coronavirus

COVID-19 updates from around the NM criminal justice system

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Jeff Proctor/New Mexico In Depth

Santa Fe County officials are awaiting the results of the first COVID-19 test conducted in their jail. Authorities arrested a man in Albuquerque over the weekend who was wanted on a U.S. Marshals Service warrant, Santa Fe Warden Derek Williams said in an interview. The man had been in California and, under a contract the county has, he was booked into the jail about 15 miles from the capitol. Not long after his arrival, the man showed signs of a possible COVID-19 infection, the warden said. He was immediately moved into what jail officials are calling the “quarantine pod” — an area inside the jail with a dozen cells designated for anyone with symptoms of the virus.

coronavirus

As coronavirus cases rise, New Mexico’s ICU beds are largely full

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Two days after Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham declared a statewide emergency to marshal public health resources against a global pandemic, and as President Trump announced a national emergency Friday, it was unclear how prepared New Mexico hospitals would be for a surge of seriously-ill patients. A spike in caseloads would require sufficient intensive care unit (ICU) beds, negative-pressure isolation rooms, mechanical ventilators to help patients breathe, and personal protection equipment like masks, gowns and gloves. Officials at UNM and Presbyterian hospitals report having enough masks, gowns and gloves on hand. But unknown is how many ICU beds and ventilators might be needed for a surge of COVID-19 patients. 

In Italy, both ICU beds and medical ventilators have been in short supply as COVID-19 patients overwhelmed hospitals.  

Currently, the great majority of New Mexico’s ICU beds are occupied. Just 54 of 344 state-licensed ICU beds are vacant.

Covid-19

Gov: “I’m prepared to make every hard decision that saves lives.”

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In the space of 24 hours, the United States seemed to close shop. Disneyland shut its gates. The NCAA cancelled March Madness and the NBA suspended its season. President Trump ended travel by Europeans into the United States. The show will not go on for the biggest concert tours and Broadway theaters, at least for now. And churches and universities across the country and the globe chose to eliminate in-person services and classes temporarily.

coronavirus

Infographic: Covid-19 Prevention

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Covid-19

Coronavirus: Lessons learned to help us weather the current situation

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Yesterday as I watched Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s news conference about Covid-19 via livestream I flashed back to 2003 when Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was sweeping the globe. The moment strengthened an urge I’ve had the past few days to think about the lessons I learned more than a decade and a half ago.At the time of the SARS outbreak, I was working in Hartford, Conn. and already pondering how diseases spread. I’d spent late 2001 and early 2002 covering anthrax after a 94-year-old woman living 10 or so miles from our family was one of five Americans to succumb to the disease. I mention anthrax only because it introduced me to epidemiology, a branch of medical science that tracks infectious diseases.

coronavirus

Gov says NM is prepared for COVID-19, but what about jails and prisons?

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Huge concertina wire coils and tall, monochrome walls command my attention as I walk through a locked metal gate and out into the prison courtyard. A thick bank of clouds over southern Santa Fe County intensifies the cloistered feel hanging over the Penitentiary of New Mexico, the state’s only Level-6 prison. As I leave the courtyard and return inside, I’m focused on the nearly silent clicking as my colleague takes photos of an empty day room and the sliver-like cells surrounding it for a yet-to-publish story months in the making. But for a moment, something invisible — if it’s even there — distracts me. What if COVID-19 got into a place like this?