There are many names behind that sign of "Labor Feat" embroidered on the flag recently received by the workers of the Air Fractionation Plant of the Stainless Steel Company (ACINOX, by its acronym in Spanish) in Las Tunas.

Las Tunas, Cuba.- It is just the confirmation of a collective epic that involved several entities to ensure the medicinal oxygen that saved the lives of sick or convalescent Cubans from COVID-19.

The aforementioned gas was no stranger to the ACINOX Las Tunas plant and, for sure, it will continue to be so in the future. At least since 2020, they have been supplying it regularly to local hospitals since the need for it began to rise due to the pandemic. "Industrial Gases" tanker trucks used to come and take around 20,000 liters of liquid oxygen and that was enough for several days' supply," says Yucel Borges Escobar, director of the Quality, Technology, and Development business unit.

But two months ago everything suddenly changed. The role of this site became critical when there was a serious breakdown in the only Cuban plant specialized in the production of medicinal oxygen, during a serious outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 with the consequent increase in the number of patients requiring assisted ventilation. Then, what it was a complement became one of the few sources of this gas for Cuban hospitals.

The first thing to do, says Borges Escobar, was to find more of a metal melting pot, as the tanker trucks specialized in transferring the liquid dioxygen are popularly known, to speed up the supply flow. "We prepared, he says, two more provided by our colleagues from the Raw Materials companies. With that, we could make two and three changes a day, because our plant produces 1,200 to 1,300 liters a day.

"We created a work scheme so that they could connect them there and know when we had to send them. Always in contact with the government command post.

"As of August 11, he specifies, we added a line for filling gaseous dioxygen which, although it served us at its maximum capacity as established, because we did not have the technology for that; given the difficulty of the Cuban plants to produce it liquid and then gasify it, we, as an industry, responded. We supplied not only the isolation centers and hospitals in Las Tunas, but also in other provinces such as Granma, Holguín, and Santiago de Cuba or further away, such as Cienfuegos or Ciego de ávila. We reached peaks of supplying more than a thousand cylinders a day."

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Yusel recalls that these were times of great pressure because both, the storage and transfer means were subjected to a higher intensity of operation than usual, and that caused many breakdowns. "These were things that had to be solved immediately because the hospitals couldn't wait. We worked 24 hours here and there, wherever we had to go to solve the mishaps that arose."

More than once, he admits, he was overheard talking on the phone with the rawness that comes from feeling the tension of the emergency. An undertaking of such dimensions required the participation of entities from the Ministries of Agriculture, Transportation, the Interior, and the Armed Forces, which guaranteed workers and vehicles that made the process efficient and safe.

In 29 years of working at Industrial Gases Company, René González Ortiz does not remember days as hard as those experienced at that time. The name of labor feat, he assures, is very well placed. Entire days on the road carrying and bringing cylinders, he evokes. "We would arrive from Camagüey and had to leave for Ciego de Ávila, but always thinking of the people who couldn't wait," he says. Looking at everything more calmly, because the pandemic seems to be subsiding, he can't stop thinking about so many Cubans who have suffered from COVID-19.

Because of his training, Lieutenant Colonel Leandro Parra, of the Special Troops of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, would be better prepared for situations like this one. However, he even stresses the complexity of such a task. "It was, he describes, a never-ending task... brings down empty balls, puts the full ones on another truck. Officers and soldiers were aware of the commitment, we knew it was necessary to get up early and stay up late at night here, fulfilling. With each balloon we brought up, we felt that it was a person we were saving in any part of our country."

LEARNING FROM THE FEAT

Aracelys Luis Pacheco's words are a little short when she relives those days: "We have always taken the step forward, every time there is a problem. This time we saw the need to double our efforts. They were long and intense nights and days in which we could hardly take care of the family."

More than once her daughters urged her to take a break that would alleviate her osteoarthritis. "If I rest, someone will die," was her answer. Now she and the rest of the ACINOX Las Tunas collective are looking ahead, focused on plans to learn from this feat. Modernizing their Air Fractionation Plant is the dream because having a more modern and efficient technology there could not only enable them to produce higher quality steel but also face eventualities such as the one in August and even to have an additional line of business for the country's economy, such as the production of liquid and gaseous oxygen.