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County jails announce positive tests for COVID-19

Curry and Roosevelt county jails on Thursday announced employees have tested positive for COVID-19.

An officer in the Roosevelt County Detention Center was tested on July 16, but results were not provided until Tuesday, according to a county news release.

The officer is quarantined at home, County Manager Amber Hamilton said.

“This employee had tested negative on five prior tests and was asymptomatic at the time of testing positive,” Hamilton said in the news release.

In Curry County, a contract employee for the jail was tested July 24; positive results were received Thursday, according to a county news release.

That employee also has been sent home to quarantine, officials said.

A Curry County inmate who tested positive for COVID-19 on July 24 has received a second positive test result, the release said.

Both county managers said new rounds of testing for all inmates and jail employees will be conducted within the coming week.

The Albuquerque Journal last week reported testing in New Mexico can take from under 48 hours to more than 10 days.

Hamilton and Pyle both expressed frustration with the amount of time it took to receive test results for the jail employees.

“We’ve experienced 7-14 days on average,” for test results, Hamilton said. “It shouldn’t take 12 days.”

Human Services Secretary Dr. David Scrase last week told the Albuquerque Journal, “When it takes you longer to get the test results than you would have spent in isolation, you kind of have defeated the purpose of getting the test.”

New Mexico Department of Health spokesman David Morgan said the state’s “capacity” for testing is 2,700 per day. It tested an average of more than 7,000 people last week.

“The backlog comes from receiving more than our capacity. We are hopeful that we will be able to make progress this weekend, but we are several days behind and can only make up ground if fewer samples come in for testing,” Morgan wrote in an email to The News.