After brutal months, health care workers see light
Dr. Dawn Barclay of Portsmouth Regional Hospital. Courtesy
Published: 2/16/2021 4:31:57 PM
Before COVID-19 emerged last year, the 18-bed ICU at Portsmouth Regional Hospital was already a busy place, full of post-surgery patients and emergency admissions: people suffering from heart attacks, strokes and pneumonia.
There, Dr. Dawn Barclay and her staff put their decades of experience, and centuries of medical knowledge, to use every day to guide treatment.
But in this pandemic, there’s just no precedent to turn to.
“COVID is different,” Barclay said. “You see young healthy people really with little to no comorbidities who.come in with a thromboembolic complication. What that means is they have blood clots, and it takes their life. Bam. Gone.”
By Bob Sanders - NH Business Review
• Feb 16, 2021
Credit Shane Adams via Flickr/CC - http://ow.ly/OJ5Pe
Can New Hampshire spend $200 million in federal money to keep people in their homes when it wasn’t able to spend $20 million last year for the same purpose?
That’s the question being asked by state officials, housing activists, tenants and landlords while they wait – after the state’s Housing Relief Program ended on Dec. 18 – for the new federal Emergency Rental Assistance program to begin.
And no one really knows the answer.
“It depends on the universe of need that’s out there,” said Taylor Caswell, commissioner of the Department of Business and Economic Affairs and executive director of the Governor’s Office for Emergency Relief and Recovery, or GOFERR.
Online gambling a concern during the pandemic
Published: 2/14/2021 6:17:45 PM
New Hampshire lottery sales, particularly from online games, are surging during the pandemic, and with that increase comes a jump in another statistic – the number of problem gamblers who seek assistance for a disorder that can destroy lives.
The National Council on Problem Gambling received 443 calls to its 24-hour helpline (800-522-4700) from New Hampshire last year, compared to 337 in 2019. That’s an increase of 24%.
Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, said there are valid concerns that the pandemic is worsening the problem of compulsive gambling. The problem is so severe that the organization released a statement on problem gambling during the pandemic.
Giving on the rise, but so is need
Patrick Tufts, CEO of Granite United Way, helps to distribute more than 177,000 pounds of food to NH families in need. Courtesy
Published: 2/15/2021 11:55:46 AM
For more than a century, Granite United Way reached donors at their workplaces or in their living rooms with traditional face-to-face conversations. Now with benefactors sitting tight in their homes to buffer against the coronavirus, CEO Patrick Tufts finds himself broadcasting to 300 boxes on a Zoom screen from his office.
Tufts, a fundraising veteran, laments the loss of that personal connection. It is challenging to maintain contact with people who still depend on a paper pledge card.
Nearly a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, masking in public has become almost second nature. And now people are wondering: Are two masks better than one?Among some local health experts, feelings are mixed.Dr. Michael Lindberg, chief medical officer at.