All N.M. counties turquoise

Officials say state making strides against disease, allow five counties that would have slipped to green to retain least restrictive status

Every New Mexico county received an A grade Wednesday from the state for their performance against the coronavirus — even if five counties didn’t really earn it.

The state is performing well overall in getting people vaccinated and coronavirus cases are down, public health officials said in a news conference. So each of the state’s 33 counties was given turquoise status, which indicates low risk of infection and enables businesses to operate at a higher capacity than if their communities were in the green, yellow or red category in the state’s color-coded system of public health restrictions.

A news release from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s office said Wednesday she made changes to the system to allow all counties to operate under turquoise-level restrictions, and the state Department of Health responded in kind.

“Absent the change enacted Wednesday, under the previous framework for evaluating risk for counties, 28 counties would have been operating at the Turquoise Level, and five — De Baca, Guadalupe, Harding, Roosevelt and Torrance — would have moved back to operating at the Yellow Level,” the news release said.

The state will monitor vaccination rates in those counties and work with local administrators to boost vaccination numbers, the news release said.

Two weeks ago, when the state released the previous color-coded gauge, Chaves County was the only one of the 33 that was not at the turquoise level. State Sen. Cliff Pirtle of Roswell expressed displeasure with the grading system at that time and wasn’t pleased with it Wednesday, either.

Chaves County was legitimately in turquoise this week because it wasn’t one of the five given a free pass.

“Now we’re just gonna let everybody be turquoise,” Pirtle said. “It’s really unfair for businesses in certain counties that were being treated differently.”

He said perhaps state leaders recognize the scoring system is inadequate and have decided to move on. Pirtle, a Republican, said it’s time to open the state back up anyway.

Tripp Stelnicki, a spokesman with the Governor’s Office, said Lujan Grisham “doesn’t want to see any county backslide into tougher restrictions. Generally, overall, statewide we are doing quite, quite well.”

He said some critics in the state are like a weather vane and take whatever view is opposite of the governor’s. Pirtle has “complained at every step of the way,” Stelnicki said.

Linda Burke, executive director of the Greater East Mountain Chamber of Commerce, said she was pleased Torrance County had been placed in the turquoise category. That helps businesses stay afloat, she said.

“The county has done an awful lot to get people vaccinated,” she said. Her organization represents portions of Torrance, Santa Fe and Bernalillo counties.

As of Wednesday, about 56 percent of New Mexico residents eligible for the vaccinations had been fully inoculated, said Dr. Tracie Collins, secretary of the state Department of Health. The goal is to hit 60 percent by the end of the month.

At 60 percent, officials said, the state will graduate out of the county color-coded system.

Dr. David Scrase, secretary of the Human Services Department, said this will be a “tale of two summers” — one for the vaccinated and one for the unvaccinated.

Scrase said statistics this year show those who haven’t been vaccinated are 15.5 times more likely to get infected with the virus and 22.6 times more likely to die from COVID-19.

Dr. Christine Ross, state epidemiologist, said that while there are cases in which the virus breaks through and infects a vaccinated person, they are much less likely to be seriously ill. No vaccine is 100 percent effective, Ross said.

But the coronavirus vaccines are “highly effective,” she said. “So please, New Mexico — get your shots.”