New Mexico 'very close' to crisis standards in hospitals

Dec. 9—The combination of viruses plaguing New Mexicans continues to push hospital capacity to the brim.

As the coronavirus pandemic reaches past its 1,000-day mark, hospitals are nearing a crisis approach to hospital care, which allows overwhelmed medical staff to ration care and prioritize patient needs.

"We're very, very close to [implementing] crisis standards of care," said David Scrase, acting secretary of the state Department of Health, during a virtual virus update briefing Thursday.

"The situation in hospitals is grim," he said.

New Mexico gave hospitals authorization to apply crisis standards in fall 2021, when the coronavirus crisis peaked. A year ago, some of the state's hospitals briefly adopted those guidelines in response to rising patient counts.

But this time, COVID-19 is not the only culprit in driving the increase in patients. It is being joined by influenza; mpox, formerly known as monkeypox; and respiratory syncytial virus — RSV — to create havoc in the state.

All together, those viruses are leading to hospitalizations that are "trending upward," Scrase said.

Death counts among COVID-19 patients also are moving upward, he said — 14 in the past 14 days.

To date, there have been 651,520 COVID-19 cases in New Mexico, with 742 categorized as new by the Department of Health.

The sobering news comes as people continue to suffer from virus fatigue after more than 2 1/2 years of dealing with COVID-19. The time period has seen restrictive health care orders, closed businesses and schools and the on-again, off-again habit of wearing protective masks to mitigate the spread of the virus.

"We all, in our dreams, wish masking was over, but it isn't," said Scrase, adding the state's health care work force also is feeling the strain.

The flu remains a growing concern for state health officials. More than 14 percent of hospital patients statewide are suffering from influenza, said Laura Parajón, the deputy secretary for the Department of Health.

That's far beyond normal, she said.

"We really have to be watching out for flu right now because this is the highest activity [of influenza] in five years," she said.

The viruses are sometimes banding together to infect children, said Dr. Anna Duran, associate chief medical officer at the University of New Mexico Children's Hospital.

She said her facility is seeing a number of children coming in with "multiple viral strains at the same time — RSV, the flu and up to four different viruses."

Scrase said the mix hitting at one time is "unusual. ... We're seeing RSV two months early. Influenza started much earlier with a much more rapid surge — on top of the COVID cases we are seeing.

"Something different seems to be happening and whether it's some grand league of viruses' master plan or just coincidence or some biological set of actions we don't understand ... it certainly is different."

Changes to the testing options available to state residents are coming, too. Last month, Curative, one of the regular COVID-19 testing operations in New Mexico, notified the state it will be concluding its testing services nationwide as of Dec. 28.

Curative began downsizing its operations in the state earlier this year as demand for testing began to decline. That drop in interest coincided with the growing availability of at-home antigen test kits that offer results in 15 minutes, according to a news release issued by the Department of Health.

"Therefore, the state will only provide free, at-home testing going forward," the release said.

Scrase and Parajón urged New Mexicans to get vaccinated for COVID-19 and flu. There is no vaccine for RSV, Scrase said.

There is some good news on the mpox front. There are only 52 cases of mpox — previously known as monkeypox until the World Health Organization changed its name in November — in the state, and no New Mexicans have died of the disease.

Despite the array of active viruses, earlier this week the Department of Health announced it is moving to biweekly reporting events on the various viruses. The department will continue to post daily hospitalizations, deaths, cases and testing rates on its website Monday through Friday.