Health Department to text close contacts; vaccination priority announced

By Guy Page

If you get a text from the number 86911, it’s the Vermont Health Department calling. Message: you’ve been exposed. Quarantine immediately.

This 86911 texting program is a new contact tracing outreach of the Health Department, Health Commissioner Mark Levine announced. “If you do get a text, please know that it is legitimate,” he said.

It’s intended to quickly notify those who have been in “close contact” with people who have tested positive for Covid-19. Vermonters should respond by self-quarantine. They should also expect follow-up phone calls by contact tracers.

Orca Media

Gov. Phil Scott at COVID-19 briefing

The Health Department will (with permission) source phone numbers from the cellphones of people who have tested positive. All followup phone calls by VDH contract tracers will be placed between 9 am and 6 pm – usually the same day as the text.

“We hope Vermonters can use it to take steps to protect themselves and others around them,” Levine said.

The State of Vermont has a verification process to help avoid ‘false positive’ texts due to phone number mixups, Human Services Agency Secretary Mike Smith said. Precautions should minimize the possibility of someone who is not a close contact getting an 86911 text.

“86” is police radio code for “fatality.” “911” is the universal emergency number. Vermont Daily asked if there is any subliminal, or not so subliminal, message in the selection of the text numbers. Amid laughter in the background, Gov. Scott said “we’ll have to get back to you on that.”

Priorities for vaccine arriving next week – The first batch of Covid-19 vaccine, a total of 5850 doses, is expected to arrive next week, Levine said. Doses will be split 50/50 among at-risk health care workers and at-risk health care recipients, such as senior home residents.

The high priority of vaccinating health care workers is less about reducing transmission in the health setting and more about protecting valuable health care workers, Levine said. “We are not as worried about transmission in the facility….we’re worried about having an important population of peope that happen to work in health care.”

The vaccine will require a minimum of a month, “and probably 6-12 weeks,” before full immunity occurs, Levine cautioned. “This whole business of wearing your masks, and everything else, is going to continue through the vaccination process,” he said.

At-risk health care workers qualifying for immediate vaccination include longterm care facility staff, clinical support staff working with Covid-19 patients, home health workers, and other health care provider staff.

Read more of Guy Page’s reports. Vermont Daily is sponsored by True North Media.

Image courtesy of Orca Media

13 thoughts on “Health Department to text close contacts; vaccination priority announced

  1. We have the right to refuse ANY medical treatment through the process of Informed Consent. By law we must be given complete information about all risks beforehand and must sign to indicate that our consent is given. Furthermore, our consent cannot be coerced. This is an NIH requirement and medical practitioners (and scientists who deal with human subjects) must be certified regularly. Know your rights, tell others, and INSIST on them.

  2. Will any of these healthcare workers be allowed to say no without losing their jobs? They and the elderly they serve will be the first to die or have serious side effects, including making the disease more severe when the vaccinated person is later exposed to the actual virus. The vaccine has been fast-tracked, and has not been proven to be either safe or effective. Information is all over the internet, for people who choose to look for it. Here is just one link of many.
    https://healthimpactnews.com/2020/doctors-around-the-world-issue-dire-warning-do-not-get-the-covid-vaccine/
    Please wake up and fight this! It is not about saving lives, but rather about reducing the world’s population.

  3. I find Levine’s statements about the’ high priority of healthcare workers over the transmission of the virus in the facility’, to be eerily eugenic sounding. Is it just me or was he implying that healthcare workers are more important than their patients?

    • Levine doesn’t seem capable of independent thought. He’s just running an algorithm downloaded from Fauci & Co. The fact that he seems entirely unconcerned with the numerous red flags raised by this vaccine–not least of which its experimental nature and the fact that we have no long-term safety data, for starters–just tells me he’s a standard-issue member of the Big Pharma industrial complex. “FDA approval” doesn’t mean much when the FDA gets 75% of its drug review budget from pharma companies. It’s a captive agency, just like most in Washington.

  4. Vaccine hocus-pocus is all for *nothing* – doesn’t stop Covid or claim to – claims only to make symptoms milder. Fauci the fraud also claims we will still wear masks.

    Fallacious to claim a Covid vaccine which does anything, or has 95% ‘efficacy’ as It is impossible to make a vaccine which will stop a coronavirus – that is cold, flu or any covid. Because viruses shapeshift rapidly – it cannot be done via vaccine.

    It’s moving target which will always be right no matter how sick one is – all that will be claimed is that it would have been worse w/o it – same thing they now say for flu vaccinees who come down with flu. And gift that keeps giving bc *multiple doses are needed* – and yearly multiple doses will be needed – just like the flu imo.

    Current Covid tests include the flu virus – as evidenced by the sudden and the miraculous number of falling flu cases – they’re being fraudulently counted as Covid – surprise!
    Moderna boss says COVID-19 vaccine not proven to stop spread of virus
    By Noah Manskar November 24, 2020 | 8:45am | Updated November 24, 2020 | 10:07am
    https://nypost.com/2020/11/24/moderna-boss-says-covid-shot-not-proven-to-stop-virus-spread/

  5. A word to all female health care workers: If this Pfizer vaccine is the same as the one rolled out in the UK, you should know that documentation provided to health care providers there states, “It is unknown whether COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 has an impact on fertility.”

    Among other things (experimental technology, no animal studies, only trialed to minimize symptoms and not to stop transmission, risk of autoimmune responses, etc.). Sounds like our health dept. doesn’t want to be bothered with those details, however.

    • They threw the tea overboard.
      We need to throw the phone overboard.

      We need to take back our country, our privacy, our rights.
      These phones have us tied to trees like dogs.
      Take back your life!

      • The “smart phone” is the greatest tool ever invented to spread propaganda. And now we are just starting to see the true goal of the phones.

        Notice how all the recent updates just keep tacking you more and more saving thing you never asked to be saved?

        They want to knoe everything about you. Every move, every dollar.

        This whole disaster could be the very best thing ever for Vermont. Perhaps now we can see a bit more clearly, realizing we are completely being sold out.

        Sold out by the majority democrats and majority republicans. Yet to hear from ANY elected representatives on a completely free speech site.

        We have citizens do more than the ENTIRE elected government to defend our constitution and get to the truth. Interesting times.

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