COVID-19 highly active in New Mexico for second Thanksgiving, holiday season

Algernon D'Ammassa
Las Cruces Sun-News

Airport travel in the U.S. the weekend before Thanksgiving was back to a level comparable to 2019, with 6.4 million travelers passing through airports from Friday through Sunday ahead of the holiday, per data from the Transportation Security Administration. 

Federal health officials encouraged Americans to enjoy Thanksgiving without masking while among vaccinated people, but the holiday week saw news that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was continuing to surge in at least 38 states, including New Mexico. 

Since the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus came to dominate other strains, the surge in daily cases that began during the summer has been rising since October after sitting at a high plateau in early fall. 

The impact on New Mexico hospitals continued to be devastating as hospital leaders reported growing nursing shortages and several have enacted crisis standards of care to manage overwhelming patient loads. 

New Mexico COVID-19 cases are shown as increasing since October in the state health department's Nov. 22, 2021 epidemiological report. The wave in the middle represents the deal surge from the fall of 2020.

Some public school sites have temporarily moved to remote learning in response to outbreaks, and the Santa Fe Public Schools and Los Lunas Schools made similar decisions districtwide ahead of the Thanksgiving break. In the Las Cruces Public Schools, test positivity among students and staff nearly doubled in two weeks.

According to this week's epidemiological report from the New Mexico Department of Health, the state's test positivity rate increased to 14 percent over the last week in federal data — the sixth-highest rate in the U.S. Because New Mexico follows a different methodology, it measured the state's test positivity rate at a little more than 12 percent.

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People who have not yet completed a primary course of vaccine accounted for 79 percent of case totals since Feb. 1, more than 84 percent of subsequent hospitalizations and 92 percent of deaths from COVID-19, per health department data.

Moreover, fewer new cases were accompanied by symptoms, in a worrying trend for public health officials. The most common symptom is a cough (in 66 percent of symptomatic cases) with fatigue a close second, while other symptoms may present as mild flu or common cold symptoms. Loss of smell occurred in nearly half of recorded cases with symptoms. 

The great majority of known cases recover, including 85 percent of New Mexico's 306,743 confirmed cases on Wednesday. Yet fatalities approached 5,300, increasing in pace 

Relative to population, the highest average in daily cases over the past week in the southern part of the state was in Doña Ana County, at 111.1 cases per 100,000 population between Nov. 15 and 21. It was the fourth-highest infection rate among New Mexico's 33 counties for the week. 

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Cumulatively, the county with the highest case rate since COVID-19 was first confirmed in New Mexico 20 months ago remained McKinley County in the state's northwestern corner, which has reported 23,505 cases per 100,000 population. 

The southeastern corner of the state border with Texas were among the state's most highly-infected counties as well — specifically Chaves (21,623 per 100,000), Lea (20,746) and Eddy (20,114). 

Some fans wear masks as the New Mexico State Aggies face off against the UTEP Miners at the Pan American Center in Las Cruces on Saturday, Nov. 13, 2021.

Vaccinations have been on the increase as well, with 74.2 percent of the state's adults having completed a primary course of vaccine and 21 percent having received an additional booster.

Among minors aged 12 through 17, 55.4 percent had been fully vaccinated, while nearly 27,000 children age 5 through 11 had received at least an initial dose of vaccine since they became eligible early in November. 

Doña Ana County's COVID cases up 13.5%; New Mexico cases up 5.6%

The state's indoor masking mandate for public places remains in place until mid-December unless it is extended, as it has been repeatedly since the order was reinstated in August

While seldom enforced as authorized in the state's public health order, health officials have promoted mask wearing as one in a system of voluntary behaviors shown to help slow community spread, alongside frequent hand-washing and keeping a minimum of six feet of distance from non-household members whenever possible. 

Algernon D'Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, adammassa@lcsun-news.com or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.