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Vermont’s Department of Health reported just four new cases of the coronavirus between Monday and Tuesday morning, a steep drop from dozens a day earlier this month. It’s the lowest number of new cases since March 18.
Health Commissioner Mark Levine on Monday said, “We seem to be approaching, if you will, a plateau. We’ll see if that is a sustained phenomenon, or just a trend over several days.”
The state also did less testing during that 24-hour period (220 tests) than it had in recent days (524 from Saturday-Sunday morning and 583 from Sunday-Monday morning).
A total of 752 people in Vermont have tested positive for the coronavirus, resulting in 29 deaths as of Tuesday morning.
The DoH is currently conducting blanket Covid-19 testing at two large senior-housing facilities: the city-run Decker Towers in Burlington and the state-run Vermont Veteran’s Home in Burlington.
Ben Truman, the health department spokesman, said it wouldn’t be possible to get any of those results on Tuesday.
“They are put together in the evening by epidemiology,” he said. “Some of the data requires manual input so it can take a while. The website is updated no later than 11 a.m., but we have been able to get it out there around 9:30 a.m. of late.”
Gov. Phil Scott’s administration announced on Monday that it was conducting pre-emptive blanket testing at the two senior living facilities, although it only had evidence of isolated cases among community members.
For weeks, Vermont was reserving tests for only people showing symptoms of Covid-19 infection. Those restrictions have loosened over the past week, as the state has been able to secure additional testing equipment, and slow the spread through social distancing measures.
The state also conducted blanket testing at two Burlington elderly care facilities, but only after clear signs of an outbreak emerged, through symptomatic residents and patients.
The state also conducted testing at the Northwest state prison in St. Albans; 32 inmates and 16 staff tested positive. Inmates have been sent to a prison surge facility in St. Johnsbury, angering local residents.
During the Scott administration’s Monday press conference, Agency of Human Services Secretary Mike Smith talked about how Vermont and its partners have “turned a very very scant testing system into a pretty robust testing system.”
Smith pointed to the blanket facility-wide test as evidence of the state’s newly aggressive approach, in which one case at a high-risk facility will prompt blanket testing. The secretary said Vermont had the capacity to conduct up to 1,000 tests a day, if it needed to.
“We’re going to be proactive in our testing,” Smith said. “If there’s a Covid-positive case, we will continue to test in a very aggressive way.”
