COVID-19 has dominated the conversation this year. Following the fi rst outbreaks in December 2019, it became clear that older adults were predisposed to greater disease severity and death. What occurred in nursing homes across Europe and the Americas was brutal—as much for the older adults themselves as for their families. Many didn’t even get to say goodbye. When the fi rst COVID-19 cases were diagnosed in Cuba in March of this year, I feared for our older adults living in nursing homes. We have 155 nursing homes where 12,368 people live full time, plus 3481 part-time live-ins across the country. Additionally, over 10,000 older adults participate in daily activities at our national network of 295 Senior Centers. [1,2] But by May, there had been just a single outbreak in a nursing home—in Santa Clara city in central Cuba. We got lucky, I thought. After weeks and then months, I realized it wasn’t luck, but rather the result of political will, well-designed and implemented protocols and trained health professionals and others dedicated to doing a good job. This was what kept COVID-19 incidence low in our nursing homes.
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