Latest on COVID in New Mexico

 It is bad.  Very bad.  Worse than ever before.  We have had over 500 cases day after day.  Many days have been up to 800.  October 28 and 29 were each over 1,000.  I used to compare New Mexico numbers with other states, seeing how much better we were doing than most.  No longer.  There are states (most notably, Wisconsin and North and South Dakota) that are doing worse, but on the whole we are doing very badly.

Today the numbers fell to 581 and the positivity rate fell, particularly in some of the hardest-hit area.  But these statistics are noisy.  Today is just one day, and a weekend at that. The drop may reflect weekend delays.

Hospitalization and death rates as a percentage of total cases continue to fall.  Hospitalizations just fell below 10% of the total, and the death rate is 2.19%.  But I am not convinced that either of those numbers are encouraging.  They could just mean that the system is being swamped with new cases and hospitalizations and deaths will catch up later.

Hospitalizations in absolute numbers are at their highest yet.  The spring peak was 223 people hospitalized at once.  Our low was August 26 through September 26, when the number hospitalized remained steady around 88.  The numbers were manageable.  Now we have 354 hospitalized and rising fast.  At what point our healthcare system will become overloaded I do not know, but the numbers are scary and getting scarier.

Also scary -- nowhere is safe.  In the spring, the outbreak was first and foremost in the Navajo counties of San Juan and McKinley in the Northwest with Sandoval County (Pueblos) and Bernalillo County (Albuquerque) also fairly hard hit.  Then for a while the southeast of the state, near Texas, was hardest hit.  Now COVID is everywhere and there is no escaping.  The map shows counties in green, yellow or red depending on the severity of the outbreak.  Once only select portions of the state were red.  But it kept spreading and spreading and now only select portions of the estate are not red.

And, of course, in this we only reflect the rest of the country, and Europe as well.