Calculating COVID-19 data

Every day, everyone in New Mexico counted for COVID-19 is counted in the same way.  Mari Anixter,  communications director of the New Mexico Department of Health, says only positive tests are reported, and they include people on the Navajo Nation and the Zuni Pueblo.

The daily update for New Mexico consists of results from 33 counties.

“Whether someone dies in another state, or gets the virus in another state, if they are a resident of McKinley County, they will be counted in McKinley County,” Anixter said.

“The county statistics include Navajo Nation residents of the county and Zuni Pueblo residents of the county. But not all the residents of those tribes are located in McKinley County. Those that are outside the county are counted in their own counties,” she said.

Since different testing sites are open each day, and tests are sent to different laboratories for processing, and not all tests are processed in the same length of time, they don’t all arrive at the database at same time or on the same day.

Anixter says it takes 12 - 72 hours to process a test in a state laboratory. Lab partners participating in the testing include TriCore Reference Laboratories, LabCorp, Mayo Clinic Laboratories, Quest Diagnostics and BioReference Laboratories.

The data that is updated daily includes the total number of cases, total number of tests, total number of cases by county, total hospitalizations, current hospitalizations, and total number of deaths.

Each week NMDOH updates the total cases recovered, age, gender, race and ethnicity and total cases per zip code.

By Beth Blakeman
Associate Editor