Check this page for the Daily Lobo's updated testing and confirmed case data for the COVID-19 outbreak in New Mexico, thanks to the COVID Tracking Project. This page will be updated daily as more data is produced and reported.



As of September 20, the NMDOH has reported 25,579 confirmed COVID-19 cases in New Mexico, including 849 deaths and 15,412 recoveries.



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Mapping the outbreak in New Mexico

















The 'curve' in NM's counties

Mapping the cumulative growth of cases in the state on a logarithmic scale can help us visualize the famous 'curve'. The steeper the line, the more rapidly cases are being reported. A shallower, flatter line might suggest that the individual counties might be flattening their respective curves and mitigating the outbreak.



















As of September 20, the New Mexico counties with confirmed COVID-19 cases are:

Bernalillo County: 5502 cases (171 deaths)

Catron County: 5 cases (1 death)

Chaves County: 593 cases (11 deaths)

Cibola County: 392 cases (20 deaths)

Colfax County: 19 cases (1 death)

Curry County: 621 cases (5 deaths)

Doña Ana County: 2699 cases (53 deaths)

Eddy County: 408 cases (6 deaths)

Grant County: 76 cases (2 deaths)

Guadalupe County: 32 cases (1 death)

Harding County: 2 cases

Hidalgo County: 93 cases (2 deaths)

Lea County: 1010 cases (21 deaths)

Lincoln County: 162 cases (3 deaths)

Los Alamos County: 24 cases

Luna County: 264 cases (6 deaths)

McKinley County: 4148 cases (255 deaths)

Otero County: 213 cases (13 deaths)

Quay County: 60 cases (2 deaths)

Rio Arriba County: 343 cases (13 deaths)

Roosevelt County: 188 cases (3 deaths)

Sandoval County: 1181 cases (40 deaths)

San Juan County: 3131 cases (197 deaths)

San Miguel County: 61 cases

Santa Fe County: 748 cases (5 deaths)

Sierra County: 36 cases (1 death)

Socorro County: 76 cases (6 deaths)

Taos County: 115 cases (4 deaths)

Torrance County: 63 cases (1 death)

Union County: 31 cases (2 deaths)

Valencia County: 479 cases (4 deaths)



In addition, the NMDOH recently began reporting case totals from various prisons and holding centers independently from the counties where they reside. These cases include:



808 cases in federal agencies:

Otero County Processing Center (ICE facility in Otero County): 159 cases

Torrance County Detention Facility: 44 cases

Otero County Prison Facility: 281 cases

Cibola County Correctional Center: 324 cases





549 cases in New Mexico Corrections Department agencies:

Central New Mexico Correctional Facility in Valencia County: 33 cases

Otero County Prison Facility: 472 cases

Penitentiary of New Mexico in Santa Fe County: 1 case

Northwest New Mexico Correctional Center in Cibola County: 1 case

Lea County Correctional Facility: 37 cases

Western New Mexico Correctional Facility: 1 case

Northeast New Mexico Correctional Facility: 4 cases



Raw case growth vs. per capita growth

While the raw case count for each county is an important figure, it doesn't take into account the fact that New Mexico's population isn't evenly distributed throughout the state. For example, since Bernalillo County has (by far) more residents than any other county in the state, it tracks that Bernalilo would also have more confirmed COVID-19 cases than any other county (other than McKinley and San Juan, where the pandemic continues to ravage the Navajo Nation).



Because of that, it's just as important to look at the per-capita case growth in NM counties, which illustrates below the number of new cases that each county reports per every 100,000 people that live in each county.











COVID-19 testing in New Mexico, by the day

As of September 18, there have been 862,899 tests conducted in New Mexico, resulting in a total of 27,579 positive cases in all 33 counties.











How NM stacks up to the rest of the U.S.

Here's how every state has fared so far in terms of new cases and tests per day. These lines have been smoothed out by using the seven-day rolling average for each metric.









As far as the population-relative density of positive cases go, New Mexico ranks toward the middle of the pack, with just over 13,000 confirmed cases per every million people as of September 20.



Throughout the pandemic, we've seen that New Mexico has returned one of the highest test density marks in the country while seeing a low percentage of positive tests. While testing has increased significantly in New Mexico, the low proportion of positive tests might suggest that the virus hasn't established much of a presence in the state thus far.













How infectious is COVID-19?

The basic reproduction number (referred to as R₀ or R-naught) represents an estimate of the number of new infections created by every individual case of a given disease. COVID-19's virulence ranks similarly to that of Ebola, the 2003 SARS outbreak, HIV/AIDS and the flu.



An R₀ value of 1 or below suggests an illness which is expected to die out, while a value greater than 1 demonstrates an illness' ability to spread throughout a population. Current estimates of the R₀ of the coronavirus range from 1.5 to 3.5, though this number has varied as the situation has evolved.















Public health funding and COVID-19 prevalence



There are a number of ways to look at New Mexico's ability to respond to the pandemic, including public health funding. The United Health Foundation releases annual reports outlining each state's per capita public health funding, which it defines as being a two-year estimate of "state dollars dedicated to public health and federal dollars directed to states per person by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Health Resources and Services Administration."



In this regard, New Mexico's $220-per-person mark is the second highest in the nation. Paired with a (currently) below-average cases-per-million mark, New Mexico is in the lower risk tier when it comes to public health funding and COVID-19 prevalence.















