This article has been published in conjunction with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.
HOUSTON – Two weeks after Valery Martinez’s 41-year-old cousin rushed to the hospital with severe COVID-19 symptoms, Martinez wrote a message on Facebook thanking the doctors and nurses at Memorial Hermann Southeast Hospital in Houston who were running to save him.
“You are the genuine heroes who risked your life in these difficult times,” Martinez wrote. “May God continue with the canopy and you and your families.”
Later, she began receiving messages from friends, almost all Hispanics, like her, who said that her loved ones were also in poor health from coronavirus. A friend’s aunt in intensive care at The Hermann Southeast Memorial.
The friend’s family circle is planning an open-air prayer vigil at the hospital this weekend, so Martinez asked to join. Then members of some other circles of family members they knew approached and asked if they could also come and pray for one who was hospitalized there with COVID-19.
Martinez struggled to hold back tears Sunday afternoon this month while she and 40 others were in an outdoor parking lot at Memorial Hermann Southeast, their faces covered in masks, their hands raised in prayer by the 3 patients hospitalized in extensive care rooms 2, 11 and 22 – all Hispanic, all connected to fans.
The moment gave Martinez the impression that she was not alone, she said, and helped her realize how the virus was spreading in her community.
“Almost everyone I know has had a coronavirus or has a member of a family circle who has been in poor health or is in the hospital,” said Martinez, who before this week can only list forty-five friends, members of the circle of Hispanic relatives and acquaintances who have been in poor health because of the virus in the Houston domain , 4 of whom died.
While coronavirus sets aside Latin American communities in Texas, the knowledge reported this week through state fitness officials shows that many of those citizens are also suffering the worst results. Hispanics in Texas account for about 40% of the state’s population, however, 48 percent of the state’s 6,190 showed deaths, according to the knowledge of the State Department of Health Services.
In the Houston area, where COVID-19-related hospitalizations increased in June before beginning to decline in recent days, knowledge reported through the Harris County Department of Health showed a disproportionate percentage of those requiring hospital care—up to 65% of newly hospitalized patients. in a few weeks of June – they were Hispanic, even though they make up 44% of the population.
At the Memorial Hermann Health System, one of the largest hospital chains in the Houston area, an investigation of emergency room visits shows that many more Hispanics between the ages of 20, 30 and 40 have come to their hospitals with COVID-19 compared to other ethnic groups. groups, an indication that the virus is spreading widely among Hispanic youth and that they would possibly be waiting to be sicker for treatment. officials said.
Meanwhile, while the Houston Fire Department reports a record number of patients who die in the house this summer before paramedics can even succeed in them, the harris County medical examiner’s knowledge shows that more than two-thirds of those who died in the house showing coronavirus infections were Hispanic.
The reasons for these disparities are numerous, according to the experts. Hispanic citizens are more likely to paint in service or live in multigenerational families that make social estrangement difficult. They’re less likely to have fitness insurance. And they’re more likely to have fitness problems, which adds diabetes and high blood pressure, making them more vulnerable to serious illness.
These points are most pronounced in Texas, one of the first states to reopen after initial orders to close the coronavirus, with Gov. Greg Abbott urging others to return to the May paintings, adding restaurants, bars and hotels, even as the number of COVID-19 Instances continued to grow.
Texas is also the largest state in the country that has refused to expand fitness insurance for low-income citizens under the Affordable Care Act, and is home to a developing Latin American population. Nearly a third of adults under the age of 65 in Texas do not have fitness insurance, the worst unsafe rate in the country, and more than 60% of those 10 percent of those 100 in the state are Hispanic.
Dr. Esmaeil Porsa, president and chief executive officer of Harris Health System, oversees the two hospitals in The Houston Public Protective Network. He said COVID-19 amplified existing inequalities in a “faulty infrastructure for health care through design.” In Porsa hospitals, where most patients do not have fitness insurance, the health care area is running out of extensive care area and key medications needed to treat COVID-19, leaving many patients in emergency room beds for days before being transferred to an emergency room. -city hospitals.
Nationally and in parts of Texas, coronavirus has also become ill and disproportionately killed black residents, some other organization that is not equal to physical care.
“And what is happening today is this flawed design that causes an overflow of certain hospital systems and disproportionate damage to a segment of the population,” Porsa said. “All of these disorders are developing after decades of not paying attention to the fitness care infrastructure.”
Another problem: People who don’t have fitness insurance wait too long for medical care, resulting in worse outcomes, said Dr. Amelia Averyt, a number one care doctor at Legacy Community Health, a federally funded mid-level health center whose patients are about 60% Hispanic.
For those who have no legal personality, Averyt said, there is also fear of staying in the country and knowing how to pay for medical expenses without physical insurance.
“I think the concern helps keep them at home more than anything,” he said.
The disproportionate toll of the pandemic can be noticed in dozens of desperate messages at GoFundMe through Latino families in the Houston area, asking for help paying for COVID-19 medical expenses or funerals. Several said their enjoyed did not have fitness insurance; others said the virus had hospitalized several members of the same family, leaving no one fit enough to earn cash for rent.
Leonor Quiroz’s friends organized a fundraiser for her after she and her husband in their 10 years were hospitalized by COVID-19 in May. Leonor, 47, believes her husband, Valentin, 52, brought the virus house from a structure site. You may simply not be absent from work.
She was hospitalized first; Valentin, who continued to paint even as her symptoms worsened, followed her to HCA Houston Healthcare Tomball a few days later. She stepped forward and was released; he got worse and hooked on a fan.
Every day, Leonor called and sang to Valentin one of his favorite songs in Spanish, “A Puro Dolor” – “Sheer Pain” – while a nurse held the phone in front of her ear.
“Give me back my fantasies … The courage I want to live … The air I breathe.
Valentin died on May 23, leaving Leonor with more than $25,000 and funeral expenses.
“Many of my Hispanic friends and family circles believe that coronavirus was a conspiracy until I lost my husband,” Leonor said. “Now they realize it’s not Array.. after I get paid everything.”
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the county’s top-elected representative that includes Houston, convened a news convention this month after knowledge of the county began to show an accumulation of COVID-19 cases among Hispanic residents. She called knowledge “a wake-up call,” and not just for communities that are already in shock.
“We want to worry about what’s happening to our most vulnerable citizens right now and not just because it’s the right thing to do,” said Hidalgo, the first Latina elected to her position. “We are all interconnected … If some of us are sicker than the rest of us right now, guess what? Sooner or later, he’ll catch up with us all.
Cristóbal Onofre, 22, has a framed photo of his father in his living room, taken in February when Benito turned 44. It shows Benito Onofre in his apartment in Northwest Houston, smiling with a cake glaze on his lips, being in front of a banner of “Happy Birthday” and colorful balloons.
He’s in good health, his son said.
Five months later, on July 3, Benito was discovered dead in his apartment after suffering a case of untreated COVID-19. He is one of a wave of other people who died at his home in Houston this summer when coronavirus infections increased.
Benito had spent a wonderful time for himself because of the virus, said his son Christopher. She wore a mask to go to the dining room where she worked as a dishwasher and gloves to do her shopping. If Benito saw too many people in a store, he’d turn around. But there wasn’t much I could do.
In late June, he began to feel unwell, with a sore throat that kept him awake at night. After a few days, it was reviewed by COVID-19 at the Mexican Consulate in Houston. But the effects of the check would take days. Meanwhile, Benito continued to treat it like a cold, drinking hot tea and drinking cough syrup.
At the end of the week, his symptoms worsened. “My uncle called and said, “Your father is not very well. He can’t catch his breath, ” said Christopher in Spanish.
His circle of relatives called an ambulance, but he said Benito refused to enter when he arrived. Cristóbal learned that his father, who still doubted to have COVID-19, feared contracting the virus in the hospital. There’s also a consultation on how you’d pay for hospital care. As almost part of Hispanics in Harris County, Benito did not have fitness insurance.
Later that night, after the ambulance left, Cristóbal’s uncle, who lived with Benito, discovered him mendacity on the bathroom floor. Paramedics pronounced him dead and the medical examiner later decided that COVID-19 was the cause, which he cited blood pressure and obesity as contributing factors.
Houston Fire Department data shows a 45% increase between February and June in the number of cardiac arrest calls that ended with paramedics who informed others who died upon arrival. In March, the ministry recorded about 250 dead calls on arrival, peaking each month in the last two years up to this point. In June, the number increased to nearly 300. And during the first 23 days of July, the maximum recent knowledge available, the branch had already surpassed that number, a new record, firefighters said.
Of the small subset of these later proven home deaths shown coVID-19, an overwhelming majority of others were Hispanic, according to the knowledge of the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. In the first two weeks of July, the coroner attributed the home deaths of 22 other people in Harris County to the coronavirus, which already exceeds the June total. Sixteen of the dead, 73%, were Hispanic.
Benito left wife and four children in his local Mexico. He hadn’t noticed them for thirteen years and recently talked about coming home forever, worried about being here without legal status.
In Houston, there’s only father and son. They used to play football in combination and eat something in their favorite place to eat Mexican every Friday. Benito, a typical father, scolded Christopher for not calling his mother or for changing unmarked lanes.
“He is my father but also my friend, ” said Christopher.
“If you’re sick, go to the hospital, ” is his message to others. “We don’t know if it can just be a blood-inscrusting coronavirus or a coronavirus. This disease has nothing to play with.”
Beginning in June, Dr. Jamie McCarthy, executive vice president of the Hermann Memorial Health System and emergency physician, heard anecdotes from colleagues suggesting that coronavirus affected Hispanics more than other teams in the Houston area.
This week, the hospital’s formula conducted an emergency room visit investigation that showed those observations. More than 37% of the nearly 9,000 patients who tested positive for the virus at Memorial Hermann hospitals knew themselves as Hispanics, a higher percentage than the combination of patients typical of the hospital formula, McCarthy said. Another 4,000 patients who tested positive for the virus refused to express the percentage of their ethnicity at the hospital, however, a significant number of them came here with predominantly Hispanic zip codes.
Although Hispanic patients in the COVID-19 formula were younger (more than 20, 30, and 40 years of age than other age teams), McCarthy reported that a similar percentage of them, about 4%, ended up having to be admitted to an extensive care unit compared to patients of other ethnicities, who tend to be older. Part of the reason, McCarthy said, is that underlying fitness conditions, experts say, can cause poor effects even in fit youth.
“Most other people who are 40 years old and have a little diabetes or a little high blood pressure or maybe a little extra weight don’t feel more threatened by it,” McCarthy said. “But that’s actually what we’re seeing. People who think they are healthy because their chronic diseases are well controlled are increasingly threatened and require hospitalization.”
Lack of fitness coverage, language barriers and beyond poor reporting can lead many Hispanic citizens to emergency rooms until it’s too late, McCarthy said.
“I’m sure there are many other people who tell the story of: “My person I enjoyed went to the hospital and never spoke to them again, and they died,” McCarthy said. And it’s scary. So if you don’t speak English in a limited socioeconomic environment, are you going to call 911 when the other people who did never get home? “
After realizing the trends, Memorial Hermann introduced Spanish-style education projects aimed at predominantly Latino communities, adding billboards and television segments, urging citizens to move away socially and seek medical attention when they begin to feel sick.
A few weeks before conducting a prayer vigil in the outdoor parking lot of Hermann Southeast Memorial Hospital, Valery Martinez won a painful call from his aunt. His cousin, Arturo “Tudy” Valles Jr., 41, had been ill for days before his mother saw him looking for air in the middle of the night of June 26 and despite everything he called 911. The ambulance quickly pulled him out of his home. house in Pasadena, a predominantly Hispanic city southeast of Houston, to the hospital, where it was soon connected to a fan.
In the days leading up to his hospitalization, when he first saw the sore throat, Valles made 4 attempts to get a COVID-19 checkup at a loose checkpoint near his home. But each and every day, his circle of relatives said, the clinic lacked controls before reaching the front of the line.
Valles’ mother, Nilda De La Pea, tested positive at one time after calling paramedics for her son. Then, a week later, Martinez also hit the virus, forcing her to leave her home to infect her elderly grandmother.
“Basically, everyone I know has been moved and other people are dying,” said Martinez, who at the time could tell 4 other people in his life that they died of COVID-19.
A single father who lived with his mother and 13-year-old daughter, Valles worked at a chemical plant until his diabetes worsened several years ago, forcing him to have his leg amputated. Although he is only 41 years old, his underlying physical disorders put him in a situation of great threat once he has become coronavirus.
Last week, after Valles spent three weeks with a fan, Memorial Hermann doctors warned that maybe he wouldn’t do it another night, which led Martinez to organize a video call. Eighteen of Valles’ relatives took turns telling him how much they enjoyed him.
“We’re abandoning it,” Martinez said last Thursday, two days after the video call. “God has the last word, doctors or nurses.”
His circle of relatives held a fundraiser on Saturday, promoting Tex-Mex dishes in the parking lot of a place to eat in Pasadena to help pay for the developing medical bills of Valles. A week after the doctors’ warning, Valles is still alive, giving Martinez and his circle of relatives hope that he can survive.
But on Tuesday, the hospital called with a devastating update. The number of other people in Martinez’s life who had died from coronavirus had increased to five.
“”I charge everything”: Hispanic citizens are the highest affected by COVID-19 in Texas” first published in https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/30/texas-coronavirus-hispanic/ through The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is proud to hold 10 years of exceptional journalism for a state of emergency.