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After the sanitary fence was implemented in Rabo de Peixe, it is time to test (almost) the entire population of one of the largest parishes in the Azores. There are about 230 professionals, including doctors, nurses, firefighters and security forces, mobilized to stop the spread of covid-19 in the parish with the most positive cases in the archipelago. In a region with 356 active cases, Rabo de Peixe has registered 78 infected so far.
“It is a great operation, which involves a very large logistics, with hundreds of professionals, mainly doctors and nurses,” explains to the PUBLIC the regional director of Health, Berto Cabral, who in the final stretch of the first day of tests was already taking stock “Very positive” of the measure. “Everything is going well. People join without limitations or problems ”.
In total, it is estimated that about 7 “, 8 thousand tests” will be carried out quickly in a population that, according to the 2011 censuses, was 8,866 inhabitants, a figure that is expected to have already increased to about 10,000. Of the massive tests, children up to six years old are left out – “unless they have symptoms or the parents want them” – and “people who have been tested in the last seven days” and who, according to regional standards , they will have another test six days later.
The rest of the population is invited to take the test. Guest is the correct term: membership is voluntary, so people’s initiative is “critical.” To ensure participation, seven test stations were secured at different points in the village covering 16.98 square kilometers.
“There is one Self-service where people test themselves in the car, park and wait a few minutes in the car to see the result. There is a fixed station that is operating in the Rabo de Peixe naval club and there are five mobile stations that will walk through the different streets to cover different areas of the parish throughout the operation ”, explains the regional director. In other words: there is a fixed station, a Self-service and five vans that circulate through different parts of the town to ensure the testing of as many people as possible.
At the end of the first day, in conversation with the PUBLIC, Berto Cabral assumed some difficulty in quantifying the number of tests already carried out, due to the “complexity” of the test system. “A few thousand, certainly”, anticipating, however, that three more new positive cases have already been detected in the parish within the scope of the tests.
Before, on the ground, Berto Cabral had already assumed that such a large operation, especially considering the region’s resources, would force a reverse of the medal: “Some assistance activity was suspended,” he told journalists in the parish north of São Miguel. . “The operation is of such a scope that it would not be possible to operate it if it were not.”
Especially since it is not limited to testing the population. With three days of tests and a health fence until December 8, the regional director points out that the “process does not end with the tests.” Then, he assures, there will be a “follow-up of positive cases”, which “will involve social workers and psychologists” and even the search for “places to host people who cannot afford isolation.”
For the PUBLIC, the president of the parish council, Jaime Vieira, was proud of the behavior of the Rabo-Peixenses so far: “Things are going as normal as the situation requires. The people must be congratulated for the way they face the situation, ”he says. Jaime Vieira also highlights the praise for the work of health professionals and thanks everyone for their support in a “very complex operation” that wants to “stop” the spread of covid-19 in the village. “Because we are testing massively, we know that more cases will appear, but it is a way of knowing where the outbreaks are and of stopping what has been, day by day, the increase in cases in Rabo de Peixe”.
Regarding the pandemic, the mayor, also a member of the Regional Assembly for the PSD, sought to deconstruct the stigma that surrounds that fishing village, stressing that it is “necessary to know the reality” of a land so often mediated. “This situation in Rabo de Peixe does not happen because we are different from the others, it is not there. Above all, it is necessary to know the reality of that land “, he said, concluding:” It happens, above all, because a small geographical area concentrates a large number of people. “
For the PUBLIC, the head of the anti-pandemic commission in the region, Gustavo Tato Borges, had already considered the situation in Rabo de Peixe as the “most difficult” in the archipelago in terms of pandemic control. Last Thursday, the Azores registered the highest daily number of cases since the beginning of the pandemic: 42. So far, 1,128 cases have been detected and 19 people have died in the region, which in July registered zero cases of covid-19 .
