Friday, September 24, 2021
Vermont has opened registration to those 80 and older who are eligible for a booster shot of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
The state's announcement on Thursday came hours after an advisory group within the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cleared the jabs for people 65 and older. Later, after midnight Friday morning, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that boosters would also be available to younger people at higher risk of contracting the disease because of underlying health conditions or their jobs, such as health care workers.
Walensky’s decision aligns with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which authorized emergency use of the vaccine for similar groups, including people who live in congregant settings, such as those in prison.
Later Friday morning, the state said it would open registration on October 1 to those between the ages of 18 and 64 who have underlying medical conditions.
The state, though, is waiting for further CDC guidance "on what occupational or institutional settings at increased risk for COVID-19 exposure should be eligible for booster shots." More information is expected next week.
Registration in Vermont is opening by age group. Those 80 and above could sign up on Friday morning; 75 and up can do so on Monday; 70 and up on Wednesday; and 65 and up on Friday, October 1. The Vermont Department of Health is setting up clinics to administer the jabs, which are also available at pharmacies and from health care providers. More information is available here.
Only those who have received their two-dose course of the Pfizer shot are eligible for the third booster shot, though “it is expected” that Moderna and Johnson & Johnson will receive federal clearance for boosters in the coming weeks, the state said in a Thursday night press release. The third shots are intended for people who received a second dose at least six months ago.
“Even though COVID-19 vaccines currently available in the United States are highly effective, a booster dose gives your body extra protection,” Health Commissioner Mark Levine said in the statement. “Getting vaccinated – and receiving a booster shot when you are eligible – is especially important as the world continues to face the Delta variant of the virus that causes COVID-19.”
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Founders Nancy and Tom Cain will still be involved in running the company, and the business will stay in Brattleboro, said Amy Zipper, HumanCo’s chief operating officer. Zipper lives in New York and has a second home in Stratton and said she, too, will be involved in running Against the Grain.
“It will grow in Brattleboro,” she said of the company, which has about 100 employees. “We love the founder’s story. We look for mission-driven companies that care about quality and taste.”
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Thursday, September 23, 2021
Acting Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad wants to use up to $1.27 million of the city's federal coronavirus recovery funds for bonuses to retain and recruit police officers.
The department roster has shrunk from 92 officers in June 2020 to 68 now — "an unprecedented rate of decline," Murad wrote in a memo to city councilors, who will consider the funding request at their meeting Monday. Only 65 officers are "deployable" as two are on a military deployment and another has an injury and is performing administrative duties, the memo says.
"Staffing shortages, increased overtime, and officer exhaustion are negatively affecting community engagement, response times, and the capacity to respond properly to incidents and follow through on casework," Murad wrote. "If staffing diminishes further, it will not only aggravate these conditions but also make it increasingly difficult to train new officers," as well as civilian employees who respond to nonemergency calls.
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But less than a month into this school year, the two pre-K-6 North Country Supervisory Union schools are facing a different reality. Amid mounting COVID-19 cases, Derby Elementary School, which has more than 450 students, shifted to fully remote learning for all students on September 16. Nearby Newport City Elementary, with around 325 students, made the decision on Wednesday to go remote as well.
In an email Thursday, Vermont Health Department spokesperson Katie Warchut said the cases in Newport have been classified as an outbreak, which means there are three or more cases with known connections in the educational setting. The Derby situation, which involves more cases and is more complex, is still under investigation, "but there appear to be multiple clusters of cases that are linked at this time," Warchut wrote.
Derby Elementary principal Stacey Urbin said that since the beginning of the school year, there have been 35 cases of COVID-19 in students and staff who were infectious while in school, and nine cases in people who were not infectious while in school. The overwhelming majority of those cases were in children, Urbin said.
RoseAnna Cyr, Derby Elementary’s school counselor and a parent of two children at the school, described the situation as “a rude reminder” that after a year and a half of keeping coronavirus under control in their community, things are not back to normal quite yet.
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A veteran journalist and broadcaster, Johnson took over Seven Days' weekly political column, Fair Game, in June after its previous writer, Dave Gram, retired because of health issues.
Johnson wrote 14 columns during his short tenure, covering a wide range of topics, from water quality to broadband expansion. In one, he took a stab at answering the perpetual question of whether Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt). will run again.
Johnson's most recent column — published Wednesday — will be his last. In an email, he said the demands of producing a quality column each week "requires more bandwidth than I can sustain."
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Wednesday, September 22, 2021
In a report released Wednesday, Hoffer said the Agency of Commerce and Community Development paid $117 million in federal money to 2,278 businesses in the first year of the pandemic.
The agency processed most general business applications, as well as applications for women- and minority-owned businesses with no employees.
Private businesses received up to $300,000 through the program, part of a $600 million COVID-19 relief package that Gov. Phil Scott signed into law in early 2020 using funds from the $2 trillion federal emergency stimulus measure. (Hoffer's report doesn’t cover grants from a separate program administered by the state Tax Department, which processed applications for businesses such as restaurants, bars, lodging, retail and entertainment.)
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Vermont's seven-day average case rate has increased 27 percent since the start of the Labor Day weekend. Cases have risen more quickly among people who are not fully vaccinated.
At Gov. Phil Scott’s weekly news conference Tuesday, state officials outlined the measures they hope to put in place as part of a long-term response to the pandemic. Officials said that Vermont is one of 26 states that have approved OSHA state plans to expand a federal vaccine mandate for large businesses to include public employees, including school districts.
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Tuesday, September 21, 2021
State regulators have granted the University of Vermont Medical Center permission to begin planning its proposed outpatient surgery facility, overriding concerns raised by frontline workers about whether the hospital can adequately staff the expansion.
The hospital was required to seek this initial level of approval, known as a "conceptual" certificate of need, because the proposed facility is expected to cost more than $30 million. The hospital must still return for final approval before it can break ground on the project.
UVM Medical Center leaders have said the new facility would replace the shuttered seven-room outpatient facility at Fanny Allen, address existing surgical backlogs and meet future demand.
Determining that the project appeared to meet an "existing or anticipated need," the Green Mountain Care Board announced Monday that it was approving the hospital's request to spend up to $5 million on planning and designing the proposed facility.
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Monday, September 20, 2021
Vermont Legal Aid and other advocacy organizations want state officials to extend benefits that have housed the homeless since the start of the pandemic. The rooms are available, as is federal funding, said Mairead O’Reilly, a Vermont Legal Aid Attorney who spoke at a news conference in Montpelier.
“We cannot support the termination of benefits for immunocompromised persons whose health is still very much at risk due to the ongoing pandemic, domestic violence survivors who may feel forced to return to abusive homes rather than sleep unsheltered, pregnant women who will become more likely to have less healthy preterm babies as a result of being unsheltered,” O’Reilly said.
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Saturday, September 18, 2021
The Vermont Federation of Nurses & Health Professionals — which represents 2,400 nurses, technicians and technologists at the UVM Medical Center — wrote to state regulators on Monday questioning the wisdom of expanding the hospital’s surgical capacity at a time when its leaders are “unable and unwilling” to safely staff existing operations.
The Green Mountain Care Board must soon decide whether to allow the Burlington hospital to start developing a plan for the new facility, which officials say would help reduce significant surgical backlogs and meet future demands.
But the union says that unless hospital leaders first commit to addressing existing staffing shortages, then the expansion will only exacerbate the current workforce crisis and further jeopardize the quality of care.
In a letter sent September 10, union president Deb Snell requested that the union be granted “interested-party status” so that it could weigh in on the project before regulators determine whether the hospital can proceed.