From Texas Public Radio:
In Laredo, sirens have become a part of the soundscape. The pandemic has hit this city harder than most. The spring surge, the summer surge, then a merciless winter spike…Laredo wasn’t spared from any of them. Not one.
Dr. Ricardo Cigarroa, a Laredo cardiologist, has been on the front lines for most of that time.
“I come from a family of physicians. We’ve been in Laredo nearly 100 years,” he said.
Cigarroa was out of commission for a few weeks in July as he fought COVID himself but has since been back to work. He feels it is a duty passed down to him by his father and his father before him.
“We’ve had a commitment to both healthcare and education in our community for a very long time,” he said.
Cigarroa has been such a visible presence in Laredo, trying to teach its citizens how to be safe during this pandemic, that he’s become known as the Dr. Fauci of the border. But he’s done more than educate.
The Princeton and Harvard Medical School educated heart specialist makes dozens of house calls a day to patients fighting COVID-19, meeting a desperate need.
“When COVID began in March, there was no treatment. They were treated like lepers,” he said. “I realized that these patients were being abandoned.”
In the evening, he sees patients in his cardiology office, which is now a COVID clinic. He and his staff evaluate them, they treat them or they send them to the hospital, whether they’re insured or not. Whether they have money or not.
“I will never cancel the COVID Clinic, because I know that in every COVID Clinic, we have saved people,” Cigarroa said. “Every day I said if I would have canceled clinic today, where would this patient have gone?”
But what will really make a difference in Laredo, Cigarroa says, are more vaccines. He points out that so far, according to the department of state and health services, Lubbock has gotten around twice as many vaccine doses. The two cities have similar sized populations, so he wonders if it’s because, according to the 2010 census, Lubbock is more than 75% white and Laredo is more than 95% Latino.
“The border has been the bastard child of Texas, forever. The last to get universities, the last to get a medical school?” Cigarroa said. “I don’t want to think its discrimination. I want to think its stupidity. However, given our history, the perception sure is terrible.”
We reached out to the Department of State Health Services and a rep there says the disparity in vaccine distribution is because the first rounds of vaccines were earmarked for healthcare workers, and Lubbock has many more healthcare workers eligible for vaccine than does Laredo.
This explanation doesn’t move Cigarroa at all.
“Sure, we don’t have that health infrastructure. But if you’re a true leader, and you care about human life, you send the national guard down here to vaccinate us,” he said. “You come do the right thing.”
Tuesday, the state sent a new delivery of vaccines to both Lubbock and Laredo. Both Cities got five thousand doeses.
Listen to the full episode here.
