CIBOLA COUNTY, N.M. – New Mexico Department of Health recorded an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in people who live in shared settings including nursing homes and prisons. Cibola County is home to Good Samaritan-Grants, which offers assisted living and nursing home services, and three correctional facilities. Officials have recorded a total of 2,415 positive tests and 80 deaths across the county since March 2020.
Good Sam’s in Grants is one of 100 long-term care facilities that NMDOH has identified in the past 28 days which had at least one positive case in residents and/or staff.
The NMDOH recorded 518 cases on Dec.22 at the prisons in the county, 523 cases on Dec. 29, and a total of 570 cases by this past Sunday.
The Cibola County Correctional Center, Milan, had 422 cases on Jan. 10; Northwest New Mexico Correctional Center, Grants, reported 148 on the same date.
Twenty-two positive tests had been reported at Western New Mexico Correctional Facility, Lobo Canyon, Grants, at the end of last week. (The NMDOH website does not include data on the Lobo Canyon site.)
State health officials announced 22 additional cases across Cibola County on Jan. 8 that were part of the 1,645 new cases in New Mexico and NMDOH recorded 30 additional deaths statewide. Health officials acknowledged the challenges posed by community spread.
People who have been infected, but show no signs of the disease, account for more than half of all coronavirus cases, according to new information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The predictive model, published in JAMA Network Open on Jan. 7, noted that an estimated 59 percent of all coronavirus cases come from those who are asymptomatic, including 35 percent who are pre-symptomatic — meaning they initially don’t show symptoms but eventually develop them — and 24 percent who never develop any signs of the coronavirus. "The findings of this study
"The findings of this study suggest that the identification and isolation of persons with symptomatic COVID-19 alone will not control the ongoing spread of SARS-CoV-2," wrote the researchers about their predictive model that was recently published in the Journal of American Medicine Association.
"The bottom line is controlling the COVID-19 pandemic really is going to require controlling the silent pandemic of transmission from persons without symptoms," Jay C. Butler, the CDC deputy director for infectious diseases who co-authored the study.
"The community mitigation tools that we have need to be utilized broadly to be able to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 from all infected persons, at least until we have those vaccines widely available," according to the article published in the Washington Post last week. Controlling the spread of the
Controlling the spread of the virus will require reducing the risk of transmission from people with no symptoms, and identifying and isolating people who exhibit symptoms, explained the study’s authors.
The predictive model supports the preventative measures that health experts have recommended for months, such as wearing a face covering and practicing social distancing.
Visit https://cv.nmhealth.org/ and www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov for more information.