Could be weeks before all nursing home residents get shots

LACONIA — Vaccinations have begun at nursing homes in New Hampshire, but state officials say it could take a month before all the people living and working in these facilities get their first injection.

Most of the first group of recipients — high-risk healthcare workers and residents and staff at long-term care facilities — will receive the first of two required doses by the end of January, according to Elizabeth Daily, chief of the Health and Human Services Department’s Bureau of Infectious Disease Control.

The arrival of the vaccine has been anxiously awaited by those in long-term care, where 566 people have died of COVID-19, or 80 percent of the state’s overall death toll of 708.

There are three current outbreaks in Lakes Region nursing facilities.

A total of 36 people have died at the New Hampshire Veterans Home in Tilton.

The Lakes Region Community Center Fairview Home has had two deaths.

The Golden View Health Care Center in Meredith says 28 residents and 19 staff members have tested positive.

An outbreak at Mountain Ridge Genesis in Franklin was closed on June 18 after nine residents died. Another outbreak closed on Dec. 8 at Mount Prospect Academy Plymouth, where 14 residents and 28 staff tested positive.

The Taylor Community in Laconia has been able to avoid an outbreak. One nursing home resident tested positive for the virus, but was asymptomatic and subsequently had a negative test. Two independent living residents and six staff members tested positive and have recovered.

Initial vaccinations have been given to nursing home residents and staff at the Taylor nursing home and at the veterans home.

Shelley Richardson, administrator of the Belknap County Nursing Home, said she's been given a tentative date of Jan. 7 for the first round of injections.

Through 10 months of the pandemic, only two residents at the county nursing home ave tested positive for COVID-19. Neither had symptoms. Four staff members tested positive as well and have recovered. 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that the second group to receive vaccines should be front-line essential workers such as firefighters, police officers, corrections officers, food and agricultural workers, United States Postal Service workers, manufacturing workers, grocery store workers, public transit workers, and those who work in the educational sector.

Also recommended for the second round are people who are 75 and older.

The CDC recommends that the third group take in people who are 65 to 74 as well as people 16 to 64 with underlying conditions that put them at risk of serious complications should they catch COVID-19.

Also recommended for this group are other essential workers, such as people who work in transportation and logistics, food service, housing construction and finance, information technology, communications, energy, law, media, public safety and public health.