In Alytus, most coronavirus cases: Cesiulis explained what he does differently from the rest of Lithuania

“You know, a month and a half ago we were at the bottom of the list and we were still in the green zone. One thing is that the neighbors seeing that we were in the green zone were in a good situation and there were almost no illnesses, people imagined that they could smoke and not protect themselves. I think a month and a half ago, most of Lithuania did not really believe that such a virus existed and we saw certain epithets. Currently, Alytus ranks first in terms of number of patients, but let’s look at the next number: Alytus ranks first in terms of how many tests he needs.

We are Dzuks and we joke around this place that if you go out into the woods and grab it for three minutes you probably won’t pick up a full bucket, but if you’ve been growing all day, you might just grab a full bucket. We do almost twice as many tests here as at Panevėžys, which currently ranks second in terms of number of diseases. I don’t mean that ten or eight times we test more than other cities and towns. The more we do, we try, the more we find.

Alytus business testing is also done. It is our mobile brigade that goes to the company, tests the employees and, interesting as it is, sometimes we find 20-30 sick employees who are practically asymptomatic ”, says N. Cesiulis.

When asked if it would be possible to maintain that rhythm for a long time, if so many people were studied, N. Cesiulis assured that Alytus wanted to go in a different direction from the rest of Lithuania.

“I think it is better to prevent human contact before it walks fifty more people and infects them. In this place we have launched another measure, which is not done in the rest of Lithuania, we voluntarily allow people who do not feel symptoms to check it, we only have a code that an Alytus resident can say and can take a free test. In this place, the more we try, the more we find, and the more we find, the faster we prevent it, ”says N. Cesiulis.

When asked if people also flocked to Alytus supermarkets, the mayor said there was no such image of Alytus that could be seen in big box stores.

“It’s hard to say whether there will be or not, but we didn’t have things like we saw at the Acropolis or other major centers. There may have been an increase in buying things that people may need in isolation, but there hasn’t been a such a marked increase ”, says N. Cesiulis.