By NANCY WEST, InDepthNH.org

Jake Leon, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said he couldn’t say how many fully vaccinated people have been infected with or died from COVID-19 as of Friday because the surveillance system healthcare providers use to notify the department of new cases was down recently for four days.

One week ago, Leon released the following data on fully vaccinated people:

Since January 20, 2021, when the first vaccine breakthrough infection was identified, through October 20*, there have been:

·         71,603 cases, including 2,441 breakthrough infections (3.4%)

·         635 hospitalizations reported to DHHS, including 47 involving breakthrough infections (7.4%)

·         504 deaths, including 40 involving breakthrough infections (7.9%)

*Reports may not represent total case counts. The information presented in reports and dashboards represents data that has been reported to the Department, validated and processed at the time of the publication. Additional data will be added as it is confirmed.

On Friday, Leon said: “We’re working through the backlog and expect to have the data up to date early next week.

“Unfortunately, due to the issues we’ve experienced this week with our data sources, we are still going through new cases from this week, so we won’t have complete vaccine breakthrough data until we’ve addressed the backlog.”

He said when the surveillance system was down from Oct. 23 to Oct. 26 healthcare providers could not submit new cases and the department could not access new case information.

“The issue has been resolved and access restored, but the outage left a four-day backlog of cases,” Leon said. “We are going through the backlog as we speak and expect that complete case information since October 23 will be available early next week,” Leon said.

As to the vaccination data being at odds with what the CDC reports for New Hampshire, Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Shibinette said at Wednesday’s press conference the CDC vaccination data is more accurate than the state’s right now because of a problem migrating data with the state from pharmacies that provide vaccinations.

The following is the news release DHHS issued Friday:

On Friday, October 29, 2021, DHHS announced 588 new positive test results for COVID-19 for Thursday, October 28. Today’s results include 415 people who tested positive by PCR test and 173 who tested positive by antigen test. DHHS also announced 1 case from Sunday, October 24 (0 by PCR and 1 by antigen test); 10 cases from Monday, October 25 (2 by PCR and 8 by antigen test); 409 cases from Tuesday, October 26 (294 by PCR and 115 by antigen test); and 297 cases from Wednesday, October 27 (120 by PCR and 177 by antigen test). Additionally, DHHS announced an additional 69 new cases from Monday, October 18 (52 by PCR and 17 by antigen test) for a new total of 409; an additional 65 new cases from Tuesday, October 19 (43 by PCR and 22 by antigen test) for a new total of 593; an additional 67 new cases from Wednesday, October 20 (38 by PCR and 29 by antigen test) for a new total of 666; an additional 78 new cases from Thursday, October 21 (26 by PCR and 52 by antigen test) for a new total of 498; an additional 84 new cases from Friday, October 22 (50 by PCR and 34 by antigen test) for a new total of 667; and an additional 472 new cases from Saturday, October 23 (363 by PCR and 109 by antigen test) for a new total of 521. DHHS continues to work through the backlog of cases from previous days and will issue additional data once it has been analyzed. Test results for previous days are still being processed and updated case counts for prior days will be reflected on the COVID-19 interactive dashboard.

Several cases are still under investigation. Additional information from ongoing investigations will be incorporated into future COVID-19 updates. Of those with complete information, there are five hundred and thirty-nine individuals under the age of 18 and the rest are adults with 52% being female and 48% being male. The new cases reside in Rockingham (391), Hillsborough County other than Manchester and Nashua (273), Merrimack (256), Strafford (177), Belknap (128), Cheshire (119), Grafton (101), Coos (96), Carroll (91), and Sullivan (78) counties, and in the cities of Manchester (228) and Nashua (87). The county of residence is being determined for one hundred and fifteen new cases.

DHHS has also announced two additional deaths related to COVID-19. We offer our sympathies to the family and friends.

·         1 male resident of Strafford County, 60 years of age and older

·         1 male resident of Sullivan County, 60 years of age and older

There are currently 191 individuals hospitalized with COVID-19. In New Hampshire, since the start of the pandemic, there have been a total of 134,517 cases of COVID-19 diagnosed.

Current Situation in New Hampshire

New Hampshire 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Summary Report
(updated October 29, 2021, 9:00 AM)

The most up-to-date laboratory testing data, positivity rates and vaccination data are available on the COVID-19 dashboards at https://www.covid19.nh.gov/dashboard/overview.

For more information, please visit the DHHS COVID-19 webpage at https://www.covid19.nh.gov/.