January 13, 2021

One county moves into “green” as state reports 1,151 new COVID-19 cases, 13 additional deaths

One New Mexico county moved to the “green” level of restrictions and another moved to yellow on Wednesday. The rest of the state’s counties are at the “red” level. Harding County moved to green level after meeting both of the state’s metrics on the number of cases per 100,000 residents and the percentage of positive […]

Matthew Reichbach

One New Mexico county moved to the “green” level of restrictions and another moved to yellow on Wednesday.

The rest of the state’s counties are at the “red” level. Harding County moved to green level after meeting both of the state’s metrics on the number of cases per 100,000 residents and the percentage of positive COVID-19 tests, while Union County’s positivity rate met the metric but the overall number of cases did not, so it is in the yellow level.

The state updates the level of restrictions every other Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday, the state Department of Health reported 1,151 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday and 13 additional deaths related to the disease.

Bernalillo County had the most newly reported cases on Wednesday, with 352. Doña Ana County reported 127 new cases and San Juan County reported 102 new cases.

DOH also reported 53 new cases among inmates held by the state Department of Corrections, 28 of which were at the Lea County Correctional Facility, and three among individuals held by federal agencies.

On Wednesday, the department reported 702 individuals were hospitalized for COVID-19, a decrease of 13 people since Tuesday. This could include those from other states who are hospitalized in New Mexico, but would not include New Mexicans who are hospitalized out of state.

DOH provided some information on each of the 30 newly reported deaths.

A male in his 50s from Bernalillo County who was hospitalized and had underlying conditions.
A second male in his 50s from Bernalillo County who was hospitalized and had underlying conditions.
A female in her 80s from Bernalillo County who had underlying conditions and was a resident of the Princeton Place facility in Albuquerque.
A male in his 80s from Bernalillo County who was a resident of the Hilldale House facility in Albuquerque.
A male in his 80s from Cibola County who was hospitalized and was a resident of the Good Samaritan Society in Grants.
A female in her 50s from Doña Ana County who was hospitalized and had underlying conditions.
A female in her 100s from Doña Ana County who was a resident of the Good Samaritan Society facility in Las Cruces.
A male in his 50s from Eddy County who was hospitalized.
A female in her 70s from Grant County who was hospitalized.
A male in his 70s from Luna County who was hospitalized and had underlying conditions who was a resident of the Mimbres Memorial Nursing Home in Deming.
A male in his 60s from Roosevelt County who was hospitalized and had underlying conditions.
A male in his 50s from Santa Fe County who was hospitalized and had underlying conditions.
A male in his 40s who was hospitalized and was a New Mexico Corrections Department inmate at the Guadalupe County Correctional Facility.

DOH does not disclose which underlying condition any of the deceased had, only if one was present before death.

The most common underlying condition for those who died with COVID-19 was hypertension, followed by diabetes and cardiovascular disease, according to the most recently available mortality update. Some of those who died had multiple comorbidities.

DOH has now found 159,119 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and reported 2,807 deaths related to the disease.

Of the confirmed cases, 81,603 were designated as recovered by the department as of Wednesday, an increase of 1,023 since Tuesday.

The New Mexico Environment Department’s Rapid Response COVID-19 Watchlist had 82 establishments as of Wednesday, seven fewer than were listed on Tuesday. These workplaces had two or more COVID-19 rapid responses in the last 14 days.

Gating criteria

The number of cases on a seven-day rolling average reached 1,253 as of Jan. 7, the last day for which full numbers are available. The state uses the date of the specimen collection (or, the date that the test was administered) for its gating criteria calculator, which lags because some labs take longer to process and report test results to the state.

The positivity rate among tests had a large drop, to 11 percent as of Jan. 12. This is still well above the state’s goal of at or below 5 percent.

The number of tests increased to 13,199 on a seven-day rolling average as of Jan. 12, continuing the sharp rise after a lull over the holidays.

The spread rate reached 1.05, which is equal to the state’s gating criteria, as of Jan. 11. That’s the calculation of how many people each person with COVID-19 will spread the disease to; anything over 1.0 means the cases are increasing.

Testing details

The state coronavirus information page says the state has processed 2,113,785 tests as of Wednesday, 11,205 more than reported on Tuesday.

The new positive cases represented 10.27 percent of the total newly processed tests.

DOH provided the number of newly reported cases on Wednesday, by county.

352 new cases in Bernalillo County
1 new case in Catron County
17 new cases in Chaves County
8 new cases in Cibola County
7 new cases in Colfax County
8 new cases in Curry County
1 new case in De Baca County
127 new cases in Doña Ana County
45 new cases in Eddy County
11 new cases in Grant County
6 new cases in Guadalupe County
15 new cases in Lea County
4 new cases in Lincoln County
2 new cases in Los Alamos County
28 new cases in Luna County
69 new cases in McKinley County
1 new case in Mora County
20 new cases in Otero County
5 new cases in Quay County
44 new cases in Rio Arriba County
3 new cases in Roosevelt County
79 new cases in Sandoval County
102 new cases in San Juan County
21 new cases in San Miguel County
74 new cases in Santa Fe County
1 new case in Sierra County
6 new cases in Socorro County
5 new cases in Torrance County
1 new case in Union County
32 new cases in Valencia County
2 new cases among individuals held by federal agencies at the Cibola County Correctional Center
1 new case among individuals held by federal agencies at the Otero County Processing Center
48 new cases among New Mexico Corrections Department inmates at the Lea County Correctional Facility
5 new cases among New Mexico Corrections Department inmates at the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in Cibola County

DOH also reported the total number of cases by county, including those reported on Wednesday.

Six previously reported cases were identified by DOH as duplicates (three in Doña Ana County, two in Bernalillo County and one in San Juan County). These have been corrected.