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Gov. Phil Scott and officials leading Vermont’s coronavirus response were pressed during Monday’s press conference about why the administration is not releasing town-by-town coronavirus results.
States around the region have started to release town-by-town data in recent days, including Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire. Yet Vermont is only releasing that data by county.
Health Commissioner Mark Levine said the main reason was the need for privacy around health information, but also noted that looking for statistical differences between communities becomes difficult on a town level.
“Often in Vermont, when we get down to small numbers, you actually succeed, even though you’ve tried not to succeed, in identifying the individuals who are the cases,” Levine said.
The health commissioner added that Vermonters should assume there are infections in their communities.
“I would think that any Vermonter, no matter what town they live in, would be foolish to think there was not a case in their town,” he said.
Mike Donoghue, a reporter for the Islander, pressed Scott and Levine on why Vermont could not release information that other states are making public. He noted that Vermont has already reported the number of cases at two elderly care facilities in Burlington, which have a smaller population than most Vermont towns.
Scott said there was an initial concern about unintentionally stigmatizing people with the virus, but noted that with immunity now an asset in many ways, the social dynamics of the Covid-19 were changing.
Agency of Human Services Secretary Mike Smith said he would look into the question of town-by-town data. “Let us look into it and see what can come up with,” he said.
Chittenden County has by far the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases, followed by Franklin County to the north and Addison County to the south.
State hiring freeze
Secretary of Administration Susanne Young confirmed that a general hiring freeze has been enacted within state government, at least through the end of the fiscal year.
“We’ve directed state agencies and departments to limit their discretionary spending in all areas and to limit any new hires except for those that are critical and essential to getting through the emergency,” she said.
The Department of Labor continues to ramp up staffing due to the tsunami of unemployment claims it has received in recent weeks. The Scott administration said that it will soon have 150 people answering phones for unemployment claims or queries, up from 15 before the pandemic.
The state’s coffers are expected to take an enormous hit in the months ahead. Initial projections showed that state revenues could drop by $200 million in just the first three months. Scott said it was “hard to put a number” on what the state’s total financial need might look like.
Scott added that he was talking with other governors about lobbying Washington, D.C., for federal support for state budgets, and beginning discussions with Vermont legislators about continuing the budget process without federal assurances.
“At this point in time, I would say that we’ll probably build a budget, based on no money from the federal government coming through, and then work from there,” Scott said. “Because we have to be realistic, we can’t build a budget based on hopes and dreams.”
Scott’s call with Mike Pence
Scott said that a phone call with Vice President Mike Pence on March 14 was crucial to getting Vermont testing supplies early in its response to the coronavirus. (Seven Days first reported on the conversation, which also included New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.)
Vermont was down to about two days’ worth of testing when Scott and Sununu reached out to the vice president, the governor said at a press conference Monday.
“And so I got on the phone with the vice president, and I told them about our situation, and they came through, and they delivered us tests to get us over the hump,” Scott said.
“So I just, again, you know as much as sometimes I criticize the administration, I want to give credit when it’s due as well, so they helped us out in our time of need.”
The governor said Vermont was “challenged a bit in terms of testing” when the virus began spreading in March, but is now in a position where it is able to both test the general public when symptoms arise, and do blanket testing at large facilities where at least one case has been confirmed among residents or staff.
“But not for the great work of many, we wouldn’t be in the position where we are today, and looking for every creative alternate opportunities,” Scott said, pointing to an early partnership with the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, when the state was sending a daily shipment of samples on airplanes.
Vermont has also had state troopers bring samples to Boston and hired couriers to bring samples from around the state to labs in Burlington.
Vermont now has the capacity to conduct about 1,000 tests a day, according to Human Services Secretary Mike Smith.
Health Commissioner Mark Levine said on Monday that Vermont could hypothetically test all of the 1,200 or so prisoners in the state and “we’d still have plenty of testing capacity for well over a month for the rest of the population.”
State releasing Covid-19 race data
Vermont is now publishing race and ethnicity data for Covid-19 cases after legislators and the state racial equity director pushed for it to be released.
On Friday, the Department of Health said it now has race and ethnicity data for 92% of Covid-19 cases. The DOH partnered with Vermont Information Technology Leaders to cross-reference medical records and get more complete data.
Advocates had expressed concern about the potential for Covid-19 to particularly impact communities of color due to longtime health disparities. Large surveys of Vermonters have shown that black, Hispanic and Asian residents are less likely to have a primary care doctor than white residents. Several states have released data showing that black residents were disproportionately represented in their Covid-19 deaths.
As of April 20, the distribution of cases in Vermont by race and ethnicity was roughly in line with Vermont’s population. Ninety-five percent of cases were white residents, compared with 94% of the Vermont population. About 98% of cases were non-Hispanic residents, compared with 98% of Vermont’s population.
The data does not adjust by several factors that could reveal or eliminate racial disparities, such as age, location within the state or whether the person was living in a facility. Vermonters of color tend to be younger than white Vermonters and are concentrated in Chittenden and other more urban counties.
Update on unemployment insurance
On Monday, the Vermont Treasurer’s office started sending out $1,200 checks as promised to thousands of Vermonters who hadn’t been able to resolve issues with their unemployment claims, some for weeks.
After hard work yesterday from the Treasurer’s office and the Finance Dept., I dropped off over 8,300 checks in the mail this AM. These are $1,200 for those whose UI issues couldn’t be cleared by Saturday. Thank you to the BGS mail center and the USPS for all your hard work. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/BywCTCeOKe
— Governor Phil Scott (@GovPhilScott) April 20, 2020
The checks represent an advance on the $600 per week that the federal government is adding to payments for all claimants through the $2 million CARES Act, the Covid-19 relief plan passed by Congress in March.
Treasurer Beth Pearce said Monday that four staff members worked a 10-hour day on Sunday to get the $10 million in checks out to the 8,384 people whose claims problems had not been fixed by a deadline of Saturday night. Scott announced Friday he had set that deadline, after weeks of delays at the overloaded Department of Labor unemployment insurance system.
Before the Covid-19 surge prompted 80,000 people to file for unemployment starting in March, about 500 claims came into the department each week. The department handled the phone calls associated with those claims using about 15 staff members.
Interim DOL Commissioner Michael Harrington said Monday that the department now has 150 people handling calls, some from other state agencies and some from a Virginia-based vendor called Maximus, which has been brought on to help after thousands of Vermonters spent weeks trying to file claims through the DOL’s online system and by phone. Another 50 phone workers are available from Maximus if needed, Harrington said.
Scott said federal regulations were the primary reason for the weeks-long backlog at Vermont DOL. About 34,000 claimants had a combined 50,000 outstanding issues on their claims as of last week, he said.
Normally, the state is required to investigate every single issue – confirming that the claimant left a suitable job voluntarily, was fired for misconduct, or is otherwise ineligible for unemployment insurance – to make sure it is adhering to federal regulations regarding who can file for the benefit, the governor said Monday.
“But these are not normal times,” Scott said Monday. While the department plans to follow up to make sure claimants are eligible, very restrictive federal standards have made it difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with the demands the pandemic has placed on the system. A lack of flexibility has made an already complicated and bureaucratic program more difficult.”
The result, Scott said, was that checks weren’t going out to Vermonters who had lost their income as a result of the business closures put in place in March to slow the spread of Covid-19.
“I know how difficult and frustrating it has been for too many as they have repeatedly tried to get to the unemployment office, especially for many who are waiting for their first check,” he said.
