LEBANON — Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center had two dozen patients with COVID-19 in the hospital on Monday, the most the Lebanon hospital has seen during the pandemic.
The Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health system had a total of 39 such patients, including the 24 at DHMC, D-H spokeswoman Audra Burns said via email.
Statewide, there were 325 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in New Hampshire as of Sunday. On Monday, there were 36 patients with COVID-19 hospitalized in Vermont, which has roughly half the population of the Granite State.
The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 continues to fluctuate on a daily basis, Burns said.
As a result, DHMC and other hospitals have to balance their needs with those of other patients.
“We continue to evaluate against the needs of our urgent surgical patients with the demand of resources that our COVID patients require. The impact on staffing is primarily from community or household exposure,” Burns said.
HANOVER — An eighth resident of Hanover Terrace died over the weekend after testing positive for COVID-19, said the Lyme Road facility’s administrator.
“Sadly, we have had another resident pass away, COVID-related, although the resident’s goal was for comfort care. Our thoughts and prayers go out to this resident’s family and friends,” the administrator, Martha Ilsley, said in an email.
Roughly 80% of New Hampshire’s 780 deaths have occurred in nursing homes.
The outbreak at Hanover Terrace has included a total of 110 people, including 69 residents, 39 employees and two essential workers employed by an outside contractor.
Four of the nursing home’s c urrent residents have not tested positive during the outbreak and 56 have recovered, as have most of the workers.
The facility, working with CVS, began COVID-19 vaccinations on Dec. 27 — vaccinating 30 staff members and 40 residents — and the second dose is scheduled for Jan. 17.
Another clinic is scheduled in February, Ilsley said.
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — The residents of a housing development for seniors and people with disabilities have not gotten their regular mail delivery since last Wednesday, according to the daughter of a resident.
Brenda Trammell, who has been staying with her 75-year-old mother at Windsor Hollow in White River Junction since mid-November while Trammell recovers from surgery, said some of the development’s residents are awaiting Social Security checks and medication.
Additionally, getting mail from loved ones is the primary means of contact for some who have been isolating from others due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, noting that many residents don’t use computers.
Not getting mail has the effect of further isolating them, she said.
“It’s not good for them,” she said.
Trammell said she thinks the mail delay also is affecting neighbors near Hollow Drive.
Similar delays have previously been reported in White River Junction and around the country.
Broadly, the delays have been due to a combination of an increase in volume since last February, as well as staffing shortages as more than 4% of USPS workers have contracted the virus, a USPS spokesman told the Valley News in an email last month.
CLAREMONT — The city of Claremont leads at least the New Hampshire side of the Upper Valley in the number of current cases of COVID-19.
As of Monday, Claremont had 62 current cases, well above other towns in the Upper Valley. Lebanon had 23; Hanover 20; Enfield and Charlestown each had 19; New London 16; Canaan 11; Newport 10 and Sunapee had nine. Most other towns on the New Hampshire side of the Upper Valley had between one and four cases.
The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services is not aware of an institutional outbreak that might be driving the spike in numbers in Claremont, Jake Leon, a DHHS spokesman, said in an email on Monday.
“There is significant community transmission statewide that is driving numbers in Claremont, but there is not currently one specific setting behind the increase,” he wrote.
UNITY — Four employees at Sullivan County Health Care who tested positive for COVID-19 last Tuesday are asymptomatic and at home, according to the nursing home’s administrator.
As of Monday, no residents at the Unity nursing home had tested positive for COVID-19, Ted Purdy said in an email. All staff and residents are expected to be retested this week and vaccinations at the Unity nursing home are slated to begin on Wednesday, Purdy said.
Additionally, a worker at the Woodlawn Care Center in Newport, N.H., has tested positive for COVID-19, according to a post on the facility’s Facebook page.
That worker has been out of work for a week and there is “no known exposure” at Woodlawn, which had an outbreak in the fall that left four residents dead. Further testing at Woodlawn is scheduled for later this week.
The next vaccine clinic at Woodlawn is scheduled for Jan. 12 for both first and second doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. The final clinic for second doses is scheduled for Feb. 2. The facility is working with CVS to distribute the vaccine.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
