COVID-19 rates rising across state

SANTA FE — State officials did not announce any pending changes to public health orders, but noted concerns with rising COVID-19 rates across the state during a Thursday virtual address.

Human Services Secretary Dr. David Scrase said Bernalillo County and the southeast area of New Mexico are seeing the higher infection numbers, but an upward trend is pretty consistent across the state.

The New Mexico Department of Health announced 227 new cases Thursday and 341 more on Friday, bringing the total positives to 30,000 since March.

The case count Thursday included three in Curry County, but it was followed Friday with 27 new cases. Over the last nine days of September, Curry reported 108 new cases after averaging 3.2 the first three weeks of the month. That includes 33 cases on Wednesday, the highest number the county has recorded in one day.

Roosevelt County reported four new cases Thursday and one Friday.

The state reported five new deaths on both Thursday and Friday, bringing the total to 887.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Scrase advised New Mexicans to continue to follow COVID-safe guidelines in their daily activities.

The state on Thursday reported a spread rate of 1.27 and 171 average daily cases, above targets of 1.05 and 168. Test positivity was 3.24%.

“I think we have the right public health orders out there,” Scrase said. “In order for those directives to work, we all have to follow them. We all have to wear masks. We all have to socially distance. We have to avoid large gatherings.”

Lujan Grisham noted the state saw its second consecutive weekly increase in rapid responses at 248 from Sept. 21-27. That’s the second-highest weekly total behind the 254 recorded Aug. 10-16.

Among counties with more than five rapid responses, Curry County was third with a 50% increase over the last week behind Lea (90%) and Eddy (60%) counties.

The governor advised people try to limit activities that involve travel to around three to five per day.

“If you’re going to seven or eight places in a day,” Lujan Grisham said, “we’re giving this virus far too many opportunities to spread.”

In other COVID-related announcements:

• Curry County's detention center reports 13 additional detainees and one contract employee have tested positive since Tuesday. That's in addition to 10 detainees who tested positive on Monday.

“We have 177 detainees in the facility and of those 22 are positive,” County Manager Lance Pyle said on Saturday.

“We are opening back up the detention center annex to assist with isolating and mitigating spread.”

Pyle said 66 tests were pending on Saturday.

• A communication from the Public Education Department Thursday noted one Curry County case among 10 new positive cases in New Mexico’s public school population. The infected individual was a staff member who was last on school property Tuesday.

Through Friday, the PED had reported 210 positive COVID-19 tests within 112 school communities. The totals include 148 staff members and 62 students.

• Clovis Municipal Schools announced Friday afternoon a confirmed case of COVID-19 for either a student or a staff member at Parkland Elementary School.

It was not clear if the positive case was the same case reported in Curry County by the PED Thursday. The release noted the district will not make a further comment due to privacy laws.

The release said any areas of the school where the COVID-19 positive individual spent time will be cleaned and disinfected, and those who were close contacts of the positive case have been notified.

• During his update, Education Secretary Ryan Stewart noted Quay County has become eligible to return to a hybrid education model, while Roosevelt stays as one of five “red” counties with daily case counts above 8 per 100,000 residents and test positivity at 5% or above. Curry moved back into the red zone since being cleared two weeks before, but Stewart said a county in that circumstance will not immediately be remanded to remote learning to keep students out of a “yo-yo” status.