San Pedro Feast Amid Uncertainty in 2020

By June 29, 2020, the date of the feast honoring the fishermen’s patron saint, the island already had five positive cases of coronavirus, covid-19, an extremely contagious virus that was affecting the whole world.

The island has a large population of older adults, who face the greatest risk of serious complications, or worse, if the disease reaches them.

The thought that living on an island made you immune, or gave you some kind of advantage, had turned into the exact opposite: stopping an outbreak is a hard thing to do, especially when many people aren’t willing to cooperate. My biggest fear about the pandemic wasn’t getting sick myself — my body is healthy, and I know I could fight off the illness — it was making others sick, and having them fall ill, or worse, because of my own carelessness.

At that moment, the island was turning into a kind of prison: if cases kept rising and got out of control, what would happen? Everyone would want to leave, since they couldn’t go to the health center for any other ailment (stomach pain, high blood pressure, and so on) without risking exposure; many would want to leave the island in search of somewhere safer to be treated and protect their loved ones, but that would be extremely dangerous and would only spread the virus further.

The island had no facilities to treat or care for even a single serious case; the ambulance barely fit two people, and getting into a small boat to fight the sea just to reach an ambulance on the mainland was an enormously complicated ordeal.

All that was left was to follow the rules and stay isolated at home: older adults avoiding unnecessary trips, and younger adults helping stock their households responsibly, with social distancing and constant personal hygiene. It remained to be seen how it would all play out; in a couple of weeks we’d know exactly where the island stood, whether the problem had been brought under control. I hoped, and trusted in God, for the peace of mind of the whole town.

— Jorge Arauz