Special Board of Aldermen 12-21-2020 Page 34
gotten sick from and then after that contact with someone with COVID-19 is the second, followed by clusters
associated, followed by community transmission.
So a lot of the unclear, unknown bar is going to be the community based transmission. It is people who
have no idea where they may have gotten sick from. They don’t have a family member with COVID-19.
They have only gone about their regular community business. And they just can’t pinpoint an exact target
as to where they got sick. And this is the vast majority of our cases. | see it in our disease investigations
every day, many people have no idea where they got sick from. So this isn’t just happening in families, it is
happening out in community just regular people walking by others and it’s not just in living rooms, it’s
everywhere.
So this is the watchlist data that | also talked through. So this is — we track all of the cases in Nashua and
these are all the facilities that have either experienced an outbreak, cluster or exposure with potential for
community spread. So these are categorized into these six separate facility types. So we have our
community groups which are churches, clubs, sports or gyms, healthcare facilities, housing facilities,
restaurants, bars and clubs, school or child care facility and then workplace or businesses. So you can see
that the majority of reports are from workplaces and businesses and then also healthcare facilities. This
makes sense because our healthcare facilities, they are high risk exposures and we put those at a high
priority at both the Health Department and the staff from the healthcare facilities put those at high priority.
So reporting these exposures is a high priority for both us and the staff at the facilities. And then also
workplace and businesses, these are general workplaces and businesses in Nashua. Any place that does
business and employs people would be on this category.
| also would just like to mention that any patron case, whether it be at a workplace or business or a
restaurant or club, or at a community group is going to be underreported because the patron has to be
aware of the exposure in order to identify that they were associated with the cluster or outbreak. So if the
patron doesn’t know that there was an exposure at the facility, they cannot identify themselves as part of
the outbreak when we do the investigation. So this is just that information summarized, so on the left we
have the breakdown of the number of reported cases per facility in the past three months and then on the
right we have the percentage breakdown of exposure reports to DPHCS. So our most highly reported
sector in general is workplaces and businesses but these do tend to have less cases associated with each
report. Another highly reported facility is healthcare, 26% of our exposure reports are associated with the
healthcare facility and like | said before, this makes sense because any case at a long-term care facilities or
hospitals is high risk and prioritized.
And then in regards to restaurants, bars and clubs, 13% of our total outbreak cluster and exposure reports
are for these facilities and the majority of cases that are in the restaurants are associated with staff
members, about 25% are in patrons likely because of the underreporting in patrons. That’s what we have
for the presentation, Bobbie. Did you want to add anything else to this?
Director Bagley
Based on this presentation that is presented here from October to December, it is also where we have seen
the exponential increase in the number of cases that have occurred here, not just in Nashua and our region
and the state, we do know when there are activities that allow for people to come together in closer settings
where their masks are not being used is where are seeing an increase in exposure. And this is what we
are trying to prevent, going into you Know this next few months, of this pandemic. We do realize that a
vaccine, a couple vaccines in fact, are going to be administered over the next probably 4 to 6 months, but
we still have this three month period where it’s going to be really important for vigilance to be underway
with everyone because even after folks get that first vaccine, there is still a 28 days period before the next
vaccine is given. And then in-between that time the vaccine doesn’t really start to kick in to work effectively
until after that second dose is received.
