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Buffalo doctor begins testing daily for coronavirus among patients

Dr. Raul Vazquez increased the testing facility at his practice on Buffalo's West Side.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Dr. Raul Vazquez recently began running drive-through COVID-19 testing clinics at the locations of two of his offices in the city of Buffalo for the past few weeks. Dr. Vazquez first began running the clinics, as a way to address what he saw as a lack access to resources for vulnerable communities in the city. 

Initially, Vazquez would hold testing clinics every few days. He's ramped up testing in recent days as physicians within the network of his practice, GBUAGHN, become aware of more symptomatic patients.  

His reasoning was that communities of color in Buffalo were likely to feel the effects of COVID-19 more than any other, because of pre-existing conditions that were already prevalent in those communities and lack of access to regular healthcare and proper nutrition among other things. 

Since he’s begun testing Dr. Vazquez says he’s seen a number of tests come back positive and a trend of blood clots in COVID-19 patients.

"If the clots are affecting the kidney they develop kidney problems, if it’s a liver, then you start seeing liver problems. If it’s a heart and you already have a problem with a heart vessel you an have a heart attack. We would see people get off a vent and then two or three days later go home and die and it was probably attributed to that clot component that we weren’t checking," he said. 

Dr. Vazquez says he hasn’t been able to compile enough data to determine definitive hot spots for COVID-19 in the city, but he’s hoping once he receives the results from recent testing he’ll be able to do so starting next week. 

He also has plans to work with Mayor Brown’s Office to help create a comprehensive plan to get more resources into communities hit particularly hard by the virus. 

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