News

The pandemic news continues to be encouraging, with the number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths all declining. Nationally, new cases are at about 35,000 per day, (down from a peak of 800,000 per day) and the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 has decreased by 75%. We’re not out of the woods yet, but there is certainly a great deal of hope on the horizon (especially with the official arrival of spring next week, which brings more options to socialize outdoors rather than inside).

Many of us think of a new year as a new beginning – an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and to start fresh. As we bid farewell (not a fond one) to 2021, we’d optimistically (and, yes, naively) hoped that 2022 would be better and that we could put COVID in the rear-view mirror. I continue to be optimistic that 2022 WILL be a better year in terms of the pandemic. I have been told that I am someone who looks at the glass as being half full rather than half empty, but I really do think that things will improve by springtime. Here’s what we have going for us, in the fight against COVID.

I don’t think any of us here in Vermont ever expected that we would become a COVID-19 hot spot in the U.S., nor that we would remain in this status for so many weeks. I remember back in the spring of 2020, when we reacted with alarm that the number of new cases in the state was exceeding 100 per day. Here we are, 18 months later, with new case counts as high as 740 per day in Vermont. Why is our rate of infection so high?

Vermont has been receiving a great deal of attention in the news these days, and not just because of Patrick Lahey’s announcement that he won’t be running for the Senate in 2022. There have been shifts regarding COVID-19 case rates, exposure / quarantining / testing standards, and treatment, so this seems like a good time to review the current COVID-19 situation in Vermont, and to put things into perspective.