Coronavirus In NH: Governor Reflects On Response To Pandemic

CONCORD, NH — The coronavirus pandemic has gripped the nation and the world for the past year with hundreds of thousands of deaths, business and school lockdowns, economic crisis and political infighting, often sound but sometimes shoddy medical recommendations and advice as well as sadness and grief — but also recovery, healing, and thankfulness, too.

While there were close calls and scares, with some thinking they may have had the virus months before the official timelines reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, the Granite State reported its first official case of coronavirus on March 2, 2020.

The announcement was cloaked in some mystery — the public and the press still do not officially know who the first infection was although the person was known to be a Dartmouth-Hitchcock employee who contracted the virus in Italy. According to officials, a second patient in Grafton County became infected after the first person did not heed quarantine requirements and the virus spread to others. Officials have not revealed or explained how the first cases spread the virus to others in New Hampshire. Quickly, as many Granite Staters returned from vacations in China, Italy, and elsewhere, coronavirus spread.

Less than two weeks later, fearing a contagion spread rate on a scale of a horrific science fiction movie, with millions of fatalities expected across the nation, Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) declared a state of emergency, locking down schools, businesses, and state functions for 21 days. Courts, arthouses and movie theatres, restaurants, and other businesses closed. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs. There were runs on necessities like toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer, sanitary wipes, soap, and meat products, too, while the sickness spread in long-term care settings and educational facilities, leading to dozens of deaths in a few weeks.

A month into the pandemic, New Hampshire issued a Stay at Home order, requesting residents only go out for necessities. Two months later, a second Stay at Home order was issued. And two weeks after that, a Safer at Home order was issued, easing restrictions.

Looking back, Sununu, during a one-on-one discussion of the last year with Patch, said after the first case was announced, he did not think it would reach a pandemic scale. But it quickly became clear that COVID-19 was not like any other virus the nation had ever seen.

"Everything accelerated so fast," he said, "as we saw everything happening across the country … the realities of the fatality rates; the aggressiveness of the virus and the fact that ... look, if you get a couple of cases, it is going to explode ... you really just can't keep this in a bottle or a box. All that, in those initial days … our thought process really evolved."

The state had to make tough decisions and fast — especially when looking at the initial fatality rate estimates of 2 percent of the population. Deaths could have been as high as six or seven million people nationally, Sununu said, clearly still moved at the thought a year later.

With no vaccine and no one believing one would be ready in a year, a miracle, in a sense, due to the federal government's Operation Warp Speed initiative, health officials planned for the worst and hoped for the best — they focused on containing hospitalizations, accessing personal protection equipment, and administering tests, to track the spread.

Seasons changing gave officials the chance to take a breath, of sorts. Infection rates bottomed out and the experts and scientists got the claims of several million deaths completely wrong, although the devastation was still severe — as of this writing, 513,0393 people have died in the United States connected to the pandemic including 1,170 residents of New Hampshire.

The spring and summer brought a welcome change to the weather — it turned out, coronavirus does not like fresh air and ultraviolet rays although the sickness continued to ravage people with comorbidities like diabetes, heart disease, and immune deficiencies. An influx of vacationers from states like Massachusetts and New York, with much higher rates of infection than New Hampshire, and political rallies, too, including President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, did not create massive super spreader outbreaks officials and Democrats worried about. There was also positive news coming from the federal government with fast-tracked vaccines and hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to keep the state and country afloat. Social distancing, too, was working, Sununu said.

But health officials were still preparing for a fall surge in positive cases — understanding the nature of cold and flu season and past tracking of other sicknesses between October and May.

"That's how viruses tend to move," Sununu said.

The state, too, was prepared, with emergency services, communication, and transparency, hosting weekly press conferences and answering questions from the public on television and radio, he said. Sununu commended former Gov. John Lynch (D-NH) for building an impressive emergency response infrastructure. The governor also heralded those team members who used their previous work with rain, ice, and snowstorms, blackouts, floods, and other natural disasters to communicate New Hampshire's response to the pandemic.

"That really put the state in a position where what happened at a state level was very seamlessly communicated," Sununu said. "We built this communication system to our communities."

While some states completely locked down their economies, with some still in lockdown, and a handful kept everything wide open, Sununu said he took a measured approach and adapted along the way. Zoom was something new but, thankfully, available, since it was difficult to communicate with people who were impacted at a time when no one was supposed to be communicating.

"A measured approach is all about building trust and calming anxieties," he said, while letting the public know they were "truly a part of this."

COVID-19 also struck the nation and state in an election year and, immediately, there were mixed messages everywhere — seal the country from hotspots, no, do not do that, it is racist and xenophobic; wear a mask, do not wear a mask; we are locking down the entire economy but, sure, continue to date others if you like, as Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested to Vanity Fair in April.

New Hampshire was not immune to the politicization and weaponization of the coronavirus — with anti-maskers and libertarians camping outside of Sununu's home in Newfields, and Democrats blaming him for every misstep on the team while legislators, in a losing effort, sued when he wanted to keep control of the purse strings as well as federal aid. Sununu, while commending local journalists for providing information to Granite Staters, put a lot of the blame of the tenor of the times on the national press and its animosity toward a controversial president in Trump as one of the main reasons for the politicization — something that did not happen with H1N1, despite more than 60 million people catching that virus (although there were fewer deaths).

"What were the odds that this was going to happen in a presidential year?," Sununu said. "I'm not saying it got politicized due to bad luck. But the timing couldn't have been worse."

Sununu noted while he was running for re-election for another two-year term, he all but shut down his campaign, including his fundraising operation, and focused primarily on weathering the storm. He did not want "politics to become a variable" in how the state reacted to the pandemic — something other governors did, too. The erratic nature of the virus, the federal government's response, the president himself, too, as well as messaging, were contributing factors governors had to deal with.

"That created doubt, if you will, which allowed it to become more politicized," he said.

Sununu had token primary opposition in September 2020 which allowed him to put his race on hold, in a sense, and then, in the waning weeks of the campaign, kick things back into gear. And, the voters of New Hampshire rewarded Sununu with a stunning victory — receiving more votes statewide than any other candidate in history, a nearly 32 percent spread between himself and state Sen. Dan Feltes, the Concord Democrat who was the opposition party's nominee.

Even though Trump is gone, things have not changed much on the federal level, the governor said. The Biden Administration's messaging was not been much better. And the post-inauguration "unity" talking points by Democrats had not come to fruition yet.

"It's really not there," Sununu said. "And that's a bit of a disappointment."

Leadership, he said, was needed to limit the anxiety of the public, and many in New Hampshire had worked toward that goal.

But just before and after the election, like clockwork, as temperatures dropped, and Granite Staters began to move indoors, the surge occurred — daily cases increased from dozens of cases to hundreds per day and then, to more than 1,000 per day. A statewide mask order was issued — even though mask orders in some of the state's largest communities, before the fall, had not stemmed the spread of the virus.

Tragically, at the same time, dozens of facilities in the state, like the veteran's home and long-term care, that were hit the hardest by deaths at the beginning of the pandemic were hit again — not unlike every other state in the nation. More than 71 percent of the state's fatalities have been in long-term care settings while more than 88 percent of deaths have been in the 70 and older age brackets. As tragic as those deaths are, and they are, everyone connected to the state's pandemic preparation realizes the first year could have been much, much worse — using the 2 percent of the population figure, New Hampshire would be at more than 27,000 deaths today and not 1,170.

While the state is not out of the woods yet, during the past six weeks, daily new positive infection rates have nosedived — not to levels seen during the first few months of the pandemic, but to 20 to 25 percent of levels during the "holiday heights." Tens of thousands of Granite Staters have received at least their first dose of COVID-19 vaccines, if not their second, including all long-term care facility residents who wanted vaccines, high-risk health workers, firefighters and EMTs, and residents with two or more comorbidities. The second phase of the vaccination process, which will include educators, childcare staffers, and people 50 or older, is slightly behind schedule like many states, rooted in how many vaccines are received each week.

Trusting the federal government and not pressing officials, looking back, might have been something Sununu would have done differently when asked.

"It's not about regretting things," he said. "I don't regret much. I've had to make a lot of hard decisions."

But taking things for granted — like, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency said they were going to do something that they would actually do it, Sununu said, was one thing, in hindsight, that could have been challenged. The lack of personal protection equipment, too, and becoming more self-sufficient, as a state, during the first stages of the pandemic, was another.

"I wish I had known that early on," he said. "Even in the same press conference (at the federal level), we would hear something different. Washington is a tough place for the left and right hands to be working together. (The mixed messages) are still coming."

Continuing to build local relationships and ensuring New Hampshire was safe were still important, he said. Sununu also praised Perry Plummer, who heads up the state's vaccination implementation strategy, noting he earned his way up the ladder, starting as a firefighter and moving into emergency management, for getting the state where it is today.

"It has allowed us all to go along during this whole process," Sununu said.

Listen to the full interview here.

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