As the U.S. Centers for Disease control shifts its guidance on testing, Vermont’s top public health official told Vermonters on Friday that the state’s own guidelines, which call for tests on many more individuals, are holding firm.
The CDC on Aug. 24 changed its guidance to recommend that people who don’t have symptoms might not need to be tested, even if they have spent 15 minutes within 6 feet of someone who is infected with the Covid-19 virus. CDC Director Robert Redfield on Thursday clarified that people who come in contact with confirmed or probable Covid-19 patients can be tested themselves.
Vermont Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine acknowledged the political conjecture prompted by the CDC’s policy change, citing “what may be questionable policy choices at the top.” But he also cut through some of the uncertainty that the CDC’s change, and then amendment, has prompted, saying he and his staff work closely with the CDC and he’s confident their decisions are guided by science, not politics.
“The science and evidence-based commitment by the organization at large is strong enough that sound public health practices will drive the work of keeping people safe and healthy,” Levine said.
Testing protocols have been at the very center of the largest migration since the Covid-19 pandemic arrived: the arrival of thousands of college students into Burlington and smaller Vermont municipalities. Community residents in college towns have kept close tabs on testing protocols, and the colleges are following detailed rules that were set out by the state on the advice of a task force.
Among other things, the state’s rules for higher education require colleges to test every student within 48 hours of arrival on campus, and again in seven days. Some Vermont colleges will test staff and students every week through the semester, which will last until Thanksgiving.
“People who have had Covid-19 symptoms should absolutely be tested,” Levine said. “If their provider recommends they be tested, they should be tested. And for those who have had close contact within six feet for about 15 minutes or more with someone who tested positive for Covid, they can certainly be tested.”
As for people who are in more vulnerable populations, such as those over age 65 or with preexisting conditions, “we might even more strongly encourage testing,” Levine said.
“The whole strategy of containment — testing, isolating, contact tracing, and quarantine has been fundamental to our success in Vermont and needs to continue underpinning its success,” Levine said. “And you can only do that if you have a sufficient number of people in the state tested, who have no symptoms.”
When states only test people who are highly likely to have the virus, they end up with a very high positivity rate that won’t necessarily reflect the level of viral infection in the population at large.
“So to be clear, our guidance in Vermont has not changed,” Levine said.
The CDC is also not mandating quarantines for people who travel nationally or internationally, a stark departure from Vermont’s policy, which mandates a 14-day quarantine for anybody who travels from one of the counties with more than 400 cases of Covid-19 per million. People who travel on public transportation into the state from any area must also quarantine.
Vermont’s per-capita infection rate has been the lowest, or among the lowest, in the nation for weeks. But hospitality business owners have said that the quarantine rules – which change frequently according to infection rates outside Vermont – make it very difficult and time-consuming for would-be Vermont visitors to figure out if and when they can make the trip.
The federal government has left the matter of additional quarantines up to the states, a policy that Levine described as “a bit short-sighted.
“I think that risks replicating the mistakes of the past, which is specifically how our country got into the pandemic in the first place,” he said.
Gov. Phil Scott noted that CDC had advised states to adhere to their own quarantine guidelines.
“That’s what we are trying to do,” he said. He said he wasn’t losing sleep about what other states were doing to limit travel.
“I think they’re going to end up doing the right thing, unless they have some ideological reason not to do so,” he said. Asked if he would consider lowering the standard of 400 cases per 1 million residents that guides whether visitors must quarantine, the governor said he would not.
“I think most of the Vermonters appreciate the fact that we have a high standard here,” he said.
