Test reporting timeliness raises concerns

The state’s leading disease expert acknowledged last week that negative COVID-19 tests of Quay County residents administered outside of the state aren’t reported in a timely fashion, which could negatively affect test-positivity rates and possibly keep public schools from expanding in-person teaching.

The admission confirmed the suspicions of two school superintendents and at least one school board member who said they’d heard New Mexico wasn’t receiving negative coronavirus tests from Texas.

The revelation calls into question the accuracy of test-positivity rates for other border counties in New Mexico where residents travel to the Lone Star State for medical care.

Many residents in Quay County get their health care, including COVID-19 tests, in Amarillo. Acting state epidemiologist Chad Smelser said during an online news conference Sept. 22 that positive tests for the disease administered in Texas are reported to New Mexico quicker than negative tests.

“We’re much better in sharing the positive data than the negative data (from other states),” he said. “Negative data isn’t captured nearly as timely. We have been asking national labs to report that data to us if it’s a New Mexico resident. But we do not necessarily receive all that data in a timely fashion.”

Whether public schools in a county can expand in-person teaching depends on two criteria — the daily COVID-19 case rate per 100,000 people and the test-positivity rate for the disease — over a two-week period.

To be in the green zone that allows more in-person teaching, counties must have a coronavirus rate lower than 8 per 100,000 people and a test-positivity rate of under 5%.

Quay County, affected by an August outbreak in Logan, missed both benchmarks during the Aug. 19 to Sept. 1 period and landed in the red zone, the lowest rating on the COVID-19 outlook scale.

During the Sept. 2 to Sept. 15 period, Quay County had a daily case rate of 6 per 100,000, which met the benchmark.

However, the county’s test positivity rate during that time was 5.4%. Only about a dozen more negative tests would have dropped the rate below the 5% benchmark, based on data collected by the state.

Missing that benchmark put Quay County in the yellow zone, which means public schools would have to continue online teaching for most of its students until at least early October. County schools are allowed to perform in-person instruction for children from prekindergarten through third grade in small groups.

Laurie Strebeck, a member of the Logan Municipal Schools board, said she was tested for coronavirus on Aug. 15 in Amarillo after being exposed to someone with the disease. Her test was negative.

Recounting her experience in a Facebook post, she said she wondered whether her negative test had been counted in the state’s database. She called the New Mexico Department of Health on Sept. 3 to ask about it.

“While talking to the NMDOH I was told my negative result was NOT counted toward the Quay County/New Mexico numbers,” Strebeck wrote. “I asked for clarification and was told that only Positive results from tests taken out of state by NM residents are counted in New Mexico, and Negative results are not counted if taken out of state by a NM resident. This is unbelievable and makes our Positive Rate completely inaccurate.

“After the first call to the New Mexico Department of Health, I was in such disbelief that I called back and asked the woman to please double check what she had told me with her supervisor. I was then told again my Negative test was not counted.”

During a phone interview last week, Strebeck acknowledged she’s not a physician or a statistician.

“But at face value, it looks like they’re using inaccurate numbers to make decisions that are affecting the children and their education across the state,” she said. “They have to use a different method. The current method is not a fair assessment for low-population counties.”

Tucumcari Public Schools superintendent Aaron McKinney said during a Sept. 21 meeting that negative COVID-19 tests administered in Amarillo weren’t being reported to New Mexico.

Logan schools superintendent Dennis Roch also said during a recent school board meeting the county’s test positivity rates may be inflated if out-of-state health providers aren’t reporting negative COVID-19 tests to New Mexico.

McKinney said during a telephone interview Thursday that Quay County probably would have landed in the green zone if the test-positivity results had been more accurate.

“The numbers are skewed, and they’re going to continue to be skewed,” he said.

McKinney said the New Mexico School School Superintendents Association has been contacting the Public Education Department and other state agencies to push back against that school-reopening criteria.

McKinney said he recently took his pregnant daughter to an Amarillo medical facility for tests.

“The lady at the front desk said all she’d seen that day was New Mexico driver’s licenses,” he said, which illustrates how much residents of New Mexico border counties go to Texas for medical care.

Smelser’s acknowledgement of delays of negative-test data from out of state seemed to contradict an earlier statement by a spokeswoman for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

In an email in early September to the Quay County Sun, governor’s spokeswoman Nora Sackett said testing laboratories in other states report positive and negative results to the New Mexico Department of Health. She did not mention delays of negative test reports.

“NMDOH goes to great lengths to ensure that they have as complete a picture as possible of the COVID-19 data in New Mexico, including working to have redundant ways of getting information on testing and cases,” Sackett wrote.

Answering another question from the Quay County Sun during the Sept. 22 news conference, an official said the state is using 2018 county population estimates from University of New Mexico Geospatial and Population Studies to help calculate daily cases per 100,000 people.

Quay County’s estimated population was 8,368 on July 1, 2018, the latest data available from UNM. Based on that, the county could have nine COVID-19 cases in a two-week period and remain just below the criteria of eight daily cases per 100,000 people.