As the virus resurges around the country, New Hampshire’s relatively high vaccination rate has helped protect the state from the devastation seen in other states.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, New Hampshire is seeing the lowest number of deaths per-capita in the country.
But state and federal health data show the virus is still taking its toll in the Granite State.
This month, 25 people in New Hampshire have died from COVID-19. The people who died of COVID-19 in August are 15 men over the age of 60, and nine women over 60. One man under 60 died this month. Two of the dead in recent weeks were at the Laconia Rehabilitation Center, and one person has died in the Rockingham County Nursing home.
The number of hospitalized people has quintupled since the beginning of the month.
In early August, just 28 people were hospitalized with COVID-19. As of Friday, 125 people were. Almost a quarter of those patients are in intensive care, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).
New Hampshire’s hospitals are not full of COVID-19 patients, but the available beds are about three-quarters full, according to DHHS. Of New Hampshire’s 279 intensive care beds, 176 are in use. COVID-19 patients account for about one in nine of those intensive care patients.
In states hit hard by COVID-19, like Mississippi and Louisiana, intensive care beds are more than 90% full. New Hampshire is still far from that level of saturation. But smaller hospitals, including Memorial Hospital in North Conway, are already beginning to warn of difficulty finding other hospitals that will accept transfer patients, and are warning of what could happen if more people are hospitalized.
State updates show the virus has returned to nursing homes and other congregate-living facilities. The state reports six outbreaks, five at nursing homes.
An outbreak at the federal prison in Berlin has infected at least 36 inmates, according to state data, and has spread to at least three people who work in the prison.
