22 in hospital in New Mexico
Report: State may have up to 800 deaths by summer
It seems there’s nowhere for the number to go but up.
According to the state Department of Health, New Mexico now has 237 positive cases of COVID-19, a jump of nearly 30 from Saturday’s report of 208.
Four of the new cases are in Santa Fe County, which has 34 people who have tested positive.
Bernalillo County, the state’s most populous, reached triple figures at 101, including nine new cases reported Sunday.
More than 11,000 people in New Mexico have been tested for the novel coronavirus, which causes such symptoms such as a fever, a dry cough and shortness of breath. All but the 237 have tested negative.
The news comes three days after the University of Washington’s Institute for
Health Metrics and Evaluation released a report predicting over 81,000 deaths nationally related to COVID-19 over the next four months.
That report says New Mexico will experience somewhere between 245 and 803 deaths into the summer months. That report says deaths will peak around 16 per day in late April.
Jodi McGinnis Porter, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Health, said in an email Sunday the state should have “some kind of update this week” with its own projection on statistics.
On Friday, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said New Mexico will likely see a peak in cases sometime between mid-to-late April.
New Mexico has reported two deaths related to COVID-19: an Eddy County man in his 70s who had pre-existing health problems and a Bernalillo County man in his 80s with a history of health issues.
The virus thus far has hospitalized 22 people in the state. Meanwhile, the New Mexico Department of Health said Sunday 26 people have recovered.
Those 26 are still considered among the 237 positive cases, according to the Department of Health.
Also Sunday, New Mexico’s congressional delegation — U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich and U.S. Reps. Ben Ray Luján, Deb Haaland, and Xochitl Torres Small, all Democrats — wrote the secretary of defense and the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in support of the governor’s request for a U.S. Army hospital in Albuquerque.
“Despite proactive measures by state and local public health authorities to reduce community spread of COVID-19, this pandemic threatens to overwhelm the state’s existing medical treatment facilities and resources by early April,” the letter said in part.
Health officials maintain the spread of the virus can be limited if, among other measures, people stay home and self-isolate and wash their hands often.