Starting Wednesday, the state of New Mexico will move to a tiered reopening system by county.
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced counties will be sorted into three distinct categories—red, yellow and green—to determine their reopening eligibility.
The state will use the average test positivity, and the per-capita incidence of new COVID cases, as a metric for considering whether a county qualifies to move categories.
Counties in the red will be the most restricted, as they are considered to be extremely high risk. According to Grisham, only one county currently qualifies to move from red down to yellow.
“The whole state, except for Los Alamos County is in the red. Los Alamos is yellow,” Grisham said. “This is startling, but it's not where the story has to end. We can show this map in a couple of weeks, it can be yellow. There can be some counties that are green. We can move through it fairly quickly and effectively if we really all do this as productively as we can together.”
Grocery stores in red counties will continue to operate at 25% of maximum occupancy or 75 customers, whichever is smaller. In yellow counties, maximum occupancy will be expanded to 125.
One change from the current public health order— all counties will now be able to resume outdoor dining at 25% maximum occupancy. Indoor dining will remain shut down until a county qualifies for the yellow category, where restaurants will be able to operate at 25% capacity indoors.
Grisham says the state will update the county by county framework every two weeks.
“The goal isn't to be moving through these all the time,” Grisham said. “The goal is to be steadily moving towards green. And then what I hope to be talking about, green plus, which means that we've really learned to manage to live with the virus, and we can open up many more things in a more reasonable fashion. Businesses are counting on us and New Mexico lives. We deserve, all of us, the opportunity to save as many New Mexicans as we can.”
State Human Services Department Cabinet Secretary Dr. David Scrase announced the state has 16 ICU beds available. He says many patients are being treated in converted outpatient facilities.
“We've shown a 45% increase in cases over a 14-day period, but more disturbing than that we've seen a 89%, almost 90%, increase in hospitalizations and a 60% increase in deaths,” Scrase said. “These two numbers are disproportionate to the growth in cases, so we're watching that.”
Scrase attributed New Mexico’s stay at home order with helping to curb the number of cases reported over Thanksgiving weekend, though he expects another rise in cases during the coming weeks due to holiday gathering.
The governor says one of her main concerns is having enough medical staff to care for COVID patients.
“The issue isn't so much today that we have no space for patients, even though we are seeing them in hallways,” Grisham said. “The issue is staffing. You can't staff all of these outside locations. So we’ve been dedicated, as you know, to figuring out step-down care and other situations because we are at a critical point.”
Grisham stressed the need for New Mexicans to follow all public health orders, highlighting the loss of a Las Cruces teacher who recently passed away from COVID, as a reason to take the fight against the virus seriously.
“We lost a beloved educator just recently from Las Cruces. I talked to her family members,” Grisham said. “It's incredibly painful. No one's going to make the decisions to put anyone at risk if we know we can't manage, mitigate and to the highest degree possible nearly eliminate it. Because we're doing so well at minimizing the ability of the virus to be prevalent in our communities. It is the only responsible, meaningful productive way forward.”
