Diego Lopez, Reporter
The United States Centers for Disease Control are recommending mask wearing for eight New Mexico counties, including Cibola. The recommendation comes as COVID-19 spread rises in rural New Mexico. Transmission of the deadly disease has been high in Cibola County for months, but on August 4, the CDC revised recommendations for the Cibola area that calls on residents to wear face coverings like masks to prevent further spread of the disease.
The recommendation comes as Cibola’s COVID-19 vaccinations have stagnated. There has been no change in the vaccination rate of Cibola County since July 25, meanwhile, deaths continue to slowly rise.
Case spread in Cibola is so high that one in three residents has contracted COVID-19.
Despite the high spread, the confirmed number of COVID-19 active cases in Cibola has remained the same for two weeks, resting at 491. These are only the known active cases, the rise of athome tests and a lack of easy ways to report positive tests means that the current active case load is likely significantly larger than the data shows. Due to the high transmissibility of COVID-19 in Cibola, the CDC recommends that people with compromised immune systems take extra precautions, like social distancing, to keep themselves healthy and well during this most recent surge of cases. Cibola is averaging nine new confirmed COVID-19 cases per day. Due to the high spread of the disease, it’s likely this number is higher than reported. Cibola has a test positivity rate of 19 percent as of August 8, meaning that nearly two in 10 COVID tests are coming back positive. Despite the high transmissibility, the current increase of COVID-19 cases appears to have peaked on July 25 and has slowly been decreasing since then. The Cibola Citizen can make this assessment with confidence thanks to the newspaper’s COVID-19 Watch Program which tracks COVID spread in Cibola. The newspapers puts in the daily average of cases with the newly reported cases of that day in a graph, which shows Cibola is slowly decreasing its COVID case count.
The CDC’s recommendation is just that – a recommendation. It is not required of Cibola residents to wear a mask, but it is a sure-fire way to protect oneself from the disease that has proven fatal to over 200 people in the rural county.
Mask wearing and social distancing has proven effective at keeping COVID-19 spread low.