Courtesy photo Nashua officials were able to test over 150 people this week and plan to increase testing moving forward.

NASHUA – The city is boosting its efforts to combat the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) by hiring four additional employees and vowing to offer more testing in the coming weeks.

The CDC Foundation – an independent nonprofit supporting the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention’s work – is paying for the city to locally hire these four employees. One new hire will work to support Emergency Management, another will be designated as a communication specialist and two will serve as public health nurses.

Director of the city’s Division of Public Health and Community Services Bobbie Bagley said a proactive and aggressive approach has been taken with contacting individuals and identifying who has been exposed to the virus and imploring them to use the quarantine methods of staying at home and limiting their exposure to others.

“It is highly contagious, but it can also be stopped,” Bagley said. “The chain of infection is broken when there’s isolation and quarantine in place. The chain of infection is broken where there’s social distancing in place that does not allow for the virus to spread from one person to another.”

Mayor Jim Donchess said the city is following a procedure referred to as “TTI” or test, track and isolate.

The city is trying to box the virus in, which entails testing widely, including tracking or tracing who has been in contact with infected people and then quarantining them for 14 days. Donchess said Gov. Chris Sununu speaks with him and other mayor’s across the state periodically, and that the state is intending to increase testing to as many as 1,500 people per day.

Earlier this week, officials tested a diverse group of 150 individuals in the community across different work places, different age groups, individuals who had symptoms and others who didn’t have symptoms. The city worked on with the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services on that mission.

“This is something that will be continued in the future and expanded so that we continue to try to test as many people as we possibly can,” Donchess said. “In order to eventually reopen the city and reopen the economy, we need to know how many people have the virus, how many people may have gotten it.”

Bagley said there is a plan in place to increase testing locally with some of their community providers such as the Nashua Soup Kitchen & Shelter. Bagley said they will try to have clinics at least every week. However, these tests will be done by appointment only, which can be made by calling the city’s COVID-19 hotline at 589-3456. Additionally, once officials have a schedule put together, it will be posted online.

“As we continue to increase our testing across New Hampshire and across Nashua and our region, we may see an increase in the number of cases,” Bagley said. “Our goal however, is to make sure that we don’t see an increase in the number of fatalities as we do this, and in order for that to be maintained, we need to maintain our social distancing, we need to maintain staying at home.”

Adam Urquhart may be contacted at 594-1206, or at aurquhart@nashuatelegraph.com

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