Curry County moves into yellow

With more than half of the state moving out of the “red” designation on COVID-19 gating criteria, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham expressed optimism in a Wednesday pandemic update.

Curry County was one of 15 counties in New Mexico that moved to the yellow designation under the state’s Red to Green reopening plan. The plan evaluates counties every week based on meeting the metrics of 8 daily cases per 100,000 individuals and test positivity of 5% or lower. Green counties meet both, yellow counties meet one and red counties meet neither.

Curry County joined the yellow level with test positivity of 3.99%, and missed the green level with 14.9 daily cases per 100,000. Roosevelt County remained just in the red with 5.3% test positivity and 19.7 daily cases per 100,000.

There are four counties at green, and 14 at red. However, Lujan Grisham said 29 counties have test positivity below 10%. A month ago, 31 counties were in the red designation.

“I'm very excited about our progress, you should be too,” Lujan Grisham said. “It means we are getting closer to returning to a more normal environment.”

Yellow counties are permitted indoor dining at 25%, with patio service at 75% and more relaxed definitions of mass gatherings and capacity restrictions at businesses. Though it is the most relaxed designation, the green level still has restrictions on dining capacity, retail capacity, and the size of groups congregating.

“You crush it here, we can expand somewhere else,” Lujan Grisham said, noting a “Green Plus” designation could be coming.

In other COVID-19 developments:

• Friday’s Department of Health update confirmed 407 new COVID-19 cases in the state, including six in Curry County and two in Roosevelt County.

Curry and Roosevelt counties have reported seven deaths so far in February, with five of them reported in Roosevelt County on Tuesday. That’s the highest number for either county on any single day during the pandemic. The other two deaths were reported Wednesday by Curry County, a female in her 40s who was a resident of St. Anthony Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center and a male in his 60s who was hospitalized with underlying conditions.

• Through Wednesday, the state had administered 2,458,248 COVID-19 tests. Lujan Grisham encouraged New Mexicans to keep getting tested, and reminded everybody the can register online for at-home test kits.

Lujan Grisham added the state is 15th on test positivity rates, and top 10 in numerous other categories — testing (third), residents receiving first vaccine doses (third), residents receiving second vaccine doses (sixth) and percentage of allocated doses used (fourth).

“We are doing incredible work together,” Grisham said. “Today is a day to really feel good about the collective efforts of the state.”

• Health Secretary-Designate Dr. Traci Collins said the 61,000 scheduled doses for the week represented increases of 2.5% over the prior week and 8.6% from two weeks ago.

With 61,173 vaccines administered in the past week compared to 3,325 cases reported, the state’s vaccination rate was more than 18 times the new case rate.

• Human Services Secretary Dr. David Scrase said COVID-positive individuals should consider various antibody treatments with information at cv.nmhealth.org/covid-19-monoclonal-antibody.

“If you test positive, please consider treatment and consider it early on,” Scrase said.

Scrase noted the state has seen several cases of the B.1.1.7 variant, or the U.K. strain, in New Mexico.

“The reason we're concerned about this is it seems to spread a little more rapidly in other countries,” Scrase said, noting that it has an increased transmission rate of 35-45% and that the U.S. will likely see this variant become the dominant strain. While Lujan Grisham was optimistic for a “more normal” summer, Scrase said variants could easily change trajectories.

• Lujan Grisham said the state is not using a return of prep sports to “bribe” schools into returning to hybrid learning, but said having kids in schools will create an “ecosystem of surveillance” that would help athletic programs succeed.

• Scrase said that while mortality rates were staying consistent, he countered that death reports take longer than any other statistic. He does expect mortality rates to drop as their trend normally follows infections by about two weeks.

Editor Kevin Wilson contributed to this report.