A month ago, from this same website, we said that the beginning of the health intervention was no a reason to believe that everything has happened and the statistics of the pandemic in Las Tunas during June corroborated that statement.
Las Tunas, Cuba.- If someone believed that the COVID-19 numbers in the territory had already worsened enough in May, what was seen in the just-ended month showed that the abyss of the worsening does not seem to have a bottom; not unless we all do something to stop it.
The sixth month of the year "pulverized" almost all the records of infections set by its predecessor, which were already creepy. The total of more cases for a month with its 1,270 and the largest number new positives in one day (127 on June 30) led the bad records, only in the accumulated imported cases remained below, something that would confirm the effectiveness of the norms applied since June 5 and that through economic springs would have discouraged trips to Russia, the main place where the people from Las Tunas who return from abroad are getting infected.
According to the statistical analysis of the experts from the University of Las Tunas, June doubled the positives notified in May, to the point that their amount means almost half of all those detected here since the start of the pandemic, in March 2020. Its data is eloquent: the panorama worsened faster from June 15, when more than half of all positives registered in the month were notified, both in the provincial accumulated and each of the municipalities. In fact, the mathematicians add, 531 cases were reported the last week, at a rate of 76 per day on average. As a whole, its second fortnight added 838 new positives (55.87 per day).
Sadly, in June as in no other month so far, the families of our province mourned some of their members infected with the new coronavirus. In this period, 40 percent of all the deaths confirmed here due to this disease occurred since the beginning of the pandemic; and not only in the provincial capital.
The dispersion of the SARS-CoV-2 is another incontestable reality, even though the municipality of Las Tunas leads all the indicators. For the first time, specifically on June 25, seven municipalities reported positives, and four days later, patients were detected in the eight municipal demarcations, a trend that continued in the following days. Nothing similar had happened with such frequency.
While the municipality of Las Tunas was confirmed as the area with the highest transmission, other territories continued to worsen their epidemiological situation. The clearest example is “Colombia,” which, during June, raised its total number of cases to 127. That means 73 percent of all detected there since the beginning of the pandemic. June 29 was its worst date when a record of 24 positives in 24 hours was registered.
The same happened in“Amancio,” although fewer patients were diagnosed. Not even “Jesús Menéndez” was unharmed, because a chain of days without confirming new positives that had begun on May 28 was broken on June 27.
ABDALA WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ALONE
Not even the praise given by the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, Miguel Díaz-Canel, when evaluated here the fight against the pandemic, is relevant anymore. While it is true that the infection rates in Las Tunas are lower than those of other provinces with higher percentages of their population vaccinated, it does not help too much looking into that mirror, because when contrasting with our own numbers in previous stages it will be quickly proven that there is no reason to believe that we are better off, but quite the contrary.
The glass seems half full when we notice that the province was able to close most of the activities of the 2020-2021 school year in General Education, something that in these times is a luxury. But the almost two thousand students who will have to wait until September to pass the grade will surely think otherwise.
Right now, Havana is seeing its figures improve, thanks, experts say, to the fact that more people have been vaccinated than in other provinces. However, it should be noted that in the capital of the country these procedures began at the end of March and it is only in the last few weeks that this improvement was noticed, very slowly.
Certainly here, during June, the first part of the health intervention involving health workers and others exposed to high risk of contagion was successfully concluded. This excellent news was completed with the certainty that the effectiveness of this vaccine candidate is 92.28 percent, which means that there is a very low probability that those who received the third dose more than 14 days ago will develop a severe stage of the disease.
However, it is not convenient to bet everything on Abdala's saving prick, because if Havana, which has been the scene of most clinical trials and broad-spectrum health interventions, took three months to see its numbers improve, there is no reason to think that in Las Tunas this is going to happen in a shorter period of time from the moment the health intervention is resumed.
One last note: remember that each digit referred to in these paragraphs carries many emotions: perhaps the uneasiness of those who are waiting for the result of a PCR, on which a chain reaction of events will depend that may or may not alter their life as they knew it up to now; perhaps it expresses the desperately sought patience by those who remain confined in an isolation center or the contained pain of those who could not even say goodbye to their loved one who has just died a victim of the COVID-19.
