Latino Hospital Heroes

In March, Houston Methodist became the first academic medical center in the country to give critically ill patient convalescent plasma therapy, and the Mexican American doctor was the principal investigator on the project.

As she treated the terrifying surge of COVID-19 patients, Rojas remembered what Dominican used to do when she was growing up—to look out for neighbors and "take care of each other."

“It felt like every day you were going to war. It was like if you were in the Army," said the Dominican American nurse who first came to the U.S. as an international student to learn English. "I’d like to see more of a mandate on a national level to wear a mask."

Of Mexican and Guatemalan heritage, Escobar works at a hospital in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Boyle Heights. The hardest part is "being the last person" to talk and comfort the coronavirus patients who passed away.

"Latinos are particularly affected because of issues related to access to health care and because many tend to live in close proximity, even among generations." Everyone in the country has to "empathize with the suffering of your neighbor" and follow social guidelines, he says.

The Latina and first-generation Mexican American translates crucial coronavirus information to patients in the state's central valley, home to many Latinos. "The most challenging part of my job, the hardest part, is having to deliver bad news."

“The emergency room is all about crisis," says the native New Yorker of Puerto Rican heritage. "We are trained to see death—but no one was trained to deal with surges of patients every single day." She personally suffered a COVID-19 loss.

Helping care for critically ill patients was challenging at first because of the lack of information. Now, a large volume of medical literature published daily, which "means society has really invested in trying to find a way to take care of the disease."

"As infectious disease doctors, we always try to be ahead, thinking of what's going to happen," said Alcaide, director of infectious diseases research at the University of Miami Health System. "But this was different.

"COVID is affecting more Latinos and Blacks, but they're not being represented in studies. That worries us," says the research doctor of Puerto Rican heritage.