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WED: Health Officials Warn Pandemic Not Over, Santa Fe Opera Re-Opens With Restrictions, + More

Associated Press, Cedar Attanasio
People walk toward the entrance of the Santa Fe Opera on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.

  

New Mexico Officials Say Pandemic Is Not Over, Vaccine Is Key Associated Press

While many businesses have reopened and restrictions have been lifted, New Mexico's top public health officials said Wednesday that the coronavirus pandemic is not over.

Health Secretary Dr. Tracie Collins and Human Services Secretary Dr. David Scrase said during a briefing that their agencies are closely watching the spread of the more-contagious delta variant. So far, about 750 such cases have been confirmed in the state.

"What we're seeing in the United States now is an upward trend of cases. We do not want to see that," Scrase said. "Cases were way up, they came back down, we've had a nice flattening period and now we're starting to see an upward trend and a concerning and somewhat steep upward trend in some states — Arkansas, Missouri, Texas and Nevada — all of whom happen to have lower vaccination rates."

Scrase said the good news for New Mexico is that nearly two-thirds of residents 18 and older are fully vaccinated, meaning there is less opportunity for the virus to spread.

"I think we're getting some benefit from that and one the great benefits is we're not on this list of states that are having big upticks." he said.

Still, state officials said they are concerned about the variant and urged those who are unvaccinated to get their shots.

New Mexico reported 180 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday with 3 additional deaths and there are 97 people who are hospitalized.

FBI Agent Serving Warrant Wounded In Shootout In Albuquerque Associated Press

An FBI agent was wounded during a shootout Wednesday that left another man dead in northeast Albuquerque, authorities said.

According to a FBI spokesman, the agent was wearing a bulletproof vest that has struck by gunfire and is expected to survive.

The agent was serving a warrant related to a violent crime investigation and trying to make an arrest when the shootout occurred in an alleyway behind the strip mall.

The other man was declared dead at the scene.

FBI officials didn't identify the injured agent or the man killed and declined to say if any other suspects were detained or involved.

Opera Returns To Open-Air Desert Theater With Diverse Cast - By Cedar Attanasio, Associated Press / Report For America

An open-air theater surrounded by high desert vistas, the Santa Fe Opera is known as the place to watch the sun set while taking in a performance.

With a deadly respiratory virus still on the loose, the opera is one of the safest venues for large crowds and singers who are known for the strongest projection of sound in the music world.

The company prepared for opening night with stringent restrictions despite the availability of vaccines and the end of pandemic restrictions in New Mexico.

Actors donned N-95 masks during rehearsals, struggling to catch their breath through the barriers as they belted out their lines. It's tough enough to do at 7,000 feet (2,100 meters) of elevation.

Stagehands wore masks on set and across the opera's sprawling campus during pre-production for multiple shows that required everything from welding a life-sized metal tree and constructing massive golden clock gears to painting, sewing and carpentry.

Hundreds of people gathered last Saturday to watch the first show of the season — "Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)," Mozart's 1786 Italian opera reimagined in a 1930s depression-era set. The story tracks the day of a marriage between a woman of high birth and a working-class man as they fend off the advances of a lusty count.

Opera lovers started the party hours before sunset in the parking lot. Aficionados dressed to impress, unfolded tables and chairs and laid out picnics and glasses of champagne.

"This is part of our coming out especially after all the months of having been isolated and everything being shut down," said Linda McDonald-Hummingbird, a retired nurse and semi-professional singer. "This is a type of rebirth."

As the desert sky turned orange, the audience erupted before the performers took the stage.

"There's just a simple announcement that came over the speakers — 'Good evening, welcome to the Santa Fe Opera' — and then they go crazy," said soprano Vanessa Vasquez, who sang the role of Countess Almaviva. "It just filled me with so much gratitude and it awoke a creative spirit in me that's been quiet for the last year."

Vasquez spent the pandemic between Phoenix and her hometown of Scottsdale, visiting her parents more than she ever could on the road, and learning a new hobby — tennis. It's now part of her pre-performance ritual.

Behind the scenes, operas are wrestling with ongoing COVID-19 safety concerns and labor negotiations.

England's Glyndebourne Festival and France's Aix-en-Provence Festival have opened. Austria's Salzburg Festival starts Saturday and the Richard Wagner Festival resumes July 25 after a one-year absence.

New York's Metropolitan Opera hopes to start its season Sept. 27 but has yet to reach an agreement with its orchestra, despite inking a deal with stagehands earlier this month.

In Santa Fe, a union organizer representing the orchestra said negotiations were surprisingly easy.

Seats were blocked off near the orchestra, and masks were worn everywhere in rehearsals, which often took place indoors.

"Everybody wanted to get back to work, but they weren't going to sacrifice anyone for that," said Tracey Whitney, president of the American Federation of Musicians Local 618.

The masking made for a creative challenge.

"You can't see their expressions. The singers, every breath they take to sing, they suck the mask into their mouth. It's terribly uncomfortable. It's terribly hot. It's a great deal of discomfort," said Laurie Feldman, stage manager.

Immigration and travel restrictions also hobbled the casting process.

The show was staged by French director Laurent Pelly, but he didn't attend rehearsals in person. Instead, a production intern helped Feldman record rehearsals with an iPad. Feldman and Pelly reviewed the rehearsals each day.

Seats were scarce, so the opera filmed the show for the first time. The video was projected on a big screen in an overflow parking lot, similar to a drive-in theater. The pandemic has accelerated the move to broadcast, which is seen as a pathway for opera to become more affordable and accessible to a wider audience.

McDonald-Hummingbird, the nurse, said she's optimistic that opera is opening up. A Black woman and a member of Laguna Pueblo, she discovered opera as a kid and now performs concerts tapping into Italian arias and gospel songs.

"I used to pretend in my mind that I was dressed up in the gown. It's so powerful. It's a gift from the Creator," she said. "I wish it were possible for every child who has never had the opportunity to experience that."

On stage, opera is getting more diverse. "Figaro" starred soprano Ying Fang, of China, as Susanna.

Vazquez, the daughter of Cuban and Colombian immigrants, said she had doubts early in her career that she could make it as a Latina singer.

​​"I was looking at the big stages all over the world and I never saw anyone that really looked like me. I thought maybe I needed a backup. And my parents were on board with that," she said, with a chuckle. As she studied music though, she saw more Hispanic stars getting top billing, giving her a boost. She said to herself, "Oh I can do this too."

Vazquez added her own twist to the plot, incorporating her very real pregnancy into the drama of the show. As the countess with the womanizing husband, she paused several times framing her belly with her hands.

"It really raises the stakes for her, for Countess," Vasquez said. "She has her child to think about and it gives this hopeful desire or objective of keeping her family together."

AP journalist Ron Blum in Denver contributed reporting to this story.

State Paid $1.5M To Show Logo During Virgin Galactic Flight – KOB-TV, Associated Press

New Mexico spent $1.5 million to advertise the state during the Virgin Galactic space launch Sunday.

The state paid the money to display New Mexico's logo on video of the flight, KOB-TV reported.

The flight saw Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson briefly rocket into space aboard the company's winged space plane for the first time.

A third of the money came from a $500,000 special appropriation by the New Mexico Legislature to market and promote the state during the flight and the rest came from the Tourism Department's budget, department spokesman Cody Johnson said..

"We actually have a conservative estimate of around $3.5 million in media value just from the event itself and again that's a pretty conservative estimate, because we've seen so much coverage and viewership of the live stream, that it's going to grow over the coming days and weeks," Johnson said earlier this week.

Autopsy Finds Teenage Girl Died From Dog Attack On Navajo Nation - By Felicia Fonseca, Associated Press

An autopsy has confirmed that a 13-year-old girl was killed by pack of dogs while taking a walk near her family's home on the Navajo Nation.

Lyssa Rose Upshaw had extensive injuries that were consistent with canine teeth marks, including cuts and abrasions on her neck and head and deep soft tissue wounds on her legs. Her clothes were torn, and she was covered in dirt, according to the autopsy released this week in response to a public records request from The Associated Press.

While her mother, Marissa Jones, suspected dogs since she saw her daughter curled up off a dirt trail in Fort Defiance in mid-May, she had been awaiting an official cause.

"I never thought that would ever happen to my daughter," she said. "She was a dog lover."

The medical examiner's office in Coconino County classified Upshaw's death as accidental. The deadly attack has renewed discussion across the reservation about how to hold people accountable for their pets.

Tribal lawmakers recently passed a resolution to establish criminal penalties. Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez vetoed it, saying it didn't go far enough and needs more input.

At least a handful of deaths on the Navajo Nation over the years have been blamed on dog packs, and numerous other people have been injured. None of the tribe's animal control laws, which are considered civil offenses, holds dog owners responsible for deaths.

Michael Henderson, the tribe's criminal investigations director, said tribal charges are being considered in Upshaw's death as authorities gather more evidence and await results for specimens collected from the dogs that belonged to a neighbor.

"The case is pretty far from being closed, far from being just put aside as an accident or a civil matter or anything like that," he said. "We're still very aggressively pursuing to understand the case to the extent to where if there are any criminal elements attached to what happened."

The FBI is conducting some of the lab testing. Henderson said he has spoken with federal prosecutors whose initial response was that the case is not one that could be charged under a limited set of crimes for which the federal government has jurisdiction on tribal land.

Tribes have concurrent jurisdiction but often seek federal charges because they carry much stiffer penalties than under tribal law. The maximum time in jail that the Navajo Nation could impose for any crime, regardless of the severity, is one year.

Esther Winne, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for Arizona, couldn't say whether Upshaw's case has been referred to federal prosecutors. The FBI did not respond to a message from the AP.

Jones said her "baby girl" who had aspirations of running on the high school cross country team deserved more compassion and sympathy from the neighbors who owned the dogs and more attention from investigators on the case.

She has been pushing for jail time and fines for whoever is found responsible, though Henderson acknowledged there's not a clear path.

"I'm hoping and I'm praying for my daughter to get her justice," Jones said.

Numbers Explain How And Why West Bakes, Burns And Dries Out - By Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer

The American West is baking, burning and drying in intertwined extreme weather. Four sets of numbers explain how bad it is now, while several others explain why it got this bad.

The West is going through "the trifecta of an epically dry year followed by incredible heat the last two months and now we have fires," said University of California Merced climate and fire scientist John Abatzoglou. "It is a story of cascading impacts."

And one of climate change, the data shows.

RECORD HEAT

In the past 30 days, the country has set 585 all-time heat records, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Of those, 349 are for daily high temperatures and 236 are the warmest overnight low temperatures, which are vital for people to recover from deadly heat waves.

And this doesn't include Death Valley hitting 130 degrees preliminarily. If this is confirmed, it would be the hottest temperature on Earth in decades — and several meteorologists say it would be the hottest reliable temperature recorded because many don't trust the accuracy  of two hotter records.

A different part of Death Valley likely set the world record on July 11 for hottest 24-hour period by averaging the daily high and overnight low to come up with 118.1, according to meteorologist Maximiliano Herrera, who tracks weather extremes.

The average daily high temperature for the entire area from the Rockies and westward in June was 85.7 degrees, which beat the old record by 1.3 degrees, according to NOAA.

SEVERE DROUGHT

Nearly 60% of the U.S. West is considered in exceptional or extreme drought, the two highest categories, according to the University of Nebraska's Drought Monitor. That's the highest percentage in the 20 years the drought monitor has been keeping track. Less than 1% of the West is not in drought or considered abnormally dry, also a record.

LOW SOIL MOISTURE

How much moisture in the soil is key because normally part of the sun's energy is used to evaporate moisture in the soil and plants. Also, when the soil and plants are dry, areas burn much more often and hotter in wildfires and the available water supply shrinks for places like California, a "true indicator of just how parched things are," Abatzoglou said.

Both NOAA  and NASA show soil moisture levels down to some of the lowest recorded levels for much of the West. Most of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Idaho are drier than in 99% of other years.

WILDFIRES BURNING

There are 68 active large fires burning, consuming 1,038,003 acres of land, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. With those fires and ones in Canada, there is "one large area of smoke over much of the U.S. and Canada," NOAA said Tuesday.

So far this year, wildfires have burned 2.2 million, which is less than the 10-year average for this time of year. But that may change because dry plants are at extra high risk of burning in much of the West as shown in what experts call fire's energy release component.

HOW WE GOT HERE

"The heat wave story cannot be viewed as an isolated extreme event, but rather part of a longer story of climate change with more related, widespread and varying impacts," said climate scientist Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center on Cape Cod.

SUMMERS GETTING HOTTER

From 1991 to 2020, summers in the Rockies and westward have on average become 2.7 degrees warmer. The West is warming faster than the rest of the United States and the globe.

MORE HEAT DOMES FROM WEAKER JET STREAM

The weather phenomenon that is roasting the West now and that brought 116-degree temperatures to Portland, Oregon, at the end of June is often called a heat dome — where high pressure parks over an area and warm air sinks. This usually happens when the jet stream — the river of air that brings weather to places — gets stuck and doesn't move storms along.

Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann found the number of times the jet stream stalls in the Northern Hemisphere  is increasing from about six times a summer in the early 1980s to about eight times a summer now.

"We've shown climate change is making these stuck summer jet stream patterns more common," Mann said.

LESS RAIN

The West on average received 13.6 inches of snow and rain from July 2020 to June 2021. Over the last 10 years, the region has averaged a bit more than 19 inches of precipitation a year in the middle of what scientists call a megadrought. In the 1980s and 1990s, before the megadrought started, the West averaged nearly 22 inches of rain.

A 2020 study said "global warming has pushed what would have been a moderate drought in southwestern North America into megadrought territory."

MORE WILDFIRES

From 2011 to 2020, on average 7.5 million burned in wildfires each year. That's more than double the average of 3.6 million a year from 1991 to 2000, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center.

It's not just more acres burned, but more "very very large fires," said UC Merced's Abatzoglou, noting that the combination of drought and heat means plants are more likely to burn and fires to get bigger.

"The drought we've had this year and the warm temperatures has allowed the fire season to come on hard and really, really early," he said.

Weather Service: Showers, Thunderstorms May Cause FloodingAssociated Press

The National Weather Service warns that numerous showers and thunderstorms are expected over western and northern New Mexico on Wednesday, creating the potential for heavy rainfall and flash flooding.

A  flood watch was issued for regions that include the cities of Albuquerque, Gallup, Farmington and Santa Fe from noon through late Wednesday night.

The watch says "many thunderstorms will be capable of producing heavy to torrential rainfall" and that some areas could receive more than 2 inches (5 centimeters) of rain from the strongest storms.

According to the weather service, "areas that have recently received heavy rainfall are likely to have saturated soils and will be susceptible to abrupt runoff and flash flooding."

The flood watch also said burn scars from recent wildfires will be vulnerable to flash flooding.

Surgeon General Thanks Health Care Workers In New Mexico - By Cedar Attanasio Associated Press / Report For America

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Tuesday met with New Mexico officials and spoke at an awards ceremony honoring health care workers.

Murthy thanked nurses, doctors, and a laboratory manager for their work fighting the pandemic, but warned that the task of caring for the sick and inoculating the hesitant is not over. 

"We are so incredibly grateful," Murthy told health care workers. "But we need your help in the weeks and months ahead."

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham thanked eight health care workers at the event, issuing them individual gubernatorial proclamations on the second floor of the New Mexico History Museum.

State health officials reported an additional death Tuesday, and 116 additional COVID-19 cases. 

Almost 65% of the state's adults are fully vaccinated, higher than the national average of around 48%. But some counties have vaccination rates as low as 30%. And only around 45% of eligible people ages 12-17 have gotten their shots. 

"We still have in New Mexico, and more so in many other parts of our country, pockets where our brothers and sisters are not vaccinated," Murthy said.

New Mexico Lawmakers Warned About Shrinking Water Supplies - By Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press

Some of New Mexico’s top climate and water experts warned state lawmakers Tuesday that the effects of the current drought on water supplies have been worsened by climate change, specifically an ongoing, long-term warming trend.

They told members of a legislative committee during a meeting that the drought is a harbinger of still drier conditions to come as temperatures continue to climb.

"We're seeing in New Mexico as bad a situation with regard to water supply as anywhere in the West, if not worse," said Rolf Schmidt-Petersen, director of the Interstate Stream Commission, noting that drought persists across the state and reservoirs remain empty despite the start of summer rains.

Schmidt-Petersen shared slides that showed conditions getting drier and drier over the last 20 years. He described the conditions this year as the most severe drought in two decades of dryness.

Retired professor David Gutzler issued a plea to the legislators, asking that they take New Mexico's long-term water challenge seriously and provide cities, farmers and other users with guidance and ground rules for managing shrinking supplies.

Some of the discussion focused on developing a statewide system for building partnerships among local districts so water can be shared when shortages arise. Such arrangements already are in place in some parts of New Mexico, including Jemez and Zia pueblos and nearby acequias, which are traditional irrigation systems that deliver water to farmers. Officials say the agreements have been working well.

Southern New Mexico Highway Reopens After Mudslide, Flooding Associated Press

Crews have cleared debris from flooding and a mudslide that closed a 7-mile stretch of U.S. 70 across San Augustine Pass east of Las Cruces for 24 hours, officials said Tuesday.

The flooding and slide occurred Sunday night and the highway was reopened Monday night after crews cleared all four lanes of mud, rocks and trees, the state Department of Transportation said.

Crews on Tuesday continued to remove remaining debris and to reopen on-off ramps for an entrance into White Sands Missile range, the department said.

U.S. 70 is a major travel route across southern New Mexico.

New Mexico Eyes Higher Plant Limit For Marijuana ProducersSanta Fe New Mexican, Associated Press

A New Mexico regulatory agency hopes to avoid a possible shortage by raising the number of marijuana plants that licensed producers could produce.

The Cannabis Control Division of the state Regulation and Licensing Department last week raised the previously planned per-grower limit of 4,500 plants to 8,000, and producers also would be able to apply for incremental increases of 500 with a total cap of 10,000, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.

The change responds to concerns that the 4,500-plant limit would lead to a supply shortage, especially among patients in the state's medical marijuana program.

New Mexico's legalization of possession and growth of small amounts of recreational marijuana took effect June 29, and the legal market for recreational marijuana is expected to launch in early 2022.

The department has scheduled an Aug. 6 hearing on the program's revised draft rules.

The department has until Sept. 1 to finalize the rules for producers. Draft rules for manufacturing, testing and selling cannabis products have yet to be released.

Navajo Nation Reports 6 New COVID-19 Cases, But No DeathsAssociated Press, Santa Fe New Mexican

The Navajo Nation on Tuesday reported six new COVID-19 cases, but no additional deaths.

The figures released by the Navajo Department of Health brought the total number of cases on the vast reservation to 31,107 since the pandemic began. The death toll remains at 1,361.

The Navajo Nation recently relaxed restrictions to allow visitors to travel on the reservation and visit popular attractions like Canyon de Chelly and Monument Valley.

The reservation is the country's largest at 27,000 square miles and it covers parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

While cases are down, Navajo leaders are urging residents to continue wearing masks and get vaccinated.

"As of today, we have 11 confirmed cases of the Delta variant on the Navajo Nation along with several other variants," tribal President Jonathan Nez said in a statement Tuesday. "Our contact tracers are doing their best to mitigate and isolate those cases to prevent any further spread."

New Mexico reported 116 new cases today and one additional death, a woman in her 60s in Otero County. That brings the total number of deaths in the state related to COVID-19 to 4,359 since the pandemic began.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reported hospitalizations continue to inch upward with 83 people in New Mexico hospitals. Sixty-three percent of eligible residents have been fully vaccinated and nearly 72% have at least one shot.

US Says Order Coming This Week On Border Asylum Restrictions - By Jake Bleiberg and Elliot Spagat, Associated Press

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will issue an order this week about how migrant children are treated under a public health order that has prevented people from seeking asylum at the nation's borders, a Justice Department attorney said Tuesday.

The comment by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Stoltz at a court hearing in Fort Worth, Texas, comes as the Biden administration faces pressure from pro-immigration allies to lift the last major Trump-era restrictions on asylum at the border.

Stoltz told a federal judge that the CDC will release "a new order on the subject of the children" by the end of the week. It will revise a Biden administration policy announced in February that exempts children crossing alone from the ban on asylum.

Stoltz did not offer additional details on the changes during a hearing on a lawsuit that Texas brought to compel enforcement of the public health order that former President Donald Trump's administration used to quickly expel people from the country during the coronavirus pandemic.

The government attorney said the CDC order this week will largely render Texas' arguments moot. He did not elaborate, and CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency had "nothing more to add right now."

The CDC, in a three-paragraph order signed by its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, on Feb. 11, exempted unaccompanied children from being expelled to Mexico until "a forthcoming public health reassessment," which has yet to be published. Texas argues in its lawsuit that the administration's justification was insufficient.

Higher COVID-19 vaccination rates have brought increasing pressure on the Biden administration to lift the public health order that was always intended as a temporary measure during the pandemic. While the administration has exempted unaccompanied children, some families and nearly all adults traveling alone are expelled from the United States — often to Mexico within two hours — without a chance to seek asylum.

The Associated Press reported last year that then-Vice President Mike Pence directed the CDC to use emergency powers to effectively seal America's borders, overruling agency scientists who said there was no evidence the action would slow COVID-19.

Lifting the ban could encourage more people to come to the border to seek asylum at a time when the U.S. is under mounting strain. The U.N. refugee agency reported last month that the U.S. was once again the top destination for asylum-seekers in 2020, with about 250,000 new claims filed, more than twice as high as second-place Germany.

Texas, which has the busiest corridor for illegal border crossings, is seeking a court order forcing the federal government to cease what state Deputy Attorney General Aaron Reitz called "de facto non-enforcement" of the asylum ban. Reitz argued that the Biden administration's posture "threatens the health and safety of all Texans."

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, a Trump appointee, questioned Stoltz about the timing of the new order and asked that the government inform him as soon as it is issued. Pittman did not rule on the request for an injunction but said he will put out a decision "as quickly as I can."

 

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