CIBOLA COUNTY, N.M. – New Mexico joined other states last March and declared a public health emergency at the onset of the current pandemic. The COVID-19 threat prompted closures that affected all areas of daily life.
Numerous Cibola County residents have routinely tracked and recorded the daily data posted on the New Mexico Department of Health website. One community member has summarized the information and recently shared it with the Cibola Citizen.
The number of cases in the state since March 2020 was 187,720 as of last Thursday. This total included 13,337 people who required hospitalization during the past 12 months. A total of 3,845 New Mexicans has died from the coronavirus and 161,650 people have recovered. The NMDOH had performed 2,815,334 COVID tests as of March 11 and 130 people remain hospitalized.
Cibola County recorded a total of 2,777 positive tests and 106 deaths. Adjoining counties reported varying numbers.
McKinley, which abuts Cibola to the north, documented 12,089 cases along with 451 deaths; Sandoval, which joins the northeastern corner of this county, had 210 deaths and 11,010 positive tests; Bernalillo, to the east, reported 53,397 cases and 884 deaths; Catron, which shares a border to the south of Cibola, had 83 cases that resulted in five deaths; Socorro, which shares Cibola’s southern boundary with Catron, documented 1,228 cases and 56 deaths; Valencia, which abuts the southeastern corner of Cibola, had 6,243 positive tests with 100 deaths.
Vaccination program
The availability of vaccines has prompted community residents to seek immunization. This county is home to 21,213 people and 9,215 residents, 43.4 percent, have received the initial injection; and 28.7 percent, 6,093 people, are now fully vaccinated. Almost one in four county residents, 24.2 percent, have registered to receive the vaccine, according to NMDOH.
Last week’s DOH dashboard reported that 731,266 doses had been administered statewide in the past 12 months. This means that 27.2 percent of the state’s population, 457,497 people, have received the initial injection. That number of administered doses includes 262,367 state residents, 15.6 percent, who are now fully vaccinated.
Three federal agencies, the Veterans Administration, Indian Health Services, and prison system, have administered 216,350 vaccine doses to date across the state.
Vaccination across the U.S.
The coronavirus is blamed for more than 530,000 deaths in the United States. Almost one in five Americans have received at least one vaccine dose and approximately one in nine people are now fully vaccinated, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Deaths and newly confirmed infections per day have tumbled during the past two months. But cases are running at an average of about 55,000 per day, according to a March 14 article, https://www.yahoo.com/.
Visit https://cv.nmhealth.org/ and https://cvvaccine.nmhealth.org/public-dashboard.html for more information.