artdirector@sfreporter.com
COVID-19 by the numbers
New Mexico health officials yesterday reported 3,354 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the statewide total so far to 455,947; DOH has designated 333,715 of those cases as recovered. The statewide test positivity rate decreased slightly from 30.8% to 30.0% (the target is 7.5%).
Bernalillo County had 864 cases, followed by Doña Ana County with 429 and Sandoval County with 283. Santa Fe County had 191, 86 of them in the 87507 ZIP code, which ranked ninth in the state for the most new cases among ZIP codes. Santa Fe County’s test positivity rate is at 25.10%, according to this week’s community transmission report.
According to the state’s most recent vaccination report, over the prior four weeks (between Dec. 27 and Jan. 24), 53.8% of COVID-19 cases were among those not fully vaccinated, as were 77.8% of hospitalizations and 93.3% of deaths.
The state also reported 25 additional deaths, 19 recent, including three from Santa Fe County: a female in her 60s who had underlying conditions, a male in his 80s who had underlying conditions and a male in his 90s who had underlying conditions. Santa Fe County has now had 223 deaths; there have been 6,317 statewide. As of yesterday, 678 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, a 6% increase from the day prior.
Currently, 91.2% percent of adults 18 years and older have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 77.1% have completed their primary series. Among the same demographic, 40.8% have had a booster shot. In the 12-17-year-old age group, 69.6% of people have had at least one dose and 59.1% have completed their primary series. Among children ages 5-11, 34.6% have had at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine and 23.2% have completed their primary series. In Santa Fe County, 99% of people 18 and older have had at least one dose and 86.4% have completed their primary series.
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 the updated guidelines for quarantine and isolation here.
You can order free at-home COVID-19 tests here and access the DOH testing directory here.
You can read all of SFR’s COVID-19 coverage here.
Hydrogen Hub Act debate kicks off tomorrow
Lawmakers on Thursday are scheduled to start discussing one of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s top policy priorities for the session: the creation of hydrogen hubs around the state. House Bill 4, sponsored by Democrat Reps. Patricia Lundstrom and Nathan Small, of Gallup and Las Cruces, respectively, would create tax incentives for low-carbon hydrogen production and offer funding options to develop regional hydrogen hubs. “By incentivizing clean hydrogen development through this legislation, we are steering this emerging industry toward a lower-carbon future,” the governor said in a statement. Several state agencies earlier this year signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories to build a zero-carbon hydrogen economy, both in New Mexico and across the US. The Biden administration’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed last fall includes plans to invest $8 billion “to incentivize the development of four regional hydrogen hubs to produce and use low-carbon hydrogen in manufacturing, heating and transportation,” and New Mexico’s proposed bill will ensure “the growing hydrogen economy aligns” with the state’s climate and employment goals, a news release from the governor’s office states. The Hydrogen Hub Act, however, faces opposition from environmental groups: “Hydrogen is not an energy source—99% of hydrogen production in the United States still relies on fossil fuel extraction,” Jonathan Juarez Alonzo, policy lead for YUCCA (Youth United for Climate Crisis Action), said in a statement last month. The proposal also is expected to face pushback from legislators; the House Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee is scheduled to hear it on Thursday. For a quick primer on the bill, check out Capital & Main reporter Jerry Redfern’s recent KUNM interview.
DOH head: More COVID-19 therapeutics coming
Acting Health Secretary Dr. David Scrase says a larger supply of therapeutics to treat COVID-19—monoclonal antibodies and oral treatments—will be coming to New Mexico, and the state also has implemented plans to make them easier to access. “We’re going to work to get a better supply…and make it easier for people to get,” Scrase told SFR yesterday in an interview discussing the state of the pandemic. Scrase says health officials now have two solid weeks of evidence that intubation among those hospitalized with COVID-19 has declined, as well as evidence that the standard two-week period in which cases turn into hospitalizations has shrunk to one week. “So the good news is, whenever we do hit the peak, which we’re anticipating in the next seven days, we won’t have to wait two more weeks for hospitalizations to start to drop, just a week,” he said. The bad news: Hospitals remain “over-subscribed,” and Scrase discussed what he believes will be permanent changes for health care as a result of the pandemic. Scrase will hold a news conference with journalists today at 1 pm (DOH says it will post afterward on its Facebook page), and has changed the format again, after facing criticism last week for not allowing reporters to pose their own questions. Scrase said last week’s deviation happened because the “press of Omicron is so severe we were trying to optimize everyone’s time. It’s good to try different things and find out whether they work or not.”
Baldwin & Rust producers want case dismissed
Deadline reports Alec Baldwin and his fellow Rust producers have filed a motion in the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles requesting a judge dismiss a lawsuit filed last November by script supervisor Mamie Mitchell. Mitchell’s suit followed Baldwin’s fatal shooting on set of the film’s cinematographer Halyna Hutchinson. Lawyers representing Baldwin, the film’s other producers and Rust Movie Production maintain in the latest legal filing that none of the allegations in Mitchell’s suit indicate Baldwin or the other defendants either intended for the gun Baldwin fired to contain live ammunition, nor did they know that it did. “Because all three of Plaintiff’s causes of action, are based on allegations of negligence that resulted in a workplace accident, they should be dismissed because her exclusive remedy is New Mexico’s Workers’ Compensation Act, not a civil action filed in California State Court,” the filing says. They have requested a Feb. 24 hearing. Meanwhile, as Deadline points out, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office and First Judicial District Attorney have yet to make any arrests in the case, although investigators in New York did, reportedly, finally secure access to Baldwin’s phone approximately 10 days ago.
Listen up
The Your New Mexico Government podcast from KUNM and New Mexico PBS returns for four weeks to follow the legislative session. The first episode, “The Executive and the Legislature,” functions as a preview, with highlights from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s State of the State speech from Jan. 18, along with clips from journalists and Legislative Finance Committee Director David Abbey from the Jan. 20 edition of “Let’s Talk New Mexico.” In the forthcoming episodes, the podcast will check in with journalists, lawmakers and other stakeholders about what’s going on at the state capital.
Good graces
New York Magazine’s The Strategist vertical has a big shout-out for Santa Fe’s Inn of the Five Graces, a hotel writer Foster Kamer describes as great and possibly perfect: “A night there is a night spent sleeping inside an artist’s global tableau. It’s also a restorative pod, and more simply, a pitch-perfect way station good for showing up, sleeping, and leaving. It has two of the key markings of a truly great hotel: It could really only exist where it is. And on its best nights, it can be worth so much more than a simple night of shelter.” Kamer ended up at the hotel last April at the end of a cross-country trip after he cut short his Taos skiing plans due to panic attacks. He apparently negotiated the hotel into reducing his nightly rate by about $200, which brought it to $510, a price Kamer describes as a “bargain” (the lowest price we’re seeing for a one-night stay on the hotel’s website is $660). To wit: “Five Graces costs what it costs because it’s a thoroughly transportive experience, travel within travel…This place is death by a thousand soft kisses and small touches.”
Treasure trove
Wondering if you’re sitting on a priceless heirloom? Come June, PBS’ Antiques Roadshow will return to New Mexico for the fourth time, specifically to Milner Plaza on Museum Hill in Santa Fe for one of its five stops in a 2022 tour. The taping here was originally scheduled for June 2020 and postponed to June 14 of this year. Have items you might want appraised? A sweepstakes to win tickets to attend opened earlier this week and remains open through March 21; an additional social media giveaway is available through Feb. 28. The social media give-away requires following the show on either Twitter or Instagram and you can find the deets on that here. The show tour also will visit Nashville, Tennessee; Boise, Idaho; Woodside, California; and Shelburne, Vermont. Fun fact: Albuquerque was the sixth city the show ever visited and also reportedly the site for one of its most impressive finds in 2002: a marble lion from the Tang Dynasty. You can watch appraiser Lark Mason almost start weeping as he tells the lion’s owner what she’s got: “This is among the finest examples of Chinese art we’ve seen,” he says, ultimately estimating the lion could likely be sold for $120,000 to $180,000.
Better than nothing
As predicted, Santa Fe received a dusting of snow overnight and more might be on the way. The National Weather Service forecasts a 30% chance of snow this morning, mainly before 8 am. Otherwise, it will be cloudy through mid morning, then gradual clear, with a high near 38 degrees and east wind around 10 mph becoming west in the morning.
Thanks for reading! Snow notwithstanding, The Word has had enough January for now. Hawaii, anyone?
