The night in “Las Conejitas” that now has Coyhaique in its first quarantine

It went from a model city to one of the areas that has regressed the most in handling the pandemic. With 303 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 150 active until yesterday, the city of Coyhaique is one of the areas that most worries the health authorities and, therefore, from this Friday it will enter quarantine for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic.

What was it that explosively triggered the curve in the capital of the Aysén Region? The authorities in the area point to one main reason: the tide of contagion that caused one of several nights without supervision at the Las Conejitas cabaret.

In the exercise of traceability, at least 60 of the 150 active cases lead to the brothel located at 464 Victoria Street, one of the arteries that in Coyhaique marks the beginning of the upper area of ​​the city, the one with the least economic resources.

Like most outbreaks in the region, the crisis in “Las Conejitas” began with a zero case imported, this time from the Magallanes Region, that since August has been increasing its rate of infected.

Violating the health regulation, a 63-year-old man traveled from that area to Coyhaique with an already confirmed diagnosis of Covid. He entered the region falsifying data. Despite having a family residing in the region, he gave a false address and phone number and avoided the mandatory quarantine imposed by the authorities of the region for all visitors.

One of his first stops was the two-story large house that houses the restaurant patented by Lidia Bahamonde Bórquez that, if it were not for the tinted windows and the hanging sign, it looks more like a house than a commercial premises, and that is run by 12 women of Colombian and Venezuelan nationality.

From that first visit it was only a matter of time. A week later, the visitor to “Las Conejitas” worsened and ended up in the Regional Hospital of Coyhaique, where he remains until today with mechanical ventilation.

“He or one of the relatives he has in the area said that he had been to that restaurant and that is where the cases of that outbreak began to appear,” says one of the doctors in the area who adds that It is still not possible to do all the traceability of the case because the patient has not been able to deliver his complete statement.

After a week the first symptoms of the women of the cabaret and of the clients who were their close contacts appeared. Several of them were infected, which caused an additional outbreak in the Arroyo el Gato restaurant and cabaret, located on Simpson Street with October 12, where some also work.

According to one of the authorities in the area, in addition to the health and economic crisis, the case has also caused a social disaster in the city. The traceability left the clients of the nightclub and their families exposed, who in several cases have been infected.

Some came to the hospital already assuming they were infected. Others approached the Mobile PCR that the health authority installed in various parts of the city in response to the heat map of infections. “These people came doing the injuries, as they were passing, and then they told that they had been in the Las Conejitas restaurant,” says a professional in the area.

The fire also generated noise in the immigrant community in the region, because in the framework of the investigations by the authorities, several of the women who until now had not commented in their environment that they were engaged in prostitution were exposed.

Until yesterday, the Aysén Health Service was also investigating the possibility that some of those infected in the Las Conejitas restaurant had been infected by a member of their community who arrived in the region in September and was also ill.

The mayor of Coyhaique, Alejandro Huala, today ensures that the provision of the municipality is to expire the patent of this and other commercial premises that during the pandemic have operated during the curfew.

“Based on the action of the health authority, we suspended the patent indefinitely and my intention is to expire it in December”, assures La Tercera PM.

“We are doing the inspection work with the police and the army and the Seremi de Salud. We are going to expire all of them even though now I don’t have the powers to do so and they can take me to trial, ”insists the mayor’s authority.

Deputy DC Miguel Angel Callisto However, it points to Huala’s management as responsible for the emergency.

“Who has the power to supervise and close is the municipality. The health authority concurs when there is a complaint. The mayor is the one who delivers the municipal licenses and in this case He has issued restaurant patents but the truth is that they do not control that these centers function as restaurants. They function as a cabaret. They are brothelyes ”, says the parliamentarian.

Calisto adds that “there is a serious inspection problem because the municipality does not have inspectors, the few that do work until five in the afternoon. Today a large part of the municipality is operating via telematics. I do not understand that the mayor avoids his functions and hides himself in the lack of resources so as not to supervise when other mayors with more cases than ours do it ”.