Diaz-Canel warned of the need to comply with health measures. Photo/Estudios Revolucion.

HAVANA, Cuba.-  “Cuba has always demonstrated unity, in Revolution, and today unity goes through responsibility, to understand that responsibility and to act with that responsibility,” the President of the Republic, Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, remarked  on Thursday as he headed the meeting that every afternoon checks the situation of COVID-19 on the island.

The decisions the country is making are not to annoy anyone, he said. “We are doing it to save lives, and even if it hurts we have to make sacrifices; not visiting the family or friends. If we don’t understand that,” he said, “we’re not going to control the pandemic.”

In the meeting – where the work of the Defense Councils of Pinar del Rio and Artemisa provinces was reviewed; and Minister of Public Health Jose Angel Portal Miranda updated on the impact of the disease on the nation, the Head of State reiterated, without alarm, that the nation is not yet at its worst.

“The pandemic has not yet manifested itself in its greatest magnitude. Only with social isolation can we resolve that this magnitude does not become the behavior of the models.”

A significant part of those on the streets, he said, is not just in the lines. There are many people on the corners, chatting in groups; people who go out to play dominoes, walk, and who have even had parties. “That’s irresponsibility,” he reiterated, “and we can’t use another term.”

“That is not solved just by repression, with measures, with fines. It is solved with understanding and with a responsible and civilized way of acting,” Diaz-Canel added.

“Unfortunately, it’s the few that act like this, but those few are the ones that are putting all the effort the country is making and the effort of the majority at stake.”

Then, he added, most cannot allow a minority to tarnish this. “What we are looking for, as a final result, is that we have as little impact as possible on human lives.”

The Cuban President referred to the death by COVID-19 of three Cubans in the last hours, “the day that we have had the most deceased”, he lamented; and extended his condolences to relatives and friends.

Because of the behavior of the pandemic, Diaz-Canel highlighted, cases are increasing and will continue to do so. The success we have in detecting and decreasing, he said, depends a lot on how measures are met by the agencies of the Central Administration of the State, the Provincial and Municipal Defense Councils, mass organizations, law enforcement and the population. “It’s a battle of all and where we’re all supporting each other.”

The President of the Republic stated that such work had to be based on the need to preserve social isolation to the greatest extent possible.

“It is a question of supporting this logic of thinking and action in a group of measures that are mainly aimed at limiting the mobility of people,” he said in reference to new decisions related to the paralysis of public transport, as well as the closure of large shopping centers and a greater supply of outlets in the neighborhoods, among other important provisions.

Diaz-Canel considered that “as the days go by and since we have not entered the most complex moment, there are people who are adjusting to the situation, as if saying that it is not happening so much, compared to the world”.

Some people come to such a routine, he valued, that they begin to lose hygiene habits in which we have insisted a lot, such as frequent hand washing. “We must avoid overconfidence, continue rigorously compliance with hygienic measures, the use of nasobuco, public estrangement in purchasing activities and, above all, insist on social isolation, ours, that of our families, that of our friends and neighbors.”

The President of the Republic reflected that, with the non-working day on Friday and the weekend, “it is three days when if we act accordingly, with responsibility and with the assembly of the new measures, we can advance a stretch in efficiency in the confrontation with the pandemic”.

“That’s what we’re asking of our people,” Diaz-Canel concluded, “and we’re sure most will respond to this request.”

Taken from the Presidency of the Republic of Cuba web site