SANTA FE - Gov. Michelle Lujan-Grisham met reporters for the second time this week to update the public on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting our state April 24 in a phone call news conference.
The Gallup Sun was there and asked the governor the following questions:
Q) Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services has a lot of sick people and 11 employees have tested positive...What is being done to help rural hospitals and what is being done to help secure PPE (personal-protective equipment) for the frontline workers?
MLG: “I’m going to take that as an alert that we need to get PPE out to McKinley County. We have taken many shipments and we should keep doing it.
“There seems to be - and I don’t really have a good answer for it - a disconnect in that hospitals set equipment aside...but the whole supply chain and around the world has been interrupted.
“I’m actually very disappointed that the federal government didn’t do a much better job not interrupting that system and creating, bolstering our opportunities…
“Our frontline healthcare workers are a priority… It’s really hard to take a moment, when you’re saving lives, to make sure that someone in the hospital reaches out to us to say, ‘You know, we underestimated what we need, we need more.’
“So I’m going to take that as - that was helpful, and we appreciate it.
“I want to thank everyone in Gallup and McKinley County. That is, in fact, an area, the northwestern part of the state, that is seeing a much faster doubling rate, incredible risk. They’re working diligently to mitigate, to manage, that’s why we put 50 beds out there, and are standing up an ancillary health care site. Also, we move people, as appropriate, right, to other healthcare institutions, not because they do a better job, but because they have room.
“We need every patient taken care of in every single way that we can. We’re going to keep doing that. It’s hard work.”
“I want to thank every healthcare worker, every first responder and every citizen of McKinley County and resident of Gallup for really doing everything they can.”
2) Given the comments out of Grants this week, what action is state police planning on taking out there next week?
MLG: “Grants. Again, I’m very disappointed in a couple of things. This notion, that you can just open businesses, that you don’t have to follow, these orders are the law, you have to follow them.
“I take no pleasure in telling people that they have to stay home or in creating this kind of economic reality by saying you can’t go to certain businesses.
“I hope what’s happening in places in the northwestern region of the state gives people a sense this infection is here, it’s dangerous and deadly, and it is spreading.
“So this notion that you don’t have to comply is wrong.
“Two, that you can just open up businesses and not worry about public health issues is really, quite frankly, tantamount to opening up a public pool and having a ‘pee section’.
“This makes absolutely no sense, whatsoever, flies in the face of every single positive, productive, evidence-based public-health effort, and quite frankly, I happen to know that the county commission is incredibly upset by these decisions.
“I’m hearing from the pueblo governors in that area. One governor’s written a letter already saying they will not support those efforts, they don’t in fact, tolerate those efforts.
“I hope it is a very strong rebuke to a mayor who I am sure meant well by saying ‘I stand with all the workers and businesses.’ We do, too.
“But you stand with them by keeping them safe, by following the rules and by helping us productively, smartly, evidence-based, using our recovery councils, our mayor councils, to make sure that as we go back to some degree of normalcy, including getting people back to work, that we do that in a way that protects each and every one of us.
“And so I’m hopeful that everyone looking at those issues gets that message.
“Lastly, and I take no pleasure in this either: if businesses open without specific instruction or permission in order to do so, they will get a cease and desist citation, and those citations have fines that can be associated with them.
“We have provided those cease and desist orders and will do whatever it takes to keep New Mexico safe and to make sure we are doing it together in the right way, and I absolutely don’t want that to occur, so I hope the mayor heeds all of our advice and walks back those statements.”
