CONCORD -- State officials reported 19 more deaths attributed to the coronavirus Wednesday, all of them in long-term care facilities. The state’s death toll increased to 111 people, 87 of them associated with long-term care facilities.
Twelve of the deaths were people from Rockingham County: six women and six men, all age 60 or older. The remaining seven deaths were people in the same age groups from Hillsborough and Merrimack counties.
N.H. Health Commissioner Lori Shibinette announced a "serial testing" plan for long-term care facilities, while Gov. Chris Sununu announced a web portal to help facilitate a broad expansion of testing residents statewide.
Shibinette acknowledged the death rate is high in long-term care facilities.
"Once it gets into the facility we're seeing significant negative outcomes for residents," she said.
"We see exponential growth in long-term care cases is happening across the country," she added, citing a national increase of deaths from 10,000 up to 16,000 in about one week. "New Hampshire is obviously having similar problems."
Though nursing home residents account for a higher percentage of COVID-19 deaths in New Hampshire than in most other states, Shibinette emphasized the death rate in the rest of the community is low compared to elsewhere. She also noted that New Hampshire has one of the nation’s oldest populations.
Shibinette said the state has tested more than 1,000 nursing home residents and more than 5,000 long-term care workforce members in last 3-4 weeks. She cited the state’s pilot project with ConvenientMD in Rockingham and Hillsborough counties, where 4,200 tests were conducted in numerous facilities, many of which never had an outbreak, she said.
"That’s a very positive statistic," she said, saying in some cases "asymptomatic staff" were identified prior to any residents becoming ill.
"We want to stop this at the door and not have it get into our resident population," she said, noting long-term care residents "don’t have the option to social distance from caregivers."
She said the goal of "serial testing" is to test all staff members statewide. She said testing for all the long-term care facility residents and workforce in Merrimack and Strafford counties will start Thursday. She said there are 2,500 to 2,700 nursing home beds in the state. She estimated the long-term care workforce at about 20,000.
The expanded testing is possible now that the state can employ a different type of nasal swab that will allow nursing home staff to easily collect samples and send them to the state for analysis, she said.
In the next two weeks, those swabs will be used to test all nursing home residents statewide, and the state will follow up with a sentinel surveillance system in which 10% of the facilities will test 10% of their residents each week. Plans are also in the works to set up mobile teams to test all long-term care staff every seven to 10 days.
Web portal for testing
Sununu said the online web portal where residents can reserve a test will be posted Thursday at the nh.gov home page. He said people who have any COVID-19 symptom, or are over age 60 or have underlying health conditions can apply to be tested.
"Expanding our testing capacity in this way is going to be a very important tool as we go forward," Sununu said.
More numbers
Officials reported 108 new confirmed cases, raising the state’s total to 2,740 people who have tested positive with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
More than 28,000 people have been tested in the state and there are 1,519 active cases with more than 1,100 people who have recovered.
Of those with complete information among the new cases, there are four people under the age of 18 and the rest are adults with 55% female and 45% male. The new cases reside in Hillsborough County other than Manchester and Nashua (27), Rockingham (18), Merrimack (7), Strafford (5), and Belknap (1) counties, and in the cities of Manchester (34) and Nashua (10). The county of residence is being determined for six new case.
Rockingham County now has 903 cases and Strafford County has 168.
Twelve new hospitalized cases were identified for a total of 307 (11%) of 2,740 cases.
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Open wide?
A task force on reopening New Hampshire’s economy recommends that dentists resume some routine work if they can provide staff with medical grade personal protective equipment.
While dentistry offices have not been ordered to close, most if not all have limited their practice to emergency work. The Governor’s Economic Reopening Task Force on Wednesday approved a recommendation that they resume elective and orthodontic procedures if they comply with American Dental Association guidance regarding protective equipment. The group is not recommending the resumption of elective cosmetic procedures or the use of ultrasonic scaling.
Task force member Bill Marsh, a Republican state representative from Wolfeboro, said the guidance balances the public health risk of opening versus the public health cost of remaining closed.
"This lets dentists catch up a bit on their backlog and keeps us from creating too much of a public health burden from untreated dental disease," he said.
High school graduations
Drive-through ceremonies with no handshakes, hugs or high-fives may mark the end of high school for some New Hampshire graduates.
The Department of Education has released guidance to school districts about how to plan graduation ceremonies in light of the state’s prohibition on gatherings of more than 10 people. Officials said schools should consider limiting audience size to a maximum of two guests per student, depending on the ability to practice safe social distancing.
The department said one option could be to have people stay in their cars, parked in every other spot, and graduates would exit in small, appropriately spaced groups, to get their diplomas. Diplomas also could be distributed "drive-up" style, or participants could be spread out among classrooms within a school.
Material from Associated Press reporter Holly Ramer was used in this report.
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