CLAREMONT — More than 20 residents of an 80-unit subsidized apartment complex for seniors have tested positive for COVID-19, authorities said Tuesday.
Elaine Perrault, an 83-year-old resident who has lived at the Earl M. Bourdon Centre on Maple Street in Claremont for eight years, said in a phone interview that she tested negative for the virus last week when workers from Valley Regional Hospital came to the complex to offer testing to residents who wanted it. It was following that round of testing that Perrault said the number of known cases at the complex jumped from a handful to 21. She also said about five employees have tested positive.
While Perrault, who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, still takes her wheelchair down the halls of the complex, she said they are quiet now.
“It’s very sad. When you go down the hall, it’s spooky,” she said.
In non-COVID-19 times, Perrault said the housing complex normally hosts a daily communal lunch, as well as activities such as arts and crafts, cards and pool. Perrault said she most misses the knitting group she participated in.
Now, the complex’s staff communicate with residents daily via an intercom system. Residents who have tested positive have been asked not to leave their rooms and even those who have not tested positive have been asked to lie low, Perrault said. The hairdresser no longer comes and residents are left to their own devices for meals, she said. Her two daughters, who live nearby, are still allowed to come in and visit if they wear masks, but one of them has lung cancer, so Perrault worries for their safety as well.
“It’s so hard,” she said.
Perrault said she was uncertain how the virus arrived at the facility and phone and email messages to the apartment complex’s manager weren’t returned on Tuesday. An automated message on the Bourdon Centre’s office phone line said that the office is closed until Jan. 11 due to “several positive COVID cases.” It directed residents experiencing COVID-19 symptoms to get tested through their doctor’s office, urgent care or Keady Family Practice.
“This is an unfortunate situation,” the message said. “The best advice we can give you is to quarantine.”
A sign on the door to the complex also said as of Jan. 1 there were 21 positive COVID cases in the building.
City officials, who confirmed that the outbreak has reached 21 residents, said community members have started to grow weary of the social distancing guidelines and become more lax in recent months and weeks.
Claremont Fire Chief Bryan Burr, who also serves as the city’s emergency management director, said that while the city kept case numbers relatively low through the spring, summer and early fall, they started to increase as schools reopened, sports began, and holidays came and went.
“It’s been downhill since,” he said.
If people fail to abide by guidelines such as wearing masks, social distancing and hand-washing, Burr said the numbers will continue to rise. As of Monday, Claremont had 62 current cases of COVID-19, according to a map on the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services website. That number puts it in the top spot for case numbers on the New Hampshire side of the Upper Valley.
Officials at Valley Regional Hospital, in an emailed statement on Tuesday, also said that transmission of COVID-19 in Sullivan County is “substantial” and that it is “poised for a brisk rise in cases.” In addition to “one large outbreak in a residential community,” the statement from Marketing Coordinator Kris Richardson said hospital officials also are aware of “at least one large group exposure incident,” which he did not describe. He said Claremont and the state as a whole are seeing an uptick in cases following the holidays.
Valley Regional, which has 25 beds, has seen an increase in hospitalizations due to COVID-19, with as many as three such patients there at any one time, Richardson said. Though Valley Regional still has capacity, the state’s health care system is “extremely stressed,” he wrote.
Officials at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon said Monday that they had 24 inpatient cases, the most it has had since the pandemic began. Statewide, New Hampshire had 319 inpatient cases on Monday.
Claremont City Manager Ed Morris said he is “really hopeful” that residents will abide by COVID-19 precautions. In doing so, he said they could bring down the city’s case numbers back to pre-holiday levels of between 15 and 25 active cases at any one time.
Morris said city officials have been in touch with administrators at the Bourdon Centre to coordinate last week’s testing with Valley Regional and to offer to assist residents with any needs they may have, he said.
“We’ll continue watching what happens,” Morris said. The COVID-19 situation “changes on a daily basis.”
The outbreak at the Bourdon Centre is personal for Burr, the fire chief, whose mother lives there. So far, he said, she has tested negative and has no symptoms of the disease. Burr and his family do his mother’s grocery shopping for her.
“She sits tight,” he said. “So far so good.”
Because the Bourdon Centre is an apartment complex, not a nursing home or assisted living facility, the residents are not yet in the queue for vaccination, Burr said.
Burr, as a front-line worker, got the first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday at a clinic being run by the National Guard at River Valley’s campus in Claremont, as did some of his colleagues, he said. He will need to get a second shot in 28 days in order to develop immunity to the virus.
Perrault said she’s looking forward to getting the shot, but hasn’t heard when she might expect to get it.
“I don’t understand why they don’t come here with as many of us as there are,” she said.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
