VTDigger is posting regular updates on the coronavirus in Vermont on this page. You can also subscribe here for regular email updates on the coronavirus. If you have any questions, thoughts or updates on how Vermont is responding to COVID-19, contact us at coronavirus@vtdigger.org
Some leading Democrats in Vermont say Gov. Phil Scott isn’t acting fast enough to lock down the state in the face of the coronavirus outbreak that has already infected nearly 100 people and caused seven deaths.
Scott told Vermonters on Monday to expect directives from his office “very soon” that would order or advise all non-essential personnel to remain at home. He said his coming directive would not be a “shelter-in-place” order as it is defined by emergency officials. It is expected to be handed down Wednesday at the latest.
The leading Democratic gubernatorial candidates, along with the attorney general, said Scott’s response has been too slow.
“With key exceptions, we should be taking stronger actions, not delayed actions,” Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, who has suspended in-person campaigning in his bid for the Democratic nomination, said when asked about Scott’s response.
“We’re seeing the spread of this virus is exactly what’s happening in other locations around the world that acted too slowly,” Zuckerman said. “We need to be getting home and hunkering down for a few weeks to allow the medical system to catch up.”
He added that shelter-in-place directives from the governor’s office “would in my opinion be done by an executive order to put the force of law behind it, but I am not in the decision-making meetings so I am not familiar with their considerations for delay. “
Scott has been incrementally expanding his executive order since declaring a state of emergency in Vermont on March 13.
He announced new “mitigation measures” on Monday, directing businesses and nonprofits ”to the maximum extent possible — to put into place telecommuting or work-from-home procedures, no later than 8:00 p.m. on Monday, March 23.”
The governor also expanded his executive order over the weekend to ban non-essential mass gatherings above 10 people, and close all “close-contact” businesses. Last week he closed schools, restaurants and non-essential child care centers.
Scott’s executive order so far falls short of the draconian measures being taken in other places where the virus is spreading fast, such as New York City, Washington and parts of California.
Rebecca Holcombe, Scott’s former secretary of education who is now running for his job, said the governor has repeatedly failed to plan ahead amid the emerging coronavirus threat, starting with school closures.
“There’s no reason to have solutions reinvented in 50 different districts in 50 different ways,” she said, adding that the Scott administration should have been talking to superintendents and epidemiologists weeks ago to have a plan if school closures became necessary. Instead, she said, Scott is “asking these administrators to fly the airplane while they’re building it.”
Holcombe said Scott should also have acted more aggressively to issue a stay-at-home order, especially in the absence of leadership at the federal level.
“The bottom line is we don’t have enough testing capacity to identify where this virus is and react, so in the absence of that we have to be aggressively social distancing,” she said. “It’s early aggressive action that matters.”
Attorney General TJ Donovan said he supported a shelter-in-place order during a virtual town hall Monday.
“I support a shelter-in-place order, we need to get ahead of this virus the best we can, and I think shelter in place is a good public health strategy,” he said.
Vermont was reporting 95 confirmed cases of the coronavirus on Tuesday, resulting in seven deaths. Four of those deaths were elderly residents at the Burlington Health and Rehab facility, operated by Genesis, and the other was an elderly man who died at the VA’s medical center in White River Junction.
The health department reported that 1,173 people had been tested in Vermont as of Monday, placing Vermont in the middle of the pack in total tests, and higher on a per capita basis, according to state-by-state data from Politico.
Scott and his health commissioner, Dr. Mark Levine, have insisted that the state’s testing capacity is appropriate for the current threat, however Vermonters on the ground told VTDigger in recent days of long delays and a lack of access to testing.
Health experts confirm that community spread is already happening in Vermont, meaning that many cases are yet to be confirmed, and that the days ahead will only get worse in terms of new patients, and increased pressure on the state’s hospitals.
Scott said Monday afternoon that Vermont has the “luxury” of seeing how officials are responding in “epicenters” of the virus, like New York City. Scott said he was in “constant contact” with Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, Gov. Charlie Baker or Massachussettes and Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland in considering next steps in response to the pandemic.
In Burlington, Mayor Miro Weinberger preemptively predicted that the city would take further action than the state to fight the pandemic in some cases during a Friday press conference, and the City Council urged Scott to immediately issue a shelter-in-place order and shut down all non-essential businesses on Monday.
Councilor Jack Hanson, P-East District, proposed the amendment including that language and the council approved it in an 11-1 vote. Council President Kurt Wright, R-Ward 4, voted no.
Hanson said that Scott had provided “mixed messages” on issuing a shelter-in-place order, and the city needed to make clear that it believed that was an appropriate step.
“I think we’ve had the opportunity to learn from other countries and other states that every day you wait matters a lot on this,” he said. “Let’s not wait a few more days, I think we need to move immediately and take this step. We need to learn from what we’ve seen in other places.”
Wright said he thought the city should defer to Scott and his administration.
“I’m going to trust in the governor and his people, I think they’re doing a great job,” Wright said.
