Opinion: A look back at COVID-19 in NM

It’s been a year since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 hit New Mexico. Let’s recall a few of the details.

This state took a liberal approach to the pandemic — our governor liberally applied health and safety restrictions to stem the tide of infections. Perhaps that’s owed to the fact that Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is a former director of the state’s Department of Aging and Long-Term Services and secretary of the New Mexico Department of Health, but from the beginning of this pandemic it appears she’s tried to follow the science more than anything else. She seemed to understand immediately how bad it could get.

If there’s a governor in the U.S. who acted faster than Lujan Grisham, I don’t know who that is. On March 11, 2020, the first “presumptive positive” case of COVID was announced in New Mexico and the governor, on that same day, declared a state of emergency.

Then, through a series of public health orders, Lujan Grisham clamped down on normal life in New Mexico. By the end of March 2020, she had suspended mass gatherings; prohibited out-of-pocket costs for testing and treatment of COVID; shut down the schools (to remote instruction only); locked down nursing homes and assisted living facilities where the most vulnerable lived; imposed occupancy limits on restaurants and other retail establishments; closed certain public facilities and “nonessential” services; funded disaster assistance for businesses; and much more in response to the growing pandemic.

Masks were not recommended at first, here or anywhere in the U.S., in part because of conflicting information about the benefits for the general population but mostly because there weren’t enough to go around and healthcare workers needed what was out there. Nor was COVID testing encouraged at first, because there weren’t enough test kits to go around.

Obviously, our federal government was unprepared for this pandemic. I suspect history will record that it wasn’t altogether President Trump’s fault, but that he certainly didn’t help the situation. He minimized the virus and politicized the pandemic, which undercut public confidence in our leaders and weakened the nation’s collective response.

Meanwhile, Lujan Grisham was taking a wholly different approach, with actions that were controversial from the beginning — mostly along party lines. The effectiveness of her hardline approach is still a matter for debate.

By summertime the virus was in every New Mexico county, growing sporadically by leaps and bounds. By Oct. 30, the state topped 1,000 deaths owed to the virus, and by Dec. 2, we had been through 100,000 confirmed cases statewide.

Then a medical miracle came to fruition: Vaccines, in less than a year, breaking all previous records for the speed in which they were developed, tested and approved for public injection.

Injections began in December — about a year after the novel coronavirus was first discovered.

New Mexico again moved quickly, with vaccinations starting about a week after the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was approved for use. The state is now a leader nationwide in the percentage of its population vaccinated, first with the Pfizer shots and, more recently, with the Moderna vaccine. The single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine will also come into New Mexico in the weeks ahead.

We are still far from where we need to be, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. New Mexicans, and the entire nation, are hopeful again.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

[email protected]