The state Department of Health and Human Services continues to lead its daily COVID-19 press releases (see below for Friday’s) with the number of total new cases even though Gov. Chris Sununu recently chided reporters for reporting the statistic saying it is vastly underreported because of home testing.

On Friday, DHHS’s press release reported 655 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths and 23 hospitalizations.

DHHS is reporting different numbers for COVID-19 hospitalizations than the New Hampshire Hospital Association website.

On Friday, the DHHS reported 23 COVID-19 hospitalizations. The NHHA website reported 96 total confirmed cases in the state’s 30 hospitals.

NHHA also reported 13 suspected cases, 35 patients recovering from COVID-19, which includes hospitalized patients no longer included in confirmed COVID-19 statistics, and 21 treated specifically with medicine for COVID-19.

DHHS recently switched to counting just those hospitalized patients who are actively being treated for COVID-19 with medications.

NH Department of Health and Human Services news release Friday

On Friday, May 6, 2022, DHHS announced 603 new positive test results for COVID-19 for Thursday, May 5. Today’s results include 429 people who tested positive by PCR test and 174 who tested positive by antigen test. DHHS also announced an additional 52 new cases from Wednesday, May 4 (35 by PCR and 17 by antigen test) for a new total of 591. 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. There are now 3,962 current COVID-19 cases diagnosed in New Hampshire.

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 eighty-three individuals under the age of 18 and the rest are adults with 58% being female and 42% being male. The new cases reside in Rockingham (133), Hillsborough County other than Manchester and Nashua (97), Strafford (75), Merrimack (70), Grafton (45), Cheshire (39), Sullivan (32), Carroll (26), Belknap (19), and Coos (6) counties, and in the cities of Manchester (39) and Nashua (38). The county of residence is being determined for thirty-six new cases.

There are currently 23 hospitalized patients being treated for COVID-19. In New Hampshire, since the start of the pandemic, there have been a total of 313,288 cases of COVID-19 diagnosed.

Current Situation in New Hampshire

New Hampshire 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Summary Report
(updated May 6, 2022, 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 additional hospitalization data, please visit the New Hampshire Hospital Association’s COVID-19 information page at https://nhha.org/index.php/whats-new/1545-coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-outbreak.

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