Monday, March 16, 2020
Vermont has announced that four new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed within the last 24 hours, bringing the state's total to 12.
Three of the four new cases do not appear to be travel-related, according to Health Commissioner Mark Levine. That's an indication of community transmission, Levine said during a press conference Monday morning.
"And that is why implementing these social distancing measures is a powerful public health tool," he said.
One of the four new patients — a woman in her 60s from Bennington County — was being hospitalized at the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center. The three others were self-isolating at home. They include a man in his 60s from Orange County, a man in his 30s from Chittenden County, and a woman in her 30s who is also from Chittenden County.
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Bidur Dahal is usually busy this time of year preparing for the Hindu festival of Ram Navami, a birth celebration for the deity Rama. Dahal, a founding member of the Vermont Hindu Temple on Allen Street in Burlington, prints up flyers and promotes the event on the temple’s Facebook page. But this year, the coronavirus has changed things: Temple leadership has postponed Ram Navami and all other events until further notice.
“We ideally don’t want any gatherings anymore now until this subsides, is over,” Dahal said.
The temple has been mostly empty lately, although the altar is festooned with flowers and twinkling lights against a backdrop of colorful prints of gods and goddesses. Instead of congregating in front of the altar, worshippers are encouraged to pray and chant at home.
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Sunday, March 15, 2020
"Many things that we expect as part of our daily lives are likely to change," Weinberger said. The session was streamed live on Facebook and conducted via conference call.
Burlington has not yet mandated closing bars or restaurants — as other cities and states have done in recent days — but the move is not out of the question, the mayor said.
"Even though the numbers appear to be quite low right now, I'm gonna have
a pretty low threshold in terms of triggering further action that would do what we can, as a local government, to ensure social distancing," Weinberger said. "People should expect that there will be further changes in the community as this week unfolds."
Vermont currently has eight confirmed cases of COVID-19, including two in Chittenden County. Many Burlington businesses have closed and postponed events since the Vermont Department of Health announced the state's first cases last week.
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Gov. Phil Scott has ordered the closure of all Vermont schools by Wednesday, March 18, in response to the worsening coronavirus pandemic.
All pre-K through 12th-grade schools must be closed until at least April 6, but that directive "may very well be extended for a longer period," the governor's office said in a press release Sunday.
No student is required to be in school Monday or Tuesday if their parents or guardians prefer to keep them home, the press release said. All schools will be closed beginning on Wednesday.
“The orderly dismissal of schools is essential to support both the State’s response to COVID-19 and the needs of children and families across Vermont,” Scott said in the release. “We must ensure children are safe, nourished, and still learning even as the traditional structure of school is disrupted. The work of educators will be essential in this effort.”
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The announcement brings the state's total to eight confirmed cases so far — half of which involve non-Vermont residents, the health department said in a press release.
One patient was a man in his seventies from Berkshire County in Massachusetts. He was being treated at the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center. Another patient was a man in his fifties from Suffolk County in Massachusetts. He was self-isolating at his Vermont home in Windsor County.
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Saturday, March 14, 2020
Levine told lawmakers from the legislature's Joint Rules Committee that the Vermont Department of Health has been "strongly encouraging" hospitals to set up such testing facilities and may possibly even be "facilitating" some starting Monday. Hospital CEOs from around the state have voiced interest.
"This would greatly alleviate a lot of the concerns that facilities have about doing testing on-site, and how cumbersome and complicated it could be," Levine said during a conference call Saturday afternoon.
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The Vermont Department of Health announced three more cases of the coronavirus on Saturday, a day after Gov. Phil Scott declared a state of emergency to combat the spread of the disease.
One patient was a Windsor County man in his nineties. He was hospitalized at the Veterans Administration hospital in White River Junction.
Another was a Washington County man in his fifties who had returned from Italy and had been self-isolating prior to showing symptoms toward the end of his two-week quarantine, Health Commissioner Mark Levine said Saturday in a phone call with lawmakers on the legislature’s Joint Rules Committee.
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Friday, March 13, 2020
Editor's note: Seven Days is profiling some of the people defending Vermonters from COVID-19.
Should you become infected with COVID-19, there’s a decent chance you might end up in the care of Dr. Erin Kurek and her colleagues at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington. Kurek, 42, has been a hospitalist there for eight years and was an attending hospitalist in Salt Lake City for three years before that.
If you’re unfamiliar with what a hospitalist does, that could be because it’s a relatively new term, coined about 25 years ago. Hospitalists are licensed internal medicine physicians who treat patients in a hospital rather than at outside offices or clinics.
“You can almost think of it as your primary care doctor, in the hospital,” Kurek explained.
Kurek’s floor at the hospital takes admissions from the emergency room and primary care doctors, as well as patients transferred from other hospitals who need a higher level of care. So far, the medical center has identified one positive case of COVID-19, more commonly known as the coronavirus. Kurek hasn’t treated that patient, though a colleague in her group has.
“Our group is working hard to disperse the work while keeping one person in charge of COVID rule-outs,” she said.
Numerous patients have come through exhibiting those worrisome, flu-like symptoms — dry cough, fever, shortness of breath.
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Gov. Phil Scott on Friday evening declared a state of emergency in Vermont and issued a series of sweeping orders that will restrict some aspects of daily life in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Scott’s orders include a ban on nonessential gatherings of more than 250 people and a restriction on access to long-term eldercare facilities. He’s also limiting out-of-state travel by state employees and said his administration will help those who can work remotely do so.
“The best information we currently have from the experts concludes that slowing it down and preventing as many cases as possible is the best way to make sure the most vulnerable, the very ill and the elderly get the care they need," Scott said during a press conference in Montpelier, flanked by nearly a dozen administration officials.
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If you need immediate information about coronavirus, visit the Vermont Department of Health's COVID-19 page, contact your health care provider or call 2-1-1.
Note: We will not share your answers or any identifying information publicly unless you give us permission to do so.
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