NEWPORT — With camera shutters clicking and video cameras surrounding him, Gov. Phil Scott on Thursday received his Covid-19 booster shot, hoping the publicity will persuade lots of other Vermonters to get theirs, too.
With Scott were state health department employees, health care workers and local officials who gathered in the Northeast Kingdom — a region particularly plagued with rising case counts recently — to urge the public to get their boosters. And, if they haven’t received their initial coronavirus vaccines, Scott said, “It’s not too late to start.”
Standing before Newport’s North Country Hospital, Scott urged Vermonters to “listen to the science” and “watch the data.”
“Listen to the experts — the health experts, not the politicians, but the health experts. Listen to what they have to say,” he said. “If we do, we can beat this virus. … It’s been ruling our lives for far too long.”
Orleans County, in the northeast part of the state, is particularly hard-hit right now, with Covid rates that are among the highest in the entire region, according to The New York Times.
Scott said Thursday that 23% of active Covid cases in Vermont right now are among Orleans County residents, who make up only 4% of the state’s overall population.
And while roughly 90% of Vermonters age 12 and older have received at least one vaccine dose, only about 76% of eligible Orleans County residents have.
Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine said it “is not a judgment, it is just a statement of fact using the data,” that there is a correlation between the Northeast Kingdom’s low vaccination rates and high caseloads.
“I’m really here today to provide facts and to be objective and not judgmental, but hopefully convincing, as well as show my compassion and how much I really do care about the people who live here, as well as everywhere in this state,” Levine said. “The Vermonters who live in Orleans County and in the northeast part of the state, in general, deserve the same opportunity to be healthy and free of the virus and its severe outcomes as those who live anywhere else in the region.”
John Lippmann, North Country Hospital’s medical director, appealed to northeast Vermonters’ famously independent streak, saying it’s a point of pride in the region to be ”fiercely independent in life and thought.”
“I would attest to that value, but also to another one that has gone with it: care for others,” he said. “We are tough and individualistic when we need it, but also look out for and know our neighbors.”
“On behalf of your medical providers … I call on your sense of individual purpose to care for our community, step up and get vaccinated or, if appropriate, obtain the vaccine booster,” he said.
[Looking for data on breakthrough cases? See our reporting on the latest available statistics.]
Scott echoed Lippmann’s sentiment, saying the act of getting vaccinated “is about independence, in some respects.”
“To get vaccinated, to protect yourself, to protect your loved ones, is a form of altruism and as well, it’s a form of independence — independence from this virus that has controlled our lives for 19 months,” he said.
Scott initially received a one-shot Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine, and on Thursday received a Moderna booster. National studies indicate that, for J&J vaccine recipients, the Moderna booster increases antibody levels 76-fold.
He reiterated that, even as cases rise statewide, he does not plan to invoke another statewide emergency or statewide mandates. Right now, vaccines and boosters are the best path forward, he said.
“The state of emergency is a tool that should not be overused, it should not be abused, and there shouldn’t be a precedent for it,” he said. It requires a state of emergency to impose a mask mandate, store closings and similar mitigation steps, Scott has maintained.
“If I thought it would be useful today, we would invoke it, but I don’t feel it is,” the governor said.
