Governor Phil Scott Continues Phase 1 of Opening Vermont
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- Created on Friday, 22 May 2020 22:48
- Written by Taylor Girard
VERMONT-Governor Phil Scott said he will continue to re-open Vermont in phases-from his press conference today. Vermont is still on Phase 1, of 3 phases. Fairgrounds, and fairs will not open this season. However, the next steps of re-opening the state will include the re-opening of hair salons,churches, and farmers markets.
"On May 29th, hair salons will be allowed to open, as long as they are following health guidlines, and churches will be allowed to open tomorrow at 25% capacity,"stated Governor Phil Scott.
Resaurants remain to be an important phases of re-opening Vermont's economy as well.
"Today, I sisgned an executive order with Dr. Levine that will let restaurants open up to limited capacity outdoor seating," continued Scott.
Doctor Levine was aslo able to offer insight on dental work, from this press conference.
"The third area that may restart immediatly is dental work, but between now and June 1st dentists may only do procedures with low areosol, "added Dr. Levine.
Although Vermont comtinues to turn the spigot, and flatten the curve for COVID-neigboring states continue to see an increase in cases daily. Vermont's doublling rate is not expected to peak until 46 weeks, and their postive cases should still reamain under 5%, with the state's re-opening. However, a Johns Hopkins Report estimates that only 4 hours from the Vermon capital-you will see an increase of nearly 185,000 cases.
"Some of our neighboring states still have new and active cases daily. In the past 7 days our neighboring state NH saw 571 new cases-compared to our 20 cases. This is one of the reasons why we cannot look at our state as a vaccum, and we still need to be taking other states into consideration,"added Scott.
The Governor also signed an executive order to re-open farmers markets this week, and they hope these markets can open even more in the coming weeks. St. Johnsbury is scheduled to have one open tommorow morning. The Governor hopes to continue to able to have people social distance-so more people, and buisinesses can begin to open.
"If there isn't many peaks in re-opening, I would hope we could re-open things to a larger limited capacity of 25 people, hopefullly by June 1st we will be able to aggravate this further and allow this to happen," stated Scott.
There will not be a press conference this Monday-in light of Memorial Day. However, there will be one this Wednesday. People should continue to gather in groups 10 or less until then, and follow www.vermonthealth.gov for further updates.
