Swingle said he gets daily updates from the State and its model predicts there will be 80 deaths in the State due to the virus through August. There are 71 coronavirus-related deaths in the State as of April 23.
“Cases are declining. We are on the downhill side,” Swingle said.
The County has delivered seven-to-10 days’ of food to 316 people in the County, Swingle said, praising Bullock’s grocery for going all out to find and supply the types of foods and supplies the County wanted to distribute.
Toilet paper, hand sanitizer, canned tuna fish, beans, vegetables, soup, crackers, noodles, rice, peanut butter, cookies and pancake mix were among the supplies delivered to families.
The County also bought personal protection equipment for healthcare workers at Sierra Vista Hospital, the New Mexico State Veterans Home and Sierra Hill Assisted Living, such as gloves, masks and hand sanitizer.
Swingle said the County tried to buy a $15,000 coronavirus testing machine for Sierra Vista Hospital, “but the federal government put a hold on all COVID-19 testing machines.”
Sheriff Glenn Hamilton said a lot of the precautions the deputies are taking “are nothing new to us” and services are “at 100 percent.”
All trainings have been suspended, however, and one officer in mid-training in Santa Fe was quarantined for 14 days in an abundance of caution. All but the office’s reception area is closed to the public and is sanitized “every hour on the hour,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton learned that the Sierra County Regional Dispatch Authority was calling the State Police to conduct investigations of reported violations of Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s order that gatherings be kept to under five people. He said there was no need to pull in the State Police, his deputies could investigate.
Since April 16, when Hamilton took over investigations, there have been four complaints, “three from the same person,” Hamilton said. None of the four complaints investigated were determined to be violations of the Governor’s order, he said.
The State Police “have issued a cease-and-desist order to one business downtown,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton said he and his deputies have also been checking on outlying residents in the county to ensure they have food and other needs met.
At the same meeting the County Commission approved a resolution asking the Governor to start a phased reopening of all businesses as drafted in a plan by the New Mexico Coalition of Businesses.