Bar reopenings likely for July

New Mexico in recent days lifted some coronavirus restrictions on breweries but not bars, leaving Quay County residents without a watering hole to drink alcohol for a while longer.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced during a briefing last week the state would allow 50% occupancy at breweries’ outdoor patios on Friday and their indoor operations at 50% occupancy starting Monday.

Because Quay County has no breweries, the new edict had little effect there. Tucumcari taverns such as the Tristar Inn Xpress and Lizard Lounge remained closed, though the latter still could serve beer through its attached Pow Wow Restaurant, as could other restaurants in the county.

The closest microbrewery, Callahan West Microbrewery in Mosquero, reopened Monday, though it had sold growlers of its beer curbside for weeks.

Lujan Grisham said during her briefing the difference between breweries and bars was behavioral.

David Morgan, a spokesman at the state’s Department of Health, elaborated on that reasoning.

“Bars and breweries are not the same thing,” he wrote in an email. “Breweries have different licenses and they are much more like restaurants than they are bars. Breweries often have drink limits, and the time people spend there is not as long. Bars — and the potential for intoxication that comes with them — are not conducive to any kind of safe social distancing.

“All that said, bars, among other businesses, are likely to be part of a next phase of reopening depending on our individual decisions to social distance and wear facemasks when in public. However, it's all on us as New Mexicans to do what we can do together to keep people from getting sick with COVID-19. If cases spike and hospitalizations rise, it will potentially delay reopening everything even longer.”

Lujan Grisham indicated bars likely would reopen during the next coronavirus reopening phase in early July.

Caution

Save for a spike in cases inside a federal prison in Otero County, Lujan Grisham and her aides said during the briefing Thursday said they saw continued progress in reducing the spread of COVID-19 in New Mexico.

They saw two areas of concern, however:

n The state continues to record more than 12% of COVID-19 cases in children, the fourth-highest rate in the country. Human Services Secretary David Scrase said the higher-than-usual infection rate in kids could hold implications for the planned reopening of schools in August.

n The neighboring states of Arizona and Texas have seen steep climbs in the number of coronavirus cases since those states relaxed restrictions a few weeks ago. Arizona “is in a crisis” and has told its hospitals to activate its emergency plans, Lujan Grisham said.

“Arizona is basically sounding the alarm,” she said.

Texas has reported more than 89,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with almost 2,000 deaths. Last week, it twice reported more than 2,000 cases in a single day.

Amarillo, which is about 100 miles from Tucumcari, reported almost 1,900 active cases of COVID-19 through Monday.

Because of the threats from neighboring states, the governor said now was not the time for New Mexicans to stop adhering to safeguards.

“This is not an invitation to ease up on COVID-safe practices,” she said. “When we do, people die.”

Latest data

The state Department of Health last week lowered the number of total cases in Quay County from five to four.

The agency recently discovered a Quay County case actually was a resident of Arizona, and “we made the correction as a result,” Morgan wrote Thursday in an email to the Quay County Sun.

Morgan said the correction did not change the one Quay County death previously recorded, though he died in Florida after contracting the disease there. Morgan said deaths are assigned to the state and county of residence.

The last case of COVID-19 reported in Quay County was on May 12.

New Mexico reported 132 new coronavirus cases Monday, bringing the total to 9,845. The number of deaths rose by five, to 440.

A total of 4,160 people have recovered from the disease. A total of 161 remain hospitalized.

In the U.S., a total of 2.1 million cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed as of Monday, with more than 116,000 deaths.