NASHUA – The city’s Division of Public Health and Community Services has had to change the way it operates in order to combat the spread of the coronavirus disease.

As of Monday, public health officials were investigating 64 active cases of individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19, and 108 contact cases related to the active cases.

With an active case, public health nurses call individuals to learn more about their exposure, looking to see if it was work related or an exposure to someone that was positive in the community that they may be aware of. Once officials have that information, the individual may identify a number of people they may have been in contact with. If an individual with an active case identifies people they have been in contact with, the division then calls those other people to let them know they have been exposed and to go into quarantine for 14 days to monitor signs and symptoms.

“It’s an all-hands-on-deck approach to addressing COVID-19,” said Bobbie Bagley, director of the DPHCS.

The division has six public health nurses monitoring active cases, including Bagley. However, while public health nurses deal with investigating the active cases, others are assisting with making calls to the individuals identified as contact cases. Repurposed staff members are supporting the public health nurses by providing the calls to monitor temperatures and symptoms of the contacts of active cases.

“In order to help allow for the nurses to do the active case investigation, the follow-up calls for those contacts was divvied out to other staff,” Bagley said. “So, right now, we’re doing pretty well.”

Staff from environmental health and community health have been repurposed to assist with making the contact case calls. Bagley said because so many contact cases have to be called, the division also has some per diem nurses as well who are calling to monitor temperature and symptoms during that 14 day period where a person may be on quarantine.

Bagley said some school nurses have shown interest and made it known that they would help out any way they could, so if needed, the division can reach out for additional support.

At this point, the division is not overwhelmed, Bagley said. Initially, she noted, with the small-cluster outbreak at the Huntington at Nashua, it was a little overwhelming.

“That number got pretty big pretty quickly for us, and that’s where we enlisted some of our other staff to make the follow up phone calls to be able to monitor,” Bagley said.

Moreover, with the investigations, there is an education component, where the division underscores the importance of social distancing. Division staff also are working to answer any COVID-19 related questions people in the community might have through the Nashua COVID-19 hotline, which is 603-589-3456. The hotline is available from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week.

Due to the current circumstances, the division has stopped clinic services, meaning they are no longer providing the STD and HIV clinic. The division also has stopped doing restaurant inspections. Welfare has stopped doing face-to-face interviews for support. Now, when people need additional financial support, everything is done over the phone. In addition, the division now has a lot of staff working from home as well.

“We transitioned how we operate by doing everything using either Zoom meetings or setting up interviews by phone so that we can maintain social distancing as well,” Bagley said.

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