FILE – A nurse prepares a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on the Tomas Dones Coliseum, in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, Jan. 8, 2022. A debate over public well being and private rights intensified on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024, as Puerto Rican legislators clashed with medical consultants on the usage of masks and vaccines. (AP Photograph/Carlos Giusti, File)
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A fiery debate over public well being and private rights gripped Puerto Rico this week, intensifying Wednesday when legislators clashed with medical consultants.
The talk started earlier this month after the administrator of Puerto Rico’s Home of Representatives introduced the obligatory use of face masks, following varied COVID-19 circumstances reported within the seaside Capitol constructing.
One conservative legislator, Lisie Burgos, refused to put on a masks and was faraway from a listening to final week, prompting her to file a lawsuit on Monday that has but to be resolved. Later that day a decide ordered that, within the meantime, the island’s Home of Representatives shouldn’t “prohibit, stop or intervene” with Burgos’ proper to attend conferences.
Many had been outraged by the ruling, noting that the island of three.2 million individuals is reporting some 1,100 COVID-19 circumstances a day, with almost 25% of checks returning a constructive outcome. Final November, Puerto Rico’s authorities additionally declared a flu epidemic.
Hours after the decide’s ruling on Monday, the president of the Home of Representatives declared a state of emergency and introduced that each one classes can be held just about till the tip of February.
Puerto Rico’s Senate has mentioned it isn’t contemplating comparable measures.
As representatives gathered behind their pc screens this week, they tackled a proposed invoice that may get rid of vaccine necessities for schoolchildren youthful than 5, a proposal that additional enflamed the continuing well being debate.
On Wednesday, medical consultants condemned the invoice.
“This invoice, in essence, inserts the state into an anti-science, ideological present that has been gaining followers in what has been described as a brand new age of obscurantism,” mentioned Dr. Carlos Díaz Vélez, president of Puerto Rico’s Affiliation of Surgeons.
Different docs testified in regards to the security and wish for vaccines. Waleska Crespo, president of an affiliation of personal excessive colleges and universities, echoed their considerations.
“It’s the federal government that primarily has to guard the elemental proper to well being,” she mentioned.
The invoice was submitted by Burgos, member of a small conservative social gathering, and 4 different legislators who signify Puerto Rico’s two greatest political events. They argue that folks or authorized guardians who don’t imagine in vaccination for non secular functions or different causes must be exempt.
Backing the invoice was Carlos Pérez Toro, a Catholic priest, who spoke at Wednesday’s listening to.
“The shortage of informing mother and father, so they’re those who in the end resolve what’s greatest for the well being of their youngsters, led to authorities choices on compelled vaccination that had been typically not primarily based on the necessity to shield the varsity neighborhood from contagious ailments,” he mentioned.
The hearings over the invoice are ongoing, with a number of legislators vowing to combat its approval in addition to the pending lawsuit filed by Burgos rejecting the face masks requirement.
