![]() ![]() The state’s coordinated response compared favorably to New York’s, which was initially beset by infighting and mixed public health messages. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, from early on allowed health experts rather than politicians to lead public messaging and guide the state’s response. But the state quickly got its act together. The state in late January reported the nation’s first case of Covid-19, and the pathogen’s tear through a Seattle-area nursing home was the first indication of how thoroughly the facilities would soon be devastated nationwide. “They were the first and had to make decisions really fast.” “Washington was the tip of the spear,” Riley said. Washington state shows larger urban centers can mount an effective defense against the virus with rapid coordination and an early focus on vulnerable populations. But unlike Alaska, Vermont is just a few hours’ drive from New York City, the outbreak’s early epicenter, and that makes its performance even more noteworthy. Vermont’s experience has some similarities to Alaska, another predominantly rural state that until recent weeks kept the virus at bay through one of the country’s most proactive testing regimes and a strictly enforced quarantine requirement for travelers. We’ve shown you can do all of that, you just have to do it right.” “There’s been this line in the sand in the Southern states, that you either reopen the economy or you do the public health work to defeat the virus. “We opened very, very gradually,” Levine said. “They took action early, they let science lead, and they were consistent but willing to pivot when the science told them new strategies were needed,” said Trish Riley, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy.įor Levine, the state health commissioner, there’s no secret to the state’s success. ![]() And it invested early in testing and contact tracing and implemented a state-wide mask mandate early on. The state is also strict about visitors, requiring a two-week quarantine for people arriving from places with higher infection rates. Burlington, the state’s most populous city, reduced its outdoor gathering limit to 25 in late August when college students began returning to nearby campuses. Local governments have authority to set their own stricter rules. The lockdown it put in place in late March is still gradually being lifted, restaurants and bars are still limited to 50 percent indoor capacity and even outdoor gatherings are still subject to a 150-person limit. “Any state that’s going to succeed against Covid has got to have the compliance of the population, because every single thing you do is telling people to alter their personal behavior,” Mark Levine, Vermont’s health commissioner, said in an interview. That sense of complacency never took hold in Vermont, where a moderate Republican governor and a Democratic-led Legislature helped defuse partisan tensions that hampered the response elsewhere. While health experts say the state has likely benefited from its rural geography, other sparsely populated areas of the country that let their guard down were overwhelmed by the virus this spring and summer. ![]() “Notwithstanding that this is a small state, it should be the model of how you get to such a low test positivity that you can actually start opening up the economy in a safe and prudent way.” “This should be the model for the country, how you’ve done it,” Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said during a briefing with state leaders in September. If the country as a whole had the same per capita death rate as Vermont, the nationwide death toll would be 30,000 instead of more than 215,000. Fewer than 60 people have died, giving the state the second-fewest deaths per capita behind Alaska, which has seen surging caseloads in recent weeks. ![]() It shares borders with some of the hardest-hit states and has the third-oldest population in the country.īut Vermont swiftly flattened its initial wave and has since gone weeks at a time without any new confirmed deaths. The virus arrived in Vermont during the first wave sweeping the country. The odds could have been stacked against the state. FIGHTING THE VIRUS Leading the way in the rural Northeastįew states have a record as unblemished as Vermont. ![]()
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