The permanence in the confrontation with the COVID-19 pandemic for 19 months - since the beginning of the disease in Cuba, in March 2021 - make him one of those practically anonymous heroes, sometimes difficult to distinguish after the outfits that assure his protection during the perennial struggle for life.

Being a doctor was his vocation, while the epidemiological contingency has become an opportunity for Dr. Yacel Palomino Herrera, a young man of 30 years and a specialist in Comprehensive General Medicine, to honor his choice: to contribute to save human lives.

The transit through different medical assistance centers, linked to the confrontation with the disease, has confirmed the willingness to fight the virus and contributed to their professional performance by allowing him to know the SARS-CoV-2 in its most diverse manifestations.

He started in the Patria popular council, in the municipality of Morón, where he became director of the isolation center located in the Behavioral School. Then, he went to the Intensive Surveillance Room of the Roberto Rodríguez Provincial General Teaching Hospital and continued in the Jardines del Rey tourist destination, where he provided services at the Sol Cayo Coco hotel-hospital and the Villa Azul accommodation facility.

Subsequently, he worked in an acute respiratory infections clinic (ARI) and, faced the need for a director for the isolation center located at the Rafael Morales Pedagogical School, in the territory of Morón, where he did not hesitate to take his step forward. Besides, he lived the most tragic moments of the pandemic in the province of Ciego de Ávila there.

Doctor Palomino Herrera seemed to breathe calmly when, at the time of the interview, he reported the admission of 17 patients the day before and an accumulated 34, in a place with the capacity to admit 333 patients, whose beds were fully covered a few weeks ago and they were not sufficient given the magnitude of the regrowth and the speed of transmission of the disease.

The isolation center located in the Rafael Morales Pedagogical School, in the municipality of Morón, today houses a reduced number of patients, compared to previous months.

From countries such as Venezuela, Mexico and Qatar, Cuban health collaborators arrived to reinforce care for those infected patients. Their support was decisive in turning the epidemiological situation around, he stressed.

Today, this isolation center for low-risk cases has a reduced number of patients, in charge of seven doctors and five nurses, which represents a strength and advantage to offer a higher quality service, which exceeds the limits of treatments with Nasalferón or Heberon by providing even psychological support as the best antidote to combat depression caused by the virus.

This doctor from Morón recognizes the effectiveness of Cuban drugs used in the treatment against COVID-19 with the aim of strengthening the immune system of patients, so that serious evolutions of the disease are prevented. In addition, vaccination with Abdala has had a favorable impact on the reduction of cases, he highlighted.

Dr. Yacel's throat tightened when I asked him if he had been infected during his professional practice, bitter memories printed sadness in his eyes as he relived the moment of infection, the transmission of the virus to his wife and the separation of his children so as not to make them sick.

He was already vaccinated with Abdala, he emphasized, which helped him to develop the disease in a moderate way, however, his body was invaded by joint pain, fever, decay, discomfort in all the skin and depression. That experience reaffirmed the importance of taking extreme care but, above all, the need to continue providing help to the afflicted ones, with the greatest possible sensitivity.

And he is back in this “war without a rifle” - thus recently described by Deputy Prime Minister Jorge Luis Tapia Fonseca - growing as a professional, but also as a human being, equaling the sacrifice of his companions in a place where routines do not allow to recognize Saturdays or Sundays as different days.