He March 12, 2020, Aragon confirmed 15 cases of coronavirus. The day before, the World Health Organization had declared that the new disease could be characterized as a pandemic. At that time, that figure set off all the alarms, although that number would be anecdotal when, months later, daily infections exceeded 1,300, and up to 8,200 in the wave at the end of 2021. And two days were left until, on the 14th March, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will announce to the entire country the approval of the state of alarm and the consequent home confinement, which lasted for more than three months.
Since then it’s been three years. More than a thousand days living with the COVID-19, which now represents only 20 daily infectionsthe vast majority without gravity.
The situation has changed so much that the Aragonese hospitals They have gone from collapsing due to the high number of admissions to the ward, which reached 348 in April 2020, and the ICU, 21 patients on March 27, to currently not registering a single patient in intensive care due to the virus, according to the data from the Transparency portal of the Government of Aragon. In addition, there have been 5,448 deathsaccording to these data, although none have been recorded since the end of January.
“the beginning was horrible“, recalls María Pilar Figueras, head of the Internal Medicine service at the Miguel Servet Hospital in Zaragoza. The health workers were fighting against a virus they did not know about, with changing symptoms and an uncertain prognosis. “20 or 30 people entered and throughout the afternoon 10 had died. We put treatment and nothing worked. Over time, high flow units came along and helped a lot. Right now the situation is much better,” he stresses.
Like her, health professionals went blind and even so they stood up to the virus without hesitation and with improvised shields, with rudimentary PPE, which were ineffective.
The toilets, in the front line
Most of the workers at the Figueras unit fell ill. In the first 15 days of confinement, 19 of the 26 toilets had been infected. Despite suffering the ravages of Covid in their own flesh, they returned to the front line of battle as soon as they could: “After four days we already wanted to return. Everyone was calling to see if the PCR was negative and they could go back to work.“.
The support of all the workers, regardless of their specialty, was vital in the fight against this disease. “Us we were in front and the others supported us when we couldn’t take it anymore. Everyone went to one, that’s what we’ve gotten the most positive from,” she says.
At that time, the ICUs overflowed. In the harshest moments of the pandemic, hospitals doubled shifts and doubled beds. The toilets took time and space from where there was none. Everything to save the lives of those who entered.
In the mind of Juan José Araiz, head of the ICU service of the Clinical Hospital, there is a date engraved on fire: April 4, 2020: “That day we had 57 patients in the ICU with Covid.” A figure that collided head-on with the capacities of the service, which had 34 beds.
Among his memories there are also those of the farewells. Many patients died and they did not have the tools or knowledge to fight against the virus that threatened so many lives. “It was a new pathology. They died in 50% of the cases and depending on age, up to 80%,” laments Araiz. In total, since the pandemic began, more than 119,000 people have died in Spain.
Vaccine against COVID-19.
The nurses were also at the foot of the bed. Despite the PPE and the safety distances, they were closer than ever to the patient and served as a link between the patient and the family, who waited for the news every day on the other end of the phone or a video call, at best. the cases.
“We would call their families or put a ‘tablet’ on them to say goodbye, not knowing if they would see them again or not.“, says Marta Palacios, supervisor of the Medical ICU of the Clinical Hospital. Very hard moments, which were also hard for them, for the health workers who saw how goodbye hurt even more due to the distance that the pandemic had imposed.
Luckily, the treatments were adapted and life expectancy was extended. On December 27, 2020, nine months after the outbreak of the virus, the first vaccines arrived in Aragon and with them hope. Just over two years later, more than 3.2 million doses have been inoculated in the Community.
It seems incredible, but in three years they have gone from wearing a mask at all times, to removing it safely from health centers, and they have gone from living in fear to breathing easy thanks to science and medicine.
