Vermont

Vermont sees spike in pneumonia cases – VTDigger

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1 year ago

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December 24, 2024

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Vermont sees spike in pneumonia cases – VTDigger

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center as seen from the air in December 2017. File photo by Charles Hatcher/Valley News

This story by Clare Shanahan was first published in the Valley News on Dec. 23.

Two pneumonia-causing bacteria have been at especially high levels in Vermont and New Hampshire in recent weeks, leading to increased levels of illness.

At Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, 97 patients with pneumonia went to the emergency room between September and November, compared to 46 during the same time last year, Dr. Michael Calderwood, chief quality officer at DHMC, said Friday. While final numbers aren’t yet available for December it “looks like the numbers may be improving.”

Pneumonia is an infection of the lungs often accompanied by fever, chills, cough, difficulty in breathing, fatigue and chest pain; it can be caused by multiple different viruses and bacteria, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The two types of potentially pneumonia-causing bacteria recently circulating in the region are: bordetella pertussis which causes whooping cough, a contagious respiratory infection that usually includes a severe cough and can lead to pneumonia, and mycoplasma pneumoniae, which causes walking pneumonia, a more mild form of illness that often does not require bed rest or hospitalization, Calderwood said.

Beyond DHMC, Vermont has seen a recent rise of respiratory illness outbreaks in schools believed to be specifically caused by mycoplasma pneumoniae, or walking pneumonia, Laura Ann Nicolai, deputy state epidemiologist and senior infectious disease program manager for Vermont, said in a Friday email statement.

Some children were specifically diagnosed with this kind of infection, but not all were tested for a specific pathogen by doctors.

The mycoplasma pneumoniae does not always cause pneumonia and often manifests as a chest cold. It mostly infects school-aged children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has reported high levels of this bacteria nationwide.

Statewide, the Vermont Department of Health has received seven reports from school nurses of these respiratory illness outbreaks, ranging in size from five to 31 cases. One such outbreak occurred in a Windsor County school, Nicolai said.

The Department of Health issued a health advisory to providers and school nurses Nov. 22 warning them of increased pneumonia cases. Many of the cases are suspected to be caused by mycoplasma pneumoniae and providers should consider that patients may be infected with this bacteria, treat them accordingly and report “any unexpected pattern or cluster of illness” to the state, the advisory said.

The number of cases of pneumonia, flu and “other cold viruses” overall at Gifford Health Care’s primary care clinics and emergency department has been mostly typical over the past few months, though the number of children infected is higher than usual, Gifford spokesperson Ashley Lincoln said.

Doctors attribute the rise to “fewer kids getting vaccinated.”

Nationally, children born since the COVID-19 pandemic, between 2020 and 2021, were less likely to have received standard vaccinations that children get before turning 2, with one of the lowest rates being the pneumococcal vaccine that is recommended for children under 5, according to a September CDC study.

This vaccine covers the most common type of pneumonia, pneumococcal; it does not prevent walking pneumonia, for which there is no vaccine.

The pneumococcal vaccine is recommended for children under 5, adults over 50 and people at higher risk of respiratory illness. Whooping cough is prevented by the DTaP and Tdap vaccines that are recommended at different frequencies depending on a person’s age.

Pneumonia can also occur as a secondary infection after someone has had another respiratory illness such as a cold, the flu, COVID-19 or RSV, according to the American Lung Association.

Vaccinations against COVID-19, the flu and RSV can help protect against pneumonia, according to the CDC.

Some additional ways people can minimize the spread of disease include: washing hands, staying home when sick and “donning a mask in public if they are concerned about their own and others’ health,” Calderwood said.

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Vermont

Vermont seeks dynamic pricing for state park access

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4 hours ago

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June 3, 2026

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Vermont seeks dynamic pricing for state park access

MONTPELIER, Vt. (WCAX) – The state of Vermont wants more flexibility in how it charges for access to state parks.

Right now, fees are determined by location, size, and type of camping.

However, leaders say parking at state parks and ponds is seeing more foot traffic, and costs of maintaining them have gone up.

The Department of Forest Parks and Recreation wants to be able to price campsites and day-use parks more dynamically.

There’s no proposal to raise fees now, but if approved, some state parks could see increased fees depending on their popularity, the date, and location.

“It is trying to find that balance of covering costs, providing the service parkgoers have come to expect and making sure we aren’t creating unintentional barriers for people who want to enjoy our fabulous state lakes,” said Julie Moore, Vermont Natural Resources Secretary.

She adds that last year’s Vermont ‘Parks Forever’ initiative, which allows for people who receive three squares benefits free entry to parks, meant an additional 30,000 visits last year.

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Vermont

Hundreds of housing units in the works at closely-watched project in Burlington’s South End – VTDigger

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14 hours ago

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June 3, 2026

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Hundreds of housing units in the works at closely-watched project in Burlington’s South End – VTDigger

A rendering of the South End Coordinated Redevelopment Project, courtesy of Andrew Foley, development director at Jonathan Rose Companies. Credit: GOA Architecture.

This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.

A long-awaited housing development that could bring hundreds of new apartments to a series of empty lots in Burlington’s South End neighborhood is beginning to come together.

The first phase of the major public-private deal, called the South End Coordinated Redevelopment Project, got official sign-off from the Burlington City Council last month. The project’s backers have also scored key funding commitments from Treasurer Mike Pieciak’s office and state housing funding agencies.

The project on Lakeside Avenue is the beginning of “a neighborhood being born out of a big parking lot,” Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak told city councilors in May.

City officials and developers hope the project could eventually include over a thousand homes, making it one of the largest developments in Vermont – and putting a considerable dent in the Queen City’s housing shortage. Regional planners estimate that Burlington needs to add between 3,500 and 10,500 homes by 2050 to get the housing market to a healthy state.

The development is possible, in part, because of a 2023 zoning change in the formerly industrial area that allows for some of the densest housing development in the state, according to local planners.

The South End project’s backers include Champlain College, Champlain Housing Trust and Ride Your Bike LLC, the investors behind the nearby Hula coworking campus. They have brought on Jonathan Rose Companies, an affordable housing developer with projects from New York to California, as the lead developer. The South End project is the company’s first in Vermont.

The development agreement signed by city councilors in May greenlights the South End project’s first 204 units, estimated to cost roughly $100 million.

Per Burlington’s inclusionary zoning policy and state rules, at least 20% of the first round of apartments will be set aside as affordable. But the developers hope to secure enough funding to allow them to earmark a third of the 204 apartments with income restrictions, said Andrew Foley, director of development at Jonathan Rose Companies, in an interview. The development agreement offers the developers reduced city fees if the affordable units are priced even more modestly than required.

The lion’s share of the new apartments will be studios and one-bedrooms, Foley said. The building would include common social spaces for neighbors to gather, he added.

Like any large-scale housing project, the developers of the South End apartments are piecing together financing from a wide array of sources. They recently scored an $8 million low-interest loan from Pieciak’s 10% for Vermont program, along with a $6.7 million award from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to support 67 affordable apartments – including 10 reserved for people experiencing homelessness.

To build out new roads – along with wastewater connections and stormwater infrastructure meant to cut down on sewer overflows into nearby Lake Champlain – city officials are going after funding from a new state program. The Community and Housing Infrastructure Program, a tax-increment financing tool created by the Legislature last year, would allow the city and the developers to borrow the funds needed to build out the infrastructure against the development’s future property tax revenue.