The days that a pandemic led them to stay in an EIDE now converted into a hospital. Photo: Rodny Alcolea.
For almost a year in Cuba, as in the entire planet, life has changed, a pandemic, COVID-19, causes spaces to be disrupted, scenarios change and, above all, tests the adaptability of human beings.
In a particular way on our island, a battle is being waged against the deadly virus that involves, together with the health system, all organisms, institutions and political and mass organizations, which is the same as saying all Cubans.
To face the disease, stop it and stop its transmission, the most effective way is the isolation of those infected, their contacts and those suspected of carrying SARS-CoV-2, in hospitals or institutions authorized to function as such.
This is the case, since the very appearance of the new coronavirus in Cuba, at the Rafael Freyre Torres sports initiation school (EIDE) in Guantanamo, a center where the dormitories normally used by our boys and girls, student-athletes and future champions now house students Suspect patients awaiting the results of their PCR, confirmatory tests that they are positive or not for COVID-19.
Teachers, sports coaches, and support staff also changed their usual activities to serve as messengers, pantrists, transporters, wardrobes, and how many activities are needed in patient care, so comments the director of the EIDE budget unit Elisabel Alpajón Guilarte.
“Since last January 7, the center was selected to convert the area of the student residence into a red zone to attend to suspicious patients, and here 72 EIDE workers remain in the direct confrontation with the pandemic.”
“Complying with the required protocols and sanitary measures to avoid contagion and the spread of the disease, there are multiple assigned tasks that are carried out throughout the day; all with a great load of humanism that will make us emerge victorious in this battle against the coronavirus ”.
The director of the center also pointed out that the workers who are not directly in the schools work remotely and support the students in the visualization of the teleclasses and in advising the athletes for their preparation at home, and others fulfill other functions of support in the confrontation with COVID-19 in the municipality of Guantánamo.
But the work of sports and EIDE in the Cuban battle against the coronavirus began a year ago, as stated by Dr. Armando Guerra Caramés, director of the provincial center for sports medicine in Guantánamo (CEPROMEDE).
Mandy, as everyone knows him, explains that “a year ago the EIDE was the center for the classification of international and national travelers who arrived in the province, where a group of our workers had the responsibility of caring for these people”.
“The sports medicine technical force is the red line,” explains Mandy. Photo: Rodny Alcolea.
“While another part of our group devoted itself to the care of athletes, a task in which a study emerged, which today has become a national project and which is applied in national teams and high-performance centers in the country, for the diagnosis of the psychological effects of COVID-19 in athletes ”, explains Mandy.
“At this stage, 90 beds were enabled in the EIDE for the admission of suspected cases, who are cared for by 16 doctors and the same number of nurses, with a permanent on-call service in four 24-hour work shifts.
“Our technical force works in the health service in the red zone, complying with the biosecurity measures with thermometry, disinfection, the use of the nasobuco, and all this with the fulfillment of the guard service, the performance of the PCR, the transfer of those who are positive for the institutions authorized for their treatment or those who are negative for the disease who are discharged ”.
Rolando Carlos Charró Estrada, provincial director of sports in Guantánamo joins the dialogue, who assures that the more than 3,000 workers in the sector are also on the front lines of confronting the virus, as well as in food production, the fight against coleros and resellers, and in voluntary sports councils¨.
“It is worth highlighting the attention to our sports glories, who many by their age are more vulnerable to contagion, as well as to athletes and coaches, transmitting the revolutionary firmness that characterizes the sport of Guantanamo and the security that in the face of COVID-19 we will be victorious” .
With no time for more dialogue, due to the many tasks to be done, this reporter witnessed the moment that patients diagnosed as positive were transferred to another medical institution and then those who were negative returned home happy after the initial scare.
They will surely not forget the days that a pandemic led them to stay in an EIDE now converted into a hospital.
The EIDE Rafael Freyre of Guantánamo, converted into a field hospital against COVID-19. Photo: Rodny Alcolea.