New Mexico has released its new county-by-county gating criteria for COVID-19, which is updated once every two weeks. All of the data showed improvement at a county and state level. Seven New Mexico counties are now in the “Yellow” category and Harding County remains in the “Green.”  

For Eddy County, our “Cases Per 100,000” dropped from 102.40 during the previous two weeks down to 68.80. Our positivity rate dropped from 27.26 percent down to 18.05 percent. These numbers are still too high, but it is good to see them moving in the right direction. Carlsbad Medical Center reported a positivity rate of 8 percent earlier this week for its testing, so numbers are continuing to improve. We hope we can continue to see these numbers moving in the right direction at an even greater rate. As a reminder, the target “Cases Per 100,000” goal is 8 and the target positivity rate is 5%. 

We are still getting significant number of calls every day from people asking for more information about vaccines. Some callers report having trouble with the registration form. The New Mexico Department of Health has put together a walkthrough on the registration process, if you are having any difficulties.  We’ve added this walkthrough to the “COVID-19 Information” page on our own webpage, www.cityofcarlsbadnm.com. Users with questions, or those who don’t have internet access, may also call the vaccine hotline at 1-855-600-3453. Getting vaccines to Carlsbad for those who want to have vaccines remains a top priority. 

From the office of Mayor Dale Janway