Amid rising COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in New Mexico, the New Mexico Department of Health held its first since March on Wednesday.
It comes as cases in New Mexico increased . Nine Counties are in the Medium Risk category for community level spread according to CDC metrics. That includes Mora County, hard hit by wildfires. On June 8, 1100 new cases were reported statewide, 140 hospitalizations (9 of them ventilated), and 13 new COVID-19 deaths.
Acting Health Secretary Dr. David Scrase explained how New Mexico is responding to what he had previously described as a likely 鈥減ost pandemic wave鈥� by emphasizing treatments like Paxlovid.
Scrase said there are likely 3 to 7 times more infections than captured in state reporting due to the rise of home testing. Five times the 6/8 count would be 5500 new cases. But he added caseloads alone are no longer the main metric of risk. Rather hospitalizations and ICU usage now figure into the CDC Community Level metric.
Scrase also said that State Epidemiologist, Christine Ross will depart in July. No replacement was announced.
Ross and Scrase emphasized resources and recommendations available through the , noting that clinical treatments for COVID help avoid hospitalization, ventilations, and severe illness.
