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Vermont’s health department says protesters should get tested for Covid-19, even if they don’t have symptoms.
“We support Vermonters engaging in public protests and other civic activities, and encourage anyone who is participating to get tested for COVID-19,” the department says in the daily coronavirus updates it sent out this week.
Mark Levine, commissioner of the state Department of Health, echoed that call on Wednesday, saying that “if you have been involved in a large gathering or protest, please feel comfortable availing yourself of any of the “testing options.”
Hundreds gathered in towns across Vermont last weekend as part of the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests. In Montpelier, some 5,000 gathered around the Statehouse last Sunday.
A pop-up Covid-19 testing event in Barre being held this Thursday was completely booked by Tuesday. The DOH keeps an updated list of “testing events” in Vermont on its website.
The Vermont Department of Health has coordinated these testing sites around the state for people who want to get tested but don’t have Covid-19 symptoms. And protestors should be able to get tested by calling their healthcare providers and discussing concerns about recent exposure, Levine added.
Protesters should get tested three to seven days after going to a gathering, according to Robert Redfield, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While some of the pop-up test sites in Vermont have been filling up, Levine said his department has not heard about anyone who wanted to get tested after going to a protest but couldn’t do so.
He’s actually concerned that not enough protesters have been looking to get tested.
“The fact of the matter is, I’ve been worried sometimes that testing is being undersubscribed knowing the size of some of the gatherings that have occurred,” he said Wednesday.
With nationwide anti-racism protests sparked by the recent police killing of Minneapolis man George Floyd, public health officials around the country have toed the line between wanting to support free expression while acknowledging that protests have the potential to spread Covid-19.
That’s because key features of protests — people standing close together, chanting or singing, and in, some other states, police use of tear gas — can increase the likelihood of spreading and contracting Covid-19.
Last week, Levine called on protesters last week to do so in a way that is “Covid-responsible.” This includes wearing a mask, staying 6-feet apart from others as much as possible, and staying home if sick.
“Because in addressing and attempting to address the great ills in our society — systemic racism, historic injustice, mistreatment by authorities, and severe health inequities — we do not want to create a greater threat to public health by accelerating the spread of Covid,” he said earlier this week.
Nationally, black people across have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic from both a public health and economic standpoint. Although black people make up 13% of the U.S. population, they have accounted for 24% of the Covid-19 deaths, according to the Covid Racial Data Tracker.
In Vermont, black people account for over 8% of the state’s Covid-19 cases despite making up 1.5% of the state’s population. At least some of that disproportionate impact is linked to an outbreak in Winooski, where state officials have recently launched a mass testing effort.
When asked why blacks were contracting Covid-19 at the highest rate, Levine said he was not yet sure why this was happening in Vermont, but pointed to reasons public health experts have cited nationally. These include a “limited access to health and to wealth,” a higher prevalence of underlying conditions like diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease linked to more severe infections, and a higher likelihood of working a frontline job, he said.
A group of more than 1,200 public health professionals sent a recent letter calling on officials nationwide not to disband protests “under the guise of maintaining public health for COVID-19 restrictions,” arguing that systemic racism constitutes a “lethal public health threat.”
So far, there has not yet been a spike in Vermont’s Covid-19 cases linked to the recent protests, said Levine. Other state public health officials he’s talked to have not seen that either.
“But the duration of (the protests) is, like the epidemic, somewhat unprecedented to have this many consecutive days,” he added. “So we’re continuing to watch this very closely, both in Vermont and across the nation.”
National public health experts have also said that it will be hard to tease whether case spikes are tied to protests or reopenings. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, recently told the New Yorker that it might become “politically convenient” to blame a case surge on the protests.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at John Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security, said in an interview with VTDigger last week that the “risk of a mass gathering sparking cases” is directly linked to how large an outbreak there is in that area.
Levine joins counterparts around the country in calling on protesters to get tested. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently set up 15 testing sites around New York City specifically for that purpose.