Morning-Word-Covid
COVID-19 by the numbers
New Mexico’s health department yesterday reported 1,654 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number thus far to 359,116; DOH designated 312,321 of them as recovered.
Bernalillo County had 511 new cases, followed by Doña Ana County with 164 and Sandoval and San Juan counties each with 101. Santa Fe County had 98 new cases. The state’s seven-day test positivity rate rose sharply from 17.9% to 19.8%; the state target is 7.5%.
DOH also reported 31 additional deaths, 23 of them recent: Nearly 65% of the reported deaths were from Bernalillo County; there have now been 5,897 deaths statewide. As of yesterday, 493 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, 21 more than the day prior.
According to the state’s most recent vaccination case report from Jan. 3, over the last four weeks, 66.4% of COVID-19 cases have been among those who are not vaccinated, as have 83.6% of hospitalizations and 88.1% of deaths.
Currently, 89% of New Mexicans 18 years and older have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 75.9% are fully vaccinated. Among that demographic, 35.7% have had a booster shot. In the 12-17-year-old age group, 66.9% of people have had at least one dose and 57.3% are fully inoculated. Among children ages 5-11, 28.5% have had at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine and 17.3% are fully vaccinated. In Santa Fe County, 99% of people 18 and older have had at least one dose and 85.7% are fully vaccinated.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention yesterday modified its advice regarding booster shots, shortening the period people should wait between their second Pfizer-BiNTech shot from six to five months (Moderna remains at six months and Johnson & Johnson remains at two months). Additionally, the CDC recommended moderately or severely immunocompromised 5-11-year-olds receive an additional primary dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (the only one permitted for that age group) 28 days after their second shot.
The state had not announced adoption of the new booster guidelines by deadline, nor has it reported when it will implement the CDC’s recently adopted modified isolation and quarantine guidelines. However, Acting DOH Secretary Dr. David Scrase, Deputy Secretary Dr. Laura Parajón and state Epidemiologist Dr. Christine Ross will provide a COVID-19 update at 3:30 pm today that will stream live on the health department’s Facebook page and with Spanish translation on Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s YouTube page.
New Mexicans can register for a COVID-19 vaccine here, schedule a COVID-19 vaccine booster here and view a public calendar for vaccine availability here. Parents can add dependents to their vaccine profiles here.
You can read all of SFR’s COVID-19 coverage here.
NM Omicron cases grow
The Centers for Disease Control estimates the Omicron variant now constitutes 95% of cases in the US. But not in New Mexico. According to the health department’s Jan. 3 Variants of Concern report, made available yesterday, Delta is still the dominant variant here. However, the state has detected, as expected, an increase in the Omicron variant from the week prior. In its Dec. 27 report, DOH said it had sequenced a total of four cases. Now the state is up to 29 since first detecting the variant on Dec. 12 in Bernalillo County. The state has not yet provided a breakdown of the variant at the county level. Of the 29 instances of Omicron, the state has matched 27 to specific cases. Of those, 17 represented breakthrough cases, as in they occurred among people who had completed their vaccination series (the state has not as yet begun reporting breakthrough cases among those who have received booster shots). None of the Omicron cases have caused hospitalization or death, according to the most recent report. The state only sequences a small portion of cases to detect variants, and there is a lag time in the reporting itself. While DOH did not post an updated report on community transmission yesterday, the CDC shows high transmission across the state. The health department’s report on geographical trends indicates Santa Fe County has had a particularly high case rate over the last seven days: 97.9 per 100,000 (view the map on page 3 of this report).
Court announces new eviction diversion program
The state Supreme Court yesterday announced a new program aimed at addressing New Mexicans facing the loss of housing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a news release, the Eviction Prevention and Diversion Program will be piloted in the Ninth Judicial District of Curry and Roosevelt counties starting Feb. 1, and will be expanded statewide in March. The court paused evictions early in the pandemic in March 2020 for tenants who provided a judge with sufficient evidence of their inability to pay rent during the pandemic (despite the moratorium on evictions, some New Mexicans have nonetheless lost their homes). Under an order issued yesterday, the stay on evictions for non-payment of rent will be lifted in Curry and Roosevelt counties when the new program begins and, once enacted statewide, the eviction moratorium will be lifted in all other counties. Under the new program, when tenants receive a legal notice that an eviction petition has been filed in court, they also will receive information to help them access legal services, financial assistance for rent and utilities as well as rehousing if needed. At the start of a hearing or trial in an eviction case, judges will advise the tenant and landlord about the Eviction Prevention and Diversion Program and the availability of federally funded emergency rental assistance administered by the state. For parties who agree to participate in the program, their cases will be put on hold for at least 60 days to allow for negotiations with a court-appointed settlement facilitator, and the court will dismiss the case if a settlement is reached. “The goal is to negotiate a settlement acceptable to property owners and renters, allowing people to remain in their homes while fairly compensating the property owners through emergency rental assistance,” Chief Justice Michael Vigil said in a statement.
Native American leaders still waiting for education
The state Public Education Department has yet to produce a report expected last month showing how it intends to meet the needs of Indigenous students in New Mexico, as identified in the landmark 2018 Yazzie/Martinez lawsuit. Native American leaders say they had anticipated providing feedback on the report last October, with Mark Mitchell, recently named chairman of the All Pueblo Council of Governors, telling the Associated Press the tribes never heard a response from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s office last October when they requested a meeting to discuss the plan. Former Santa Fe Public School Superintendent Veronica García, whom PED hired to write the plan, says she submitted it, but has not heard anything since. The governor’s spokeswoman, Nora Meyers Sackett, declined to comment on the governor’s response to the tribes’ letter, but did say the plan would be released “in the near future.” PED would not respond at all regarding the plan’s delay. State Rep. Derrick Lente, D-Sandia Pueblo, said Education Secretary Kurt Steinhaus had told him in a late December meeting the plan was pending the governor’s approval, but DOH also wouldn’t comment on that meeting. “I hope it doesn’t come out days before the session and we’re expected to embrace it,” Lente said.
Listen up
The City of Santa Fe yesterday announced it will be holding a series of events in 2022 as part of its Culture, History, Art, Reconciliation and Truth (CHART) initiative. These will include its Cultural History Series, which “engages with historians, artists, culture bearers, storytellers, scientists, makers and others who can add to our knowledge of our complex history and many cultures.” If you missed the inaugural event with State Historian Rob Martinez and City Historian Valerie Rangel last November, you can watch that here. If you’d like to participate in upcoming online (these may become in-person events when COVID-19 numbers allow) public dialogue sessions, you can register for those here.
Giving Chicago her due
CBS News presented a segment on Sunday morning on the founding mother of feminist art, New Mexico resident Judy Chicago. The 82-year-old artist currently has her first career retrospective, on display through Jan. 9 at the de Young museum in San Francisco. “When I walked in, I got very emotional actually,” she tells journalist Martha Teichner, “because it was not just seeing the work, it was seeing my entire life.” Chicago published her autobiography, The Flowering last summer in time for the show at de Young. As the CBS profile notes, Chicago’s 1979 iconic work, “The Dinner Party,” “was eviscerated” by mostly male critics when it was first shown. “Today, it is considered an icon of feminist art—since 2007, with pride of place in its own gallery at the Brooklyn Museum.” She lives in Belen, Teichner narrates, “in a kind of exile from the hostility of the art establishment.” But as times changed, “a #MeToo world finally ‘got’ Judy Chicago. Suddenly she was a star,” designing the set for the 2020 Dior Couture show in Paris, along with a line of Dior handbags. Chicago also has work currently in galleries in Miami and Reno but, closer to home, two works from her Birth Project are on display at Through the Flower Art Space (Chicago founded the nonprofit Through the Flower in the late 1970s) in Belen.
Down to earth
As the world ends in the new film Don’t Look Up, the one percent board a plane that takes them to a spaceship where they escape the Earth’s catastrophe. Here in the real world, Taos Earthships are beckoning not so much to the elite, but to those worried about the climate future. The Washington Post spotlights the Earthship community in a recent story, noting the “off-grid, self-reliant houses built from tires, dirt and garbage that have long been an offbeat curiosity for travelers passing by the ski town of Taos…suddenly look like a haven for climate doomers.” The Post talks with Mike Reynolds, who has been building the Earthships since the early 1970s. The early days of pandemic panic coupled with the increasingly extreme weather patterns didn’t fluster him, he says: “I was watching that on TV and then walking down the hallway of my building, picking bananas and spinach and kale and tomatoes and eating them,” Reynolds says. “Barefoot, because my building was warm without fuel. My Earthship took care of me.” And while new Earthships used to sit “dormant,” these days many sell before they are finished, drawing a variety of people, including “young people anxious about a worsening climate, a housing shortage, and the dark promise of eternally escalating electricity and heating costs. To them, Earthships offer a life free of grids and bills; a clean break from a world that feels like it’s on the verge of breaking itself.”
Clear and brisk
According to the National Weather Service, today will be sunny, with a high near 43 degrees and northwest wind 10 to 15 mph.
Thanks for reading! The Word hopes Warner Chappell Music takes good care of David Bowie’s life’s work. She also wishes she’d been at this Isle of Wight show.
