Carnival.
February, month of carnival, party, masks, makeup and sequins. For the Canary Islands, we can say that one of the most important events throughout the year is the carnival, where thousands of people experience it with joy, enthusiasm and illusion. I want to highlight, above all, the murguer@s, the comparsas, the batucadas, floats, etc., who spend a whole year sacrificing themselves working to give their all on stage and in a parade during the month of February and part of March in every corner of our islands spreading smiles.
Last year we experienced the carnival oblivious and unaware of what the future would hold for us in just a few days. After removing the glitter from our faces, on March 14, 2020, the State of Alarm was decreed throughout the state territory, and a new way of living until that very moment was waiting for us all.
I know that it is difficult for someone who lives carnival as part of their life to ask them to renounce that conviction at this time, but I think it is necessary and essential. Society in general is exhausted from this situation, especially from this uncertainty that we live without knowing the exact direction of where we are going, or until when we will have life as we knew it before the arrival of Covid-19. Human beings by nature are social beings, they need to interact with others; we need leisure and fun. Now we value and are aware of how lucky we were those moments with friends, where kisses, hugs, laughter with uncovered faces did not pose any danger. Today, all that is unthinkable.
All of us who live the carnival, including the vast majority of my healthcare colleagues, want to put on our best costume, a wig, paint our faces and kick our streets and squares dancing to the rhythm of batucadas and comparsas without losing at any time the joy and the best smile. But we have to be aware and reflect that all that must wait.
Still in Phase 4.
Lanzarote, right now, is suffering the worst wave in this health crisis since the WHO declared the pandemic. The DR. José Molina Orosa Hospital has become the hospital with the highest care burden and pressure from patients admitted for COVID in the intensive care unit, exceeding twenty patients connected to ventilators to continue breathing and have hope of surviving.
We are in Phase 4. We can see how what was intended to be achieved with these restrictions is gradually being achieved. But there is still a long way to go. It must be known that all patients who are infected today, a percentage of these in an average of 10 days approximately, will be likely to present severe or serious symptoms, which require emergency medical assistance and many will end up in hospital ward or ICU. I mean by this that the change of phase will be largely given by the number of patients admitted to the intensive care unit. The Lanzarote Hospital usually only has an intensive care unit with 10 beds, where patients with critical pathologies that needed extreme surveillance and very complex and specific treatments, such as myocardial infarctions, strokes, sepsis, encephalitis, polytraumatized patients, etc., were admitted before Covid. Pathologies that have not disappeared and that unfortunately we continue to suffer among the population. Well, that ICU with those 10 beds is now totally COVID, but in addition, another 10 patients occupy resuscitation areas and operating rooms as intubated Covid patients, displacing the non-Covid ICU places. This situation is causing the first helicopter transfers of intubated patients to other ICU units in Canarian hospitals to have already taken place.
Staff.
On the other hand, we suffer from the handicap of qualified personnel, the specialist doctors of critical care are the intensivists, but right now due to the large burden and care pressure of the number of patients, the anesthesiologists have had to prepare to perform those functions; the same happens with the nursing staff. The Management has announced in the press that intensive care doctors will come from other islands to reinforce.
With all this I want to make you see that, despite the fact that we are in February and we want carnival, we have to be responsible, not lower our guard, not trust ourselves, comply with health regulations and not do anything crazy such as, for example, holding or organizing private carnival parties in houses, warehouses, villas, etc. Let's think about those lives that we have lost and all those that are still connected to a ventilator, which have also been left without carnival. Let's be in solidarity, not with us healthcare workers, but with the sick and their families who are having a really bad time.
There will be many moments of parties, laughter, timbales, wigs, makeup, revelry, dances, etc. Let the only ones who continue to "dress up" this year be us, the healthcare workers, by putting on our gowns, hats, glasses, gloves and masks, to continue offering a quality public service.
Yoné Caraballo, Insular Secretary of Welfare of NC in Lanzarote. Emergency Nurse at the Dr. Molina Orosa Hospital.