Did we arrive or were we pushed?

By: Lázaro Numa Águila

Cuba-Covid

Since June 16, the first recovery phase was declared for a significant number of provinces in the country, only Havana and Matanzas were exempted from this measure. After one hundred days of the Covid-19 pandemic in Cuba, a certain level of general unease began to be noticed in the population and at capital management levels. Very quickly and still having cases of SARS-CoV-2 infected, Cuba’s Athens also moved on to the first phase. The decision was made due to the behavior in the province of the five indicators assumed as health patterns for this: incidence rate, reproductive index, active cases, number of positive cases with known source of infection in the last fifteen days and local transmission events.

At that time, the capital of all Cubans remained the queen of social indiscipline, law enforcement was absent within the neighborhoods, at least in the center of the city. The visible picture left much to be desired: a real nightmare for the tellers in the confrontation with the scourge.

La Covid-19 no fue impedimento para que las calles habaneras fueran tomadas por la población por infinidad de motivos.
The Covid-19 was no impediment to the habaneras streets being taken by the population for a myriad of reasons.

What has changed from then to date? Very little or nothing, and not all changes can be signaled as positive.

Being the tail of the pandemic raises questions about management and that creates concerns. On a social level, there was rapidly a greater relaxation, to the point that in certain capital areas it seemed that it was all over. To top it all off, a transmission focus emerged in the municipality of Cotorro that to date continues to report cases. Despite all this, what some of us foreshadowed happened, the first phase was proclaimed for Havana and it was again claimed that it was due to the behaviour of the five health indicators.

La Habana mostró siempre un mayor nivel de relajamiento social, en determinadas zonas capitalinas parecía que se vivía un estado de normalidad a causa del descontrol y la falta de rigor, por parte de quienes deben de exigir el orden público.
Havana always showed a higher level of social relaxation, in certain capital areas it seemed that there was a state of normality due to uncontrollability and lack of rigor, on the part of those who must demand public order.

Although these indicators, from a statistical point of view, are very general, and that in the capital everything that is calculated on the basis of its population tends to give a low result – please note that at the statistical close of the National Bureau of Statistics and Information (ONEI), valid for 2019, this was 2,131,480 effective and legal inhabitants , the largest in the country, compared to a small “apparently” number of cases in numbers, but highly polluting – the result will always be small for the province. The same will happen if the calculations are taken to a municipality. Statistics, in this case, are often misleading. Given the degree of transmissibility of SARS-Co V-2 and the levels of asymptomatic patients exceeding 80% of the cases detected to this day, they are high-risk factors for the population of Havana, a territory where the disease has not been able to be controlled as in the rest of the provinces of the country. Therefore, an epidemiological phase pass such as the one just implanted can become a real boomerang that, in the short to medium term, generates a complex epidemiological problem, which is often called “regrowthe”.

We are aware that the country must at some point restore its normality and, above all, its economy, and that the capital did not provide the dose of discipline it owed and was expected, for many reasons, not all attributable to the population. We also know that there was a lack of rigour in enforcing the provisions of the forces intended for this purpose, that there were desupply (and still there are) that always generate insecurities in the public, and that large population sectors do not have the necessary conditions, from a housing and health point of view, to comply with effective isolation, due to historical abandonments. It proved inability to be able to feed the capital population mass equally and, above all, to keep it under control. These are only a few assessments from the actual analysis of the stage lived, based on the information that has been collected and available to a standing analyst, who basically uses what was obtained from the field study and how little it transcends through the means.

Las necesidades y la indisciplina social provocaron en la capital un estado de desorden notable.
Social needs and indiscipline caused a state of remarkable disorder in the capital.

The message seems clear: “You have to follow at all costs and at all costs.” If we don’t get to the first phase properly, we’re pushed, but the truth is that the habaneros are done. Experience has to call us to chapter, not take care of ourselves, we run the risk of becomes a positive number among those infected by the microscopic virus. Give us or not, that’s the reality, because the final chapter of this terrible novel, in its possible first season, is about to be broadcast. Ω

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