Respected Governor Michelle Lynn Lujan Grisham and Mayor Kintigh,

At this stage of disease spread in Roswell, NM, we - Roswell Physicians - highly urge you to consider some of the following recommendations regarding possible safety measures to be implemented in public businesses and institutions in order to reduce transmission and infection of COVID-19. Special attention must be given to grocery and department stores with high volumes of traffic:

Allowing only 1 individual to enter per family.

Requiring a minimum of 6 ft distance from person to person.

Requiring the cleaning of surfaces on an hourly basis.

Temperature screening for employees at the start of shift.

Temperature screening for customers.

Individuals with temperatures above 100.4 should be sent for further evaluation to health care facilities.

Screening and testing are hugely important in containment and spread of the virus. Below are some of the measures that we recommend:

Drive-thru testing - In Roswell at least 50-60 Covid-19 tests per day are ordered in the multiple health care facilities serving our population. A much more efficient means to conduct these tests is through drive-thru testing. A single drive-thru testing unit has the potential to both screen more individuals as well as conserve up to 50-100 PPE’s per day. This method of screening would also decrease the burden of testing currently falling upon the existing labs providing for the area (Quest, LabCorp and TRICOR).

Volunteers - Now more than ever we need volunteers to help with contact tracing, screening, and potentially replacing health care workers that may become infected soon. With the help of special volunteer groups focusing on creating masks we may be able to provide thousands of people with added protection against airborne transmission of the virus.

Considering the threateningly high mortality rate observed with this virus we urge you to consider some of the following measures which can be implemented to protect both those serving on the front lines of this crisis as well as the people of Roswell.

- Roswell Physicians