New Mexico urges people to get vaccinated for flu, COVID-19 and RSV

By Austin Fisher
Source NM

Tanya Lattin, Commander at the Corrales Fire Department, gives Rachel Ralya’s three year old son an injection of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine on Thursday, June 23, 2022. (Photo by Shelby Wyatt for Source NM)

New Mexico health officials urged residents of the state Monday to get vaccinated for the flu, COVID-19 and RSV as people gather for winter holiday celebrations that can also spread infections.

“Getting vaccinated against these winter viruses is about protecting yourself and safeguarding those around you,” said Department of Health Chief Medical Officer Dr. Miranda Durham said in a news release.

“Very high” amounts of COVID-19 were found in samples from New Mexico sewers, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Members of the public are left to rely on sewer data to understand how much COVID-19 is spreading in their communities because public health officials no longer provide individual testing like they did earlier in the pandemic.

New Mexico started testing sewage for COVID-19 in April 2022, and stopped providing easily available, community-wide, free diagnostic testing for COVID-19 at the end of that year, to the dismay of local advocates.

As of Dec. 9, only 12.4% of New Mexicans had received the COVID-19 vaccine updated to fight against the latest variants, according to state health department data. Vaccination rates were even lower among Black and Hispanic New Mexicans, and among people aged 39 and younger.

State health officials are directing people toward an online database of providers offering vaccines and vaccination events, and to a list of public health offices for people, including children, who do not have insurance to get a free vaccine.

Since last fall, COVID has hospitalized six times more people in New Mexico than RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, and flu combined. Between September 2023 and Dec. 7, the latest health department data available, COVID has sent 436 New Mexicans to the hospital, while influenza has hospitalized 69 and RSV has hospitalized three.
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“We cannot talk about COVID in the past tense,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week. “It’s still with us, it still causes acute disease and Long COVID, and it still kills.”