Officials: NM meeting criteria to relax restrictions

CLOVIS — New Mexico is not without its successes in combating the COVID-19 pandemic, with nearly three dozen states showing a higher prevalence of infection than the Land of Enchantment.

But the state is not without its issues, state officials said Thursday, with the Southeast area that includes Curry and Roosevelt counties remaining problematic.

The state announced, through a Thursday webinar with Human Services Secretary David Scrase and acting state Epidemiologist Chad Smelser, that it was meeting all of its gating criteria to relax restrictions.

However, there were no announced changes to public health orders that expire Friday, or to any new ones that may be released after that.

“I know that's the question of the hour,” Scrase said. “My honest answer is I don't know.”

The state, as of Aug. 16, had a 0.7 transmission rate, a 2.16% test positivity rate, more than 5,000 daily tests, 244 hospital beds available and a seven-day rolling average of 132 new cases a day.

“If we can sustain that,” Scrase said, “we have the room to do a little bit more reopening, and I want to emphasize a little bit.”

The state set the benchmark for the seven-day rolling average at 168 cases, with Scrase noting the number was reached by using an 80 cases per million baseline.

The state has five public health regions, with a Metro region that includes the Albuquerque metroplex and the four other regions surrounding it. The Southeast region is averaging 19.3 new cases per seven days as of Aug. 16. That was nearly double the Northwest region (9.3) and more than double the remaining three regions — Southwest (7.6), Metro (4.3) and Northeast (3.6).

While other regions are seeing more precipitous drops, Scrase said the region is appearing to plateau after it began the pandemic with the state’s lowest infection rates.

“We are hoping in the near future it will be going down,” Scrase said, “but it's not that surprising because of the heavy influence of Texas. Texas has reached somewhat of a plateau, so our Southeast region is mimicking the Texas plateau.”

The Southeast’s mortality rate among COVID-positive patients, however, was at 1.0%, less than a quarter of the state overall (4.1%) and well below the Northwest region (6.2%). A question regarding mortality rates was not addressed as of Saturday morning.

When asked what residents could do to push infections lower, Scrase said the best action is more of the current actions of mask-wearing, social distancing and avoiding travel. He noted cases doubled following the Memorial Day weekend, and advised people give second thoughts about “the family barbecue with 30 people on Labor Day.”

The state announced 144 new confirmed cases on Friday, bringing the cumulative total to 24,095. The report included three positive cases each in Curry and Roosevelt counties. There are 65 current hospitalizations as of Friday, and 11,312 cases are designated as recovered. Five COVID-19 deaths were reported Friday, bringing the state total to 739.

Among other topics addressed in the webinar:

• Scrase did say that the key focus is to resume in-person instruction at public schools, and notes that keeping infections low helps the state feel better about possibly phasing in-person instruction back in after the Labor Day weekend. He referenced states like Georgia and Indiana that quickly saw infection spikes.

“If they had our gating criteria, they would have not reopened schools,” Scrase said. “It was perfectly predictable there would be serious problems.”

• Regarding colleges having issues, Scrase noted that colleges can take plenty of precautions but will always have the variable of young adults without parental supervision.

“What are the chances,” Scrase said, “they'll all get together for a first day ofschool party? I'd say it's pretty high, and that's exactly what we saw. I'm not sure how we could get a public policy that could effectively manage that.”

• Smelser said it’s fair to view the state’s published recovery numbers as needing an asterisk, as it’s more difficult to track recoveries weeks down the road. He said citizens are for the most part cooperative, but understands a segment of the population will just stop returning phone calls from the Department of Health.

• Smelser said he didn’t have any direct data on the impact of face coverings at gyms, but noted, “any time you bring people together in an indoor environment, you increase transmission; if gyms are to stay open, they need to enforce mask wearing, good hygiene and be consistently cleaning equipment.” If somebody has concerns about visiting a gym, Smelser recommends getting exercise in other ways.

• Scrase said when the state does relax restrictions, it won’t necessarily open in a reverse order of how it closed because there’s more data available to make those decisions.

When asked about how long he’d want to see good numbers before reopening the state, Smelser noted the virus has an incubation period of up to two weeks. As good as he felt about the numbers Wednesday, seeing them sustain over an incubation period is good and over two such periods is even better.

“There honestly isn't an answer that people know for sure,” Smelser said. “We're learning from this pandemic as we go. It's clear that the longer you go meeting all of the gating criteria, the better off you'll be. We've seen example after example in the United States and other countries … that reopened quickly … and they had outbreaks.”

• Infection rates rise with poverty rates, with Scrase noting factors like higher population density in houses, less overall ability to isolate and the need to go out more for necessities or employment. Scrase noted the Department of Workforce Solutions had recently held a town hall discussing rental issues, and that it is archived on YouTube.