“New Mexico has crushed this virus before — twice,” she told her state’s 2 million citizens. “We’re going to do it again.”

Three weeks later, victory remains a distant prospect. Instead, Lujan Grisham (D) is on the verge of acknowledging just how grim conditions have become: She will, she said in an interview, soon allow hospitals to move to “crisis standards,” a move that frees them to ration care depending on a patient’s likelihood of surviving.

It is a step that she and other governors have avoided through nine months of battling the pandemic, and one that doctors dread.

“That’s a physician’s nightmare,” said Jason Mitchell, chief medical officer at Presbyterian Healthcare Services, one of the state’s largest providers. “We want to save every life we can.”