The first thing Axel does when he comes home after a day’s work in central Havana, is strip down to his underwear in the open doorway, throw his clothes and face mask into the nearby washing machine, and then go indoors and straight to the shower.
In a country where it is not uncommon to see octogenarians in beachwear more suited to a music video than a trip to the cornerstore, this fifty-year old Habanero in his boxers every afternoon raises few eyebrows, especially since the new Corona laws have come into force.
To date, Covid 19 has claimed only 27 lives in Cuba’s population of eleven and a half million. Having few material resources at their fingertips, Cuba’s government is relying on its compliant populace, its widespread medical training programmes and its indisputed world-class resourcefulness in order to fight the recently arrived virus.
To start with, the Cuban Government hasn't waited to take action. Apart from the clothing advice - no outdoor clothes to be worn in the house - Cubans are not permitted to leave the house without a face mask or ‘nasobuco’ on, even if it is just to sit in their garden. (Doing so can incur a fine if the offender is seen by the police).
Few Cubans have the money to splash out on facemasks, but the government has this in hand: a ‘how to sew a ‘nasobuco’ ’ video is regularly broadcast every few hours on the state run tv, along with instructions about how to put it on, take it off and clean it, as well as reminding viewers of the importance of ironing to get out any really determined contamination after each wash.
Click here for ‘how to sew a nasobuco video as shown on Cuban tv:
All the schools, universities, bars, theatres, clubs and restaurants in Cuba shut a few weeks ago. Only essential workers, such as those providing medical care or serving in food shops, continue in their jobs as they did before the closures. This arrangement has become particularly challenging since the pulling of all public transport this week.
A series of measures have been implemented however, to enable key workers to get to work, such as the recommissioning of tourist buses to transport medics to their respective hospitals and clinics. Meanwhile, while school’s out, the children are not and if they are found playing in the street, their parents are fined by the police.
Apart from patrolling the streets to oversee compliance with the new regime, the police are also stationed outside food shops, making sure that waiting customers are the required one and a half metres apart when queuing. After baseball, salsa and boxing, Cubans are world leaders at queuing – be it in shops, at bus stops, outside toilets or in the legendary serpentine lines at Jose Marti international airport, as witnessed by many overseas tourists. But it seems even with decades of practice, the local population were ill-prepared for Coronavirus queues.
Axel’s sister, who lives in Playa, another district in Havana, said ‘By the beginning of the year I had got used to waiting an hour in a queue to buy some chicken, so when I got to the local supermarket at 8.30am last Monday, I had thought I would be back home for lunch.’ But she didn’t reach the shop counter until eight hours later. ‘When I got near the front,’ she added, ‘I used my mobile to call my daughter and got her to join me as they only allow you to buy two packets a person and there are three of us at home.’
Eileen’s daughter and a friend in their homemade nasobucos
In a country that has one of the highest, if not the highest ratio of doctors to population depending on whether you are looking at World Health Organisation or World Bank figures, it is unsurprising that Cuba is relying heavily on its home grown medical manpower to control the virus. With the closure of the universities, all the medical students, except those in their last year (who have already been posted to hospitals), are required to conduct daily household health checks. Javier Feria, a teacher from the Facultad de Ciencias Medicas in Mayabeque, near Guines, a town to the east of the capital, is in charge of a group of students doing daily visits.
‘Each student is allocated approximately fifty households to visit’, he explains. ‘They are expected to go every morning and ask a series of questions about the health of each family member. They then bring the data back to me at around noon and I collate it, passing on any concerns to the local medical centre. If it is decided that an individual has symptoms of coronavirus, they are immediately asked to leave the home and are put in isolation areas.’ These new isolation zones are recommissioned motels, campsites and medical schools, where people are tested for the virus and if positive, sent to hospitals, otherwise they are kept there for seven to fourteen days for observation and then allowed home.
When asked if sometimes people lied about symptoms in order to stay with their families Javier replied, ‘It doesn’t work like that in Cuba. We all know that it is our responsibility to be truthful in order to help each other. We have always been a country that looks after each other and this virus has shown us how, when we work together, we are strong’.
Whilst some of the measures seem draconian, there appears to be few complaints on the streets about the new Covid 19 regime. A developing country where until a few years ago life expectancy was higher than in the neighbouring USA, it seems Cuba knows how to get organised when it comes to the health of the nation.
Sarah Whitehead
