Second 'Booster Blitz' coming Jan. 8

CONCORD — New Hampshire currently has over 9,600 active COVID cases and over 1,800 deaths, a situation the state is meeting with another booster blitz and a roll-out of in-home test kits. That was the message Gov. Chris Sununu and other state health officials pushed at a press conference held Thursday afternoon.

“The Say Yes to the Test program put a lot of household tests into the market, Sununu said. “We had just shy of one million put into homes in about a day.”

Sununu was quick to announce a second booster blitz taking place Jan. 8, 2022, following one held earlier this month. Registration will be open to the public shortly after the new year. Both Sununu and state epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan pushed the importance of vaccination and booster shots throughout the conference.

According to Dr. Chan, New Hampshire had 53 new deaths in the last seven days, and he expects the omicron variant to continue to spread. Currently, New Hampshire has an average daily diagnosis rate of 1,111 people per day.

“We announced our first omicron infection identification on Monday,” said Dr. Chan, “we are aware of two additional infections and there will likely be many more to come. Based on what we're seeing in other countries and across the United States, we expect omicron to increase and increase. This only highlights the important of vaccines.”

As infections increase, Sununu pushed the importance of more at-home testing, treatments and moving patients through the hospital system's severely limited beds to keep things running smoothly.

“We're looking to get hundreds of thousands of more tests into that program. I think it's next week. We'll have an exact date listed shortly,” Sununu said of his plans to get more in-home tests into the hands of residents. "It'll reduce transmission, and reduce burden on hospitals.”

The governor acknowledged a downside to mass at-home testing, and that is a decrease in state COVID data accuracy.

“Test positivity data is going to become much more inaccurate,” Sununu said. “A lot of negative results won't get reported, some positive results won't. I think at the end of the day it's a huge net positive that folks are finding out if they have COVID that much faster.”

When pressed on implementing a state of emergency or a statewide mask mandate, the governor said that individual municipalities can make mask mandate choices for themselves and that a state of emergency is not necessarily the best choice.

“With any mandate or measures, you're forcing a sacrifice, some are less severe some are much more severe,” Sununu said. “A state of emergency is a huge deal. The idea that we go back and forth in a state of emergency, telling the 70% that have been fully vaccinated that you too must make these sacrifices as someone else who isn't vaccinated, we'd be on that path for potentially years.”

As of this writing, 1,828 people in New Hampshire have died since the start of the pandemic, and there are currently 463 people hospitalized.