RENO, Nev. (AP) - It all started with an itchy throat.
Before long, Miguel Ángel Lopez Villal Pinzón found himself in a hospital room, alone.
The 45-year-old Reno maintenance worker was hospitalized for more than two months and died Aug. 31 from COVID-19-related complications.
“He just started saying, ‘God’s calling me, I think my time is coming,’” his wife, Brenda Bravo Torres, told the Reno Gazette Journal .
Pinzón worked at an apartment complex and would often enter people’s homes while masked, Torres said. When he became ill, he unknowingly spread the virus to the rest of his family, including his wife, his 3-year-old daughter and his father-in-law.
Washoe County Health District data shows Hispanic or Latino people are testing positive at a rate more than double that of white people: 740 per 10,000 people compared with 351 of every 10,000 white people. Hispanic or Latino people account for 25% of the population, according to the 2019 U.S. Census, but 28% of the county’s coronavirus cases.
The Washoe County Health District noted that the race or ethnicity of individuals in 33% of cases is unknown due to a contact tracing backlog.
Nevada Health Response, which tracks coronavirus cases statewide, shows that Latino or Hispanic people account for about 37% of the state’s virus cases but 29% of the population.
Nationally, hospitalization rates for Latinos are 3.8 times the rate among white people, according to Salud America, an organization focusing on health equity for Latino families. It cited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showing that Hispanic people are dying at nearly three times the rate of white people.
The CDC attributed the disparities to socio-economic status, access to health care and work-related exposure to the virus.
Torres, 39, said her husband always wore his mask, but she’s sure he picked up the virus while at work.
“Me and my family were so careful,” she said. “He would always come home and wash his feet and shoes outside.”
Pinzón would then take a shower, leaving his clothes in a plastic bag for his wife to wash. It was a routine they established at the start of the pandemic.
One Monday, Pinzón started feeling sick. He called off work the next day.
On Friday, Torres took her husband to the hospital. That following Monday, he called his wife to tell her that he wasn’t coming home.
Pinzón was taken to the intensive care unit, where Torres said the doctors placed a special “space mask” device on his head to help him breathe. But he eventually stopped responding to treatment and died of a heart attack as a result of the virus’ side effects.
In all, Pinzón was hospitalized from June 21 to Aug. 31. He never knew his wife and other family members became infected by the virus. Torres never told him because she didn’t want him to worry.
Christabell Sotelo, a Washoe County Health District epidemiologist, attributed the disproportionate number of cases among Latino people to the types of jobs they work, their overall health, living situation and family customs.
She said many Latinos are frontline workers and she believes most feel pressured to go to work, even if they’re feeling sick.
“If you work in a grocery store, you’re not able to work from home,” Sotelo said.
She said most Latinos also live in large households and don’t have space to isolate themselves from relatives.
“When you put this all together, you have COVID-19 spreading quickly at home,” she said.
Diana Sande, communications manager for the Nevada Public Health Training Center, said she found most people fear losing their jobs.
“If you’re the head of your household and you need to feed your family, you’re going to go work,” she said.
Sande’s organization founded the COVID Crew, which provides food to those in need and launched campaigns including Effing COVID to educate Hispanics to stop the spread.
“We really need to be helping the community, especially the Latinx population, understand why they need to wear the mask,” she said.
Oscar Delgado, CEO of Community Health Alliance and a Reno City Council member, echoed Sotelo and Sande’s findings. His organization provides medical, pediatric dental and behavioral health services to neighborhoods and reaches out to underserved populations. It serves roughly 30,000 people in the Reno-Sparks area.
Delgado said that comparing Zip codes and demographics of people affected by the coronavirus shows many are working Latino families.
“These are people who don’t have the benefits or opportunities to work from home,” he said.
He said he was able to set aside $2.5 million from federal CARES Act funding to pay for laptops and Internet access for school students to remain in their homes and reduce their exposure to the virus.
Delgado said many students visit friends or relatives’ homes to have access to computers.
Delgado said he and his wife recovered from COVID-19, and his biggest worry was passing it to his son, who has asthma.
“We couldn’t isolate ourselves,” he said. “We still had to care for our kids, and we couldn’t count on help. Both of our parents are seniors and we didn’t want to expose them.”
Sotelo said many Latino community have underlying health issues such as diabetes or hypertension that put them at risk of experiencing severe illness if they become infected with the virus. He said his goal is to give people access to primary and preventative care.
Torres said that at one point, Pinzón was taking vitamins to build up his immune system.
When he became ill, all he wanted to do was sleep. The virus also affected his sense of taste.
“Everything tastes so horrible that you cannot eat,” Torres said. “If your immune system is low, how is it going to go up again if you’re sleeping and you can’t eat? It’s going to destroy your body.”
Torres described her husband as a leader who was full of life. He was a youth pastor and an elder at his church. He previously worked for La Voz Cristiana, a local Christian Spanish radio station.
“He was a person who always motivated people and encouraged people,” Torres said. “No matter what, throughout this process, he would be encouraging the nurses and doctors. He would be in pain, but he would be the one hyping them up.”
The couple would have celebrated their four-year anniversary in August. Now, Torres is a single mother of two children.
“He prepared me for this time,” Torres said of Pinzón. “I know God is going to help me, and I have my family who support me. I want to encourage people to know that life moves on.”
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