Periodista investigativa con 20 años de experiencia que labora al presente como agente libre. Ha realizado trabajos para radio, internet, televisión y por más de una década formó parte del equipo del diario El Nuevo Día. Sus escritos han sido publicados en diversos periódicos locales e internacionales y han sido galardonados por organizaciones periodísticas en Puerto Rico y el exterior. Fue presidenta del Overseas Press Club.
El pleito fue presentado en el Tribunal de Primera Instancia de San Juan como un caso confidencial por lo que el documento no está disponible, pero el CPI recibió el lunes evidencia de que el caso ya fue registrado en el Sistema Unificado de Manejo y Administración de Casos (SUMAC) de Tribunales.
One of the most important factors to confirm the real status of the COVID-19 case fatality rate in Puerto Rico is to conduct molecular tests on people who die and who had any symptoms of the disease. However, hospitals — which is where most people on the island die — have not been testing all suspected patients and none of the deceased, Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Health Lorenzo González Feliciano admitted on Tuesday to questions from the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI, in Spanish). More than 60% of deaths in Puerto Rico occur in hospitals, according to Demographic Registry data. The official answered the question during a press conference on Tuesday about the status of COVID-19 on the island, when he also reported that disease-related deaths were already at 64 and that, of those, 19 were detected through the annotations that doctors make on death certificates they send to the Demographic Registry of Puerto Rico. González said some of those cases lack confirmatory tests, but did not specify how many of them, and answered categorically that the hospitals have not been taking the samples.
El 20 de marzo Salud emitió un protocolo que ordena a las facilidades médico-hospitalarias tomar muestras nasofaríngea y orofaríngea a todos los pacientes sospechosos de COVID-19 que mueran en sus instalaciones.
Dos fuentes del CPI indicaron que el doctor Juan Luis Salgado Morales también intervino en las conversaciones que culminaron en la compra de $38 millones en pruebas no aprobadas por la FDA y a sobreprecio, a la empresa de construcción Apex Contractors.
Las proyecciones y los escenarios dependerán de las medidas de contención que el Gobierno tome y de los recursos que pueda allegar al deteriorado sistema de salud del país.
Government and public health experts at the highest levels have known this for days, but nobody wants to say it openly: thousands could die from COVID-19 in Puerto Rico. So far, the projections that the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI, in Spanish) has learned from experts are overwhelming. The most conservative suggests that some 16,000 deaths could be registered during the pandemic on the island; the worst case scenario approaches 58,000 victims.
The CPI asked health demographer Raúl Figueroa to calculate the number of possible deaths, based on the contagion estimates that the Government of Puerto Rico has disclosed, as well as the fatality rates published by countries that lead the way in the pandemic, and the local case-fatality rate that the few tests done to date show. The first test was done on March 8. According to Figueroa’s calculations, if Puerto Rico approaches the global average mortality rate — which to date is 4.4% — 27,000 people would die in about 12 to 18 months.
The wave of corruption that characterized the Ricardo Rosselló-Nevares administration had among its enablers the now outgoing Secretary of Health, Rafael Rodríguez-Mercado, an investigation by the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI, in Spanish) reveals. Amid the emergency and deaths related to Hurricane María, a decisive meeting took place at the Government of Puerto Rico’s Emergency Operations Center (COE, in Spanish). Elías Sánchez, lobbyist and former governor Rosselló’s ex-campaign director was present. The meeting, held Oct. 2, 2017, two weeks after the storm, was the first sweeping encounter among Government of Puerto Rico cabinet secretaries and federal government response officials.
Ten days after the Government of Puerto Rico began to take the coronavirus seriously, Puerto Ricans are in the midst of the deadly pandemic without a Health Department to count on. With no public health expert in charge of the decisions on which the lives of 3.2 million people who live on this island depend. The Health Department has no data, no projections that allow for coherent planning and response, no communications manager with expertise or experience in public health education, and no large-scale educational campaign despite the many millions spent on advertising superfluous matters. Former Health Secretary Rafael Rodríguez-Mercado, who had previously mishandled the emergencies created by Hurricane María in 2017 and the earthquakes between December 2019 and January 2020, “resigned” on Friday, Mar. 13, the day the first positive COVID-19 case in Puerto Rico was confirmed.
