First Hispanic surgeon general on Covid: Use 'common sense,' save your family Antonia Novello, the first Latina U.S. surgeon general and a native of Puerto Rico, urges Latinos to get vaccinated and wear masks. NBC News

MIAMI — Dr. Antonia Novello, the first Hispanic person to serve as U.S. surgeon general, is spending her birthday on Monday administering Covid-19 vaccinations at a health center in San Juan, Puerto Rico — and urging more Latinos to get vaccinated and wear masks.

... Nursing shortages have long vexed hospitals. But in the year and a half since its ferocious debut in the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has stretched the nation’s nurses as never before, testing their skills and stamina as desperately ill patients with a poorly understood malady flooded emergency rooms. They remained steadfast amid a calamitous shortage of personal protective equipment; spurred by a sense of duty, they flocked from across the country to the newest hot zones, sometimes working as volunteers. More than 1,200 of them have died from the virus.