A lot of things were put on pause for the presidential election but that doesn’t include the spread of the coronavirus.
New cases in New Hampshire continued to rise sharply this week, while the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 stayed relatively high.
As of Wednesday, the two-week average of new cases in New Hampshire was 122, far higher than any time last spring. The average is rising more quickly than it did at the height of the first wave of the pandemic in early May.
Close to one-fifth of cases uncovered now come via antigen tests as compared to the slower but more accurate PCR test. Antigen tests are being rolled out in large numbers in New Hampshire and other locations because their quick turnaround allows outbreaks to be spotted early.
Questions have been raised, however, about the accuracy of antigen tests when performed on people who do not show any symptoms. A recent study found that in that circumstance they missed as many as one-half of positive results which were spotted by follow-up PCR tests. If this holds true for all antigen tests in all locations, it would seem to indicate that more people are infected than we realize.
As of Wednesday, 42 people hospitalized in New Hampshire with COVID-19, twice the number of late October.
New Hampshire has seen 484 deaths related to COVID-19 since the pandemic began. That number is rising but only slowly. To put the number of deaths in context, consider that during the 2019-2020 flu season, the state tallied just 33 “influenza-associated” deaths in the state.