CIBOLA COUNTY, N.M. – National, state, and local officials have alerted residents about the threats posed by the pandemic.
Five Grants/Cibola County School District schools have been temporarily closed at various times since the beginning of the current academic year because of COVID-19 cases. The total number of G/CCDS positive tests had dramatically increased by Nov. 10.
“Many of these [23] have been reported in the past two weeks,” explained Superintendent Max Perez in his Nov. 11 letter to community members. He acknowledged that 16 were district employees and seven were students.
The school board voted 4-1 on Tuesday, Nov. 17, to return to total remote learning as of Monday, Nov. 30. No classes are held during the Thanksgiving holiday break, Nov. 23-27.
Cibola General Hospital, a 25-bed general hospital in Grants, reported that the four ICU beds have been consistently filled in recent months. Not all patients in the ICU were being treated for the coronavirus.
Dr. MacFarland Bridges, CGH chief of staff, issued an urgent plea earlier this month warning about the dire consequences if residents fail to slow the rate of community spread.
The local hospital provided data on the number of people tested at the Bonita COVID Clinic/hospital ER, the statistics for patients admitted who were diagnosed with the coronavirus, and the total to date of COVID patients who have passed away since the onset of the pandemic.
CGH tested 45 people in March with one positive case; the number increased to 352 tests in August with 23 positive results; 476 tests were administered in October with 65 positives. A total of 2,410 tests were done between March and early November and 258 of those tested were positive. The hospital has admitted a total of 31 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic last spring. Seven were transferred to other hospitals and five of the 31 admissions passed away while hospitalized at CGH, according to hospital officials.
The CGH data is reported to the New Mexico Department of Health and is included in the NMDOH dashboard, which updated daily. The information is available online at https://cv.nmhealth.org/
In addition to the concerns expressed by CGH officials about area residents who may need to be hospitalized to recover from surgery, heart attacks, and other critical medical conditions including COVID-19, New Mexico is one of two dozen states that has been affected by hospital staffing shortages since Nov. 1, according to Nancy Foster, American Hospital Association’s vice president of quality and patient safety. The list includes Texas, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois. Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, and Utah along with Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Indiana, Montana, California, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.
The shortages are primarily caused by overwhelming numbers of patients as coronavirus spreads, combined with decreasing staff levels as nurses and doctors themselves fall sick or have to quarantine after being exposed to infected people, according to statnews.com, Nov. 19. Shortages brought on by a resurgence of the pandemic have already forced hospitals to take unusual measures to continue treating patients. In North Dakota, nurses were told they could continue working even if they had contracted the virus, as long as they did not show symptoms.
One Kansas City, Kansas hospital system was fielding calls from hospitals as far away as Arkansas, Colorado and Iowa looking to transfer extremely sick patients they didn't have capacity to care for reported Side Effects Public Media last week.
"I think capacity, in terms of staffing, is probably the biggest challenge that hospitals are facing right now," Nasia Safdar, the medical director of infection control at University of Wisconsin's hospital and clinics, told PBS Wisconsin, according to npr.org, Nov. 20
Surviving the coronavirus is only one challenge; recovery can pose ongoing threats to the individual’s health.
An estimated 10 percent of those diagnosed with COVID-19 go on to experience prolonged symptoms, according to the British Medical Journal. That translates into more than one million Americans who could potentially experience debilitating symptoms long after they've recovered from the infection, abcnews.go.com, Nov. 18.
Visit cibolahospital.com, https://www.gccs.k12.nm.us/, and https://cv.nmhealth.org/ for more information.