The Veterans Hospital, which had until Monday almost half of the positive cases of coronavirus In Puerto Rico, despite the fact that its clientele constitutes only a minimal fraction of the total population of the island, it has not given any explanation to the authorities of Puerto Rico about the apparent disproportion of infections between its patients and the rest of Puerto Ricans. .
As of yesterday morning, 13 coronavirus positives had been reported in Veterans, which constitutes 42% of the total of 31 reported throughout Puerto Rico. The Veterans Hospital, which belongs to the United States Veterans Affairs Administration (VA), only serves former members of the various branches of the United States Armed Forces.
The VA has registered 76,000 ex-military personnel in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. An additional 35,000 ex-combatants in the area are believed to be unregistered, but are also eligible for services. They are, among all, only 3% of the total population of Puerto Rico.
The government of Puerto Rico has no explanation for the disparity.
“The hospital provides information on the positive (cases). But it is a federal jurisdiction. We do not have the complete ‘insight’ of what is happening, ”said emergency scientist Jorge Falcón, a member of Governor Wanda Vázquez’s work team on this topic and who is associate dean of Medical Graduate Education at the Medical Sciences Campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR).
Since Thursday of last week, El Nuevo Día sent written questions to the hospital administration, as requested by the facility’s spokesman, Rafael Contreras. The questions were repeated yesterday, at the request of Contreras again. As of press time, no response had been received.
The absence of information, coupled with the fact that the hospital is basically closed after having suspended all visits, appointments and clinics, have generated in some sectors of the island a climate of concern about what the real situation may be in the institution. In a column published yesterday in the digital edition of El Nuevo Día, Dr. Fernando Cabanillas described the situation in Veterans as “an outbreak.”
El Nuevo Día learned that days ago, the hospital administration ordered to suspend all contact between its employees and patients who are not facing any emergency situation.
At this time, only emergency room employees and those caring for hospitalized patients work at the hospital. Accurate information was not available yesterday, but this newspaper learned from various sources that most of the 13 cases of coronavirus are attended from their homes, such as the recommendation when the condition does not present symptoms or characteristics that put the patient’s life at risk.
It is not known, however, what care the hospital is taking with the relatives or caregivers of the patients sent to their homes, on which strict monitoring is recommended to prevent the virus from spreading further.
“Of the eleven (positive cases) that there were yesterday (Sunday), there was one hospitalized. The other ten had sent them to receive care at home. If so, what about family members? That is the question that has not been answered. I don’t know if these family members are being followed by Veterans or (the Department of) Health of Puerto Rico, ”said Jorge Pedroza, president of the Council of Puerto Rico of the organization Veterans of Vietnam of America (VVA). , who receives periodic, but concise, reports from the Veterans Hospital.
Agustín Montañez, attorney for the Veteran of Puerto Rico, said that he had not been informed by the Veterans Hospital about what is happening in the hospital either.
As of yesterday, Veterans had done 62 tests. The positive ones constitute 21% of the total. In the case of the Department of Health, it had done 241 tests. The 18 positives are 13% of the total. Veterans had 39 pending tests yesterday to receive results. In the case of Health, there were 59 pending cases yesterday.
As of the weekend, the VA had identified a total of 204 cases of coronavirus among former members of the Armed Forces, of whom two had died of complications related to this condition.
Until the weekend, Veterans in San Juan was the seventh most positive ex-military hospital in the United States. The six hospitals that surpass it are areas in which many more cases of coronavirus have been confirmed than in the general population of Puerto Rico. These are two hospitals in the New York City area (15,000 cases), plus those in Washington state (1,996), Louisiana (837), Washington D.C. (663) and Georgia (620).
Scientist Daniel Colón Ramos, a professor at Yale University School of Medicine in Connecticut, was struck by this information.
“It makes me think about the fact that we are among the ten jurisdictions in the United States with the most cases in the veterans population, while we know that the Department of Health has not done enough tests in the general population. At a minimum, that makes me think that we need more tests to know how we really are on that spectrum, ”said Colón Ramos.
Reporter Keila López Alicea collaborated with this report.
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