WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — For the past four weeks, the New England Patriots and New England Revolution have teamed with the USA Veterans & Military Support Foundation to provide “vital food packages” to veterans, military families and veteran service organizations. The packages contain non-perishable foods and nutritionist-developed recipes to provide three meals a day for two people for 14 days.
More than one million meals have been assembled at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., and on Saturday a Patriots branded truck delivered some of those meals to White River Junction, North Hampton, N.H., and Arundel, Maine. The food packages also have been available for pick up at six different locations in Massachusetts. More deliveries are scheduled for the coming weeks with another stop in North Hampton and one in Merrimack, N.H.
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health has been able to validate and stand up its own reprocessing efforts for N95 masks, a crucial piece of personal protective equipment for health care workers who could be exposed to COVID-19.
The process uses hydrogen peroxide vapor to sterilize the mask without compromising function and can extend the life of one mask by 20 times.
“If you have 50,000 masks, and we have around that amount on hand, really good, high-quality N95s, if you can re-use them 20 times that gets us to a million,” said Dr. George Blike, chief quality and value officer for D-HH. “So, suddenly having the ability to have a million uses of N95s, that puts us in the range of what we believe we actually need for some of our worst case scenarios.”
Blike said similar processes were being used at Yale University and Massachusetts General Hospital and had been “well-published.” And Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon has been using hydrogen peroxide vapor since 2017 to effectively sterilize patient rooms.
“We know this process, we have the equipment, and we decided it was best for us to implement our own process for better quality control,” Bilke said. “Our process not only sterilizes the masks, but maintains its filtering, fit and seal on the face.”
The U.S. Small Business Administration reported Saturday that 11,582 loans, totaling more than $2 billion, have been approved for New Hampshire small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program. The SBA expects to have details regarding the latest spending bill passed by Congress, which will expand COVID-19 relief programs, by early next week.
For those who want some help understanding the PPP, the New Hampshire Small Business Development Center is offering a free webinar Tuesday from 10-11 a.m. titled “Assistance for the PPP Application & Payroll Calculation. The link for that event can be found at nhsbdc.org/events.
The PPP webinar is part of a two-week series from the NHSBDC, which has scheduled a free webinar every weekday for the next two weeks. The goal is to help businesses move forward during the pandemic. Other topics include the best options for the self-employed to get COVID-19 relief and advice on generating cash flow during this time.
The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services reported 77 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, bringing the state’s total to 1,864. Of those, 242 are hospitalized. Grafton and Sullivan counties each had one new case. There were no new deaths attributed to COVID-19, leaving that total at 60 in New Hampshire.
There were eight new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Vermont, for a statewide total of 851, the state Health Department reported. The number of deaths remained unchanged at 46 statewide.
The Woodstock Area Relief Fund, which is run by volunteers to aid struggling families in the seven towns in the Windsor Central Supervisory Union, has raised more than $215,000 in just two weeks with contributions from 160 Vermont residents and 50 people from other states. The money will go toward grants of up to $1,000 per individual for help with rent, groceries and other household expenses. The fund is open to residents of Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Pomfret, Plymouth, Reading and Woodstock.
To apply for aid, go to woodstockarearelieffund.org. and fill out a straightforward application – no tax forms are required. Go to the same website to donate to the fund. For more information, call 802-281-9902 or email woodstockcovid19@gmail.com.
The Telegraph newspaper, based in Nashua, announced Sunday that it will be moving all weekday editions online beginning Monday. The Sunday Telegraph will still be available in print and it will be delivered on Saturdays starting this Saturday.
“With COVID-19 all around us, this is the time for change,” an article in Sunday’s Telegraph read. “In recent years, a majority of our readers have accessed the news online. We know we want to move with our readers and advertisers. Today — when COVID-19 news needs to be analyzed and published immediately — we are accelerating our move into the future.”
Material from the Associated Press contributed to this story.