On Wednesday night at 8:20, which is 20:20 military time, Merrimack Valley High School turned on the lights at its athletic fields to honor the class of 2020 seniors who didn’t get a chance to participate in sports or arts this spring due to the coronavirus pandemic. The lights were shining for 20 minutes and 20 seconds.
The bright idea took off at high schools in Texas and Colorado. The National Federation of State High School Associations, a body that provides leadership and rules guidelines for high school athletics across the country, picked up on it and turned the idea into an organized movement called “Turn on the Lights,” and Wednesday was New Hampshire’s designated day to light it up.
Bishop Brady High School doesn’t have many outdoor lights to turn on, but it joined the movement by turning on the lights in its gym and setting its scoreboard clock to 20:20 and the score to 20-20.
“Seniors in this year’s class, however, will be among the toughest graduates ever as their lives have been the bookends to two of the worst tragedies in our nation’s history,” Dr. Karissa Niehoff wrote in a story about “Turn on the Lights” on the NFHS website, nfhs.org. “Born sometime during the 2001-02 school year, which began with the horrific events of September 11, 2001, these resilient 2020 graduates had an abrupt ending to their high school days with the ongoing national health crisis.”
A COVID-19 outbreak at a Franklin nursing home is worse than was initially believed Wednesday.
A total of 48 people – 38 residents and 10 staff members – at Mountain Ridge Center have tested positive for the coronavirus, the center said in a statement Thursday afternoon. One resident has died of the virus, the center says.
That’s far higher than the 15 initially reported Wednesday afternoon by Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Shibinette.
The jump in numbers is a result of mass testing of the entire building, according to Lori Mayer, vice president of communications for Genesis HealthCare, the parent company of Mountain Ridge Center. There was a slight delay in results coming back, Mayer said.
The first positive infection was confirmed April 25, Mayer said.
That discovery prompted DHHS to send one of its mobile units to test all patients, residents and staff. Doing that allowed them to identify patients and staff who hadn’t shown symptoms yet and provide “additional information to possibly curtail the spread,” the center said.
The facility has also received donations of personal protective equipment as it works to contain the outbreak, Mayer said. The Franklin Fire Department and the New Hampshire Public Health Network both assisted in that delivery.
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to those impacted by COVID-19 during this difficult time, especially the family of the one resident who passed away,” the statement from the Center said.
Throughout the pandemic, officials at the facility have been working to take precautions to limit the spread of the virus, Mayer said in a statement. That includes barring most visits except for in end-of-life circumstances; taking temperatures of staff entering the facility; screening residents for symptoms three times a day; setting up Zoom calls for families to video conference residents; and canceling non-medically necessary outside appointments.
“We believe it’s better to overreact than underreact in the face of a pandemic,” Mayer said.
One-sixth of Concord’s labor force has filed for unemployment since the shutdown began, according to analysis by New Hampshire Employment Security.
Between March 15 and April 11, 3,676 people in Concord filed initial unemployment claims, which is 15.9% of the total work force.
The situation was more stark in Franklin, where a full 22% of the workforce, or almost one out of every four workers, filed initial unemployment claims during that period.
Other area towns were also hard hit. Bow saw 488 initial claims, or 10.7% of the work force; Canterbury saw 180 claims, 11.9% of the work force; Henniker, 323 claims or 11.1%; Hopkinton, 267 claims or 10.5%; Loudon, 461 claims or 13.7%; Pembroke, 668 or 14.5%.
The agency is calling this a measure of a town’s “COVID-19 Affected Unemployment Rate.” It is not equivalent to traditional unemployment rate as it only counts claims filed since March 15 and does not incorporate New Hampshire residents who have filed in other states, such as people who commute to Massachusetts for work.
Those who work in eating and drinking establishments filed the most new claims for unemployment insurance since March 15 (26,873), followed by employees in administrative and support services industries (11,020), and ambulatory health care industries (10,115), which include a number of elective procedures that have ended during the outbreak.
Of New Hampshire’s 2,000-plus confirmed cases of COVID-19, 145 of them have been in Merrimack County, 44 of them in Concord.
Merrimack County has about 11% of New Hampshire’s population and has about 7% of the recorded cases in the state. Hillsborough County, site of Manchester and Nashua, has been hardest hit by the disease with more than 930 cases so far, due in part to outbreaks at several assisted-living facilities.
Manchester alone has more than three times the caseload of all of Merrimack County.
Gov. Chris Sununu has promised to unveil a plan Friday for how to re-open New Hampshire to business amid the ongoing pandemic.
But unless that plan includes an immediate reversal of the shut down of “non-essential” businesses, one political group says it won’t be satisfied.
“The governor is expected to announce his top-down reopen approach on Friday, and anything short of completely reopening the state is not going to work for the people,” said Andrew Manuse, a former Derry state representative who has headed up the action group “Re-open NH.”
“Re-open NH,” which held a rally outside the State House in Concord April 18, plans to do so again Saturday. And now, the organization is attempting to highlight stories of economic suffering to make its case.
A section of the group’s website features stories from people who have lost their jobs and businesses, and others who are struggling to visit family members in hospital and get behavioral health services for their children.
Organizers argue the stories highlight the need for state officials to reverse all closures and focus on isolating those most at risk while letting the rest of the population back to stores and workplaces.
“There is still a way to protect the most vulnerable people in the state while allowing the 99 percent of people, who will most likely see minimal impact from the virus, to conduct their lives as normal,” said J.R. Hoell, another former state representative involved in organizing Re-open NH.
Sununu and state health officials have rejected a wholesale approach to reopening the state, pointing to new identifications of cases and warning that re-opening too soon would invite a spike.
State officials also pointed to an ongoing severe outbreak in Boston and northern Massachusetts, one of the biggest hot spots in the country, and said re-opening businesses in New Hampshire could invite tourism from southern neighbors.
Sununu did not give details for how the gradual re-opening plan expected Friday might look. A 19-member committee of lawmakers, state officials and stakeholders has been meeting over the last week to hear from industry leaders over how a re-opening might work while maintaining social distancing.
But the governor did issue sharp words earlier this week for proponents of a complete reversal.
“There’s a lot of people who say just open things back up. Just do it,” he said at a press conference Monday. “That’s incredibly irresponsible thing to do for a variety of reasons and I think most people understand that.”
New Hampshire is using $3 million in federal funding to help homeless residents during the coronavirus pandemic.
Sununu said Wednesday the money will be used to provide eight-week stipends for homeless shelter staff and to cover other shelter expenses. Some of the funding also will go to community agencies working to help homeless people find permanent housing, he said.
DHHS Commissioner Shibinette said fewer than five homeless people have tested positive for the virus statewide.
(Staff writer David Brooks contributed to this report. Material from the Associated Press on homeless funding was used in this report.)