Doña Ana County sees declining virus cases but remains in state’s red zone for restrictions

SANTA FE, New Mexico -- Data released Wednesday showed seven counties showed significant improvements over the last two weeks when it came to reducing daily Covid-19 case totals and test positivity rates, allowing them to move into the yellow zone on the state's Red-to-Green map.

Under the state's color-coded system, those counties that meet certain benchmarks can begin to rollback some public health restrictions.

New Mexico's largest counties, including Doña Ana, remained in the red level of restrictions due to higher risks, according to the latest information from the state Department of Health.

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Doña Ana County missed moving to yellow after reporting a 9.46 positivity rate for the past two weeks. Counties with a 5% positivity rate or those that have 8 cases per 100,000 people can have fewer restrictions.

But officials did note that Doña Ana County improved in both of the key health metrics.

"Doña Ana County saw a new daily per-capita case rate of 39.6 per 100,000, a decrease of 19 percent over two weeks, and a test positivity rate of 9.46, a decrease of 27 percent over two weeks," the health department said in a statement.

The newly yellow counties - bumped up from red - were Colfax, Grant, Los Alamos, San Miguel, Sierra, Socorro and Union. Sparsely populated Harding County remained the only county to be in the green.

All but three counties in the state showed some improvements over the past two weeks, according to health officials who added that more than two-thirds of the state's counties are on the cusp of reaching the metrics required for yellow classification.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)