The town cut off all physical connections to the outside world when the deadly COVID-19 pandemic started spreading a month ago.
As a result of that, the town has not got even a single case of coronavirus so far.
Zahara de la Sierra, situated in the Andalusian area of Southern Spain, has so far been successful in keeping COVID-19 away from its population.
The town, that’s more of a hillside fortress, has followed a strict disinfecting routine to sanitize the streets and has closely been monitoring everyone going in or out to keep COVID-19 away from the residents.
Mayor of Zahara de la Sierra, Santiago Galvan, passed an order to block four of the five entrances of the town on March 14. There’s a checkpoint on the only road that can be used to access the town and it is staffed with just one man.
Two men, with personal protective equipment, disinfect every vehicle that enters the town using bleach and water.
There’s even a make-shift ditch through which all the entering vehicles are required to pass to make sure that the tires are disinfected.
The town’s 25% population consists of people above the age of 65 and there are 30 people living in an assisted living home.
The mayor’s in-time and no-exception rules have so far safeguarded the inhabitants of the town, especially the elderly ones from getting the virus.
Villages and small towns near Zahara have reported cases of the virus and even deaths but Zahara is safe.
Just above 20 miles from Zahara, in a town named Ubrique, 16 people living in a care home have died from the virus. And in another town six miles from Zahara, a woman also lost her life to COVID-19.
After Spain’s extension in coronavirus related measures, the town turned down the entry requests of German and French tourists who had come to the place oblivious of the measures being taken by the local administration.
It is incredible that in a country where there are 200,000 reported cases of COVID-19 and more than 20,000 people have lost their lives, the town of Zahara with a population of 1,400 has not a single case of the virus.
Mayor Galvan said a team of 10 people disinfects the town at 5:30 pm every Monday and Thursday. The disinfection procedure includes plazas, streets, and outer parts of private properties.
Galvan, 40, said: “There is no car that comes through the checkpoint that’s not disinfected. We have managed to give tranquillity to our neighbors. They know no one unknown can come in.”
A local farmer, Antonio Atienza uses his tractor to disinfect the streets of the town by spraying antiseptics.
A local business is taking care of delivering groceries to the residents of the town and has employed two women to do that.
One of the delivery women, 48-year-old Auxi Rascon, told CNN: “They [the residents] are very happy because they don’t need to go out, they feel protected and feel confident.
“They took the right measures at the right moment, and now we are seeing the results.”
Zahara is just an hour’s drive from Seville and is among some of the most popular tourist attractions in Spain.
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