New Ipswich, Rindge, and Greenville are in the bottom tenth percentile of all New Hampshire towns reporting a percentage of fully-vaccinated residents, according to statistics compiled by the Department of Health and Human Services. That means vaccination rates are lower in those towns than 90 percent of the 233 towns statewide with published data.
The New Hampshire Department of Safety emailed town vaccination rates to local emergency management directors on June 25. Percentages of residents fully vaccinated against COVID-19 were calculated by comparing the town’s 2019 population estimate with vaccine administrations attributed to that town as provided by vaccine recipients. The spreadsheet also calculated the percent of town residents with at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Of the 233 New Hampshire towns represented in the report, New Ipswich ranked 223rd, with 1,367 residents – just 30.5 percent of townspeople— fully vaccinated. New Ipswich’s town population was 5,375 as of the 2019 census numbers used by DHHS in compiling the data; the vaccination numbers are a snapshot of the state’s status as of June 23.
Statewide, 55 percent of residents were fully vaccinated as of July 2, according to the state’s COVID-19 dashboard, but, when broken out by town, reported vaccination rates went as low as 11.3 percent, in Columbia, to 100 percent, in Waterville Valley and Littleton, where more people completed vaccinations than were listed as permanent residents. Such discrepancies belie the potential for error in the estimates: A dataset explanation in the June 25 email by Department of Safety Director Jennifer Harper noted the beyond-100 percent vaccination rates could be a result of inaccurate Census counts, new arrivals to town since 2019, or people using a second home to access vaccination. Furthermore, data for the state’s 26 towns with populations under 100 were not reported to protect individuals’ identities, according to the spreadsheets.
Towns had a median full-vaccination rate of 49.2 percent. In the Monadnock region, New Ipswich, Rindge, and Greenville had the lowest vaccination rates, at 30.5, 33.5, and 34.5 percent of residents fully vaccinated, respectively. Most area towns were below the 50th percentile, however: Mason and Bennington lie below the state’s 25th percentile at 38.2 and 40.6 percent fully vaccinated. Lyndeborough, Greenfield, Jaffrey, Antrim, Francestown, Wilton, and Temple lie between the 25th and 50th percentiles at 42.9, 43.1, 43.7, 45.5, 47.4, 47.5, and 48 percent fully vaccinated respectively.
Peterborough and Sharon achieved vaccination rates above the 50th percentile, at 51.1 and 53.1 percent of residents fully vaccinated. Dublin landed above the 75th percentile, with 60.5 percent of residents fully vaccinated. Hancock is the only local town in the state’s 90th percentile, with 66.1 percent of residents fully vaccinated.
Each town’s percentage of partially vaccinated residents was higher than their fully vaccinated numbers by about four percent.