Las Terrenas fights against Covid with little compliance to prevention measures

Las Terrenas, Samana, DR.

If it weren’t for the date and the health crisis in the country, we might think that in Las Terrenas, Samaná, it is February 2020 or a date before this, when Covid-19 was only a disease that aggressively attacked China.

That impression arises from how people live in the center of this tourist town in the northeast of the country and the areas near Las Ballenas beach.

Many workers were seen without masks in the area’s businesses, especially those selling clothes and snacks. Only some motorcyclists and a few passers-by were seen wearing protective measures.

Although the beach was not full of people and groups attending on Saturday did not crowd together, it was noticeable at a bar-restaurant on the beach that those who served had ignored protective measures such as the use of masks and allowed a group to be at the bar without any preventive measures against Covid-19.

Waiters walked between the tables for consumers taking orders as in the old days: without proper distance and masks.

“Even if I have Covid, I don’t transmit it. The sea doesn’t allow that because of the iodine. Iodine does not allow the coronavirus to be transmitted. And the salt of the sea, the salt doesn’t allow anything to stick,” says a dark-skinned waitress to a client of the place, after putting on a black and brown mask, although minutes before she merely wore it on her neck while taking the order from an adjacent table.

However, in amazement of the claim, the client asked who gave her this information, to which the woman replied that a doctor explained it from the Public Health Department and that the authorities give frequent talks there because it is a tourist place.

However, her answer was a little different from that of another colleague, who said, “Now I don’t have the mask, but I’m supposed to wear it.”

The government’s obligatory use of the mask was ratified on Friday when it issued decree 553-20, which provides for 45 more days of the state of emergency starting on October 18.

President Luis Abinader also extended the curfew to control social mobility through decree 554-20, starting October 18 for another 25 days.

“The obligatory use of masks in public places and private places of public use is ratified as an essential measure to control the propagation of COVID-19 whose non-compliance will be sanctioned with the dispositions established by the law number 42-01 General of Health,” informed the government in a press release.

In the Dominican Republic, three new deaths from coronavirus were reported this Saturday, bringing the total to 2,195.

While there are 21,375 people with the active virus, and the accumulated contagion is 120,925.