Doña Ana County has state’s only new virus death; New Mexico now has fewer in hospitals than El Paso

SANTA FE, New Mexico -- A man in his 50s from Doña Ana County was New Mexico's only new coronavirus death reported on Sunday, raising the state's fatality count by one to 492.

The man who died had been hospitalized with underlying conditions, state health officials said. It was Doña Ana County's ninth death of the pandemic.

Meantime, New Mexico recorded 114 patients hospitalized for Covid-19 as of Sunday, which is its lowest level since late April.

The entire state of New Mexico, with a population around two million, now has fewer virus hospitalizations than neighboring El Paso County in Texas - which has about 700,000 people. El Paso on Sunday reported a record 147 patients hospitalized, including another record 68 in the ICU.

“We are reaping the rewards now of a lot of proactive behavior in the state that has minimized the spread of the disease and we’re seeing that in our hospitals. And as the census has come down for Covid-19 positive patients, it’s not putting as much of a strain on us,” Troy Greer, CEO of Albuquerque's Lovelace Medical Center and the Heart Hospital of New Mexico, told The Associated Press.

On Sunday, New Mexico reported 192 additional Covid-19 cases, which raised the state’s total to 11,809 confirmed infections to date.

The bulk of the additional cases were in Bernalillo County (45), San Juan County (34), McKinley County (28) and Doña Ana County (27).

There were also three new cases reported at the Otero County Prison, which has suffered from a massive outbreak that began with a prison staffer and grew to infecting 713 inmates so far.

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.