Transcripts For CSPAN New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham Holds Coronavirus News Conference 20240711

Thanksgiving. I believe we are going to have to make many of those same arrangements into the christmas holidays. Why dont we go to the first slide . Ok. Today, we have 1684 new cases. That brings us really to a startling yearly 100,000 cases statewide. 97,095 total cases. Today, we have an additional 28 deaths. That brings our total to 1568 total deaths statewide. This is really the grimmest part of these updates for everyone on the state of new mexico team and i know for all new mexicans, i gave personal condolences to some families who shared their information with me this morning in this incredibly painful, of course, these are unnecessary deaths and we all must do better. I do want to alert folks that in the details of the emails we send out about the new mexicans we lose to covid, we lost two individuals in their 30s with no underlying conditions. And i dont report this, and we dont put it in our daily updates that go out via email or on our websites and in the media, to provide any more gruesome details about this deadly virus. But to remind everyone, again, it does not care how old you are. It does not care what Political Party you are. It does not care what gender you are. This virus can be deadly for anyone. And while we know that it is particularly precarious for individuals with underlying conditions, therefore older populations can be most at risk, we want to point out that we are learning that science as science catches up with this virus, we are continuing to learn about its longterm devastating impacts, underlying combat conditions that seem to stay far longer than the virus, and the fact that it can be deadly for anyone. So new mexico, we really have to do better to protect each other. Hospitalizations, we currently have 876 hospitalizations. And we have 146 on ventilators. For individuals who may be joining us for the first time, we want to make sure folks have information about hospital capacity. We also track what is likely to occur by the number of people on ventilators. We know if you require breathing assistance, that puts you in a very risky category for recovering with this deadly virus. So that is far too many in that category and our thoughts and prayers are with those families and those patients as they fight against covid. Next slide. Today, we announced it on friday, but i want to provide as many details as we can. What do i mean by that . Things are more do. This virus moves through the country, and we get more data as there is more studies. This is what we believe is a mechanism that will allow new mexico to move through the virus, protect new mexicans, provide a little bit of more economic certainty for the entire state as a whole. So we are calling it red to green. What it basically means is that we have got three areas in which we will look at the state to determine what kinds of things will be available and open, and what kinds of restrictions would still need to be in place in order to protect as many people as we can, to prevent our Hospital Systems from being overwhelmed, and to lead the state in as cohesive a way as possible, but allow some local flexibility in that regard, if those communities can get their constituents to work a little bit more closely together. We think that is possible in this framework. So, we are going to go to this threetiered system, after our reset. Our reset ends. On wednesday, we are going to go to this red to green a by county county by county framework. I already talked about the city read level. So red, red means what you would think it means. It means our case levels are too high, our Positivity Rates are too high. Therefore, we are not going to move a whole lot in terms of garnering new access. I want to point out, it will come in the next slide, there are some additional benefits after the reset. So that we can again learn to manage this virus. Not let it manage us. We learn to manage it. And still work to prevent spread. Yellow means that youve got a better Positivity Rate than red. We will show you what those numbers are. Or that youve got a lower average of new cases. We know those are the two things, you dont want a doubling of your cases. You dont want a rate of infection that continues to go up. You dont want Positivity Rates that go up. I went to point out that when new mexico was doing well, we had an average, a 3 Positivity Rate. We saw other states as high as 25 and 30 . We are now seeing many, if not most new mexico communities, in the doubledigit range. And we are seeing the country in as much as a 50 positivity range. What does that mean . For every person tested, one person positive, 1 negative. That means the virus is far too prevalent. That means wherever you go, you are increasing your chances of getting the virus or giving the virus. So that is what we are working to avoid in new mexico. And we can do this. Green means we get right back to those low Positivity Rates. Remember, we used green. That was the color to show when schools could open, how that would work. That is a 5 Positivity Rate. We are going to go through that with dr. Grayson in a minute with a gating criteria. It means you have a low average of new cases per capita. We basically tier it out at different levels, using this red to green criteria to move the state as cohesively as we can together. But to also allow opportunities, and we are going to empower local governments and constituents to work more carefully and closely together, so that we can move the entire state to green. Now, you are going to find out anything you need to know with the red to green at our website. It is specific to this framework so we can realtime give information to individuals, residents, consumers, businesses, local bodies of government. Cd. Nmhealth. Org redtogreen. Cd. Nmhealth. Org redtogreen. Next slide, please. All right. So, this we thought was an easier way to get a sense about what is available if we are in the red. And you are going to see in a moment that basically the whole state is red. Essential retail. So, Grocery Stores. More than that, but basically it is places for goods, supplies, and services. Grocery stores, pharmacies, the things we cannot live without. That is going to go to 25 of maximum occupancy, or 75 customers, whichever is smaller. And we have already been doing that. We are getting used to that. Food and drink establishments, note that is new. So we did not allow those to be opened at all in our reset. So we are still prohibiting in red Indoor Dining. But we are starting to ease back into Outdoor Dining again. At 25 of the maximum occupancy. And we still have a curfew. No alcohol after 9 00 p. M. Houses of worship, down to 25 of maximum occupancy. Places of lodging, 40 of maximum occupancy. For everyone that is in new mexico state certified, 25 for those who are not. Five guests, which is our group number, for vacation rentals. And then a central businesses have to limit their operations to only people who are absolutely necessary to carry out essential functions. Why would we do that . Again, it is really trying to minimize person contact. We are keeping the five person limit for Mass Gatherings and 10 vehicles. The reason we did the 10 vehicles is there have been, and we appreciate the question very much, can we do a birthday parade . Can we congregate to participate in an event that is all in the car or drive by . We are trying to create an environment where we manage that a little bit better, and we grow it as we do better in terms of the number of cases and the Positivity Rates. Now, businesses, and those are gyms and salons, same thing, 25 of your maximum occupancy or 10 close contact businesses, and those are gyms and salons, same thing, 25 of your maximum occupancy or 10 customers at a time. Whichever is smaller. Outdoor recreational facilities, 25 of maximum occupancy. Close contact, movie theaters, bars, those remain closed. And then all other businesses, this includes nonessential retail. So those are our Clothing Stores or the Computer Stores or any businesses that are selling goods can do 25 of maximum occupancy. Or 75 customers at one time. Whichever is smaller. So you can see now the groupings, and you can see we have opened it up a bit. Even though we are red. We are doing that because we saw improvements, which we believed will occur, we are still going to have to work really hard. This does not mean that new mexico has no risk. That is why it says red. The more we go, the more we move, the more this virus can move. So we still, covid safe practices must be occurring in the red level. In every level. Lets go to yellow. You can see the same icons. Now you will notice in a essential retail like Grocery Stores, you can do 125 customers. So we keep that 25 at the maximum. But we have lifted by 50 additional individuals the number of customers. We are doing that, we are providing an easing up on the number of people who are moving through a business at one time. Because we have lowered the Positivity Rate and we have lowered the number of cases per day. And this is what we will do. So as we move all the way to green, we will provide a little more normalcy in those designs. Food and drink. Indoor dining would be available at the 25 of maximum occupancy. Outdoor dining jumps all the way to 75 . And the curfew changes by an hour. Houses of worship, 25 of maximum occupancy. Places of lodging, 60 . State certified, 25 . State certified. 25 for those who are not. We keep the five guests for vacation rentals. Essential businesses, same criteria. If you can be teleworking, you need to do that. Here we have made the vehicles 25. Mass gatherings, 10. We have not gone to 10 in quite a while. Were really hoping that we can exhibit the kinds of covid safe practices and allow us to do that. Close contact businesses. Now you can go to 20 customers. Whichever is smaller, the 25 or 20 customers. Outdoor 25 . Close contact in yellow. Still closed, then nonessential retail, they match the essential retail. 25 or 125 customers, whichever is smaller. Green. Green, we take away from the essential retail and for the nonessential retail, the number of individuals. So it is 50 . If youve got a big area then you can go to 50 occupancy. We are not going to limit the number of people in at one time. Notice that we go all the way to 50 of the maximum occupancy. And Outdoor Dining, 75 . We have not been that high, or for restaurants, in quite some time and we really need to get to green. We get to green by exhibiting safe covid practices. Places of lodging, 75 . New mexico state certified, 40 . 10, we double the number at the vacation rentals. Same thing. Essential businesses have the ability to really help us here. By having as many people telecommute that can. Because that minimizes persontoperson contact. Notice we go to 20 people, one 100 vehicles, close contact go to 50 maximum occupancy. Outdoor recreational, 50 . Close contact recreationals remains closed. And then i already talked about the nonessential retail. I know that folks, im going to go ahead and preempt the question, when can we get to new zealand and south korea where theyve got concerts . We can get there. We can get there potentially before we have massive distribution of a vaccine. How well we do in green is completely up to every single new mexican. The more covid safe practices we engage in, the more we adhere to these efforts and socially distance, the more things that are available. And i have never not believed that we cant do it. It is, i will admit, it has been very difficult without a federal strategy to keep people moving together as productively as we can against this virus. So we are subject to what goes on around us in arizona and colorado and texas. And just one quick reminder as we get ready for questions. We have Less Health Care capacity than other states. We have a sicker population than those other states. We still have rural areas without basic access to services and personal supplies that would allow you to manage a covid safe environment without traveling. These risks mean we have to do it better than everybody else, and we can. I have complete confidence that we can do this. Next slide. All right, so, this is tough to look at. It is for me too. It is really stark when we were the first state in the nation to be green, right on those National Maps that we are showing when you are ready to reopen. Showing that every Proactive Public Health related effort we were making was really making a difference. And again, no national strategy. All the things that we know, covid fatigue, not adhering to productive covid safe practices. The whole state, except for los alamosa county, is in the red. Los alamos is in yellow. This is startling. But it is not where the story has to end. We can show this map in a couple of weeks, it can be yellow. There can be some counties that are green. We can move through it fairly quickly and effectively if we really all do this as productively as we can together. Next slide. All right. So, this county by county framework, and we are going to update the information every two weeks starting this coming wednesday, december 2. I just want to remind folks that we do think in that twoweek. , based on a number of factors. One, the data takes a wide bike, it lags before we know exactly what the positivity trends are. We have to trend out this data before we know what the trends are going to be like and hospitals, so that we cant make these we cant show you where we are without getting a reasonable amount of data in which to make productive Public Health, epidemiological Public Population Health decisions. We are going to do it every two weeks. I want to show you how easy it will be for a county to move between these colors, red to green, when they have access to the information. When a county moves to a less restrictive level, so los alamos, when you get to green, the second you are green, you can go to all of the green standards that we identified that will be on the cdnmhealth website. You dont have to wait for the end of the two weeks. As he moved toward the least restrictive environments, you are ready to go. You dont have to make those decisions right away. You can wait and see if you hold it. But we are going to allow that folks can move as quickly as they get to the next color. If a county, i will pick on poor los alamos, if they go to red, then they have to Begin Operating at the red within 48 hours. Because that takes some planning and some time by those businesses. This is really hard on business. Businesses need predictability. These rules and standards are really difficult for them to manage. That means that they are doing everything in their power to keep new mexican safe, to make sure you have access to necessary goods and supplies, that we can get ready ourselves for the holidays. All of those things. I want to make sure they have a little more time in order to ratchet back down if we need to. The goal is not to be moving through these all the time. The goal is to be steadily moving towards green, and then what i hope to be talking about, green plus. Which means we have really learned to manage to live with the virus and we can open up many more things in a more reasonable fashion. Businesses are counting on us, and new mexico lives. We deserve, all of us, the opportunity to save as many new mexicans as we can. Ok. Next slide. All right. I just want to make sure that even though we have managed and we will talk more about that, our two week reset, thank you, new mexico for working hard to do that, thank you to the Business Community who really takes a significant hit, and to all of the individuals who are now on unemployment. This is not easy. This is really hard, living among a deadly virus. I just want to point out, the virus is still here. It is still deadly. It is still highly contagious. Even though we are working, again, to try to manage this virus, you have to do your part. You cannot stop being vigilant. Remember . Dont go more than three places. You must have your mask. I have my mask. Walking right out here, i have my mask. I just take it off to get on camera. You have to be socially distance from one another, and we have to be really vigilant about bringing family groups together outside of our bubbles or our own households. That is incredibly highrisk, and we are seeing it bear out in our numbers around the country and our numbers here in new mexico. Remember to wash her hands. We dont talk about this enough. You want to wash them 20 seconds, hot water, soap, and hand sanitizer. That combination is incredibly effective. For killing the virus and minimizing that you will touch your face and spread it. So, keep vigilant, new mexico. We can do this. I dont think i have anymore more slides. Am i correct about that . Looks like i am. The so lets go to dr. doctor, with his updates and then we will go to questions. Dr. Scrase thank you very much, governor. Were going to walk through some of the epidemiologic data today as we usually do. This is the familiar case curve. The blue line here up top is all of new mexico. In these other colored lines, you can go back to our legend here, individual regions of the state. If you have been watching these for a while, you all know that i tell you not to Pay Attention to this downturn here. Because we will go back, as we get Additional Lab results and fill in some of those datas. Even with a lag we have built in. I want to call your attention to what looks like a plateau here. A little zigzag. But the case counts have leveled off over thanksgiving weekend. From the implementation of the reset, which is when we expected to see some effect. Also if you look down here, you can see most of the region seems to be leveling off as well. Four of the five of the metro region still an uphill curve. But there may be some cause for optimism here. At this point in time, we were doubling every day. And now, we are seeing that steady. Ive got to tell you, it is not the best of the new best news. We were seeing 1800 to 2200 cases a day. But it is better than going from 2000 to 4000 to 8000. I think this data shows that this early plateau. Next week we will have more data and we can tell you more accurately if that is the case. These are maps that show the number of total cases in counties. On the left from the very beginning of the pandemic, with a burning leno number one, indiana number two, the two population centers. Mckinley, third, and so on. But here are the positive cases in the past two weeks. One of the things that is most concerning to all of the folks working on the Covid Response in our state is not only do we have this hotspot in south eastern Southern New Mexico that you have all been following with us now for really 10, 12 weeks, but we are seeing a reemergence of very high case counts in the northwest again. In fact, case counts in Mckinley County are higher now than they were at the beginning, the very first wave at the beginning of the pandemic in april and may. You remember the difficult time that was for the navajo nation, as well as mckinley, san juan, ibolaee ebola c counties. We are hoping to stem that tied there. Hospitals, very full in this region. Transferring patients. I will say more about that in a minute. As far as age groups, the 18 to 34 group is still leading the pack as it were in terms of daily case rate per week. Our two high hospitalization groups, 35 to 64. And then 65 and over here, also still on an upward trend. A little bit more of a lag in the data. Hoping to see these begin to level out next week. I want to show you this from national data. New mexico, unfortunately, has been in the National News a lot related to coronavirus in the past week or so. The New York Times has data from today, and it ranks new mexico as the fifth highest in the country in per capita cases. What that means is cases per 100,000 people. So, if you took our case counts here on november 29, you have our numbers here. But this has shown a 45 increase in cases over a 14 day period. More disturbing than that, we have seen an 89 , almost 90 increase in hospitalization and a 60 increase in deaths. These numbers are disproportionate to the growth in cases. So we are watching that very closely. Finally, and also significant of concern, want to point out that the highest average number of daily cases per 100,000 in the country, new mexico has three. Roswell, the highest number of cases in the country. Gallup, second in the country. Just in new mexico. Hobbs ranking number 20. I also want to point out, lubbock, texas, which is on the list because we rely on lubbock as a referral area for the counties in the eastern part of the state. This morning, they had less icu beds available, if i remember correctly, than you can count on fingers of one hand. They are filling up very rapidly. Very tight in amarillo as well. So, you dont want to be at the top of these kinds of lists. We dont want our cities to be at the top of these kinds of lists. Hopefully, the reset that is in place plus the new framework will allow the folks to have more influence and more ability to influence the pandemic and to take the measures seriously that we do no work. Hospitals, a story in the paper, i have a few quotes in here about university of new mexico has been over 100 full now for i believe almost four weeks. Presbyterian, 100 full. This is a really serious concern. Adult patients in the hospitals are up in the high 800s, low 900s. Pediatric admission, still running around the 18 to 25 range. This is putting a strain on our hospitals. There are very few beds left. If you look at what is available in the state right now as of this morning, we made phone calls to all of the hospitals in the state, which are symbolized by these green dots. There is an insight here for albuquerque and in albuquerque, one icu bed left. In albuquerque, one general medic bed left. What worries me about this is it does not count the overages. You cannot put negative numbers in the system. In reality, it looks like we only have one general bed and one icu bed in albuquerque, but the fact is we have got over 100 people being cared for in outpatient settings converted to hospitals. Hallways and the like, so this is very critical. My main worry is that because hospitalizations follow cases by two weeks, that we have another four weeks of increases of hospitalizations, and even further than that of great concern is the fact that during thanksgiving, we are not sure what that impact will be. We know what the impact was at memorial day, fourth of july and labor day. All of them were followed by increased case counts four weeks later which would put us at christmas with respect to thanksgiving. My biggest fear is our Health Care Workers will be working very, very long hours between christmas and new years trying to take care of hundreds more patients than our facilities have capacity for at the present time. Some good news, we track miles traveled by cell phone data. We dont have any individual the phones in this, but hart lab provides us with this data every day. Initially, at the beginning of the reset, we started talking about it here. A slight decline. Then we started the reset here, two weeks ago. These jagged lines are the higher friday, lower saturday and sunday pattern. You can see there has been a significant drop off over this past weekend. That may be part of what is causing the plateau in the number of cases. We will know in another week what we see. This is a good sign. Ideally, if we could get down to where we were in terms of mobility, back in april, when we were able to really flatten the curve and turn the tide, that would be fantastic. We are getting closer. We have made good progress. More than halfway from where we were here in early november to where we are now on the way to this level here. Gating criteria, i mentioned the greater transmission, now below one which means we are at a plateau for the minimum. Still have very high case counts of course. 10 times what are gating criteria would indicate, as we have already discussed. Testing, still robust. But a very, very high Positivity Rate which means many, many cases are going missed as well. Our primary concern is the Hospital Number continuing to grow. We used to think we have 439 icu beds. We can convert g. I. Labs and the like into those kinds of beds. Right now, we dont have sufficient staffing to cover them which is why we are oversubscribed in our hospitals. Also, the governor mentioned the risk of being on a ventilator to our state data. We know the risk of death from hospitalization is up over the past couple of weeks to 17. 6 of people who enter a hospital with coronavirus will die. Will not leave the hospital. For ventilators, it is now over 60 of people. Placing them on a ventilator, they will not get off the ventilator alive. So two more reasons to focus on staying green. I do want to remind people, as grim as this looks, and i do wake up at night, you know, thinking about this very red map. This is only roughly three months ago, at the beginning of september. We have been using this red, yellow, green we had an orange in there, but basically treated orange and yellow as the same. We have been using this framework for four months. Initially for nursing home visitation, then for school reopenings. I just hold this up to everybody to remind you all that there is an opportunity to get back to this. Hopefully, it will be faster going back then it was our journey from this map three months ago. We can do this. I agree with the governor that we have it within our power, within our own individual actions to get to where we need to get. Just a reminder that the virus isnt changing out there. It is we who change. Human to human contact just does increase spread of the virus. Im worried about thanksgiving, although i know there was a decrease in travel which was heartening. I think there is a lot more people getting together, our Modeling Team last week is looking at the middle Case Scenario of up to 50 deaths per day over the next four to six weeks. In the middle Case Scenario, we always model three cases. Of the worst case, over 100 after six weeks. Sorry, deaths per day. So this is something that we really, for the sake of our families, for the sake of our neighbors, we want to take this seriously. I would urge you to seriously rethink holiday plans, keep washing your hands, keep wearing face masks, maintain that social distancing, and thats it for me, governor. Im going to turn it back to you for questions now. Gov. Lujan grisham all right, thank you, dr. Scrase. And thank you, new mexico, for tuning in. I know that it is grim. And we dont do that to create an environment where people are so pessimistic and depressed at that we cant move forward. The point is to know what we are dealing with. In the point is to be clear that we can, frankly, we must it is not just we know we can. But we have to move forward. One death is unacceptable. 50 deaths a day, where we are headed already remember i said we are too late to fix november. Dr. Scrase says we are too late for the next couple of weeks. But we are not too late for all of december. We are not too late for january and february and march. We can win over the virus in general. Some people are still going to get infected. Unfortunately, some people in the state and around this country are going to die from covid. Which is why the vaccine and the hope that the light at the end of the tunnel, the hope that we all have is critical. We are going to need a vaccine in order to really drastically reduce death, rate of infection, and the risks we are dealing with. But we have to take this much more seriously than we have. And i know that we have all been tuning in, listening to experts like dr. Fauci continue to say, it is never too late to engage in good Public Health behavior. Hes right. But we also have to take into consideration where we are and think of this like a semi. Right, it cannot stop on a dime. It is the rules about tailgating, you dont want to do that. You dont want a truck right behind you. We need to have think about that in the context of social distancing. We dont have good Public Health behavior, you cant stop the movement of this virus on a dime. It takes that 14 days, constant effort, and no easing up. We can and we will do this. I have great confidence in new mexicos ability. Because weve done it over and over and over again. And i know fatigue and the borders and people moving in and out of the state continue to cause issues. I have to say, not every community has been as vigilant about good Public Health practices related to covid. That has also caused problems. Not just for the communities, but for the whole state. But new mexico can come together. Lets do that. Lets save lives. Lets protect our Health Care Workers and First Responders. Lets protect our kiddos in school. Lets give them every reason to believe that we can get them into more in Person Learning opportunities in the next semester. But School Boards, particularly, we lost a beloved educator. Just recently from las cruces. I talked to her family members today. It was incredibly painful. No one is going to make the decisions to put anyone at risk if we know we cant manage, mitigate, into the highest degree possible, nearly eliminate it, because we are doing so well at minimizing the ability of the virus to be prevalent in our communities. It is the only responsible, meaningful, productive way forward. And we are going to do this. And im confident. Hank everyone t in new mexico who is going to help us get there. All right, nora, i think dr. Scrase and i are ready for questions. Nora thank you, governor. We will start with morgan lee with the ap. Morgan, if you want to let me a new youth, there, then there, then you can ask your question. Ok. Im going to come back. We will go to dan boyd with the albuquerque journal. Dan, go right ahead. Reporter thanks. Good afternoon, governor. I wanted to ask, you mentioned this threetiered system has been used for Nursing Homes and school. But it is a new strategy for dealing with economic reopening. I wanted to see if you could address why there is a change in strategy, whereas before, it have been a statewide focus and not a regional approach to the pandemic response. Gov. Lujan grisham thank you, dan. Yes, the longer we go through this, the more information we have, the more data we have, gives us the opportunity to think about different ways to strategize, to safeguard new mexicans, and to partner more effectively with our businesses. So early in the pandemic, we didnt have covid safe practices in place. Early in the pandemic, we didnt have the ability to do surveillance testing, and early in the pandemic, we were trying to stay green. That risk is if you are not careful with the statewide set of efforts and you are very, very clear about what those were, and we did great for a long time. Now national strategy. That always made us susceptible to risk. Not every community not every new mexican took this as seriously as i wish they would have. All of that is a perfect storm. Now we are basically red. The only way forward now is to get more empowerment, more skin in the game. So it is a combination of enforcement, which we know works. We just showed you that. We were able to reduce the number of cases, we are trending in the right direction. We know enforcement works. I want to add a component now. Enforcement and we want to have this incentivized approach where businesses get an opportunity to work with local leaders, to move us forward in this way. So im very hopeful about this strategy. You can see that we have tested it with our Modeling Team like we do everything. And this can work for the state. But it means everybody is going to have to do all those three things together. The community is going to have to come together. Local bodies of government are going to have to work with their local businesses to make sure that they shore up every component, including incentives and enforcement, and the state will continue to do testing, to help with surveillance. We are catching up. That has been really hard. We are doing better, were going to keep doing better, more testing is available. We think it is local counties and local leadership to help push people to testing that helps us get more people isolated to tell us what the prevalences. So we do. We believe this will work. Those are the situations and conditions that have changed from the beginning of the pandemic. I dont know if you have anything to add, dr. Scrase. Dr. Scrase i would mention that we did try a regional strategy at the beginning. We found that usable in some sense. Other than that, i agree with what the governor said. Also, the system we have been using for schools and Nursing Homes does not seem to be does seem to be something people at the local level understand. It reinforces this idea that is the local conditions that drive everything else. Hospitalizations in their area. Nursing home infections in their area. It is just a way of tying everything together and having individuals, communities, counties in the state rowing in the same direction. That is our goal of going to green toward our goal of going to green. Nora thank you, governor and dr. Scrase. Next we will go to chris mckee with krqe. Go right ahead. Reporter thank you very much. I had two questions. One, under this new red, yellow, green system, Los Alamos County as we have mentioned being the only one listed at the yellow level, at least as of today, and i know this starts wednesday, one of the big differences there notably is the change to Indoor Dining. Red and yellow. Red allowing no Indoor Dining. Yellow allowing 25 capacity, if i read correctly. Do you have any concern there will be people traveling between counties with different restrictions . Is there any type of enforcement on that kind of mechanism . What is supposed to happen here . One other question, at risk of sounding like a broken record, National Publications like New York Times and politico have continued to identify you as among the top contenders for a possible position with the hhs under president elect biden administration. Have you had any discussion with the biden team about this type of position, and would you be willing to accept a role like this under the current circumstances when you think about your role in new mexico . Thank you. Gov. Lujan grisham thank you you, chris. Yes, we are concerned. Mobility is an issue. When we say no more than three places, stay in your community. But now we are asking local governments, elected leaders, and community members, if one place is green and you bring the virus to them, they will not get to stay green. We really have to think about this as both a local and statewide approach for improvement. It is a risk. The issue is that we have worked really hard i want to be careful. I dont think every state is equal in this design. I dont think up to the election with super spreading events, i think behaviors were not what they needed to be, and we got very mixed, if any, Productive Health messaging out of the white house. That is just fact. And we asked states to figure it out themselves. You cannot do that in a pandemic. Youve got to come out this come at this cohesively. The success of other countries is that they did it as a country. They basically, the United States, to your point, everybody was moving around the United States with all sorts of different rules in place. It created much of the problems we are suffering through today. So it is a risk. But we think with this threepart strategy, enforcement, opportunity, and local empowerment, and it is not that we have not been asking. And this is not a shame on you, or good for you, this is one state. People are affected negatively in every single community. This virus is not fair. But the more we do together, the better we are going to be and i do think unfortunately, that now there are very few of us left in this state who dont know someone who has suffered with covid. There are very few of us left in this state who dont know someone who died of covid. I do think that that terrible statistic, those two terrible statistics, have changed the mindsets of people. Which means i think folks are really wanting to work a little bit more together in a different way. And that is not to say that they were ignoring it. It is just i dont think that they saw the risks in the same way. It is invisible deadly virus. And we had somebody who was communicating out of the white house telling you there is nothing more than the flu or the cold, not to worry about it. Now that it is really prevalent, and i cant think of any community who does not mourn what has occurred in their community, it is just a different framework. And i think that framework does what new mexicans do. We rise to the challenge and we are going to work across county lines and we are going to do this together. Long answer, yes on risk. But i think the circumstances about where we are have changed dramatically. And that creates an opportunity for a different set of successes. My role in the biden transition is really to make sure that they are clear about the kinds of folks that i believe, and what an honor to be a cochair, can address the significant challenges of the country and to restore credibility in the country in any number of ways. I think for health and Human Services, which is the cabinet post ive been identified for by advocates, it is a testament to being, i think, one of the only governors in a long time who has experience in Public Health, health care, health care reform, longterm care, in the country. And i think that is a valuable thing for the biden team to look at. There are many incredible governors and folks who have been governing on the ground. No one has talked to me specifically about any job because im in the job where i can make the most difference. I can turn, with your help, covid around. I can advise the biden team. And make sure that they give new mexico and states just like us the opportunity to win against this virus, to make Public Health a significant investment for this country today, and forever more. And to learn from the lessons we learned the hard way. And it is not just covid. There is a lot of work to do in health and Human Services. And im looking forward to having a relationship that is good for new mexico. So that is where we are today. It is flattering. But i have a very busy fulltime job right here. Nora thank you, governor. Im going to come back to morgan lee with the ap. Morgan, i just need you to go ahead and accept the unmuting. Go right ahead. Reporter sorry about the technical difficulties. Hello and thank you for this opportunity. Looking at the county by county map, as you noted, los alamos is the only one there with the potential to move to yellow. It is perhaps the richest and most educated county in the country. What has made them successful, and can that really happen right now in counties that are next to el paso, for example . Also what happens to counties, tiny counties, where one infection blows them out of the water for reaching some of these thresholds . And if you would, one more question. It looks like we are starting to contemplate restaurants reopening, in person dining, when the schools are still shut. How do you square that circle, our students are students going to get an opportunity before a restaurant . Gov. Lujan grisham im going to try to do the last question and move forward. And if you need to remind me about a question, please do so. Lets do the last one. So schools can do what limited in Person Learning k through four i. We started there to see what the risk level was. I talked about the tragic loss of an educator. We have seen spread in the classroom. So it is an issue we are concerned about and we continue to see kids who are being infected with covid. But they are the priority. We are trying to do both. Not one or the other. Notice that we did not close the schools, even though we all got to red. We are continuing to do surveillance testing. We think that this environment, everyone working together, that we can manage both. We are hopeful that when we get into the green, that is a signal for School Boards and others we set the floor they can set a ceiling. They can do better in terms of in persone doing for learning. I am optimistic, cautiously. We have seen states that have let restaurants stay open and closed all their schools. States that have closed all dining and focused on schools. In this teeter tottering between a number of specific services or activities. This is why the different tiers. A little bit more methodical, it little slower. Hoping we can get the whole state to green so that our focus on education can materialize. That is critical. It is why we have really worked hard to hang in for in person hybrid learning. Now, schools, you are right, have determined too risky in their communities to even accept the hybrid in Person Learning. We have not interfered with that. We have modeled what we thought was acceptable, productive covid safe practices, limiting as much risk as possible. Two, is it fair to a Little County . It is really hard when we are using these statistical aspects. But they got to stay green for longer than anyone. So they get both ends of that environment. They can get to green quicker than any other county. They can be cohesive because youve got so few people and so few businesses. So the same thing that puts them in the red is the same thing that will launch them into the green. So in that way, i feel like it is apples to apples. But it is a fair point that it is very hard to create a statewide system that really thinks about the nuances of each community. The problem is, this virus is everywhere. It doesnt care whether youve got five people or 500,000 people. It finds a way to move. So we are trying to get our arms around that in the most productive way. I think los alamos can keep doing well. You didnt quite say it, if i answered all three questions, but social determinants of health we now have everything to do with poverty levels. Because you have limited access to the things that higher income communities can produce. They can have more health care access, they have more physicians and nurses who can adequately move and live in those communities. You have lower environmental risks. You have, as a result of that, often lower chronic care conditions in those populations. It is a completely unfair issue that new mexico has long been struggling with. Way. Of i will give dr. And we are on our way. I will give dr. Scrase the credit that we know, but i know him as the guy who is moving Human Services which has everything to do with addressing poverty and social determinants of health in a complete partnership. Or the department of health. You all know our new department of secretary start seen. These issues are our expertise. We need our state to do much better in that regard. But it is not i mean we certainly are not surprised that los alamos has been able to do that a little bit differently. Remember, that employer can have an incredible impact on what is going on in the community. To our point, it is businesses and local leaders who will work us, the state. We believe that we can move to yellow to green in a productive fashion. And i think, to a large degree, you just proved our point by highlighting los alamos. I appreciate that. Dr. Scrase yeah, morgan, welcome back. I want to say one more thing about los alamos. You can be yellow if you have a low test Positivity Rate or if you have a low cases per 100,000. One or the other. They have at the last calculation we did last wednesday, a 4. 3 test Positivity Rate. So we need to mobilize the people who are living there to get testing, when the testing is available, subscribe to and full and people sign up and go and get tested. That makes a difference. I think that is what is happening in los alamos. I think it really is, if i were a mayor or county commissioner at one of these counties looking for a strategy, i would be trying to figure out, how do we get more people to get tested on a more regular basis as required . The other thing i want to add in, the governor covered this well, we know that poverty is the number one risk factor for chances of getting coronavirus. We talked about that in a number of press conferences. Or data is coming out about not just issues, the inability to isolate at home. You dont have enough rooms for each person, it is a more dense, quarters. We know lower income individuals in new mexico and elsewhere are to be essential workers. They do not have a choice, they have to show up at the jobsite every day. At additional risk. All these factors put together, higher income counties have an advantage based on what i told you. At the same time i think more aggressive testing strategies can help any county get to where they need to go. The same low denominator, number of people in the county that can get you in the red can get you back in the green just as fast. In our previous session, if i were the owner of a restaurant and have 25 , Indoor Dining, i might develop some rules about what counties, what customers i might prioritize. I might seek to serve first the people closest to home for a variety of reasons. I think that incentive lines up as well. , there areing to say significant challenges for counties that have significant challenges, being on the border. The city bordering texas, el paso, where we have seen horrific issues unfold. That is a very specific challenge. The state is not going to walk away. We are engaged. It is not like we havent given folks strategies, ideas, containment, engaging with partnerships about strategies with sovereign nations. You introduce risk, we saw the virus move in to all of our sovereign nations. Mckinley county has specific risks given is the only place to get supplies in many circumstances. That creates incredible risk, then people go back to multigenerational households. We need to think about how we are available to give every strategy, containment effort for the virus to keep it from spreading and to make sure those counties have every shot at getting yellow and green. We will stand with them to do that. We need help from them. The state is not going to be able to get us to green by ourselves. We need to have every person inside these counties working with us diligently. I think the circumstances have shifted enough that new mexicans are ready to do that. I am grateful. That is going to make a big difference moving forward. Next question. Next, we go to a reporter from las cruces news. Go right ahead. Reporter thank you. Governor, your Economic Recovery Council had representatives from a range of Different Industries to advise you about how to proceed with restrictions on business. Under this new framework, from what i understand, conditions for a county could change in as little as a twoweek period. I know the idea is for the trajectory, everybody goes to green. In the event that a county has to go to a more restrictive level, in a couple of days, businesses would have to prepare for adjusted restrictions. Im just wondering if you got clear advice from the Different Industries about their ability to adjust and plan for more than two weeks or a month into the future. And dr. Scrase, through Contact Tracing and other data modeling, are we able to get a clearer picture of where transmission is actually happening . Not only risk. Where we are seeing transmission taking place in public spaces such as Indoor Dining or worship services, or the highest vectors for transmission. Gov. Lujan grisham the Economic Recovery Council you have given me a great opportunity to thank them. I dont think any of them realize that part of economic recovery meant we would have to identify industry specific covid safe practices, which they worked on for months including the recommendations about the watchlist, Rapid Response, surveillance testing. All of that came from the Economic Recovery Council. And i am very grateful. It is been an enormous amount of work. I think we all hoped that the state would not be in the situation we currently are in and i think we all hope that the country would not be in the situation it is in now. We have National Experts alerting us about how we should brace potentially for even worse covid realities in the upcoming months. And so, we have been working together. Here is what i think youre getting at. Yes, every Single Member has alerted us that the most devastating impact of managing in a virus setting is that it is really hard on businesses to have to change their operations in two weeks, months intervals. It is really difficult. What businesses need for a Business Model is to have predictability so that you build that into your model. The only thing that is predictable about covid is that if you give it a chance to spread, it will. And the only way to prevent spread is people have to be vigilant. They have to wear their masks, they have to socially distance, they have to wash their hands and they have to minimize contact with others. They just have to. We have to be pretty choosy about getting into our businesses. That is hard. Most businesses have worked painstakingly hard. That is how they got there covid safe designations. If their employees do not practice covid safe practices at home, the business is at risk. If the customers dont practice that at home, they bring that virus in. It spreads too rapidly and so many people are dying and hospitals are overwhelmed. The only way to prevent it is to prevent persontoperson spread. That is why we laid out some of our covid restrictions. There is no question that it is completely unfair largely to our small businesses. But big businesses are struggling too. They are struggling across the country and frankly globally. It is devastating. We are working really hard. The easiest way forward, and i have shown that i will make the tough decisions, if the risks become too great. To say to businesses, everything is closed until we have enough vaccine for 50 or 75 of new mexicans to have that vaccine. That is basically saying to a huge percentage of businesses and schools that you will never open and you dont get to stay open. I think this new strategy, and we have modeled it, it can be successful or we would not do it. But it is dependent upon each and every one of us to make it successful. That never changes. That message is the same press conference to press conference. It depends on new mexicans. It pains me that the number one thing that businesses need as verified and identified by the Recovery Council can you give us predictability . The truth is, i dont know what Human Behavior is going to be. I can tell you what i hope it will be. I can tell you what i need it to be. And i can tell you it is possible but in the end, only new mexicans are going to be able to demonstrate that we can do this as an effectively and quickly as we need it to be and then hold it. Thereby providing predictability back to business. That is what needs to happen. Dr. Scrase great question. I got a request about what is Contact Tracing showing us . I sent back a web link. Most of the information we are using to manage this pandemic is available. If you go to the doh website, there is a tiny thing in blue that says medical and scientific report. Drop down to the epidemiology report. I will show you what that looks like really briefly. It has been very much expanded. Hopefully, you can see it. This is a graph you have seen before. We look at the trending data. It is based on what they tell us. You can see far and away the idea of going shopping is almost half the people. These other things are much lower frequency. 15 , outside mexico travel. Worship, and all the other things you asked about are all listed here. Im going to do this briefly. You can scroll down for more detail. Information about attending gatherings by region. There is more detailed information about different regions of the state. Visiting restaurants and bars. Information on Shopping Trips by region is broken down. Pay close attention to the yaxis. These are different levels, for looks all overt the place, but it is between 1 5 . I wont go through the rest of it but it is a great resource. Our team has expanded it recently. I use this every day. Gov. Lujan grisham we are working on even more i. T. Tools that will help us be more definitive. The one thing and me too, the more information we have and we get this all the time can you be more surgical . This house of worship . This restaurant . This Shopping Center . This Grocery Store . If you know that is ground zero, we could do something right there. The problem is that people dont go to just that one place. I cannot tell you if you got it at that Grocery Store or restaurant or Childcare Center i know you went to all of those places and you were exposed, or you were the infected person that went to all of those places. I cannot tell you if you got it right there because people converge. The way you control the spread of the virus is you dont have people moving about as much as they are. I dont want them close together. We know that about the virus. You dont want them inside for long periods of time. And god for bid, people are without masks. Our Rapid Response efforts and watch list have proven to be very useful to determine the problems of the virus inside workplaces. Am blaming workplaces . Not necessarily. Not adhere toid covid safe practices. Some did not take our advice early in the summer about surveillance testing. Even when the state offered to set it up and pay for it. Now, box stores have to do it. You dont ask someone to go to a restaurant, as an example if you know you have risk, you do not go. We got that worked out. I just want to point out that we suggested strongly that that should be the mechanism in the summer, and people would not do it. I think more people are now comfortable about testing. Even though the state got behind. If you are watching this, you need to reach out to us and we will find results. It was a really tough month. When cases are exponential, it is really hard to catch up. Because the United States did not have a universal strategy for Contact Tracing as well, finding ground zero in sections is very complicated. I want to give a high five it is the media through investigative journalism, by and large, looking at very specific data points that people shared. I think i got covid at this wedding and then they put it all together. That is been very useful as a tool. But it is very hard for the state to do that. It is very hard for any state to do that and we will keep improving that system. And i feel good about that. But good question, and you can see the data we are collecting. Thank you. Next, we go to tommy. Tommy, i am getting an error message saying that you are using an older version of the zoom, so it is not allowing me to invite you to talk. I will go to chris with albuquerque business first. Reporter thank you, nora. Thank you, governor. Do we have a time on wednesday you expect the figures to be updated . I would assume it is around 3 00 . And what is the Current Situation at the Gibson Medical Center in albuquerque . The last briefing, there was going to be a week trial period and a reassessment to see if more individuals were going to be brought in. I wanted to see how that has been going. And the outrage to those unemployed, and if those individuals signed up to work at the facilities. Thank you very much. Gov. Lujan grisham im going to pitch to dr. Scrase. He is responsible for looking at the gibson facility and tracking our improvement and unemployment. Our recruitment efforts. I cannot remember what National News organization and this is the debate we have. We invested in part of our Emergency Preparedness is preparing for the worst Case Scenario. The best outcome is never having to use it, but you need it. We never thought we could create the same kind of icu, everyone who needs a ventilator at an offsite field hospital. In order to do that, you would have to have all of that equipment and all of that staff. The issue today is not so much that we havefor patients. We do have them in hallways where we have physicians and nurses and every other clinician and practitioner. It is a huge team. The issue is staffing. You cannot staff all of these outside locations. We have been dedicated to figuring out, stepdown care and other situations because we are at a critical point in time. I just wanted to point that out. We have been in agreement about that. I pushed hard to make sure that whatever vehicles we need that provide some relief to patients, families, and rest to our health care community, we have to figure out a way to do that. We are. I will have the doctor give you the update. And i cannot remember, you had a third question. Dr. Scrase thank you for that question. We are doing well. Gibson has itself up and running. We did have a couple of patients there this morning. It seems that we can deliver care at this juncture. The primary use for the facility will be for hospitals to move patients nearing the end of their treatment for coronavirus and normally would stay another day or two. Perhaps because they dont have an adequate home situation to transfer them to. That will take a couple more days to work that out. Transferring them to the gibson medical facility. There is a meeting every morning at 8 30 with the coordination people with the Major Health Care facilities and gibson to identify people for transfer. We will have to increase the senses of that facility against the caveat that the governor mentioned. If somebody needs the kind of care that only a fullservice hospital can provide, we always want to provide that care in a fullservice hospital. On staffing, there are approximately 450 Health Care Workers identified on the unemployment rolls. Many people were interested. That is the report i had this morning. Tomorrow, i will get an update on how many of those folks will reenter the workforce to work in health. That effort is underway. And the deputy secretary of work for solutions reported on that this morning at our meeting as well. We will have better metrics on that over the course of this week. It will be an important key to our strategy pulling as many Health Care Workers back into service as we can. I want to emphasize there are a number of important medical roles that Health Care Practitioners in the state can provide that lie outside a direct patient to patient contact. Older, retired physician and worried about facetoface contact, we have a lot of opportunities related to our transfer center and other options where you can help. Please do reach out to the medical Service Corps to volunteer, and we will help you find a place that suits your skills and talents. Gov. Lujan grisham we will update our redgreen map on the second and that every two weeks. It is a twoweek situation. It is not that you have to wait for the case counts to be updated by epidemiology. We can do that first thing. We would look at yesterdays information and update the map accordingly. I will make sure that after this press conference specific to you that we will get out this is when it will always be updated unless we say otherwise. But it should be at the beginning of the day. So people can absorb the information. Call us to ask questions. And be ready to manage the information going forward. I need to learn i could lean down i dont have anything to write with that sometimes it takes a minute to answer those questions. Dr. Scrase ive got that one and i can make sure that we get an exact time. I would like to say that we could do it before noon because it is produced late in the evening on tuesday. There is some checking and review. Gov. Lujan grisham what makes you think that is a friendly amendment . You can keep working all night. People are working incredibly hard. I have a great deal of respect and gratitude for the state team and our Hospital Partners and all of the private sector and government folks. Very few folks say no to the most impossible asks to help us protect other new mexicans. It is a lot to be proud of but there is a level of exhaustion. A lot of things i want to have happen in real time but they take a minute or two. I took that as a friendly amendment. By noon on wednesday. Thank you, governor. We are going to come back to tom with kob. Reporter governor, nora, dr. Scrase, thank you for these explanations. A lot of people appreciate this. I would like to ask more for the thresholds for a county to progress through the tiers. We want to know why you chose the number eight. A statistician who graduated from Johns Hopkins is putting out a lot of information and a told us the program would take counties 2030 weeks to meet the goals. Do you guys have any timelines for what you are looking at . If there is a period of time, mid april to the end of june, would you potentially rethink that threshold, or the overall loosening of restrictions businesses would be under. Gov. Lujan grisham tommy, the easy way to move forward that is focused on saving lives. I want to be really clear. I have not shifted from healthcare workers, health care capacity, saving lives. I look at those parameters for every decision. And even when the decisions are incredibly painful for families, the economy, and for schools, you have to focus on saving lives. Given the dramatic circumstances here as opposed to other states, we have to do it better. Your point about if you have a Modeling Team that says it will take us 30 weeks, that is a problem. We have to think about a different strategy that increases the opportunity. Our Modeling Team looks at this in two increments. They are confident they do best case, moderate case, and worst case. It is Like Washington university that did not look at some of the nuances state to state when they made their state predictions early on. And that particular modeling was discarded by many states, and they looked to their own. You can use your own data point so you have a much more accurate depiction. Los alamos and our complete Modeling Team, we have a mask mandate. Not every state has a mask mandate. We have enforcement tools. We have local bodies of government that have worked hard to figure out how they can be engaged more productively. We are winning over folks who were not sure if it was really as serious a threat as it is. I hate that it was dramatic, personal experiences that made that shift. This virus is so unfair, deadly, and contagious. No one in the world deserves to have a negative experience in light of covid. It takes all of us cohesively working together. I do not agree with that stark prediction. I want to do this because you have given me this opportunity. If people dont take it seriously and local bodies of government and the private sector dont work hard i did not say this was easy. This is hard. These are lifestyles that none of us are accustomed to. If we do not change our Public Health behaviors, we cannot manage without a vaccine. Too many people will die. Far too many, unnecessarily will die and contract covid. And far too many will be in the hospital. The whole thing gets overwhelmed. We dont talk about this and of at the next press conference i will have a friendly amendment to the slide of dr. Scrase. We will show you how many women are expected to deliver between now and may. We have to have capacity to do that. We can tell you based on last years data how many traffic accidents we are likely to have. Those who cause someone to need trauma care in the hospital. I can tell you how many flu hospitalizations we can expect. I can to you how many strokes. Where are those patients going to go if we are just dealing with covid . We have to get it right. I appreciate the start review stark review, but we have the power to do it differently. And we demonstrated that we have done it that are than most states and most of the modeling. The whole country moved in the wrong direction. And we had too many counties moving too quickly in the wrong direction. It created a perfect storm for new mexico. This is a reasonable model forward. I guarantee that boston did not think about the red, green, yellow. And the eight cases per 100,000 is a pretty globally accepted managed number of cases. That is when you know your Positivity Rate can stay low and your rate of infection can stay low. That parameter gives us the science we need to tell us whether we are managing well in the pandemic. His job is to look at every data point all around the world every day. I dont have the ability to do it but i am grateful for the doctor. Dr. Scrase we went through a variety of different models, criteria, and ranges. They are all over the place. Every state will have to figure it out on its own. I was on a call last week with the minister of health from tibet. We were talking about their system and their levels and their criteria. What i can tell you is that the eight cases per 100,000 is on the high side on the borderline between yellow and green in some of the models. In the five or six months we have been looking at these numbers carefully once you get , above eight cases per 100 ,000 we start to see the test rate Positivity Rate climb. I feel like they are close to the right numbers and i would underscore what the governor said. That it could be 30 weeks if nobody does anything different. We already have evidence we could be at 6000 cases per day if we do not do Something Different two weeks ago. I think we know that doing things differently, and people paying attention to the measures, do make a difference. Everything we are predict and assuming assumes we will be bold with those interventions and people will step up to protect themselves, their families, and their communities. Travel, mask, livmit whatever we need to do to bring the case count down. Thank you. Next, we go to robert with the santa fe new mexican. Robert . Reporter thank you. We keep hearing about enforcement playing a role in this multitier approach. Im hoping you can say more about that. Specifically, what youre thinking. My second question for both of you is given your concern about the hospitals, the staffing, are you keeping track of how many of our medical workers have fallen prey to the virus, be it illness or quarantining or death . Im curious about enforcement and the second question. Thank you. Gov. Lujan grisham what we know is that enforcement has been an incredible challenge for the state. And it has been difficult to engage all of law enforcement. It cannot be just state police. It cannot be mixed within the state police. We need local police support. Police chiefs and their City Councils and mayors, they have been mixed in their approach to enforcement. We began using agents that can do enforcement. Ordinances, Public Health orders. There are a limited number of those folks. We have several instances where not only were they not enforced, a business or a person not wearing a mask, or businesses requiring people to wear masks as they go in we have some sheriffs who have brazenly said that not only will they not enforce, but they will encourage businesses and individuals to not comply. That is not acceptable. To always make that the states problem with elected officials, that has to be a community. The community has to step up and decide they want to be green. We all want to be green. Is it just because we have more access to businesses and we are protecting them . To me, that is the icing on the cake. What is important about green is we are saving peoples lives. I want to get to green desperately. It means we do not overwhelm our Health Care Workers. We need everyone engaged. That means role modeling Good Behavior by officials. Private sector businesses when we suggested they could help us with testing and surveillance, instead of saying no thank you, we need you to do that. You need to know whether or not your workers are positive. You need to help us. We cannot do every Rapid Response. Every city has an environmental protective agency. They provide Business Licenses and restaurant permits. They can help us. It is not to gotcha, it is to make sure that everyone is practicing covid safe practices. So that we can get to yellow, then green, then stay green. I really wish it did not take the country and this emergency situation to get everyone on the same page, but unfortunately, it has to be real and very localized for us all to see that it takes all of us to do this correctly. Yes, we are tracking data. Infections of Health Care Workers and deaths. There are many Health Care Workers who have contracted covid and recovered. And there have been some that have lost their lives. And there are a couple of circumstances where Health Care Practitioners have not been able to return to work and dont know if they will be able to because their chronic illness is related are so significant, they are unable to return to work. That all plays into overwhelming the Health Care System. It is not just the number of people that require care. It is the number of people that get infected and impacted. It is the same risk. We have at least one positive case with staff or resident in 133 longterm care facilities. 133. If we do not have certified nurse aides who are doing gods work in these facilities every single day at their own peril , without the kind of access to medical service supplies, it is a different environment. If they are sick and cannot come to work, there isnt anyone to come in and provide care to our loved ones. We are in a very dangerous, critical situation. That is why we did a reset. The reset had an impact. Where we go from here . The whole state has to get on the same page. Dr. Scrase, i dont know if you want to point to a data set yes, we do track that information. Dr. Scrase we do track that. I dont know if it is online. It is a great thing to display. Health care workers are some of the highest at risk people because they are dealing with covid positive patients for long periods of time. In some states, i believe in new jersey in the spring it was over 30 of Health Care Workers. We are having a problem with Health Care Worker infections in new mexico. That is part of the staffing struggle we are having. It is not a big surprise when we see case counts go up by a factor of 10, and those that care for those individuals would also have a higher risk. Health care workers can also acquire the infection outside of work. As of the middle of last week, we had 18 Health Care Workers who died from Coronavirus Infections in the state. That may be higher by now but we do track that. Every death is a tragedy. When we lose a Health Care Worker, we lose our ability to take care of hundreds of other new mexicans that present with illness. It is not something we can replace in any amount of short time. I want to echo what the governor said about the Health Care Workers on the front line. A wide variety of jobs as well as emts and First Responders they all deserve our support and they are working extremely hard. I talked to leaders of other systems and i know they are pushing themselves and everyone else to the absolute limit. Gov. Lujan grisham robert, i hope youre right. A shout out that the entire Health Care System depends on a number of the workers that when we talk about a Health Care Worker, sometimes i dont know that everyone is always clear. There are plenty of certified nurse aides in hospitals. The custodial workers are sanitizing and cleaning the rooms. They are at extreme risk. They show up every day. They are among our lowest paid professionals in new mexico. It is the same for the custodial folks at schools and nutritionists making meals for our families and kiddos. We are not doing enough to thank them, and frankly the best thanks is to protect them. And we protect them by doing everything we can to lower the spread in our state. I want to make sure we are giving a shout out to the men and women that show up every, single day. And we are at a crisis place in terms of our Health Care System and every single worker has my, and the whole states gratitude and respect for their chosen profession and what they do to take care of us and get us well. Thank you, governor. Next, we go to matt with new mexico pbs. Reporter thank you. A couple of questions. I wonder if you can help me parse out the idea that going out to eat or going shopping is safe. In other words, because it is allowed, is it necessarily safe . The second one is borne out of the graph that the doctor showed. If i read it right, it says a third of our cases and a fifth of our deaths in the last two weeks. If that is the case, and even if it is not, thanksgiving just happened. Why did you choose now when you know people have been traveling out of state and in state to decide to make a move to open up a little bit more . Thank you. Gov. Lujan grisham thanks, matt. Lets go to the last part of that question. The only way to be truly safe is to have a proven and effective vaccine that most new mexicans get. That is the threshold. Managing and reducing our exposure and risk is really what we need to do. In order to reduce transmission, i think that bringing people together and making it clear that communities have an opportunity now that things are thankfully difficult, that things are frankly difficult, that enforcement, Public Health behaviors and incentives can be the way forward. And more businesses today and two weeks ago are actively engaged in their own testing. They are purchasing tests. Testing their own employees. That is also a game changer. It gives us many more opportunities to mitigate risk. The safe issue is hard. The safest thing we can do is stay home. But people have to get groceries. It is not as easy as i wanted to be for people to get deliveries. Not everyone can afford a delivery service. In some communities, it is not even available. Some folks do not have the access to the internet. Cannot get on to do Grocery Store delivery. Not everyone can telecommute. The reality is that i cannot totally make it safe nor can you. But, if you will limit the number of times you go out. If you will double down on your mask wearing. If you go to Outdoor Dining once, and i know this is hard for restaurants, instead of every day of the week. If you will do carry out and delivery more. Choose the things that are safest. To the point of the other question, chris question, if we wait nine months from today, or longer, 12 months, i dont know that we have a strategy that effectively deals with education and economic recovery while we are keeping people safe. That is why we are working hard to create an environment. And that is the benefit of having your own Modeling Team. We can set the risk. We can tell you what to do to make it as safe as possible. The rest is up to you. If we dont do it and things get worse in two weeks, we have to figure it out. And we are nervous. I dont want anyone, because of the red to green, we are nervous about thanksgiving. And it is not just because it is thanksgiving and indoor eating. It is because when we have holidays, we see an explosion around the country. We know new mexicans were traveling and americans were traveling, and we dont know the impact. Maybe this is an opportunity to ask new mexicans, if you chose to have a thanksgiving where you had family members mix, and they were travelers, double down on your isolation. Dont go out. From thanksgiving to 14 days out. If you have any symptoms, get tested. Assume you have covid. Treated like that. You are asymptomatic, stay home. Many businesses there are things we can do even with the risk of thanksgiving to double down on our own public safe practices. Everyone isolate. That will really make a difference. We will see that impact in a couple of weeks. Im hoping for the best. We have to do that. It is too early to tell. Based on predictions, december and january could be really hard. We will learn the things to work to mitigate in that highrisk environment and the things that dont, and we will adjust accordingly. The benefit of having such great modelers is that as we try different aspects, i have the benefit of the data and information so we can make informed decisions moving forward. I wish i had a crystal ball. I wish i could tell you when the vaccine would get here. I wish i could tell you when we could get kids back and parents could choose that course. I wish i could tell you that there will be x treatments that will prevent all hospitalizations. And that they will be available in three weeks. I wont know until i know. Safe is a hard term. You are only really safe if you stay home and you dont have other people coming in to your family pod. That you can mitigate your risks. We think this red to green is an opportunity to mitigate some of that risk and to increase local participation in our success. If you dont give them a little flexibility, it is hard for folks to feel there is any gain from their Good Behavior. This will be our last question from steve edmonson. I forget your call letters from your radio station. I will have you say those. Reporter kyren. Doctor scrase, the hospitalizations have really jumped in the last two days. 854 to 919 and back to 876. Is there an explanation for that swing . Governor, concerning schools, a lot of people are concerned about middle school and high school. When will a decision be made about going to a hybrid model . We have Elementary Schools going, but when will you make decisions on that . And if you do allow hybrid but a School System decides to go with online only, will their students be able to compete in High School Athletics . Thank you. Gov. Lujan grisham dr. Scrase, i will go first and have you hit a home run for our press conference. There is nothing i personally want more than, as a parent, is for kids to have the kind of quality of Life Experience which includes athletics in addition to good academic learning. And there are a multitude of studies that show that connection is powerful for learning and other productive behaviors. No question. Unfortunately, it is exactly what the virus wants. Close contact and students together. Middle School Students move between classes, so do high School Students. They are hardest to deal with. There is no substitute for in Person Learning. For people that choose it. Where the excepted investment is in Person Learning, i dont want anyone to think this is the best way to educate our students. We think it is the best way to keep our students and families safe. Getting to green means we are in a position the same thing we are already using for schools. It is not that we changed that. There are three colors, but it is the same criteria. We just wanted to try to give people relief early in the process if we are gaining ground. Remember, it is the Positivity Rate at five or less, eight cases per 100,000. If you can do both of those, you are in the green. If you are in the green we can make decisions about middle school and high school, because it means the prevalence of the virus is down. Schools could still opt to do distance learning. We would give you an opportunity. I think new mexicans are leery. I think it is split. You have parents and educators who do not want any in Person Learning because until there is a vaccine, there is still risk. No matter how good your practices are. Then about half of the parents and students want to go all back right away. And it is a tough thing for the Public Education department to manage. Those issues that folks represent are valid issues. Wellbeing of a student versus safety of this student and their family. That is a sophies choice situation. There is no good situation until there is a vaccine. Get to green. Then we are ready. That criteria has not changed. We have been consistent. You have to get to green and hold it before we make decisions about hybrid for middle school and high school. Notice we were not able to hold it, that is why we did not increase in Person Learning over the last several weeks. Good question. I appreciate it. Dr. Scrase i was just going to address your question. Hospital census data looks at mobility. High during the week and it drops during the weekends. That is typical. A lot of folks get admitted for infections on monday. They wake up in the morning and dont feel well enough to go to work. Or they are short of breath. We see an increase in visits and admissions early in the week. Even for things like covid. The last thing i hate to say this, but in some of the smaller hospitals on the weekends, there is one nurse manager who has 37 different jobs, one of which is to fill out the datasheet. We are having really good compliance. Monday through friday, we have 100 reporting. The number drops off a little on the weekends. My advice is not to overreact to those dips. The governor mentioned that it is sad that we have to all learn more about covid when it hits close to home. I had one of my most delightful patients die this week. My first patient to die from coronavirus. I think about her and how i used to look forward to talking to her. Having her come into the office, which we do not do much of now. Life has changed for all of us. It has gotten more difficult for all of us. My plea to everyone listening today is not only for you to do everything you can to stay safe and stay at home. This idea that just because it is allowed a lot of things in life are allowed that are not safe. Choose the safest alternative whenever you can for any activity whatsoever until we get through this. I want to thank everybody in new mexico because almost everyone has contributed to that drop. Staying at home which goes with it. And the other things that we are doing regarding masks and not mixing with other families it has brought us to a plateau that i hope we can stay at. Thanks to our team modelers and , medical teams working so hard. Gov. Lujan grisham i know these press conferences are long. I am grateful that people stick with us. The benefit of having dr. Scrase and i, i hope, that we can cover a wide range of issues and topics. Because we do them every week, there is more to talk about in the context of the updates. New mexico, we are in a crisis situation still. We will be in a crisis situation moving forward. But we can do better. We demonstrated that in the reset. Lets all recommit to doing our very best by supporting each other and taking care of our communities and Health Care Workers and families. Dont forget that this is in fact really hard on our small businesses. With the holidays approaching, think about ways without going in, if you can, that you can support your local business. They are all working really hard to change it their own models of business so they can give you more curbside and delivery and online and telephone shopping. Lets do our very best to make sure that they get the very best from us in the safest context. Just because everything is open not everything, but just because we ease up doesnt mean that you all rush out and dont distance and dont wear masks and wash our hands. And that we dont really work diligently family gatherings are high risk. Friendship gatherings are high risk. Eliminate those, as painful as it is. Try to do that using zoom or another mechanism because that is how we get through this. We save more new mexicans lives and protect our Health Care Workers and our economy and our students. Thank you, new mexico for tuning in. Have a safe evening and a safe weekend, everyone. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] one journal, everyday we are taking your calls live on the air on the news of today and to discuss policy issues that impact you. Coming this morning, Johns Hopkins university dr. Christopher buyer discusses the development, efficacy and safety of the covid19 vaccine. Then, nancy altman talks about her groups priorities on Social Security reform. Sure to join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, Text Messages and tweets. Tuesday morning, the supreme arguments. Two oral inc,ase of nestle usa liabilities for alleged child slave labor violations abroad. At 11 00 a. M. , a case on tax and administrative law. Listen to the oral arguments live tuesday at cspan. Org. Tuesday, treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell or on capitol hill for a Senate Banking hearing on the coronavirus response. That is live at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Then at 3 p. M. , a discussion on Economic Policy under the incoming biden administration. On cspan two, the Senate Returns at 10 00 a. M. Eastern to consider executive and judicial nominations. Introduces hisn economic personnel which includes the nominations of janet yellen as treasury the white house budget director. Arizona secretary of state presided over a meeting in phoenix. She was joined by governor doug ducey. This is 20 minutes. Good morning, everyone. Today, we are canvassing the official results of the 2020 general election held on november 3. We will also hear from the secretary of states office. We want to thank you governor ducey. Was a historic election for several reas