Saturday, March 28, 2020
That’s one of the many dilemmas lawmakers are weighing as they seek to help residents weather the economic storm caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Legislators are considering a statewide moratorium on evictions until two months after Gov. Phil Scott lifts the state of emergency that he declared on March 13.
The idea got close scrutiny in housing committees of both the House and Senate this week and is expected to move forward next week.
People should "stay put" during the public health crisis, Jean Murray, an attorney with Vermont Legal Aid, told the Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs Committee. “Just put a pause on the whole thing,” Murray said.
The Vermont Department of Health announced 28 new coronavirus cases Saturday afternoon, bringing the statewide total to 211 people who’ve tested positive for the virus. Two more people have died from COVID-19, bringing the state total to 12.
One death was a patient at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
The new confirmed infections represent a 15.3 percent increase over the 183 cases announced Friday — the lowest percentage increase in more than a week.
By comparison, the spike from 28 to 44 cases announced March 21 represented a 57-percent increase in infections. The updated numbers follow the state’s announcement that it had relaxed testing protocols, allowing patients with mild and moderate symptoms to get tested.
While the increase in total positive tests was lower than it has been all week, the percentage of new tests that were positive was about 24 percent — well above nearly every daily tally since the outbreak began.
Health Commissioner Mark Levine said Friday that the protocol change reflected the state’s success obtaining more testing kits, though he declined to say how many the state now possessed.
Health department data show that Chittenden County continued to have the largest number of cases in the state, at 105. Two rural counties, Essex and Grand Isle, still had none.
The department also reported that the number of people tested had increased to 2,374.
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Friday, March 27, 2020
The bill, which cleared the Senate on Wednesday, passed the House by voice vote and was signed by President Donald Trump later Friday.
House leaders had hoped to approve the legislation without calling many members back to the Capitol. But after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) threatened to derail the proceedings if a quorum was not present, many lawmakers scrambled to return.
Welch was not among them.
"Peter is trying to respect the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] public health guidelines prohibiting large gatherings, so he will not be traveling to DC unless a roll call vote is called and he is needed by leadership to pass the bill," spokesperson Lincoln Peek wrote in an email Friday morning. "Peter strongly supports the bill and expects it to pass by voice vote today."
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Employees at two New Hampshire Shaw's near the Vermont border — Littleton and Woodsville — have also tested positive.
The grocery chain said it has identified cases at six locations among its 150 or so stores in New England.
The Middlebury store, at 8 Washington Street, is the brand's only affected location in Vermont as of Friday. The others include stores in Dover, N.H., Easton, Mass., and Hyde Park, Mass.
The company did not say how many employees at each location had been diagnosed or when the cases were discovered. The Middlebury location was not included in a March 26 report by Boston NPR affiliate WBUR that listed the five other Shaw's sites with employee cases.
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In a letter sent to Trump shortly before 2 p.m., Scott wrote that Vermont was "particularly concerned about being able to secure enough ventilators for critically ill patients."
The Defense Production Act allows the president to force businesses to take action in support of the national defense.
"Please, Mr. President, use the DPA to order the expedited production of ventilators, and other essential supplies," Scott wrote. "Doing so will help us save many American lives."
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"We're really worried about people stuck in these households with their abusers and no other outlet," said Karen Tronsgard-Scott, executive director of the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence.
Prior to the pandemic, according to Steps to End Domestic Violence interim executive director Ana Burke, "If an abuser was off at work, it would give someone several hours of reprieve to do some safety planning — possibly to leave. But now that everyone's at home, some people may be in situations where their abuser is home all day, all night."
Burke's Burlington-based organization and 14 others that serve survivors throughout the state remain open. But each has had to adapt to public health regulations to ensure that staff and clients practice appropriate social distancing. In some cases that has involved moving residents of the shelters they run to hotels and motels, according to Sarah Robinson of the Vermont Network.
Serving those who are stuck inside with their abuser "has proven to be very complicated," according to Nadia Lucchin, executive director of the Bennington-based Project Against Violent Encounters. "We are increasing our outreach efforts via social media and checking in much more frequently with survivors in emergency shelter," she said.
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The state leveraged its connections with “people in high places” to procure more test kits, Levine said. He didn’t reveal the source beyond saying they “have some connection to Vermont and actually have some understanding of what Vermont is going through.”
The state will continue to prioritize testing for vulnerable populations — including health care workers and patients who are hospitalized, in long-term care facilities or with underlying health conditions — but doctors will have more latitude to order tests for patients with mild and moderate symptoms, Levine said.
“We’re going to do it full bore even if it means we [put ourselves] at risk for eventually not having enough supplies 10 days or more from this point,” he said. “This is really the critical juncture.”
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No staff member has tested positive for coronavirus, but some are off the job and home in self-quarantine awaiting test results, spokesperson Alise Certa said Thursday.
The resulting staff shortage forced the closure of five drop-off centers. The Environmental Depot hazardous waste facility is also closed. Only the Williston drop-off center, on Redmond Road, remains open.
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Thursday, March 26, 2020
The mayor was able to round up $85,000 for the fund, which will help organizations that support families and communities impacted by COVID-19.
The first recipient is the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity and, specifically, Feeding Chittenden, one of three food shelves operated by CVOEO that distributes nearly 2 million pounds of food every year.
The lead donors include the Pomerleau family of Vermont real estate and philanthropy fame; Roxanne and Russ Scully, developer of the Hula tech campus and Burlington Surf Club founder; and Laura and David Stiller, son of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters founder Robert Stiller. Each donated $25,000.
An additional $10,000 came from Spruce Mortgage, whose founder and CEO is Gene Richards, whom Weinberger appointed director of aviation at Burlington International Airport in 2013.
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It's another worrisome sign from the site of Vermont's most concentrated outbreak, which has already killed six of the nursing home's elderly residents.
With 26 total cases — nine staff and 17 residents — the Pearl Street facility accounted for more than a third of the 75 coronavirus cases in Chittenden County confirmed by the Vermont Department of Health as of Thursday afternoon.
Meanwhile, the Health Department's plan this week to evacuate 10 residents from the lower floor went sideways after a discovery that they, too, may have been exposed to someone with the virus.
Five rehab patients on the short-term care floor were taken by ambulance Tuesday to the DoubleTree by Hilton, where the University of Vermont Medical Center had agreed to take over their care.
On Wednesday, the evacuations were halted, and patients at the DoubleTree were moved again — to the hospital.
The original plan fell apart for two reasons, UVM Medical Center said in a statement. First, the patients at the hotel ended up requiring care that was "slightly more intensive than expected."
Further, the statement said, "state health officials determined that a person with whom some of these patients may have come in contact has tested positive for COVID-19."
A spokesperson for Genesis HealthCare, the nursing home's parent company, did not specify whether that individual was a staff member or another resident. But as the evacuations were underway, reports surfaced that a woman who had been discharged from rehabilitative care at Burlington Health & Rehab less than two weeks ago had tested positive for the virus.
She was being quarantined in her room at the Residence at Quarry Hill, an eldercare facility in South Burlington, according to that home's parent company company, LCB Senior Living.
Albert Petrarca, one of the five patients transferred to the DoubleTree, said by email that caregivers came to his hotel room around 2 p.m. on Wednesday to take him to the hospital.
"I asked three different people why we were leaving the DoubleTree and no one had [a] reason I could understand," he wrote.
The rehab patients, who make up a small fraction of the 80-plus residents at Burlington Health & Rehab, may decide whether to receive the remainder of their care at the nursing home or be transferred to the UVM Medical Center, the organizations said.
The employees who tested positive in recent days were among 14 who were already under a precautionary quarantine. Genesis brought in more than a dozen nurses this week to make up for the staff shortage.
Burlington Health & Rehab and the Residence at Quarry Hill are the only two eldercare facilities in Vermont with confirmed coronavirus cases, the Health Department said.
Correction, March 26: A previous version of this story misstated the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Chittenden County.
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