CONCORD — New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said Thursday that he’s going to issue an executive order stipulating all school districts in the state have at least two days of in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic.
The order would take effect on March 8, Sununu said at his weekly news conference. He said there are only about a half-dozen districts left in the state that aren’t offering a hybrid schedule.
“It isn’t just so the kids come back and have a more fuller, robust learning model,” Sununu said. “It really is for the behavioral and mental health, the isolation issues, that so many of our students have been bearing with.”
Earlier in the news conference, Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Shibinette spoke about pediatric psychiatric care. She said over the last few weeks, “we’ve seen the children’s waitlist for psychiatric beds at historic levels.” She said she has commissioned New Hampshire Hospital to dedicate 10 beds to serve children experiencing a mental health crisis. She also said the state would be working with providers to provide more care for children, and that Hampstead Hospital anticipated having more beds available in May.
School employees would be in the next vaccination group, 2A, and the state is preparing to assist them with a target time of April, Sununu said.
“The data is all very clear, whether it’s the CDC, the state, everyone has said that there’s no reason that these schools cannot open without a vaccination,” he said.
HANOVER — Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire appear to be on different tracks in terms of COVID-19 case trends.
UNH, which is based in Durham, had 472 active cases, including 467 students and five employees as of Wednesday.
In the meantime, Dartmouth had just three cases, one in a student and two in employees. This term, UNH has had a test positivity rate of 0.9%, while Dartmouth has had a rate of below 0.2% so far this year.
When UNH students returned for the spring semester in late January, there were about 30 cases in the community, Todd Selig, Durham’s town administrator, said in a public health announcement on Wednesday. Case numbers have climbed since and “significantly” increased since the Super Bowl, Selig wrote. Durham now leads the state in current cases with 398.
Of the 461 new cases New Hampshire reported on Thursday, 141 were related to colleges in the state, Dr. Benjamin Chan, New Hampshire’s state epidemiologist, said in a news conference. Of late, 90 of the state’s new cases each day have been tied to colleges, he said.
State health officials are working with college leaders in an effort to “break the chains of transmission,” he said.
Selig attributed the spike in cases in Durham to COVID fatigue that has driven students to gather in groups without masks, without physical distancing and in poorly ventilated areas.
“This behavior is unacceptable during the current pandemic,” Selig wrote.
As a result of the recent spike in cases, UNH has instituted a variety of precautions, including temporarily transitioning to all-online classes with a few exceptions, restricting gatherings to no more than six people and prohibiting off-campus students’ access to residence halls. In addition, UNH fraternities and sororities have halted in-person activities. Bars, in compliance with public health guidelines, remain open in Durham, Selig said.
Meanwhile, Dartmouth Provost Joseph Helble highlighted the low case counts around the Hanover campus during a virtual community conversation on Wednesday. He also indicated, with several caveats, that Dartmouth students might return in full by the fall. Currently only about half of undergraduates are allowed on campus.
“By fall, right now, as of today, our planning is for an operational in-residence normal fall term,” Helble said.
Elsewhere in New Hampshire, Plymouth State University had 174 active cases as of Wednesday. In Burlington, the University of Vermont also reported nearly 80 confirmed COVID-19 cases among students during the first two weeks of the semester, the Associated Press reported. UVM previously reported a total of 99 student cases last semester from Aug. 7 to Nov. 24.
LEBANON — Numbers of cases of COVID-19, hospitalizations and deaths are all trending downward in the Twin States due to various factors, according to a Dartmouth-Hitchcock infectious disease specialist.
The downward trends are due to people developing natural immunity to the disease through infection, as well as vaccinations and increased adherence to safety protocols, said Dr. Jose Mercado, who also is a hospital epidemiologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
“We are seeing a trend for improvement on all those kind of different factors,” he said, in a Thursday phone interview.
The 461 new cases New Hampshire health officials reported on Thursday were a far cry from the more than 1,000 cases the state reported some days last month. Vermont reported 131 new cases on Thursday, well below the more than 200 cases the state reported some days last month.
In addition, both states are seeing hospitalizations and deaths tick downward.
Hospitalizations in New Hampshire stood at 126 on Thursday, down from more than 300 at times last month. But Chan, the state epidemiologist, said during Thursday’s news conference that hospitalizations are “still high” and equal to the numbers the state saw during the pandemic’s first wave last spring.
Vermont’s hospitalization numbers also are trending downward, with 38 hospitalizations on Thursday. That’s also slightly above the number Vermont saw during the first peak of cases last spring.
Average deaths per day in New Hampshire have gone down to two this week, from highs of more than 10 in late December and early January. Vermont’s total weekly death count was down to three last week, after a high of 20 in late December.
CANAAN — Cardigan Mountain School has shifted to remote learning for the remainder of the week and is extending next week’s planned vacation through most of next month after five students tested positive for COVID-19, according to the head of school.
The campus first entered quarantine by dorm groupings last Thursday, with some students opting to quarantine at home, after one student at the Canaan boarding school for boys in grades 6-9 tested positive, said Christopher Day, the head of school, in letters to parents this week.
Students able to travel will now depart campus on Saturday and return on March 26 and 27.
The school’s spring term is slated to end May 14.
Day described the extended break as a “campus reset,” with the goals being to eliminate the virus from the campus, give students a break from quarantine and prepare for “a successful on-campus spring term.”
Staff writter Nora Doyle-Burr contributed to this report.