PCRs, screenings, close contacts, cohabitants, confinement, PPEs, masks... all the terminology that was of massive use after the declaration of the state of alarm on March 14, 2020 had been used about a month and a half before in La Gomera, the Canary Island of just 20,000 inhabitants that certified the first case of covid-19 in Spanish territory.
This Friday marks five years since the Canary Islands became the pilot scenario of the pandemic in Spain, and it was not only because of that first case of a German tourist but also because just three weeks later the first massive confinement would be deployed in Tenerife after an Italian tourist staying at the H10 Costa Adeje hotel tested positive, with about 1,000 people, including guests and workers, inside.
An anecdote
Regarding both moments, many of its protagonists agree in highlighting the ignorance and unconsciousness about what a virus, which was still called "from Wuhan", the Chinese city where it all began, would come to represent.
"We experienced the first case as an anecdote, as an experience that could even serve us positively and with some laughter about the coincidence that it had been precisely in a place like La Gomera," the then director of the Canary Islands Health Service (SCS), Blanca Méndez, tells EFE.
"There we did not feel pressure beyond the initial nerves to ensure that the affected person was well cared for in a hospital that was of the third level. We were concerned that there were no respirators or specialists, but we foresaw the transfer of personnel from Tenerife in case it worsened," recalls Méndez, who also alludes to the initial difficulties for the transfer of samples, whose analysis could only be done at the Carlos III Public Health Institute in Madrid, because "there was fear" among the professionals who had to move the swabs.
Although he understands that "anecdotally" there were "reticence", the doctor responsible for the laboratory of La Gomera, Jesús Grande, recalls that the tests were inside a triple container that in turn was in another container of biological waste that made contagion "impossible".
Finally, it was the Minister of Health of the Canary Islands Government, at that time Teresa Cruz, who personally transferred the samples taken from the four tourists from the hospital to the airport of La Gomera, where they were transferred by helicopter to Tenerife and, from there, by military plane to Madrid.
It was also complex to locate the tourist at first -it was done by viewing the security cameras of the Tenerife South airport and the port of Los Cristianos without having certainty about his appearance- and to trace his close contacts, who were also preventively confined in the rural house they shared on the Colombian island.
A policeman for each close contact
In fact, the Canary Police sent four agents to La Gomera to have the four tourists watched 24 hours a day, with the peculiarity that they all spoke German. "We were very interested in talking to them, without intermediaries, and knowing their sensations, how they were evolving," since "we knew that in the immediate future there would be more infected," the former Director General of Security and Emergencies, Gustavo Armas, tells EFE.
As explained by the SCS nurse who coordinated the tracking teams during the pandemic, Aarón Plasencia, the 'modus operandi' used with the German tourist would serve to define later the protocols of the trackers who worked during the pandemic and that, at the peaks, reached about 100.
"There was absolutely no bibliography to prepare those protocols or make certain decisions, but the epidemiological experts made recommendations that varied as more information was available on the behavior of the virus. Based on that, it was decided who had to be tracked in the case of airplanes, for example," adds Plasencia, who recognizes the logistical difficulties of having, three weeks later, about 1,000 people confined in a hotel "in safe conditions" with that degree of uncertainty.
An "on and off" of PPEs
And at the care level, the supervisor of the Hospitalization area of the Hospital of La Gomera, the nurse Elena Yanes, recalls the complexity that involved, after receiving the warning, changing the disposition of an entire hospital floor to create the so-called "dirty areas" that would be used for patients diagnosed with the virus.
At the beginning they only had expired personal protective equipment (PPEs), since they had been stockpiled during the Ebola crisis of 2014, and what she remembers worst of those first days is not the work itself, because having only one infected patient without severe symptoms was not excessive, but it was stressful the "on and off of PPEs" and the dehydration they produced.
"The world became a little small for us because until then we saw everything far away and with ignorance. After enabling the floor to receive them it was all a bit surreal because we had isolated everything a lot and then they entered walking simply with a mask on. It was like a movie," she says.
She also points out that in that first case "few wanted to work because of the ignorance and fear and no one could be forced" and it was a group of young nurses who gave the push and moved that first service forward.
The confinement of the H10
Three weeks later, with nerves already on edge in the tourism sector, which in the Canary Islands has its high season in winter, it was necessary to face another stress test: a positive, that of an Italian traveler of 61 years in a hotel that the regional Executive, based on the criteria of epidemiological experts, had to close.
To prevent anyone from leaving the hotel, three security cordons were established: the first controlled by the Canary Police, the second by the National Police, and the third by the Local Police of Adeje.
In addition to an exterior control there was surveillance inside the walls, with infiltrated policemen, dressed in PPEs, who were in charge of seeing how the coexistence of such a large and varied group of people was, among them about 200 children, details the former Director General of Security and Emergencies.
Armas recalls that, in general, the behavior of the guests during the fourteen days that the confinement lasted "was perfect" despite the fact that there was some attempt to escape that did not end up fructifying.
Amós García, then head of the Epidemiology unit in the Canary Islands, admits that the decision to close the hotel was "very difficult to make" in a community that lives on tourism, although from the sanitary point of view "we had it clear: it was the best way for the outbreak not to leave there".
And that at that point, he admits, "many of us thought" that covid-19 "was like a flu" and "not to trivialize", but because the information from China "was of that caliber".
For Gustavo Armas, that measure personally cost him to receive several threatening messages, some of death, to his personal telephone, while the then director of the Canary Islands Health Service, Blanca Mendez, says that there were voices within the Governing Council that accused her and the counselor that with that measure they would "ruin" tourism. "But time ended up proving us right," she concludes.
