When it comes to COVID-19 in New Hampshire, for most of the summer we have been split into two groups: Nursing homes and everybody else.
Right now, however, that split is better described as schools and everybody else.
The switch comes about partly because the outbreaks that have plagued many long-term care facilities have been mostly brought under control by concentrated testing and focused response and partly, of course, because schools are starting back up.
The Department of Health and Human Services knows this, as reflected in their interactive COVID-19 Dashboard. They’ve built an entire tab devoted to various schools in a searchable database.
As I write this, the database says four colleges, three private schools and four public schools have at least one active case of COVID, for a total of 28 cases – more than half the total reported Thursday in the entire state.
There’s a complication, however: Schools don’t all report at the same time. Right now, two school reports are 9 days old and reports from all the non-colleges are at least 4 days old.
And even up-to-date reports may not be all that up-to-date.
Currently the database says UNH in Durham has 13 confirmed and 16 recovered cases even though Thursday the school reported it was monitoring 26 confirmed cases of COVID-19. UNH also says it has 169 students in quarantine around Durham, including members of a fraternity and a sorority.
This uncertainty makes it hard to judge on a day-to-day basis how the reopening of many schools is affecting the spread of COVID-19 in the state.
I suspect, or least hope, that this will improve as the school year continues. Everybody in education, from teachers to administration to staff to parents to students, is dealing with unprecedented upheaval. We should give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to reporting for at least a little while, I think.
With that in mind, here is the Monitor’s weekly update on the state of the pandemic in New Hampshire, which according to data from DHHS is still very good.
Goal 1: A two-week drop in cases as measured by the 14-day running average, which would indicate that the virus is not spreading.
Have we met this goal? No, but numbers remain low.
As of this writing the two-week average is 23 new cases a day, the same level it was two weeks ago. In other words, the disease is not going away.
However, 23 new cases a day in a state of 1.3 million people is a pretty small number. As long as it doesn’t start rising, this is probably OK.
Goal 2: Fewer than four new cases per 100,000 people each day, or 54 new cases a day, which would show that the disease is below dangerous levels.
Have we met this goal? Yes. Our number of new cases has been below this level for more than two months.
Goal 3: Conducting at least 150 PCR tests per 100,000 people each day. That works out to 2,000 tests per day.
Have we met this goal? Yes.
The average number of test results were reported each day was over 3,000 last week and has topped 4,000 on some days.
However, on average the number of different people being tested is only about two-thirds of the number of tests, because multiple tests are given to individuals in high-risk areas. So the number of people being tested is probably only about 2,000 a day, which barely meets the goal.
Goal 4: A positive rate of PCR tests below 5%, indicating that the virus is not spreading rapidly in the general population.
Have we met this goal? Yes.
As measured by the Department of Health and Human Services, the positive rate has been below 3% for most of the summer.
I update three charts about the virus in New Hampshire each weekday: New cases, new hospitalizations, and total deaths.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
