COVID-19 Update 31 May 2021

COVID-19 Update 31 May 2021 (Numbers as of May 30)

Total: 2,962 confirmed cases in Salem
Salem has 7 active cases
1 out of every 10 Salem residents has been infected
Salem’s new cases per 100K for 14 days: 94
Salem’s Positivity Rate for the past 2 weeks: 2.2%

Today is Memorial Day, a national holiday to recognize our military heroes who lost their lives fighting for our freedom. In recognition of Memorial Day, NH DHHS did not report COVID numbers today. While I had my own moments of reflection today, tonight I continue with my update. Since there are no new NH numbers, I have the opportunity to do some deeper look at some of our numbers, and update a few charts. Tomorrow I’ll go back to the normal format.

The first COVID-19 diagnosis in the US was January 20, 2020. Friday will be 500 days.
On March 2, 2020 NH had its first case of COVID-19, 456 days ago.
My first COVID-19 update was April 4. This is the 422^nd update over the past 423 days.

Global and US changes over time

NH changes over time

Salem changes over time

Active Cases:

Salem has 7 active cases, the same as we had October 1. There were six days between September 24 and September 30 when we had less than 5 totals. We had 232 active cases on December 27.
Rockingham County has 75 active cases. We reached 1,806 on December 17. We were down to 55 on September 7.
NH has 476 active cases. That’s a huge improvement from our peak of 6,994 on December 27, but is still twice as many active cases as the 236 that we had on Sept 8.
26 communities have 5 or more active cases, totaling 263 active cases:
Nashua (41); Manchester (34); Rochester (24); Dover (12); Hudson (11); Durham, Hampton, Merrimack and Portsmouth (10); Keene (9); Laconia (8); Goffstown, Londonderry, Salem, Somersworth (7); Concord (6); Barrington, Belmont, Brookline, Exeter, Farmington, Lisbon, New Durham, Newport and Tilton (5)
The dashboard with active cases also has:
113 communities have 1-4 active cases; data is suppressed for these locations
27 communities have a population of less than 100; data is not reported for these locations
94 communities with zero cases

Cumulative Cases

Of the 259 communities tracked by DHHS, 228 have had five or more confirmed cases of COVID-19. There are now 169 communities that have had 50 or more total cases, 133 that have had 100 or more cases, 43 that have had 500 or more cases, 21 have had more than 1,000, and 12 have had more than 2,000.
Only 3 communities have had more cases than Salem: Manchester, Nashua and Concord. All are cities, and all have more residents than Salem.
The communities with more than 1,000 total cases are: Manchester (12,023); Nashua (8,059); Concord (3,023); Salem (2,962); Derry (2,840); Dover (2,459); Hudson (2,437); Durham (2,261); Londonderry (2,196); Rochester (2,067); Bedford (2,066); Merrimack (2,019); Goffstown (1,697); Portsmouth (1,619); Pelham (1,433); Windham (1,429); Keene (1,422); Hooksett (1,251); Hampton (1,245); Milford (1,195); and Laconia (1,081)

Ratios

Ratios for Cumulative Totals

1 out of every 10 Salem residents have been confirmed to have COVID-19. We are 174 new cases away from 1:9. While a month ago, it looked like one out of nine was close, things have slowed down, and that now looks far away.
1 out of every 13 Rockingham County residents have been confirmed to have COVID-19.
1 out of every 14 NH residents have been confirmed to have COVID-19.
Of the NH communities with a population over 10,000, only 2 have a higher ratio than Salem: Durham (7) and Manchester (9). Pelham, Salem, Windham and Hudson are all at 1:10.
Of the communities with a population under 10,000, five have a ratio of 1:10 or worse.
- Waterville Valley is worst, at 1:5. (Note that they have had only 46 cases, but their population is only 248.) Others are Plymouth and Stewartstown (1:8), and Tilton and Plaistow (1:10).

Ratios for the active totals for NH communities with 5 or more active cases:

Showing Community/Active cases/ratio;
Lisbon / 5 / 1:338; New Durham / 5 / 1:528; Tilton / 5 / 1:735; Brookline / 5 / 1:1,077; Rochester / 24 / 1:1,291; Newport / 5 / 1:1,296; Farmington / 5 / 1:1,377; Belmont / 5 / 1:1,471; Hampton / 10 / 1:1,521; Durham / 10 / 1:1,609; Somersworth / 7 / 1:1,692; Barrington / 5 / 1:1,825; Laconia / 8 / 1:2,089; Nashua / 41 / 1:2,168; Portsmouth / 10 / 1:2,221; Hudson / 11 / 1:2,319; Goffstown / 7 / 1:2,563; Keene / 9 / 2,603; Merrimack / 10 / 2,624; Claremont / 5 / 2,649; Dover / 12 / 1:2,650; Exeter / 5 /1: 3,076; Manchester / 34 / 1:3,256; Londonderry / 7 / 1:3,752; Salem / 7 /1: 1:4,250; Concord / 6 / 1:7,164
Higher number is better. Of these, only one community, Concord, is doing better than Salem.

Community Transmission

Some time ago, NH DHHS identified three metrics that they were using to determine the level of community transmission of COVID-19. They said the following:

The overall level of community transmission is defined using three metrics. A community is then assigned an overall level based on the highest-level determination for any specific metric. NH Metrics are:

New Cases per 100k over 14 days: Scale: Minimal: <50; Moderate: 50 – 100; Substantial: >100.
New Hospitalizations per 100k over 14 days: Scale: Minimal: <10; Moderate: 10 – 20; Substantial: >20.
Average PCR Test Positivity Rate over 7 days: Scale: Minimal: <5%; Moderate: 5% – 10%; Substantial: >10%

Since DHHS started reporting new Hospitalizations per 100K over 14 days, the count has always been minimal. NHDHHS stopped providing this info after March 9.

Here’s where we were as of yesterday:

New Cases per 100k population over the last 14 days:

Salem is down to 94, the second time that it went below 100 since I’ve been tracking this metric. On Saturday, it was 100; on Friday, Salem saw 97. A week ago, it was 122. On May 1, Salem was at 264. On April 1, Salem was at 514.
NH has dropped down to 94, the first time this metric has gone below 100 since I started tracking it in November. It was up to 812.6 on December 16. Anything over 100 is considered to be a severe level of community transmission.
Counties range from 67.5 to 180.6: Coos (180.6); Cheshire (156.4); Strafford (113.3); Sullivan (102); Nashua (100.4); Manchester (92.2); Belknap (91.3); Grafton (86.8); Rockingham (86.8); Rest of Hillsborough excluding Manchester and Nashua (79.3); Merrimack (72.7); and Carroll (67.5)
There are only 10 NH communities listed on the dashboard: Keene (214);); Goffstown (144); Rochester (131); Londonderry (107); Hudson (105); Nashua (100); Salem (94); Manchester (92); Derry (87) and Dover (87).
There are 26 communities for which data is not available, as the population is less than 100.
There are 159 communities for which data is not available, as their cumulative cases in the last two weeks are less than 5.

Antigen and PCR Positivity Rate over the last 7 days:

Salem is down to 2.2%, the lowest since I started tracking this metric in early December. A week ago, we had a slight surge, which brought us up to 5.5%. We were at 5.8% on May 1. On April 1, we were at 8.9%. It went as high as 14.3% on December 16.
NH has dropped down to 1.9%, the first time this metric has gone below 2.0% since I started tracking it in November. It was up to 9.2% on December 22.
Counties range from 0.4% to 4.5% over the last 7 days: Coos (4.5%); Strafford (4.1%); Belknap(3.5%); Nashua (2.8%); Rockingham (2.7%); Unknown (2.7%); Carroll (2.3%); Rest of Hillsborough(2.3%); Merrimack (1.8%); Manchester (1.7%); Sullivan (1.7%); Cheshire (1.3%); Grafton (0.4%)
There are 30 NH communities listed on today’s dashboard with a positivity rate above 0.0%. 26 have a PR above 26.0%. 10 have PR above 5.0%. 3 have a PR above 10%. 23 have a PR more than Salem. The 30 communities are: Lisbon (27.8%); New Durham (20.7%); Brookline (10.2%); Ossipee (8.9%); Allenstown (8.3%); Sandown (6.9%); Hampton (5.9%); Rochester (5.4%); Belmont (5.2%); Farmington(5.0%); Pembroke (4.7%); Goffstown (4.5%); Londonderry, Somersworth and Tilton (4.3%); Portsmouth (3.9%); Hudson (3.3%); Dover (2.9%); Laconia, Merrimack, and Nashua (2.8%); Derry and Milford (2.3%); Salem (2.2%); Exeter (2.1%); Plymouth (2.0%); Claremont (1.8%); Manchester (1.7%); Concord (1.0%); Keene (0.5%)
There are 5 communities for which data is not available, as the population is less than 100.
There are 102 communities for which data is not available, as their data was suppressed. (DHHS says Data is suppressed when the dashboards contain extremely detailed and granular information. In some circumstances, data becomes so granular that data is suppressed when numbers are small to protect the privacy of the underlying individuals.)

Vaccinations

800,949 NH residents have received their first vaccine per DHHS’s report on Saturday. That’s 59% of our state’s population. Last Sunday we were at 787,900 (58.1%).

657,316 NH residents are reported as fully vaccinated as of DHHS’s report on Saturday. That’s 48.5% of our state’s population. Last Sunday, we were at 625,266 (46.1%).

DHHS has not updated the vaccination database 16 days out of the past month. The unreported days are on a random schedule.

There were some big changes in the vaccination database in early May. Numbers were reported on Tuesday, May 4, and then not again until Tuesday, May 11. The count of those who were fully vaccinated went from 356,369 (26.3%) to 545,542 (40.2%). However, those who had their first dose went DOWN, from 848,736 (62.6%) to 746,072 (55%). We are still lower than DHHS reported a month ago.

Hello, Salem!

We are living in challenging times. COVID-19 continues to be one of the lead stories in the news, and when it doesn’t, it’s still hard to find happy news. We get conflicting information about masks, and some confusion about vaccines.

Some people are fed up with hearing about COVID-19, and some are frustrated to not have more info. Some think it’s nothing, while others are grieving the loss of family and friends. Some people are concerned about the financial impacts they have felt, and are concerned that things will get worse for their businesses, jobs or families. Some people are worried about feeding their families, and others are frustrated at the lack of opportunity to help in person. Some parents are concerned that kids aren’t wearing masks, while others want mask wearing to end. Tensions are building, and people are grieving from loss of loved ones to loss of traditions.

If you are reading this, it’s hard to imagine that you don’t fit into at least one of these categories. So, how are you doing? I mean, how are you REALLY doing?

Try to stay positive. Watch out for others; are your friends and family doing ok? Don’t presume … ask them.

If you are feeling blue, or are struggling with feelings of isolation or depression, don’t be afraid to ask for help.

NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Health. 24-hour hotline: 1-800-950-6264. https://www.nami.org/Home
Center for Life Management (603) 434-1577, Option 1. https://www.centerforlifemanagement.org/
#SuicideAwareness: 1-800-273-8255.

Please do what you need to do to protect you, your family and friends. Please, in every way, stay safe, and always, be kind.

~ Bonnie