Local jail employees test positive for COVID-19

Curry and Roosevelt county jails on Thursday announced employees have tested positive for COVID-19.

Also Thursday, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham extended the state’s public health order through August and Curry County extended its string of positive tests for the virus to 49 consecutive days.

“We’re still not where we need to be as a state, but we are seeing some hopeful signs of stabilization,” said Human Services Secretary Dr. David Scrase in a news release from the governor’s office.

“Unfortunately, stabilizing at a high level of daily case counts will result in sustained pressure on state resources, will result in too many illnesses and too much risk. We’ve got to stay the course and drive down the spread of infection in our state.”

Both of the local jail cases involved employees who were tested days earlier but did not receive results until this week.

An officer in the Roosevelt County Detention Center

was tested on July 16, but results were not provided until Tuesday, according to a county news release.

The officer is quarantined at home, County Manager Amber Hamilton said.

“This employee had tested negative on five prior tests and was asymptomatic at the time of testing positive,” Hamilton said in the news release.

In Curry County, a contract employee for the jail was tested July 24 but results were not received until Thursday, according to a county news release.

That employee also has been sent home to quarantine, officials said.

A Curry County inmate who tested positive for COVID-19 on July 24 has received a second positive test result, the release said.

Both county managers said new rounds of testing for all inmates and jail employees will be conducted within the coming week.

The Albuquerque Journal on Monday reported testing in New Mexico can take from under 48 hours to more than 10 days.

Hamilton and Pyle both expressed frustration with the amount of time it took to receive test results for the jail employees.

“We’ve experienced 7-14 days on average,” for test results, Hamilton said. “It shouldn’t take 12 days.”

Scrase told the Albuquerque newspaper, “When it takes you longer to get the test results than you would have spent in isolation, you kind of have defeated the purpose of getting the test.”

Curry County on Thursday had 298 active cases of COVID-19, according to the New Mexico Department of Health. Roosevelt County had 85 active cases.

The state had 11,738 active cases of coronavirus cases on Thursday with 156 covid patients in New Mexico hospitals and 33 on ventilators, Lujan Grisham said during her news conference on Thursday.