A Puerto Rican nurse was the first to be vaccinated in New Jersey

Washington dc – Puerto Rican nurse Maritza Beníquez was the first person to be vaccinated against coronavirus in the state of New Jersey, which he highlighted as an opportunity to emphasize to Latinos that the road to normalcy lies in securing the immunity of much of the population.

“I wanted to be at the front so my people could see me,” Beníquez said today in a telephone interview with The New Day.

More than 18,000 people have died in New Jersey due to the coronavirus, which has had a particularly hard impact on Latino and black communities.

Beníquez’s vaccination, which took place on Tuesday, coincided with his birthday.

Born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, Beníquez’s family lives in Isabela.

Beníquez has been working at Newark University Hospital for five years.

Since March, he said, it has been very hard to live close to the emergence of the coronavirus, which has taken the lives of over 305,000 people in the United States. At his hospital, he said, 11 employees have died.

“You help keep a person alive, so that they can return it to their family. I can only imagine the pain that the families have felt, when a relative dies not because of an expected illness, but because a virus was stolen from them,” he said. .

The Puerto Rican nurse stated that she did not feel the injection given to her on March, but she was thrilled as soon as she was vaccinated, which means for the safety of her children, her other relatives, her own patients and she. Beníquez is already scheduled to be given the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on January 4th.

“I felt safe. I’m crazy to be given the second dose, because I know I won’t run the risk of infecting or affecting others. I want to go see my family, give my grandmother (Isabela) a hug and feel that family warmth again, ”he added.