Health officials say delta variant still biggest threat
The nation and world have buzzed with concern about a new variant of the coronavirus, but New Mexico laboratories have yet to encounter it.
New Mexico health administrators said in a news conference Wednesday much remains unknown about the omicron variant of COVID-19 — still, they are preparing for it.
Numerous nations have detected it and American officials have said it’s a matter of time before the omicron variant infiltrates this country in many places. The first known case was discovered in the U.S. on Wednesday. “It has been sequenced from a lab in California,” said Dr. Christine Ross, state epidemiologist. “There are many question marks” about the variant, she said.
The U.S. has placed restrictions on travel into this country from certain nations, she said. “The goal is to slow the spread so we can learn more about this in the interim.”
Ross and Dr. David Scrase, acting secretary of the state Department of Health, said the delta variant continues to be the most vexing variant in the pandemic.
That variant has caused a surge in the disease this fall, lifting coronavirus numbers to levels not seen in New Mexico and elsewhere since early this year. The state reported nearly 1,900 newly confirmed cases Wednesday and a dozen additional deaths. There were 643 patients in the state hospitalized with COVID-19.
Ross said the country continues to see high case rates. “Not where we want to be,” she said.
Scrase said New Mexico has performed comparatively well in distributing vaccines for the disease, but the numbers of new vaccination recipients are “moving very slowly” now.
The rates of New Mexico adults and kids ages 12 to 17 who have completed the initial series of shots have remained fairly stagnant, at just over 74 percent and 55 percent, respectively. Only 23.3 percent of adults have received the booster shot, and 17 percent of children ages 5 to 11 have had their first dose.
Katrina Hotrum-Lopez, Cabinet secretary of the state Aging and Long-Term Services Department, said a surge a few weeks ago in cases at long-term care facilities has cooled down. During a seven-day stretch in late November, she said, Sandoval County reported the most cases of that kind at 37, followed by Bernalillo County’s 33.
Scrase said the state’s initial cases in the close to two-year pandemic were in long-term care places. “The vaccines have been a godsend” there, he said.
But he said New Mexico hospitals still struggle with high occupancy in intensive care units because of coronavirus patients and those with other maladies. “The hospital situation is not getting a lot better,” he said. “The pandemic is not over.”