New Mexico town near vast US reservation shuts everyone out

GALLUP, N.M. (AP) — Like clockwork, payday arrives and tens of thousands of people from the Navajo reservation and other rural stretches along the New Mexico-Arizona border flood into Gallup, a freewheeling desert oasis of just 22,000 that can quickly quadruple in size with all the visitors.

Not now.

As the modern-day trading post reels under a coronavirus outbreak that has infected more than 1,400 and killed 31 in the city and surrounding rural county — overrunning a patchwork health care system — Gallup has gone into extreme lockdown. Barricades are manned by state police and the National Guard keeping out anyone who doesn’t live there or face an emergency.

That has sent thousands of people scrambling for options other than the city’s coin operated bulk water station and monthly shopping runs to Walmart and Tractor Supply Co. Up to one-third of homes on remote stretches of the Navajo Nation lack full plumbing, and local grocery stores are mostly tiny and limited.

The roads into Gallup may open up Friday evening, but the rules allowing only essential shopping will remain, and the reservation has its own lockdown that prevents people from leaving on evenings and weekends. Navajo police patrol for people breaking the rules.

On Thursday, hundreds of cars idled at a roadblock in hopes of entering town, just before the lockdown was extended for three more days under provisions of the state Riot Control Act.

The effectiveness of the lockdown, enacted by the governor and endorsed by Gallup’s fledgling mayor, is up for debate. Infections are still mounting unabated inside town, with about 240 infections within one zip code and more than 2,650 on the Navajo Nation that extends into portions of Arizona and Utah. If the Navajo Nation were its own state, it’d have the second highest per-capita rate of positive...