GALLUP, N.M. – 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.