By this point in my internship, I have become familiar with all the programs and can somewhat expect a routine. This week I evenly balanced doing all three programs. In COPA, there was a push for recruitment of participants in neighborhoods where there was a significant loss to follow-up. In COCOVID there was the usual pick up and drop off of samples, although being able to go out into town never gets old. In SEDSS, I am still dressing up with full PPE to go to the ER, interestingly there are still a handful of COVID patients that often have overlapping symptoms with the dengue symptoms we look for. In other exciting news for this week, I will start to work on a lit review looking at symptomatic dengue cases picked up by surveillance systems. I am interested to see if the inclusion criteria is the same as the one used in the SEDSS program I work with. 

While not much new has been happening this week here in Puerto Rico, I cant help compare the almost 66.5% vaccination rate and end of strict regulation to the state in which Cuba is in. Though both islands are in the Caribbean, they could not be any different. It has really given me time to reflect on how important government structure is to successful public health practice.