Puerto Rico coronavirus chaos catches Washington’s attention
The chaos, cabinet changes and questionable contracts that have plagued Puerto Rico’s response to the coronavirus have caught Washington’s attention.
On Monday, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Chuck Grassley, sent Gov. Wanda Vázquez a five-page letter and a laundry list of questions.
Among the answers that Grassley’s powerful committee is seeking is why Health Secretary Concepción Quiñones de Longo and the island’s chief epidemiologist, Carmen Deseda, resigned last month. In addition, the committee wants information about $40 million worth of contracts to buy coronavirus test kits.
But the committee’s concerns go beyond just the current crisis. In the letter, Grassley is asking Vázquez to turn over investigations into “possible malfeasance by the government” that cover the last four years. Among the reports the committee is seeking are investigations into contracts awarded after Hurricane Maria in 2017, the previous governor’s acquisition of a $245,000 sports utility vehicle, the alleged politicization of Puerto Rico’s Institute of Statistics, and a lawsuit surrounding lack of public death data following recent hurricanes.
“Unfortunately, there have been recent troubling revelations regarding instability of leadership in Puerto Rico’s health system, as well as a clear lack of accountability regarding government procurement and contracting,” Grassley said, citing articles in the Miami Herald and other outlets. “These revelations are the latest in a steady stream of evidence demonstrating similar faults in the government of Puerto Rico’s rebuilding efforts following the largest municipal debt default in U.S. history and a string of devastating natural disasters.”
On Tuesday, Puerto Rico’s Federal Affairs Administration said Gov. Vázquez and island officials would respond “promptly” to the letter.
“We will answer Senator Grassley’s concerns without diverting our attention from the important work that thousands of American citizens are doing on the Island to combat and control the invisible threat that COVID-19 represents for the entire Nation,” Vázquez said in a statement. “I would have preferred that Senator Grassley or any other person who intervened in the drafting of this letter, had the courtesy of communicating with our team or with our Resident Commissioner, Jenniffer González, before attacking the people of Puerto Rico for situations that are replicated in other jurisdictions of the United States or foreign governments.”
The letter comes as Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory of 3.2 million people, is stumbling in its response to the coronavirus. Despite winning praise for shutting down non-essential businesses and imposing a curfew on March 16, it has struggled to ramp up testing and roll out a viable contact-tracing program.
As of Monday, the island had reported 1,252 cases of the coronavirus and 63 deaths. But the data is problematic. Last week, Health Secretary Lorenzo González acknowledged that some patients were being double or triple-counted in the statistics. His office has said it intends to produce accurate figures soon.
Even so, the island has tested fewer than 12,000 people, giving it the lowest per-capita testing rate compared to any U.S. state. For the last several nights, the capital has erupted with the sound of banging of pots and pans as locals demand more testing.
González took the reins of the health department last month after Quiñones de Longo resigned after holding the job for less than two weeks. When she stepped down she said she was troubled by the way some contracts were awarded, in particular a $38 million deal to buy rapid test kits with a small construction firm called Apex.
Puerto Rico’s legislature is conducting its own investigation into how the company won the deal to provide the tests, even as the purchase has been canceled due to delivery delays and because the tests did not have FDA approval.
González has uncovered other problems as well, including millions of dollars worth of medicine that expired as it languished in government warehouses.
This story was originally published April 20, 2020 at 4:30 PM.
