COVID cases spiking locally, statewide

Case counts for COVID-19 are spiking with the highly transmissible Omicron variant, and it’s difficult to not notice.

Statewide, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced efforts to temporarily employ National Guard troops and state workers as substitute teachers and childcare workers.

Locally, both Curry and Roosevelt counties only needed the first three weeks of January to report the highest number of new cases in any month since the pandemic began in March 2020. Portales schools closed on Friday due to a surge in cases.

Kaye Green, the chief executive officer of Roosevelt General Hospital, said the hospital’s clinic handling COVID-19 cases is seeing roughly 150 patients a day. The operation, Green said, was probably built for 50.

Through Friday, Curry and Roosevelt counties have combined for 2,642 new cases of COVID-19 so far in January, including 201 in Curry and 40 in Roosevelt on Friday. The previous one-month record for combined cases in the counties was 2,073 in November 2020.

The spike is overwhelming many activities, including any local efforts at contact tracing.

“We’re not asking where they think they were exposed,” Green said, “because it’s so prevalent in our community.”

About a dozen patients a day are being treated at RGH for COVID-19, and any patient needing an intensive care unit is transferred out.

“We try 25 to 35 hospitals before we can find an accepting hospital these days,” Green said.

Plains Regional Medical Center in Clovis is seeing 30 to 32 COVID-19 patients per day, with about half a dozen in the ICU on average.

“We have had to postpone some surgeries that require an inpatient hospital stay,” Chief Nurse Executive Deborah McAlister said via email. “Some patients have also had to cancel appointments due to positive COVID diagnoses. We also have moved some departments within the hospital to accommodate for surge numbers. We want to make sure that our community knows that we continue to provide emergency and routine care despite the surge in patients due to COVID.”

If any silver lining exists, it seems the cases are less severe than the Delta variant.

“It seems with Delta, we were seeing much more spread to the lungs,” Green said. “With Omicron, we’re seeing more in the upper respiratory tract. It’s challenging because we’re also seeing a lot of flu and a lot of strep, and the symptoms are similar.”

Portales Municipal Schools opted to close Friday with three schools reaching a 5% positive case rate and another three campuses close to that number.

“Closing schools is not something we take lightly,” Portales Superintendent Johnnie Cain said in an email to parents, “but out of an abundance of caution and to be in line with (state and health department) guidelines, the decision to close and clean seems to be the best option at this time.”

Regarding vaccination, PRMC officials don’t track the facility but shared New Mexico Department of Health statewide estimates that 81% of COVID-related hospitalizations and 93.8% of deaths are unvaccinated individuals. Green said RGH does track vaccination data, but said she didn’t feel comfortable sharing it because early data compilation didn’t differentiate between three different vaccines or account for booster shots.

In another COVID-19 development, the Clovis/Curry County Chamber of Commerce announced it was canceling its Clovis/Portales legislative dinner, originally scheduled for Jan. 31 in Santa Fe. During Wednesday’s chamber board of directors meeting, board members cited the optics of holding a legislative dinner after every other entity had canceled theirs, plus the potential expense of a dinner likely to be full of no-shows. The chamber will explore options to hold a post-session event.

McAlister encouraged the community to get vaccinated, get tested if symptoms appear and stay home if a positive test occurs. Both hospitals also ask for patience, with Green noting patients may be waiting multiple hours.

“All of our departments are stretched so thin between being down in staffing and being unable to recruit qualified staffing to the levels we need,” Green said. “Also, some of our staff are out with flu-like symptoms. The short-staffing has been a concern for us. We’re in a better place now than six weeks ago, but it does take time when you do recruit new staff. They’re really not up to speed for four weeks or so in certain areas.”