal agencies so that we can uh really give people a reason for why we have the results we have right now and further reassure them uh thank you very much for your indulgence that's my questions liam vpr governor did you expect to issue a math mandate on friday um um liam did you hear my opening comments i i did i did i didn't want to say if you're looking for clarity you know it all depends on what the uh what the modeling shows um we're we hope to update that over the next day or so uh so when we announced the modeling on friday i'll have a better idea indication as to what we do from there i would say uh that if it's not friday it'll be sometime in the future i just sense uh that we're going to have this uh you know what we're seeing again throughout the the west and the south and up the east coast it looks like it is coming back towards us so we want to prepare and with the number of students coming in in september and as i alluded to before we'll have some travelers um for fall foliage as well so we'll want to just prepare ourselves for that um but we're going to continue to utilize our education campaign and uh trying to convince people uh that it's the right thing to do regardless of whether it's mandated on friday or not uh earlier in the press conference you said you're not sure that you'd had a mandate two months ago it would have changed the where we are right now and obviously things are looking pretty good um but i mean you know the evidence with that of you know the effectiveness of math has been clear even kind of two months ago or at least pretty strong two months ago so even if it had to change the picture don't you think two months of people living with a mandate would have brought up compliance so that as we're seeing potentially a surge i mean the fall uh the situation would be more mitigated um like wouldn't more time have been good just for the educational opportunities of everyone you know we've uh you know it's not as though that we haven't done anything with mass along the way i talked about it almost every single week about it being a good idea to do we've uh initiated this mass campaign uh initially when we started opening up businesses right off the bat uh we made a mandatory for those businesses uh to have their employees wearing masks we made mass mandatory for those on public transportation so there's been a number of initiatives along the way that have gotten us to this point and i know uh as well allowing municipalities to mandate mass that's gotten us further compliance so you know we're moving in the right direction i i would have to again counter uh that the numbers aren't showing what you're saying i mean i just don't see that we would be in a any different position when our numbers are so low right now the lowest positivity rate in the in the country the lowest number of positives in the country i mean it shows that we're doing something right and uh whether that's because we're we're compliant by nature we want to do the right thing and and uh that's been working so forcing someone to do it two months ago who knows what would have happened the resistance might have been uh counter to what you might predict maybe people wouldn't be wearing them because the government's telling them to do so at that point in time so we'll never be able to prove or disprove that uh but uh but i can show the numbers uh here and the numbers show that we're doing pretty well thank you lisa the valley reporter hello this question is for dr the meaning i understand that the cdc has just approved the use of cool testing for coviz will romanti use of cool testing wearing four tests are batched together and testing all the fall out of all four are negative those four are done if they're positive all four are that he tested it said to be useful for space with low positivity rates and i'm wondering if that would help speed up our testing here yeah thanks for that question let me just explain to everybody the concept of pool testing i think you did but they may not have heard it as well on the phone pool testing means you take a whole bunch of samples put them together and test them as a group so that you save on doing individual tests on all of those samples so if you think ahead that they're all going to be negative that would be a really good strategy if that batch of samples came out positive you would still have saved your original specimen so you would then go back and individually test each of those so say the lab does a thousand tests a day you might decide well i'm going to divide them into groups of 50 or groups of 100 or what have you so you would save on all of the supplies of testing that you use the reagents and stuff like that so it is not a bad strategy we haven't actually resorted to it if you will we've tried to keep things less complicated right now and it wasn't that approval process that suddenly been in the newspaper since yesterday when it occurred so we're going to have to think about that because you're right we are a low positivity state so we might actually be able to conserve a lot on reagents if we follow that track we have a governor appointed testing and tracing task force that deals with questions like this multiple times a week so now that this is news i think this will be something that we can put on their agenda there's no urgency or emergency to making a decision on this but it could be a reasonable strategy to use you know i remind people on an average day we may have zero to two positives or we may have 17 positives we're in that range but we're testing literally thousand plus specimens a day across all of our different platforms so there may be a role for this when we have that few number of positives on a given day thank you as a quick follow-up i've been looking on those state health department health websites and for people who are traveling to vermont and those are returning to vermont scheduling tests looks to be almost impossible if i were to return today on the 21st to quarantine for seven days until July 27th there are no openings for a state of vermont test until August 5th which is nine days after my one week quarantine yes and that's a timely question because it points out the fact we have multiple avenues for you to pursue so you could return to vermont and in preparation for day seven call your healthcare provider and say i'd like to have a test on day seven can you help me arrange that that wouldn't necessarily have to be through a pop-up site that the state was sponsoring in any particular part of the state that could be through the normal mechanisms of how the healthcare system gets tests scheduled and done and that's what we would actually recommend we've also really started a partner a lot with our healthcare systems whether it be hospitals federally qualified health centers or primary care practices with this particular need in mind and i'm happy to announce that yet another bit of progress was made just in the last day with wall greens actually in sx junction so we're continuing to work with the commercial sector if you will to try to expand opportunities that way as well so it just points out there are multiple pathways for a person to pursue above and beyond what's on our website for a state-sponsored pop-up in the region great thank you dr leah i did reach out to a local health care provider and ask about scheduling tests for people returning to vermont and they very specifically responded that the system was overwhelmed there were long ways it was hard for them to schedule them and go to the state of vermont website so that's good information i thank you for that thank you tim vermont business magazine hi rebecca i had two questions one for jill jill bolstein about how the full proprietor grant program was was working out just started and for dr levine there's a situation apparently in williston where perhaps some children were exposed to an unmasked child care provider and i'm wondering if i know that your department isn't being do this and i wonder if you have any update on that we'll start with uh commissioner goldstein first hi this is commissioner goldstein the focal price of programs started on monday and i don't have the numbers for you i know there's a tremendous amount of interest the way that one will work is i believe they're accepting applications till august and we'll be doing a selection by lottery so it's very very different uh from the way that we're doing the apcd intact currently but we can get a number for you and get back to you i actually get a couple of calls myself helping people walk through the the application is a little bit more complicated than some of the other ones in the way just the website was set up as an fyi and then some of the people didn't know that you could also apply for the eidl which i'm kind of curious that it didn't know that how about for the the ongoing grant that you've already talked about through the tax department accd how are those how are those going very they're going very well um accd has 1700 applications 400 of which are approved a little bit more than 400 are approved and uh sex are expected to go out this week on each cd and i know tax had a payment last week at the end of last week and another one uh this week as well so uh it's progressing there's still a very robust um review process we have hundreds that we are hearing and approving um and i just uh ask everybody to be patient because uh it is you know quite an undertaking and uh but we're happy that some people already received payment last week and will receive payments this week and we'll do that continuing on uh each week can i still apply for those there's still money available yes there's still money available so definitely still still find get the message out it's a great point about faux proprietors not necessarily knowing what other avenues are available and they are eligible to apply for federal money so um i think that that might have been something overload thank you thanks hi i'll respond about the child care uh this this again gives me an opportunity to broaden the discussion a little bit um the child care you're referring to has gone one full week without any reported cases um the it's a good example because again as you pointed out it was an adult who was the ill person initially uh and then uh some children subsequently tested positive the bottom line though again it's the theme we've been repeating is the transmission pattern is usually adult to child and not child to adult whether we're talking about child care or kindergarten through grade six uh that seems to be the way the pattern goes um this gives me another opportunity also to really tout if i could our success record with child cares across the state you know child cares were were operative from the very beginning um because of the issue of essential workers needing to have reliable uh child care so that they could perform their duties and uh and we've expanded them since and this is not a um another occurrence of many this is a unique occurrence really considering how many child cares there are in the state uh and how many parents children and child care providers have had concerns uh just because of the fact that we're in the covid era but things have worked out very very well um but this does illustrate that there will be a case here there will be a case there much as like we're talking about schools and colleges um there will be cases in those settings as well but as long as they can be isolated cases scattered cases don't occur with great frequency and can be contained very effectively through the public health measures that we've utilized traditionally that's what's important for everyone to understand uh doctor i'm wondering if you i know there's privacy issues around this sort of thing but can you tell me um how many children uh tested positive in that case what my third age range is the best yeah no i can't tell you how many children which should tell you that the number is not large because we usually can't give information when there's a small number because it would be identified um and because it's a child care i can tell you they're all very young but i i can't give you any more specificity about the ages all right great thank you andrew caledonia record uh yeah hello can you hear we can hi there my questions are for secretary french um and i apologize if these were asked at the tail and the friday conference which i didn't quite get to finish reviewing um is there any data yet on how many schools are considering uh hybrid or part-time remote learning plan as their reopening mode and if not yet would you and and when would you expect to have this information thank you for the question uh you know we just released the guidance hybrid learning last week so i think it's a little early um i am contemplating collecting that information on a monthly basis from school districts so we can understand the patterns of instruction that are happening around the state uh and all that um hybrid guidance um it focuses primarily on the requirements around taking attendance um since it seems at least a number of schools here in the kingdom are intending to adopt a part-time remote plan to start will a reissue any additional guidance with details when uh this learning mode should be implemented or discontinued uh and especially uh how remote learning can best be utilized to maximize student outcomes um i know there are a number of parents you know besides the child care issues are concerned about their kids falling behind yes i think uh it's reasonable to expect us to produce uh additional guidance on this topic it's the topic because none of that isn't really addressed in our current regulatory framework so the goal of our initial guidance was to review the current regulations established personally to what extent is hybrid learning permissible it is um i think the other type of guidance we often produce our sort of best practice guidance or considerations that i'm sure has the patterns uh emergent people uh you know user creativity uh to figure out how to best do this will identify some really effective approaches and probably codify those into guidance recommendations of best practice um and the guidance also indicates in the additional considerations section that boards and supers should consider policies that outline the option of hybrid learning and the process for parents opting in and out and so it makes me wonder is a always position that hybrid learning or this you know part-time remote learning should be something that a family can choose or do individual schools on boards have the authority to adopt it for every student and at every grade level yeah i mean the conclusion of our guidance in that section is that we don't necessarily have authority at the state level prescribe how it's enacted uh outside of these requirements on attendance uh our recommendation or consideration if you will that there needs to be some um say regulation of the set the local level and we think that's most appropriate for school boards and uh their administration to have that conversation um you know the bottom line in terms of our current regulation is that school districts are required to educate their students uh we're putting those options in front of them um but that's based on my experience how that conversation should involve the local level parental teacher to feedback at the school board level uh but ultimately the school board's responsibility the school district's responsibility to ensure all students get educated I guess very quickly uh with remote learning now on the table our uh snow day is the thing about that yeah that's a great question uh you know we uh we don't have a lot to go on in terms of regulatory authority over that issue at this point I think it's a great question and one we'll have to note out examine uh if it starts snowing I'm not expecting it to snow anytime soon in the next couple weeks but uh I'm sure we'll take this up on this appropriate I think uh the kids will be disappointed if they don't ever get that one thrill all right thanks for your time Dan Wallace Allen BT Digger hi this too is a education question for the remote portion of the learning um broad end connections is still a huge issue and school starts in several weeks so how's the state going to make sure that the online option is available to all kids we all know that some teachers have said that you know kids have just fallen through the craft and presumably it's going to be a priority you guys to get everybody you know enrolled and actually doing schoolwork this fall yeah I think it is uh it is a priority uh that's continuing to do our best to educate students but obviously it's being an imperfect solution I think at this point you know uh what we're trying to do is establish uh public health parameters for in-person instruction you know there's no doubt that that's the best approach in terms of addressing needs to do something we strongly encourage um at the same time we have to also uh give districts the options to the sort of resolve the practical issues of implementation there's a lot to band with that work not thoroughly for all students um or the availability of their facilities and so forth so I think we're striking the right balance in terms of establishing clear uh guidance on the public health position um at the same time we're trying to impart some degree of flexibility so school districts have schools to address the the area of practical implementation issues that are heard as they begin to implement the guidance so you're sort of leading up the school district to either offer in-person instruction or to find a way to supply broadband connectivity for people well they have the option to choose among in-person remote learning or hybrid some combination of the two in areas where they have students who don't have to really have the best act that certainly there's a big responsibility to work and we have been working very diligently with the Public Service to address the sort of last issue but those are considerations that are very across the state and uh to a certain extent there's nothing to do with that but we are we are working to address those issues and the legislature has stepped up if they're willing to focus some of the CRF funding on this issue as well yeah but I can't see that that all happening by the time school starts uh you know actually getting that left miles completed right I mean but that's that's the world we're living in this is an emergency so we're doing our best and I think you know the the best solution in my view is to provide options to folks to utilize each other to ensure that they uh they can address the needs of all people that they can all right thank you Kevin seven days hi governor can you hear me again thanks for taking the call I have two questions one is COVID related and one is decidedly not the first one is that I went to a restaurant for the first time in months yesterday in Burlington and was asked to write down my name and telephone number to allow contact tracing if that's necessary um getting back to Greg's question about you know people getting off airplanes um 4 000 of them by by one account I guess um do we have anything at the airport that's similar and is that even um within the state's jurisdiction well they certainly have the flight manifests so they know who the passengers are coming off the planes and I and does the state have that information if necessary I guess I'm not I'm I'm not sure to be honest with you um but I would think that we would be able to get that information if necessary okay excellent and then the next question is more of a broad one and it's about federal law enforcement um what are your thoughts when you watch what's occurring nationally in Portland and now apparently even in Chicago with the president sending federal troops um into those communities obviously Vermont doesn't have any cities with such unrest nevertheless what are you doing or have you done anything or any outreach or any communication with any federal agencies to make sure that there's not a similar overreach by federal federal law enforcement officers here in Vermont um I would I would say first of all I'm very happy glad that I live in Vermont that I'm overseeing such a great state and what we're seeing across the country is is alarming and uh and I do believe that there's a federal overreach in some capacity especially in Portland at this point in time but um as far as reaching out I've done nothing proactively to reach out to any of the federal um authorities asking them to or not to come to Vermont again we enjoy um I think a lot of a lot of the steps we took in terms of of uh making sure we listen and we we acted appropriately I think led us to where we are today and hopefully we don't end up in a situation like Portland or any other part of the country for that matter do you think it's appropriate for the federal government to step in when local jurisdictions uh uh have decided to not let's say clamp down on some of the some of the protests in their city yeah no not from my perspective if we if we need their help we'll ask thanks for your help good afternoon Vermont has taken a more conservative approach in what tasks in what COVID tests are for profess permitted and authorized by the Department of Health and I was curious as the state reopens and college started students return and there's maybe a higher demand whether the state's long-term testing strategy will have any place for antibody tests or antigen tests or anything besides PCR you know interesting when you talk about our long-term strategy Katie when this started in March and we've really elevated since then so I uh I would I would say that we've evolved in many different ways and we've accepted different platforms and and what Dr. Levine has said today and what I've been saying as well we're looking for partnerships with some of the commercial entities so we're looking for partnerships with the FQHCs and other hospitals and we've we've grown a lot especially over the last two months so I don't know if we have a you know our long-term strategy is obviously to have a vaccine where we don't have to have these tests but we're always willing to to look for something new the new initiatives whether it's the pooling or whatever it is to get us the highest rate of return so I'll let Dr. Levine again elaborate on that if I could have only learned so much from the governor about how to governor state as he has learned about managing an epidemic there's not a lot to add to his dissertation I would say that we will still have a very open mind to antigen testing I don't want anyone to come away from this thinking the door is closed on antigen testing because there will be a solution to what's gone on and hopefully it will be one that allows that test to still have a role in any state's strategy and what we'll have to determine with the antigen test is is there a particular strategy to pursue that would be most high yield and fraught with least difficulty in terms of challenges of interpretation etc and I do believe that antigen testing as it could play a role in a symptomatic population that needs a quick decision made could be a very very strong role for it to play I think there may be less of a role for it to play in a more of a screening enterprise in an asymptomatic population where the prevalence of disease may be very low to go back to the antibody testing and just to remind listeners and viewers the antigen testing is similar to the PCR with a nasal specimen the antibody testing is a blood test looking to see if someone has formed antibodies against the virus whether they knew they were ill or not previously that continues to not show great promise in terms of advising individuals or advising work sites about should a person go back to work be allowed to be in that setting etc it still seems to have the most utility from a public health standpoint in terms of how much disease might have been present in your state over a period of time so we're getting some early data on that from a very small sample that we're working with the University of Vermont College of Medicine on we haven't yet engaged in a true zero prevalence study that's very large population that would require frankly a lot of outside support and we would hope that we could do that through our research platform either through the CDC or through an academic medical center that is interested in having a large population tested for research purposes so I don't see as much utility for that now people have talked about using it for eligibility for vaccine um but I think when it went and if a vaccine becomes available that's not going to be people's ticket to getting the vaccine or not getting the vaccine because we don't know enough yet about how durable these antibodies are even if you have them in your body and we would most likely advise people to get vaccinated the most utility they have right now which is an important place for them is for people to donate their own plasma to sick people who might benefit from the antibodies in their plasma there's a lot of research trials going on with that now so that would be a very selective but important use for this test does that cover pretty much what you asked yes thank you um and secondly uh there's a ongoing rate review blue cross and blue blue cross blue shield and mvp are skiing 6.3 and 7.3 percent rate increases today when they haven't seen big losses due to covid a couple months ago secretary mike smith who I do not believe is on the call said he would consider blocking any rate increase from health insurers so I was wondering if secretary smith or the state or administration is still considering that or or whether um you all have a perspective on that you're in luck secretary smith is right here in the building thanks for the question katie I think a couple of months ago and still today I remain concerned about the rate increase that blue cross blue shield and others are proposing at the green mountain care board I've talked to the green mountain care board on several occasions uh when I've had the opportunity and expressed that concern in terms of the rate increase I don't think vermoner is right now um with the amount of vermoners who have been laid off or without a job and those who are also struggling um because of reduced salaries um should have to endure a rate increase especially in those areas that we're talking about with blue cross blue shield so I remain concerned um I don't know if I have any power or authority to do anything about it except to express concern and hopefully that the green mountain care board will do the right thing as we uh as we move forward with that for only a minute over so I thank you for tuning in and we'll be back on friday for our modeling um thanks again