Armenuhi Arakelyan. “We should not lose vigilance in the fight against the pandemic”

“Since March 1 of last year, when people having contacts with people with Covid-19 infection started moving to hotels in Tsakhkadzor, our city has become a closed city and interpersonal relationships were transferred to the on-line or telephone domain”, – said Armenuhi Arakelyan, a member of the Tsakhkadzor City Council.

At first, the news of the new coronavirus caused panic among some people, while others did not believe that the contagious disease called “coronavirus” really existed, so both groups of people had to be guided correctly, and for this purpose Armenuhi took her measures to inform the residents of the community. It was assisted by an assessment of the needs of women in the community in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program.

– It so happened that the beginning of the program coincided with the quarantine, of course we started working online. Within the framework of the project, I organized a meeting with 37 active women in the city, one of the participants was a doctor at the Tsakhkadzor outpatient clinic, she was with the patients, introduced us to the symptoms of the new coronavirus, she taught how to defend Covid-19 competently. And each participant of the program, in her turn, had to pass the knowledge she received and the information to her family members, acquaintances, and thus the awareness was spread all over Tsakhkadzor, – says Armenuhi.

My interlocutor is convinced that iff you want to succeed in the fight against the pandemic, then all sections of society, all age groups must be involved in that fight. School-age children must also have the right information to be able to defend themselves both outside and at school.

According to her, until September, there was not a single patient infected with Covid-19 in Tsakhkadzor.

During the war, Armine and her brother used their opportunities to involve the residents of the whole community, to help the soldiers fighting on the front lines, and the population of Artsakh.

 More than 3,000 Artsakh people found refuge in Tsakhkadzor. Now the families whose houses are left to the Azerbaijanis live in hotels. I have met and talked with several people from Artsakh, they say they will go there if the shelters in Stepanakert are ready. And now some of the women work in hotel kitchens, and for the rest a sewing workshop has been opened by a benefactor-individual, where only Artsakh women work, sewing vests.

Armenuhi mentions that it is true that the cases of infection with the new coronavirus have decreased, but the infection has not disappeared, and people seem to have lost their vigilance.

“We have a lot of vacationers at the moment. I was walking around the city today. I noticed that, except for a few exceptions, no one wears a mask. Probably the guests perceive the city as just a recreation area and want to have a carefree rest, I do not know, but there is an intention to start a program, buy sewing machines and accessories so that we can sew masks with several women and distribute them in hotels, tourists,  schools, kindergarten, even at home. Maybe this will make people more vigilant, so that we do not have new cases of Covid in this difficult time for Armenia.

Full text in Armenian