Providers raise space concerns

The chief medical officer of New Mexico’s biggest healthcare provider said Thursday that hospitals may have to resort to MASH-style medical tents in their parking lots by mid-November if the coronavirus pandemic soon isn’t brought under control.

Later that day, New Mexico broke another daily record for COVID-19 cases with 1,082 cases, exceeding the old mark by more than 200.

The next day, the state reported 13 deaths from coronavirus, also a record. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham also ordered flags flown at half-staff that day after New Mexico crossed the 1,000-deaths mark during the pandemic.

Dr. Jason Mitchell, chief medical officer at Presbyterian Healthcare Services, said during a press videoconference Thursday “we are at an unsustainable growth rate” of 5% to 6% per day of coronavirus cases.

Presbyterian operates several hospitals around New Mexico, including Trigg Memorial Hospital in Tucumcari.

Mitchell said New Mexico contains a baseline of 290 intensive-care beds. If those beds run out, hospitals can expand the number to 439 in contingency mode, but that would mean they would not offer any elective surgeries, and patients would be required to wait longer for care.

In a crisis mode, the number of ICU beds would be expanded to 623. But that would include those “drastic measures” of medical tents being erected in hospital parking lots and activating retired healthcare workers, he said. It might mean other patients, such as women about to give birth and people critically injured in car accidents, would have nowhere to go.

At current trends of the disease’s exponential growth, Mitchell said New Mexico hospitals would find themselves in the crisis mode by mid-November and that ICU beds no longer would be available by mid-December.

“This is a serious call to action for us as a community,” Mitchell said. “We are not past the tipping point, but upon it. It will either be catastrophic or an occasion for celebration.”

Dr. David Gonzales, chief medical officer at Christus St. Vincent Health System, said a lack of staff to handle all the potential COVID-19 cases, in addition to usual patients, is troubling.

Human Services Secretary David Scrase noted a rise in hospitalizations typically rises about two weeks after a rise in COVID-19 cases. He said a surge in deaths occurs about two weeks after that.

Scrase said the state was failing to meet almost all its gating criteria for the virus, except personal protective equipment supplies. He said New Mexico’s test-positivity rate of 9.47% percentage — the baseline is 5% — was particularly worrisome, along with the seven-day case average of 791, well above the baseline of 168.