UNITY — Four residents have now died at a Sullivan County nursing home in a COVID-19 outbreak that has grown to be the largest in the Upper Valley thus far, according to the facility’s administrator.
The outbreak as of Friday includes a total of 120 people, 79 residents and 41 employees, said Ted Purdy, the Unity nursing home’s administrator, in a Facebook post.
Hanover Terrace, with a total of 111 cases, was previously the largest outbreak in the region. That outbreak, which left seven residents dead, has ended.
Most of the Sullivan County nursing home residents who tested positive this week have no symptoms or minor ones such as a cough or congestion, Purdy wrote.
Of the staff who have tested positive, 19 have returned to work and two have resigned.
The facility had a second round of vaccinations on Wednesday.
Those who had tested positive but had improving symptoms were allowed to be vaccinated. Others will be vaccinated at the facility’s next clinic on Feb. 17.
The outbreak at the neighboring Sullivan County jail has grown to 32 cases, said County Manager Derek Ferland in a Friday email.
The total includes 24 inmates, one of whom has recovered, and eight employees, five of whom have recovered and returned to work.
Of the 23 active cases in inmates, 15 have mild symptoms and eight have none, Ferland said.
CONCORD — Schools in the Upper Valley are among those that will benefit from $156 million in emergency relief funds coming to New Hampshire through the federal Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, the New Hampshire Department of Education announced in a news release on Friday.
Among the Upper Valley school districts set to receive a boost through this round of relief money are Claremont ($2.88 million); Newport, N.H. ($1.88 million); Lebanon ($1.07 million); Mascoma Valley Regional ($918,000); Haverhill ($856,000); and Kearsarge ($676,000).
The funding, which comes on top of a previous award of $37.8 million in similar funding in New Hampshire last spring, is aimed at assisting schools in their response to COVID-19 by helping them to address learning loss among students, as well as to make repairs and improvements to school facilities to reduce risk of virus transmission.
LEBANON — The U.S. Department of Labor awarded a $2.5 million grant to Dartmouth-Hitchcock to support training and workforce development for rural health care in New Hampshire, according to a news release.
The award comes as the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened a health care workforce shortage in the state, said Friday’s release from D-H.
The money is aimed at helping New Hampshire-based rural health care organizations, including D-H members, to hire, train and retain employees who work with patients. The effort is focused on expanding a pipeline into apprenticeship programs, continuing education for current health care workers and investing in strategies to help health care organizations to retain their employees.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
