The Chronicles Of Grant County
COVID-19 Status Report shows low risk in area
This map shows that the risk level for COVID-19 is low throughout much of New Mexico. In Southwest New Mexico, only Luna County is considered to have low risk. Catron, Grant, and Hidalgo Counties, according to this map, have less than low risk for COVID-19.
(The map was provided courtesy of Covid Act Now, September 28, 2023.)
There is a low level of risk for COVID-19 throughout much of New Mexico.
According to Covid Act Now, reports of COVID-19 infections were either extremely low or non-existent in Southwest New Mexico as of September 28, 2023.
In Luna County, the weekly admissions to hospitals due to COVID-19 infections was 2.0 per 100,000 people. The percent of hospital beds used for patients with COVID-19 infections was less than 1%.
There were no reports of COVID-19 infections in Catron County, Grant County, and Hidalgo County as of September 28, 2023.
"Covid Act Now is a part of Act Now Coalition, a non-profit that leverages a Silicon Valley approach to build innovative and user-friendly data products to address today's urgent problems," according to a statement from the organization. "We believe that accurate, accessible, and actionable data is critical to help leaders and individuals make impactful decisions."
The organization also indicated that among its guiding principles is "Transparency: Our data and methodologies are fully open-source so that the public can vet, freely use, and build upon our work."
Overall, there were 44 new hospital admissions of people with COVID-19 in the entire State of New Mexico.
"In New Mexico, 1,989,307 people (94.9%) have received at least one dose, 1,582,545 (75.5%) have received at least two doses or a single Johnson and Johnson dose, 867,565 (41.4%) have received a booster dose, and 467,615 (22.3%) have received an updated bivalent booster dose," according to a report from Covid Act Now. "Anybody who is at least 6 months old is eligible to be vaccinated. Fewer than 0.001% of people who have received a dose experienced a severe adverse reaction."
The New Mexico Department of Health indicated that it stopped updating reports listing deaths caused by COVID-19 in the Spring of 2023. The most recent data on this subject from the State is for the week ending April 11, 2023.
This Department is continuing a number of other efforts to monitor COVID-19 infections and indications of potential infections.
"The New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) is currently monitoring for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) in wastewater collected at municipal wastewater treatment plants across the state," according to the COVID-19 Wastewater Monitoring Report as of August 11, 2023. "Symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 shed the virus in their feces. This creates an opportunity to monitor for the presence of the virus in sewage. These data provide valuable information to decision-makers and can help inform public health actions to reduce the spread of COVID-19."
"Ten wastewater treatment plants are participating in the voluntary program with NMDOH," this report continued. "Four additional facilities are participating in a similar program with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At each utility, 24-hour composite samples are collected twice weekly and shipped to the agency's Scientific Laboratories Division (SLD) to analyze gene markers unique to the SARS-CoV-2 virus."
In Southwest New Mexico, the wastewater treatment plant in Deming is participating in this program.
The report noted that "Wastewater monitoring data are most valuable when results are compared over time within the same community and combined with other sources of COVID-19 surveillance data. Each wastewater treatment plant serves a different number of people and collects wastewater from a unique population segment. Because of this, comparing the number of virus copies per liter between communities without adjusting for these differences does not yield useful information."
Additional information will be included in an upcoming edition of The Chronicles Of Grant County.
This graph shows the levels of COVID-19 vaccinations in the State of New Mexico as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The image was provided courtesy of Covid Act Now, May 12, 2023.)
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© 2023 Richard McDonough