Board of Aldermen 3-24-2020 Page 3
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Yes Madam President. First thank you for arranging this meeting so that many people could participate
remotely. This is consistent with what we are trying to do throughout the community. And | had a couple of
things that | wanted to address tonight. The first being the Coronavirus and the City response, our
community’s response to this pandemic. Of course our goal along with social distancing we are talking
about and all of the other steps we are taking is to limit or contain the spread of Coronavirus, protect as
many people in our community as we possibly can, keep people safe and disease free. So we have
instituted a number of measures. First of all, Madam President, right here the Board of Aldermen is having
a remote meeting so that people do not get exposed to others. But we also have taken the steps which we
discussed before of the City Hall that is closed to the public, is working remotely, most employees are
working remotely, except for essential employees who are coming and working on the job. Those, of
course, include Police Fire, First Responders, as well as our Street Department picking up the garbage and
the people plowing snow like this morning and people who work at the sewage treatment plant.
We have also taken other steps and we are working very closely now with a number of people in the City.
First of all with our hospitals; Southern New Hampshire Medical Center and St. Joe’s and the medical
people there and the National Guard which | will detail in a moment as well as, of course, our own
employees, our Public Health Director Bobbie Bagley and Emergency Management Director Justin Kates
and their respective staffs. We attended a meeting yesterday at Nashua High School South involving all of
these participants including the hospitals and doctors and medical people. The purpose there was 1) with
the State of New Hampshire, the Department of Health & Human Services to open up an alternative care
site at Nashua High School South where people could stay if the hospitals become overwhelmed. And that
will be a site and the second site will be Nashua High School North.
Now what the Medical Director of Southern laid out at the time, | think he’s just telling us what is within the
realm of possibility, maybe probability but probably just possibility, he pointed out that there is some
modeling down out of the University of Pennsylvania suggesting that Nashua could get, the Nashua Region
could get 2,500 cases of people who need to be hospitalized because of severe symptoms, mostly
pulmonary distress. These people would all be at risk because if breathing stops obviously, a person can’t
survive that. The two hospitals are gearing up as much as they possibly can and increasing their bed
counts. Once they do that, Southern will have about 200 beds and St. Joe’s about 175. So 375 people, it
would be possible to take care of 375 people in the two hospitals, assuming no one else is there for any
other serious and acute emergencies. Dr. Scherer the Medical Director pointed out that the hospitals could
never care for 2,500 people at the same time. Now this may sound extreme and maybe it is. But as we
have seen what is happening in Italy where the death count went up again today, Tuesday they are a little
ahead of us and in New York where the number of cases has been doubling every 3 days and is up to
25,000 and climbing rapidly. If we don’t take steps to contain the disease and it begins to spread freely,
the number or the impact on the community can be very, very dire. So we are trying to avoid that.
Hence the steps to work remotely from City Hall, closing City Hall and the like, the Governor has ordered
all restaurants and bars to be closed. That, of course, has worked a great hardship on a number of people
but we are trying to save people’s lives. Also our schools are closed and the School Department, Dr.
Mosley, is instating remote learning, which involves computer and also hand out of paper homework and
lesson plans and the like. Now here in New Hampshire right now, we have 101 cases, that’s as of
yesterday but the testing is behind; only one positive case so far in Nashua. There are seven in
Manchester. But the testing is behind because some of the people in Nashua, there’s a couple a family of
the person that has the virus, when the tests were taken on Thursday the results aren’t in yet. So the
testing is definitely behind. The 101 number comes from yesterday and we don’t know what the number is
today; | don’t think it has been announced today. A number of other people in Nashua have been tested
and we will have to see.
Again it is very important that we limit public gatherings according to the Government no more than 10; so
a step that after meeting with all of these medical people that | felt we needed to take was to suspend the
fixed route bus system because as we talk this through, the buses are a relatively small space where there
