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.”
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Those deaths, all of which Barclay calls preventable, piled up in New Hampshire this winter. Fueled by holiday gatherings, and a continued reluctance by some to follow public health guidelines, more than 530 residents died in December and January alone, nearly half of the total COVID-19 related deaths recorded in the state since the pandemic began. On any given day through most of December and January, New Hampshire hospitals were treating between 200 and 300 people for COVID-19 far more than were reported during any earlier wave of the pandemic, according to the available data.
The first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine arrived in New Hampshire in mid-December, with the Moderna vaccine arriving soon after - marking a
The delayed passing of the coronavirus relief package is impacting COVID-19 testing at New Hampshire hospitals.
Hospitals were contracted with the state to help conduct coronavirus testing across communities. But those contracts, along with the resources and funding through the CARES Act to support them, ended at the end of the year.
Officials say Congress did not approve the relief bill soon enough to allow states to access additional funding before it expired.
Other testing sites in the state, like city public health and national guard sites, say they weren t impacted by this change.
Jamie LaRoche, director of provider network operations at Lakes Region General Healthcare, says it may become a challenge as demand for tests remains high.