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Vermont is going to join a multi-state regional effort to coordinate responses to the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Phil Scott said Wednesday. The governor also hinted that he will ease some business restrictions Friday.
Loosely organized groups of cooperating states have formed over the last few days on both U.S. coasts as governors have sought a path forward to reopening their economies. Scott said he got a call Tuesday night from an official in New York about that group, which includes seven continguous states. At his regularly scheduled news conference about the coronavirus emergency on Wednesday, Scott described the group as “more of a formal recognition of what we are already doing.”
The purpose of the coordination is not to have all the states open the same sectors at the same times, Scott emphasized. Rather, it’s to keep officials informed regionally of plans to reopen, so that they can be coordinated. He used golf courses as an example where this could prevent a ripple effect.
“In Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, if one of those states were to open up their golf courses, there would be a lot of people traveling to their state to play golf,” said Scott. “Those are the types of things where we want to make sure we’re strategic and really pay attention.”
Scott and other officials sounded a positive note at the news conference. The governor said he was encouraged by the latest numbers from the Vermont Health Department, which show the number of new infections is now doubling at a rate of only once every two weeks. Health Commissioner Mark Levine said he was hopeful that the infection rate is reaching a plateau.
Accordingly, Scott hinted that some restrictions would be lifted on Friday. Last Friday, while Scott extended his “stay home/stay safe” order to May 15, he very slightly lifted one restriction, allowing inns and other lodgings to start booking stays after June 15.
In response to a question about reopening farmers markets this spring, Scott indicated more announcements are on their way.
“We want to put this on the front of the list,” he said of farmers markets. He added he’s been working with Anson Tebbetts, the secretary of the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, but declined to go into more detail.
“But suffice it to say if we can do this safely, we want to make sure people understand they can still sell their goods, they can do it from home, being safe, but to put everyone together at this point in time in the traditional fashion is just not something that would be beneficial to many,” he said.
It has been more than three weeks since Scott signed an order March 24 in response to the mounting crisis of the spreading coronavirus, calling for all non-essential businesses and not-for-profit businesses to cease all in-person operations and for individual Vermonters to stay home when possible. There are increasing calls from some businesses and some members of the public for the governor to start loosening those restrictions.
Scott reiterated that the pace at which businesses reopen depends on how the coronavirus infection rate continues in Vermont.
“We’ve had a strategy in place that I think has been beneficial to many, and we just want to make sure as we plateau and go down the down side that we’re doing this in a very, very methodical way,” he said. He noted that Vermont lies within 300 miles of big cities like New York City and Boston. “This virus knows no state boundaries. That’s why we’re being very cautious, being careful. If we continue to do this in a strategic way, we’ll be fine.”
Even when businesses and public places to start to reopen, said Levine, new measures will be needed to prevent infections, particularly in the period of time before a vaccine is developed and distributed.
“As we look into the future, we’ll definitely need to have very robust data on the rate of exposure,” Levine said, expressing hope that serology testing — which measures the amount of antibodies or proteins present in the blood after an infection — might be used to prove who is immune and who isn’t.
“It won’t be an end to social distancing, to limitations on large gatherings, perhaps, to facial coverings or all the public hygiene things,” Levine said. “We’ll still have to maintain a very aggressive testing strategy.”
Vermont still doesn’t have the testing capacity it needs, but Levine said the tests are going to states with a higher rate of infection than Vermont. More than 12,000 Vermonters have been tested so far, he said – meaning Vermont is in the top five states nationally for testing per capita.
“This is a national issue,” Levine said.
The governor used his three-times-a-week press conference to give a shoutout to some of the dozens of Vermont companies that sprung into action in the early days of the emergency to help. Burlington-based Burton Snowboards worked to get half a million N95 masks into the hands of health care workers in Vermont and neighboring states.
“I never thought I’d be sitting here talking about Burton sourcing medical masks,” said Donna Carpenter, Burton’s owner and board chair, who like most of the press conference attendees participated remotely. “It’s kind of insane when you think about private companies stepping in when it really should be the federal government.”
Scott also thanked Martti Matheson of JV Air for helping organize the flight of 4,000 Covid-19 testing samples to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota in the early days of the pandemic.
“We truly could not do this without you,” Scott said to the Vermont companies at large.
The governor has also gotten an earful from Vermonters about the slow processing of claims at the state Department of Labor. Overwhelmed for weeks, the department has brought on dozens of extra workers to answer phones and is now moving to a third-party processor, said interim Commissioner Michael Harrington. Both Harrington and Scott apologized for the delay and the worry that the backlog has caused people who are trying to file claims.
“I accept responsibility for this,” Scott said. “This is an area we didn’t foresee. No excuses, but we need to do better, and we’re going to do better, and if this doesn’t prove to be enough, we’ll initiate further methods.”
Asked if Vermont will follow federal guidance on reopening businesses, Scott said he’d continue to base his decisions on data and science. Earlier in the week, he rejected President Donald Trump’s claim the federal government held the power to reopen the economy.
“We didn’t have their input in some respects when we got into this, and we don’t need their perspective … while we’ll take their advice, we don’t need them telling us how to get ourselves out of this either,” Scott said. “I believe history will show we did the right thing.”
