State steels itself for surge
Criteria for testing expands as state exceeds 300 cases; another death reported
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham delivered some encouraging news Tuesday about New Mexico’s fight against the spread of the novel coronavirus but mixed it with a bleaker message: The state has a huge hill to climb before it is prepared for an expected surge in cases.
During an hourlong briefing on her Facebook page, when officials announced New Mexico had surpassed 300 confirmed cases of the virus and has had another death, the governor said the state’s rate of new cases has slowed. She also announced officials are expanding the criteria for people to get checked for the virus as testing capacity increases.
But officials gave sobering figures for a potential surge, saying New Mexico might need six times as many intensive care beds as it now has. The state also has been struggling to procure medical supplies.
“It’s both — we’re incredibly prepared, but it’s not going to be enough probably even in the best-case scenario,” Lujan Grisham said.
The governor’s update came as the state reported 35 new cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, bringing the total to 315.
◆ Twelve of the new cases were in Bernalillo County, and six new cases were in San Juan County.
◆ Santa Fe County reported four new cases, bringing the area to 42.
◆ There are 26 people hospitalized in New Mexico, including two who live out of state.
◆ The state reported one more coronavirus-related death, bringing the total to five. The most recent victim was a Bernalillo County man in his 40s with an underlying medical condition, who was found unresponsive in his home.
“Frankly, that’s too many,” Lujan Grisham said of the reported deaths. “The reality is, we will see more deaths.”
The governor again urged New Mexicans to take seriously her stayat-home order and social-distancing measures, saying universal adherence to those instructions is the best chance the state has to lower the rate of spread.
She said she recently had seen images of hundreds of cars in big-box store parking lots and lines of people standing right next to each other, and she said that kind of behavior will make it more difficult for the state to withstand a surge.
“This is not safe for your family. It’s unfair to your neighbors,” she said. “It’s unfair to every single New Mexican.”
During the briefing, state Health Secretary Kathy Kunkel said New Mexico is broadening its policy on testing to encourage testing of people who aren’t showing symptoms of COVID-19, including household members and close contacts of those with positive test results. People without symptoms in nursing homes also can be tested.
Additionally, the department is changing its policy to allow testing without a doctor’s referral at state labs, although some private providers may still require one.
Those changes were made possible, officials said, by the state’s success in increasing its testing capacity.
New Mexico has ramped up its capacity to 1,450 tests per day, with TriCore Reference Laboratories performing around 1,100 per day and the state lab carrying out around 350, Kunkel said.
In the next week, the state expects to further raise that overall number by between 1,000 and 1,300 tests per day, which would raise the total daily capacity to 2,450 to 2,750.
While New Mexico began the outbreak with a “doubling rate” of two days, the state has since stretched that rate to above three days, meaning the rate of new cases has been slowing, said Human Services Secretary David Scrase.
“That’s incredibly good news,” Lujan Grisham said.
“You see a rounded effort in our graphs. You don’t see this incredible spike,” she added, referring to a higher doubling rate in other states.
Lujan Grisham talked at length about how long stay-at-home orders may last, suggesting they would be in place for some time and adding that “more narrow, more strict, more focused” restrictions would likely last through April and into “the middle of May.”
Despite the progress in testing and the new case rate, officials provided a grim outlook Tuesday on overall case numbers expected in the state.
Scrase said recent modeling projections from researchers at the University of Washington, who estimated the state could see 5,500 cases and 529 deaths, likely were too optimistic.
“We think higher numbers than that,” Scrase said.
The availability of critical care beds could become a major issue as cases increase. The state is estimating it could need around 2,175 ICU beds during a COVID-19 surge, and it now has only 331 adult beds. As of this week, 139 of those 331 are available, the Human Services Department said.
Lujan Grisham said she is instructing her officials to plan for a worstcase scenario of needing 3,000 beds.
She said it will help that the federal government on Monday approved New Mexico’s request for an Army field hospital. Officials are waiting for more information about the hospital’s size and weighing other factors to decide whether it will be located in Albuquerque or elsewhere.
The state also plans to create additional health care capacity in other cities, including potentially in Gallup, Roswell, Farmington, Las Cruces and Santa Fe.
Officials plan to set up a health care facility at the former Lovelace hospital site on Gibson Boulevard in Albuquerque, which would add at least 200 more beds.
Lujan Grisham said the state has received 75 percent of its allocation of medical supplies from the national stockpile but needs more, and obtaining such resources remains “one of our biggest challenges.”
At the briefing, the governor and health officials displayed a “social distancing scoreboard” that uses cellphone data to track the degree to which people are staying at home. The graphic, created with data from the company Unacast, showed New Mexico is scoring a “C” in social distancing.
Some northern counties got an “A,” including Santa Fe, Rio Arriba, Los Alamos and Taos. Others scored an “F,” including McKinley, Torrance, Luna and Eddy.
“New Mexico should not be a C state for social distancing,” the governor said. “New Mexico should be an A state.”
Scrase said the state could succeed in withstanding the surge if it could double the capacity of the health care system while cutting the rate of spread in half.
“Social distancing is the most meaningful tool we have,” Lujan Grisham said. “The less transmission, the more lives we’ll save.”