Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, most Vermonters would have been hard pressed to name the state’s health commissioner. Today, Vermonters can easily identify Dr. Mark Levine’s familiar baritone voice as he discusses the latest strategies for containing the pandemic in twice-weekly press conferences with Gov. Phil Scott. These strategies have contributed to Vermont having the lowest Covid death rate in the nation. However, Covid continues to take a significant toll: as of February 9, about 10,000 Vermonters have recovered from Covid-19, 186 people have died, 53 people are currently hospitalized, and cases are now rising in Vermont.

Dr. Mark Levine is a graduate of the University of Rochester medical school. He was a professor of medicine at the University of Vermont and associate dean for graduate medical education before Gov. Scott named him Vermont’s commissioner of health in March 2017.

“Much as we have tried to be the island of Vermont within the continental U.S., … that’s been a real challenge,” says Dr. Levine. He remains very concerned about the spread of coronavirus variants such as strains from the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil, but asserts that Vermont health workers are "energized" to expand the vaccination campaign.

Levine says that the approval of vaccines this fall was a success, but bemoans the fact that the rollout “was punted from the federal level to the states.”

”The part that we’ve fallen down on as a country,” he says, is “how each state would get their vaccine and eventually get it into the arms of people who need it.”