Southern New Mexico has 7 virus deaths, Doña Ana County sees record 312 daily cases

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico -- Southern New Mexico's Doña Ana and Otero counties were responsible for seven of the state's 18 additional coronavirus deaths on Thursday, while Doña Ana also reported a record 312 new virus cases among New Mexico's 1,753 daily count.

The seven latest fatalities in the two southern counties included:

• Three women in their 70s from Doña Ana County, one who was a resident of Adobe Assisted Living in Las Cruces.
• A woman in her 80s from Doña Ana County who was hospitalized.
• Two men in their 80s from Doña Ana County, one who was a resident of Adobe Assisted Living in Las Cruces.
• A man in his 70s from Otero County who was hospitalized.

Health officials said Thursday's deaths took the state's fatality toll to 1,158, with Doña Ana County's toll rising to 121 - with 48 of those occurring in within the past two weeks. Otero County's death count has now reached 20.

Doña Ana County's new all-time case high of 312 was just one more than the old record of 311 that came a day prior. In addition to the record new cases reported among Doña Ana residents, there were also eight new infections among inmates at the Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility in the county for a total of 101 active cases there.

The total number of infections throughout the pandemic in New Mexico now stands at 60,776 with 9,271 of those being tallied from Doña Ana County.

There were 471 individuals hospitalized across New Mexico for Covid-19 illness on Thursday.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's medical advisor Dr. David Scrase has said that hospitals statewide were reporting 92% of their general hospital beds were full.

“We expect to run out of general hospital beds in a matter of days, not weeks,” Scrase said.

Below you can see county-by-county data for virus cases and deaths across New Mexico. The data comes from Johns Hopkins University, so the numbers may sometimes vary a bit from what's reported by the state health department. (The Associated Press contributed to this report.)