MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - The Vermont Health Department is going to begin sending text messages to people who may have come into contact with someone who has COVID-19, an official said.
Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine said Tuesday the system is intended to ensure the word gets to people who may have been exposed to the virus as quickly as possible.
The person infected with the virus will provide the cellphone numbers of the people who may have been exposed.
After receiving the texts, people will also receive calls from Health Department contact tracers.
“Our contact tracing team will help determine who gets these texts based on the exact situation,” Levine said during the state’s virus briefing.
The person will receive two short texts from the number 86911. The texts will be sent between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.
“If you do get a text, please know it is a legitimate and important message from the department of health,” Levine said.
In other news related to the coronavirus:
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POLICE ACADEMY
Staff and cadets at the Vermont Police Academy in Pittsford are in quarantine after eight of 23 members of the potential graduating class had positive antigen tests and are now considered probable for having COVID-19.
It’s unclear how class members were exposed. Cadets and staff are quarantining at home until PCR testing can confirm the antigen tests and rule out more cases, William Sheets, the interim executive director of the Criminal Justice Council, told the Brattleboro Reformer.
The academy has been training officers with strict COVID-19 protocols and recruits in the Level 3 course had single occupancy rooms and did not eat meals together, Sheets said. The academy was scheduled to hold a graduation ceremony on Dec. 18.
Once the probable cases were detected, “we shut down the physical academy,” Sheets told the newspaper.
Recruits are doing their training remotely for now.
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NUMBERS
On Wednesday the Health Department reported 105 new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19, bringing the statewide total since the pandemic began to more than 5,280.
The state reports there are currently 25 people hospitalized with COVID-19, including two in intensive care.
The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Vermont has risen over the past two weeks from 92 new cases per day on Nov. 24 to 116.43 new cases per day on Dec. 8.
The latest average positivity rate in Vermont is 2.47%. State health departments are calculating positivity rate differently across the country, but for Vermont the AP calculates the rate by dividing new cases by test specimens using data from The COVID Tracking Project.
The seven-day rolling average of the positivity rate in Vermont has risen over the past two weeks from 1.33% on Nov. 24 to 2.47% on Dec. 8.
On Wednesday the state reported four new COVID-19 fatalities, bringing the statewide total since the pandemic began to 86.
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