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The controversial plan to house vulnerable people recovering from Covid-19 at Goddard College is a no-go.
“I have determined that the State does not require the bed capacity that Goddard offered as a potential site,” Kerry Sleeper, interim deputy secretary of the Agency of Human Services, wrote in a Friday email to the selectboard chair in Plainfield, where the college campus is located.
Caseload data and modeling suggested infection rates are decreasing, Sleeper wrote, meaning the state — if the numbers held true — wouldn’t need Goddard as a quarantine site. The Bridge of Montpelier first reported the change.
“We were definitely open to helping in this time of crisis, however we could,” Goddard President Bernard Bull said. “If the state doesn’t need the space, I’m hopeful that’s a good sign for where the pandemic is going.”
The proposal, announced in late March, was at one point set to see up to 150 people move into part of the campus as they recuperated from the coronavirus.
The campus would have been for people who have nowhere else to go but can care for themselves, including homeless people, people with disabilities or mental health conditions and children in state custody.
A vocal group of residents criticized the plan and said they felt too few details had been released by state officials. Some residents voiced concern about whether patients at the campus would accelerate the virus’ spread in town. Others defended the plan as an uncomfortable but necessary move given the circumstances.
“That process of people expressing their concerns did have an impact, and it did change what the proposal was,” Selectboard Chair Sasha Thayer said, adding that the proposal made sense, “as frightening as it was to a lot of people.”
Sleeper, the state official, wrote that decisions about surge sites have been premised on a worst-case scenario.
“This new data is reason for cautious optimism in the crisis management process, and a recognition that Vermonters are taking the self isolation role seriously and limiting the spread of the virus,” Kerry wrote to Thayer.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the news site that first published word of change of plans at Goddard. It was The Bridge of Montpelier.
