Vermont officials pointed to signs of pandemic success — and downplayed the more depressing metrics — at the latest Covid-19 press conference Tuesday.
The state’s Covid-19 cases are down 27% in the past seven days, and other states in New England and the Northeast have reported even more dramatic declines in new infections.
But during that same period, Vermont’s hospital visits for Covid-19 have risen about 7%, and scientific models are projecting that they are likely to remain elevated through mid-February. Fatalities, too, are expected to “lag behind case improvements,” according to a report from the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation, which keeps the state’s coronavirus statistics.
Gov. Phil Scott defended Vermont’s record on hospitalizations, saying the state would have 250 Covid-19 patients, instead of the current 101, if the hospitalization rate resembled the national average.
Scott also pointed to recent hospital data provided by Health Commissioner Mark Levine to defend the state’s track record. According to Levine, a review of hospitalized Covid patients in Vermont shows about a third of them did not come in for treatment because of the virus, but tested positive while they were there.
“From the very beginning, we said we were going to watch the hospitalizations, and that’s what we’ve done,” Scott said. “And when you couple that with the number of people in the hospital with Covid, not because of Covid, I think it does make the point that we’re seeing a milder variant.”
Even Covid-positive people who come in for different reasons can strain hospital resources because they may need to be isolated and raise issues around personal protective equipment and staff exposure, Levine said.
Hospital staff and administrators around Vermont have said they have been swamped by the high number of Covid-19 patients, combined with a staffing shortage that has hit many health care facilities.
Vermont is providing additional health care staff through a private contractor, federal emergency relief and National Guard members.
“Everyone is facing staffing shortages, as well as every single sector across the state,” Scott said, pivoting to his recent workforce proposal that the Vermont Legislature will consider.
“We’ll see what we can do, because this isn’t going away after Covid,” he said.
Also hard-hit this week were long-term care facilities, with 25 outbreaks reported across the state — the highest number of outbreaks since at least September. Those outbreaks have racked up more than 300 cases, according to the state statistical report.
Yet Levine said the numbers may be misleading because “many of the residents of these facilities either test positive but (have) no symptoms, or (have) very mild symptoms.”
“There are, of course, some very, very vulnerable people who live in our highest level of care facilities,” but so far, even the largest outbreaks have resulted in few deaths, he said.
On Tuesday, Vermont reported 420 new Covid-19 cases and two more deaths. It also reported a new milestone: More than 100,000 recorded Covid-19 infections since the pandemic began in Vermont in March 2020. In all, 523 people in the state have died over the course of the pandemic.
Education agency defends new policy
Education Secretary Dan French acknowledged complaints about the state’s new test-at-home program for schools, used when a student tests positive for Covid-19. The method requires far more Covid-19 tests than earlier testing practices.
School districts across the state said they have been running out of rapid Covid-19 tests, but French denied it was an issue, saying that “we rush in” to provide more tests as quickly as possible.
“If your district runs out, don’t worry. They will have more tests soon,” he said.
It’s hard to say how the new testing policy is affecting Covid-19 numbers in schools because the state has stopped compiling K-12 case data due to concerns about its accuracy under the new test-at-home policy, which requires parents to test their children and report the results to the school.
French said there was no enforcement of the requirement that parents inform the district about their kids’ positive status nor any way for schools to force children to stay home if they suspect the parents of lying.
Under the previous guidance, a lot of the conflict between school nurses and parents was “just the broader sense of fatigue that was setting in,” he said. “So certainly one of the aspects of tests at home, I think, that’ll be more successful is not only the broader distribution of testing, but also a higher degree of cooperation. I think it’ll be easier for both.”
Vaccines and Omicron
As cases rose, and again as cases dropped, the risk of infection under Omicron has remained steadily higher for Vermonters who have not received full doses of the vaccine.
The Department of Health’s breakthrough data shows that Covid-19 infections have fallen for vaccinated and unvaccinated Vermonters, but unvaccinated people tested positive at double the rate of vaccinated people.
The gap for hospitalizations was even higher: Vermonters who are not fully vaccinated have triple the rate of hospital stays as vaccinated Vermonters, when accounting for population size, according to the department data.
More than 95% of people 5 and older in Vermont have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and about 83% have gotten their first full course, according to the state statistics.
But progress on the booster dose has lagged behind. Only 60% of people 18 and older have received a booster dose of the vaccine, ranking first in the nation, but Levine said it was “not nearly good enough.”
The number of people getting their first booster fell to its lowest point since it became available to all adults. About 7,800 people got their booster in the past week, compared with a peak of more than 26,000 in early November.
Levine said public health experts are phasing out the term “fully vaccinated” in favor of saying whether someone is up to date on their vaccines, including the booster.
“If you really want to consider yourself protected, you need to be boosted,” he said.
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