With its own “red zone” of quarantine around 72 homes in San Manuel, the municipality of Puerto Padre tries to prevent the COVID-19 from spreading throughout the community after the last week a citizen with residence in the province of Ciego de Ávila, who made a short stay in this town north of Las Tunas tested positive for the new coronavirus.
San Manuel, Puerto Padre.- Preventively the Municipal Defense Council of Puerto Padre decreed the limitation of the movement for the 670 inhabitants of the houses located in the area framed between streets 28, 21, 19 and up to 24 of San Manuel. For the first time, such a high number of residents of Las Tunas are being held with such severity, although at dawn this Sunday no positive case for SARS CoV-2 associated with the Ciego de Ávila’s woman diagnosed on September 16 had been detected.
It was precisely the efficiency of the active health inquiry what made it possible to detect the presence in the town of a compatriot from a territory with autochthonous transmission of the disease, said Dr. Ricardo Ronda Solórzano, who works as a family doctor in the medical office 9, within the area baptized as the "red zone" by the locals. "Thanks to timely proceedings, the epidemiological survey was carried out in less than 24 hours by the basic health team and we sent her to the isolation center in Cerro de Caisimú," he said.
After the preventive isolation was decreed, the doctor pointed out, the investigation was intensified with preventive actions by our Public Health personnel who have all the security means. “We emphasize vulnerable people such as diabetics and those with high blood pressure, ischemic heart disease, chronic kidney failure; as well as children less than one year of age and pregnant women.
"We have always had the continuous support and advice from our health area (the Rafael Izquierdo polyclinic, from Delicias), and from the municipal and provincial directorates of the sector," stressed the also second-year resident of the Comprehensive General Medicine specialty.
Flanked by his right hand in this task, the nursing graduate Damaris López Cabrera, Ronda Solórzano said that the reaction of the residents to this requirement, which seriously altered daily life, has been positive. "We have a duty to guide and educate them to get out of this situation without transmission within our population."
The closure of the blocks was accompanied by the deployment of the authorities, companies and organizations to guarantee the isolated people everything necessary, in particular food and medicine. Within that area, 13 messengers work, who are linked with the same number of distributors inside to ensure the flow of food and other essential products, said Rubicel Pupo Céspedes, president of the Popular Council 12, San Manuel.
In unison, the representatives of the social and mass organizations mobilized, who together with the different organizations have collaborated with the distribution of fish, frozen chicken, ice cream, viands. Others, such as Aqueduct, maintain the water supply through the network and by means of a tank truck to the doctor’s office, which now operates as a 24-hour medical emergency center in the area. "Services such as the regulated basic food basket and the payment of salaries and pensions are equally guaranteed to them," he concluded.
In the last 15 days, Las Tunas registers an incidence rate of 0 cases of Covid-19 per 100 thousand inhabitants; however, government authorities have taken extreme measures to prevent a rebound of the disease in the Balcony of Eastern Cuba.
