Hosting a Christmas gathering is more dangerous than ever in Merrimack County.
An interactive map, created by two researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, attempts to answer a deceptively complex question in tangible terms: What is the likelihood one of your holiday guests will have COVID-19?
The answer is unsettling.
At a 10-person Thanksgiving gathering in Merrimack County, there was a 12% chance one person showed up infected. Now, the probability has nearly tripled. There is a 30% chance one of your 10 guests will have coronavirus.
If there are 15 people at the gathering, the chances someone will contract the disease increases to 41%. With 20 people around the Yule Log, there’s a 52% chance someone in the group will get COVID for Christmas.
Other counties in the state have similarly dire projections, but the statistics go down in the northern part of the state – in Carroll and Coos County there is a 15% chance; in Grafton County a 10% chance – though southern and central New Hampshire are at most risk.
The safest thing to do is stay home, most doctors and public health experts agree. If you must travel, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends keeping gatherings small and intimate.
In their last news conference before Christmas, public health officials and Gov. Chris Sununu urged Granite Staters to stay disciplined in preventing the spread of the virus.
Dr. Ben Chan, the state epidemiologist, cautioned against gatherings that extend beyond one’s household, and said those who do gather for the holidays should wear masks and stay 6 feet apart. Sununu said he has only been visiting his parents for five or 10 minutes at a time, and “Christmas and Christmas Eve will be the same way.
“We’re not going to mandate, we’re not going to force people to celebrate their holiday in a certain way in their own homes. We don’t do that here,” he said. “But we are asking them to be disciplined and make good choices for themselves and their loved ones.”
Despite a dwindling number of hospital beds and pleas from health officials to celebrate at home, millions of Americans are still expected to travel for Christmas.
If families do choose to gather for the holidays, the Centers for Disease Control recommends gathering outside, wearing masks, and staying six feet apart from those not in your household. Those returning from an out-of-state celebration are recommended to quarantine for 14 days or quarantine for 7 days and test negative for COVID-19.
Once the virus is inside a home, there is little that can be done to stop the spread.
Small family gatherings are deceptively dangerous. Many public health officials have cited these smaller get-togethers as possible triggers to the mountain of cases the United States faced in early December. Following Thanksgiving, many families found that their dinners quickly set off a cascade of COVID-19 diagnoses – for one woman in Texas, 10 family members left a 25-person gathering with the virus.
Leading up to Thanksgiving, many Granite Staters leaned on COVID-19 tests to assure themselves that gathering was safe.
The state went from receiving 350 test requests to 1,500 requests the Monday before the holiday. To keep up with the mounting demand, the community COVID testing sites have started prioritizing requests from people who report having symptoms of the virus, said Laura Montenegro, a spokesperson for the N.H. Department of Health and Human Services.
These tests may provide a false sense of security, however. Even if a negative test result were accurate (for some antigen tests, there is a 20% chance you test negative for COVID-19 even when you actually have the virus), the test needs to be timed expertly to ensure you don’t become infected too soon before the test, or immediately after the test.
The state has deemed a certain out-of-state visitor as an “essential worker,” who may be visiting your home.
“We did it for the Easter Bunny, and we want to make sure Santa knows that there will be nothing holding back here,” Sununu said. “He will be here on time, much like the vaccine has been.”
(Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.)