Rodent reported inside state public health building in Las Cruces

New Mexicans can get a variety of public services at public health offices like this one in Las Cruces, including WIC, automobile records, developmental disability waivers, Medicaid, vaccinations, clean needles and Narcan. (Photo by Danielle Prokop / Source NM)

A state public health office in Las Cruces remained open on Monday, two weeks after state workers and the public reported seeing a rodent.

Workers from three different state-run programs operating in the building reported encountering a rodent in late July, according to emails reviewed by Source New Mexico . Staff answered the main phone line on Monday morning and said it was still open.

Later in the day the rat was first spotted, officials said rodent traps were set, an infestation was not found and the rat may have fled.

New Mexicans go into the public health office in Las Cruces called the Solano Building to receive a variety of public services, meaning there is the potential for state workers and members of the public to be exposed.

“These encounters could have resulted with families, children, and staff being bitten or scratched by the rat,” the workers in the building wrote in a collective statement shared with management through a union representative on July 25.

Despite these concerns, office managers said the risk is low and denied requests by the employees to work remotely until the rat issue was resolved.

Communications Workers of America Local 7076 represents state workers across New Mexico. Their president, Megan Green, relayed the Las Cruces workers’ concerns to Health Care Authority Human Resources Director Dustin Acklin and Labor Relations Manager David Rich on July 25.

“This is a health and safety risk for our employees in the Solano building and we appreciate you taking prompt action,” Green wrote. “Keeping staff in the building while the situation is resolved does not make the environment any safer.”

Green asked Acklin and the labor relations manager to allow people to either work from home or go on administrative leave “until the rats are caught and cleanup is completed,” but he refused.

Green said she raised the issue on the workers’ behalf to protect them from retaliation for reporting the problem, and added that they feel they aren’t being treated fairly because when the same problems arise in the major metro areas of Santa Fe and Albuquerque, those workers are granted remote work or administrative leave.

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“I think it’s a shame that folks are scared to go to their management and HR and express concerns about rats,” she said. “That speaks to the type of work environment they’re working in: they don’t even feel safe bringing up safety concerns.”

A rat under a desk

One worker reported as they were sitting at their desk, they saw a rat was underneath. “This could have resulted with several staff being bitten or scratched by the rat,” they wrote.

The rat proceeded to the waiting area on the first floor, where people were about to receive back-to-school vaccinations. When they saw it, their screams could be heard by state workers up on the second floor, the workers wrote.

The rat then went to an area where mothers and infants get health services, according to the workers’ statement.

Several offices near a storage room contained rodent droppings and urine, the workers wrote, and they didn’t know whether they’d been cleaned as of Aug. 6.

Source New Mexico asked for comments from the Department of Health and the Health Care Authority that conducts the business for New Mexicans in the building, and Doña Ana County, which owns it, on Aug. 8.

In a joint statement released on Monday morning, the agencies said they found “rodent activity in the storage areas” of the building. However, they insist only one rat was seen on July 24, and hasn’t been seen since.

“With no further sightings of the rodent since July 24 nor signs of interior infestation, there has been no public announcement of the possibility of rodent presence,” they said, adding that inspectors searched inside the building with a black light, which “indicates no infestation.”

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Theories about where the rat has gone

The agencies said as soon as the rodent was reported, county staff immediately inspected the building and found “rodent activity” in its storage areas.

Doña Ana County Vector Control set traps and bait, and will keep checking them, Rich wrote. They set more traps and “stronger bait” in the hopes of catching the rat over the weekend while the building was quiet.

On Aug. 5, a Public Health Division supervisor with the state told Rich that Doña Ana county workers checked the traps every day and there had been “no activity” on them, nor “any evidence of any new droppings.”

At 6 a.m. on Aug. 1, a county worker found a large glue trap showing evidence of a rat that had gotten stuck but chewed itself free.

“Vector Control is guessing that either the rat has left the building or as a result from eating the glue that possibly it has died,” Rich quoted the supervisor as saying in an email to Green on Aug. 6.

Multiple Health Care Authority employees in Las Cruces told Green the rat who ran across the lobby was “believed to be in the duct work, which is a concern for airborne diseases such as hantavirus,” Green wrote in her initial email to management.

“Once they are doing cleanup work, they will be disturbing nests and potentially releasing more virus into the air,” Green wrote.

When an infected rodent’s fresh urine, droppings, or nesting materials are stirred up, the virus can get into the air, which can infect someone who breathes it in, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hantavirus can also spread when an infected rodent’s saliva or droppings get into cuts in a person’s skin or their eyes, nose, or mouth, according to the CDC.

The agencies said the possibility of someone catching hantavirus in the building is “very low” because the virus isn’t regularly detected in offices, and instead have historically been found when people clean or explore enclosed parts of homes, cabins or sheds containing mouse droppings.

Office managers in Doña Ana county told staff to throw away or secure food. Workers were offered masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, face shields and shoe coverings, according to the agencies’ written statement to Source New Mexico . They said as of Monday, no one had asked for any personal protective equipment or supplies.

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Any state workers “who have an additional concern,” Rich wrote, can use personal protective equipment like gloves and masks, and “practice good preventative measures” by washing their hands and not touching their face, eyes or nose.

A county official thinks recent flooding in the area may explain why rodents entered the building, Rich wrote to Green in an Aug. 6 email.

The agencies said on Monday there have been four confirmed cases of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) so far this year, with one each in San Juan, Sandoval, Cibola and McKinley counties. The last case in Doña Ana County was recorded in July 1992, they said.