As someone who supplies New Mexico’s Department of Health with syndromic surveillance and lab data, while tracking the percent of positives vs. total tests daily on the side, this has been another week of alternating hope and despair. On some days in the past week, it looked like the daily rate of positives were hitting a high of maybe 6% and were turning back down. But last Friday we get bombed with 10% new positives, and it was a very troubling 25% on the latest reported day. (The graph shows two results for 04/08 because the state updates multiple times daily).
So what's up with all this bouncing around? I attribute it to the fact that, now that actual hotspots are getting discovered, more tests are being targeted to those areas. The one that got uncovered last week was a retirement community in NE Albuquerque. But where the worst trouble lies right now, accounting for the huge spike in yesterday’s numbers is in certain Navajo (aka Diné) and Pueblo Native American communities. The news reports 55 positives discovered on San Felipe Pueblo and a smaller but still troubling number in Zia Pueblo. Growth in Navajo Country had already been uncovered last week but I haven't been able to pinpoint which communities yet.
This is all reflected in the county level data published on NMDOH's website. I'm starting to track the counties day to day, and what stands out is that the growth rate of the 4 northwestern counties with a large population share of natives (Cibola, Sandoval, San Juan, McKinley) is going way up. At first I struggled to understand why, but it became obvious. Anyone who drives on I-25 between Albuquerque and Santa Fe (as I have most of my life) uses the San Felipe or Kewa (Santo Domingo) travel centers as fuel and food stops. People traveling I-40 east-west do the same in Gallup, Grants, Laguna etc. Lots of tribal members staff those travel centers. And so we can presume whatever they catch from travelers there they take back to their communities, in which they have extended families living in sometimes dense housing. That would definitely explain the spread in San Felipe, Zia and Navajo country.
The bottom line of all this is that, in the two days I've tracked counties, I've seen the 4 above counties that I will call "native" (McKinley is 74% native, Cibola 44%, San Juan 41%), which comprise 17.5% of the state's population, have 58% of the growth of COVID-19 cases in this period. I know there is a long history of outsiders bringing diseases to our ancestral neighbors in this land that I can't even begin to cover, but it’s not just a history lesson anymore, it’s happening right now.
And that’s not to say all is well elsewhere. Sure, tourist counties Santa Fe and Taos are flattening, but Bernalillo County, the state’s most populous (being home to Albuquerque) is showing a 24% up over the period.
So before anyone thinks it’s now just the rez’s problem, guess again. We all need to stay vigilant. NM will need to please heed the governor’s order to hang in and isolate through the rest of this month.