Governor’s office provides new details about virus infection at Las Cruces nursing home

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico -- The New Mexico governor's office is making clear that an active duty caregiver at a Las Cruces nursing home was diagnosed with Covid-19 and it was no mistake the care facility was added to a state health department list of those with confirmed cases, despite protests to the contrary from the facility's CEO.

The facility in question is Haciendas at Grace Village, an assisted-living operation caring for elderly residents with dementia and Alzheimer's, which ABC-7 reported Friday is among 25 care facilities statewide that had virus infections involving residents and/or employees.

After ABC-7's initial report, an irate Haciendas CEO Gary Coppedge in a series of tense phone calls, emails and news release exchanges with ABC-7 claimed that his facility was mistakenly put on the list and in fact had a clean bill of health from the state, implied that the caregiver no longer worked for his facility, and suggested that the worker's test result was actually a false positive.

But Nora Myers Sackett, a top aide and the official spokesperson for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, paints a much different picture from that of Coppedge. Over the weekend, she provided ABC-7 with a more detailed account of the situation at Haciendas of Grace Village.

"No, that is not accurate," she said of Coppedge's portrayal of the circumstances at his facility. "The staff member in question tested negative over a week after first testing positive, meaning they likely tested negative after having cleared the infection. Nothing in their case indicates a false positive. DOH (the Department of Health) reports confirmed positive tests, not pending tests."

Sackett added: "To be clear, the Haciendas at Grace Village facility did (emphasis by Sackett) have a staff member test positive and they will continue to be reported as such."