COVID Resurgence in Puerto Rico: Urgent Need for Precautionary Measures and Reinforced Vaccination

Although we have abandoned the strictest prevention measures against COVID, especially after the World Health Organization decreed the end of the emergency due to the pandemic, on May 5, the scourge of the virus continues to hit the population in many parts of the world. It is necessary that in Puerto Rico certain precautionary measures be resumed and protection through vaccines be reinforced.

All the regions of Puerto Rico have presented high transmission of COVID, and 70 of the 78 municipalities revealed high positivity, which means that more than 10% of the tests processed were positive for the virus.

In the last 28 days, precisely since preventive measures were relaxed, the number of new cases has increased alarmingly: from 391 to 982 infected, for a 2.5-fold increase in a single month.

Perhaps some think that, compared to our worst moment, in January 2022, when 8,766 new cases were recorded in a single month, the 982 that are reported now is not much. But COVID continues to cause deaths and hospitalizations, especially among those who are not inoculated, or have not received the recommended boosters every six months. In January 2022 we came to regret 42 deaths a day, compared to which, it may not make much of an impression that two people are now dying a day.

However, the loss of human lives is a tragedy that cannot be measured in numbers, especially when there are vaccines to reinforce resistance to the different lineages of the virus, and drugs that, once the disease is acquired, mitigate and alleviate its symptoms. .

In Puerto Rico, the end of the emergency due to the pandemic was decreed on May 11. But what should have been a staggered transition, liberalizing precautionary measures in some places and maintaining them in others, in order to find a balance to see how the transmission of the virus behaved, became a headache, for example, for nursing homes. This is the population most vulnerable to COVID, and the one that suffers the worst consequences, including hospitalization.

From having been protected thanks to the measures in force before the end of the emergency, they went to a stage where masks, basic disinfection measures, and the regulations for employees and visitors were suddenly eliminated. The consequences, according to the owners of these homes, have not been long in coming and have had outbreaks of COVID of varying intensity.

Tens of thousands of people who should have received the bivalent vaccine have not come to get it. The Health Department’s campaigns to urge the population to inoculate themselves have been declining, to the point that they are hardly seen.

The declaration of the end of the emergency is not equivalent to a declaration of the end of the disease, and yet we have seen a worrying relaxation at all levels. Some pharmacies do not have home tests, and among those that have them available, some sell them at a price that discourages those who go for them, running the risk of getting worse and becoming a source of contagion for others.

The health authorities must closely observe the phenomenon of this outbreak, which shows that we have lowered our guard. We understand that people were eager to leave the anxiety and rigors of lockdown behind them. However, it does not cost anything to wear a mask indoors, have disinfectant liquids on hand, and avoid infecting those over 65, who are at high risk of complications.