De Baca County staying COVID-19 free so far

Only one New Mexico county has made it through the pandemic without a single reported case of COVID-19. While this could be due to De Baca County’s demographics — approximately 2,300 square miles of land with 1,800 residents, and the one major municipality of Fort Sumner — there are other local theories.

“There’s not very many people here so we’ve got a lot of natural distancing,” De Baca County Commission Chairman Scot Stinnett said. “We do have a lot of traffic through here since we have two major highways that join here, and the convenience stores get a lot of traffic.”

Though there are many people who travel through Fort Sumner from west Texas and central New Mexico, Stinnett said that a harsh flu season might be what contributed to the lack of COVID cases in the county.

He said that back in the late months of 2019 and early 2020 the De Baca Family Practice Clinic had a large number of visits for flu-related symptoms that did not test positive for the flu.

“They couldn’t explain what it was so they were just treating symptoms, if that makes sense,” he said. “At one point we had 60% of the kids in school out of school, and a lot of the teachers were out of school sick.”

Lisa Walraven, chief executive officer of the clinic, said that between September of 2019 and mid-March of 2020 they had 1,342 visits for flu-like symptoms and 1,022 visits for strep-like symptoms. The total of visits account for a greater number than the total population, with 31% of residents visiting the clinic more than once.

“A lot of the people here think they had the symptoms of what is now being called COVID,” Stinnett said. “So there’s some thought that we’ve already been through the pandemic here and we’ve got some herd immunity built up, so we’re not as susceptible as some communities may be.”

There have been 366 COVID tests in De Baca County. Stinnett said that compared to the size of the population, it is a relatively large percentage, though people are not going to get tested if they do not have symptoms.

While a high rate of the tests from earlier in the year came back negative for flu-like symptoms, Walraven said the clinic cannot confirm or deny that De Baca County had already experienced the virus.

“At this point in time Serology antibody testing is not available to our clinic,” she said. “We are fortunate that there are no confirmed cases in De Baca County to date and ask that our residents and visitors continue to practice appropriate COVID-19 safety measures,” she said.

Stinnett added that while mask wearing is not popular in De Baca County, there are some people who do respect the precaution.

“There are people who do respect the masks, and there are a lot of people who don’t wear masks and don’t intend to. If we were located in Bernalillo County it might be a little different,” he said.