HANOVER — A Hanover Terrace resident who had tested positive for COVID-19 died Tuesday evening, according to the nursing home’s temporary administrator.
The outbreak at the Lyme Road facility grew to include a total of 96 people on Wednesday, adding six more cases including two residents and four workers, said Martha Ilsley, the administrator, in an email.
The outbreak now includes a total of 68 residents, 26 workers and two essential workers employed by an outside vendor.
Due to the death and another resident being discharged earlier this week after testing positive, the total number of current residents infected as of Wednesday was 66, more than 90% of the 72 residents residing there.
Two of the infected residents — who have elected to focus solely on comfort care — are seriously ill, but most of the residents who have tested positive have either no symptoms or mild symptoms, Ilsley said.
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center has scheduled a second physician to assist Dr. Daniel Stadler, Hanover Terrace’s medical director, with the monitoring and care of the facility’s residents, Ilsley said. DHMC also has provided a nurse to assist with communicating with families.
Elsewhere in the Upper Valley, Grafton County Nursing Home in North Haverhill had one staff member test positive for COVID-19 last Friday, according to Craig Labore, the facility’s administrator. The nursing home is conducting further tests this week to determine if there are more cases there, Labore said in a Wednesday email.
LEBANON — A Dartmouth-Hitchcock infectious disease specialist is asking people to be patient with the rollout of the vaccine for COVID-19.
Dr. Michael Calderwood, in a video released by the Lebanon-based health system on Tuesday, asked that patients not call their primary care physicians to find out when a vaccine will be available for them. Instead, he said, the health system will keep patients and community members informed about when and how they can be vaccinated.
D-H is expecting to receive some doses of COVID-19 vaccine this month, and Calderwood, who is associate chief quality officer at DHMC, said the first doses will go to high-risk health care workers, first responders and nursing home residents. Older people and those with underlying health conditions also will be toward the top of the list, with people working in front-line professions such as education, transportation and food distribution close behind, he said. The precise order of who will be vaccinated when is still being worked out, he said.
It’s possible that enough people in the U.S. — some 230 million — will be immunized by next summer to provide sufficient herd immunity to allow life to return to normal, Calderwood said.
Before then, however, people need to continue to wear masks, practice social distancing and wash their hands to reduce the spread of the virus.
LEBANON — A $3 million investment from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health in the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund is slated to help homeowners in manufactured-home parks purchase and operate parks as resident-owned communities, as well as to extend mortgage loans to low-wealth homebuyers; and to help develop affordable multifamily rentals.
Stable housing can improve people’s health by reducing stress and improving people’s quality of life, said Dr. Sally Kraft, vice president of Population Health at D-HH, in a Wednesday news release from the Lebanon-based health system. The investment comes as some people have seen their income reduced due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Community Loan Fund also works with communities to support local businesses, early childhood centers and other nonprofits.
A person at the adult education program at Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center in Newport, N.H., has tested positive for COVID-19, according to a letter from school officials.
The school district has informed close contacts and directed them to quarantine, and sent that list of names to the New Hampshire Department of Health, according to the Wednesday letter from SAU 6 Assistant Superintendent Donna Magoon.
Magoon on Friday informed the community of a separate case at the Claremont Middle School, but that person had not been in the building since before the Thanksgiving break, so the district determined it did not need to conduct contact tracing.
One person, who was most recently at the Indian River School in Canaan last Friday, subsequently tested positive for COVID-19, Mascoma Valley Regional School District officials said.
That person had no contact with students on Friday and the adults that were close contacts will be notified and directed to quarantine by DHHS, Mascoma Superintendent Amanda Isabelle said on the district’s Facebook page.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
