Via DW.com: Upper Silesia region becomes Poland′s coronavirus epicenter. Excerpt:
The first weekend in May was the first time the weather could really have been called springlike in Ruda Slaska. Normally, in such weather, children would have been playing in front of the red brick houses that were built over 100 years ago for the workers at the first coal mine here. But this year, they had to stay at home because of the coronavirus pandemic regulations.
Adults have also been banned from gathering in groups, but, unlike the children, not everyone follows the rules. A group of young residents from the typical houses, called "familoki" in Polish, met up to hold an outside barbecue. Krzysztof Mejer, the deputy mayor of Ruda Slaska, told DW that he was horrified when he heard of it.
Mejer immediately wrote a warning on his Facebook account: "The people at the barbecue were not wearing masks, of course. They also stood and sat very close to one another. And a few days later, it turned out that one of the guests was a woman infected with the coronavirus who probably infected others as well."
Since early May, Ruda Slaska and other cities in the heavily populated region of Upper Silesia have been the biggest breeding ground for the coronavirus in Poland. At the moment (as of May 14), there are some 17,600 registered cases of coronavirus infection in Poland, with 4,000 of them in Silesia. Of those cases, 1,000 are miners. As a rule, two-thirds of new reported cases each day come from the region, which has a population of 4.5 million.
No sealing off
Media took to calling Upper Silesia the "Polish Wuhan" because government officials reportedly wanted to seal off the entire region as Chinese authorities had with the city of Wuhan, where the pandemic began. Government officials now deny having had any intention to do so. "No one is planning to seal off cities; no one is planning to restrict freedom of movement," said Health Minister Lukasz Szumowski.
Nevertheless, regional politicians have protested against the reported plans to isolate Upper Silesia. "These are rumors, but rumors don't come from nowhere," Mejer said. He feels that it would not be necessary to close off the entire region, saying it would already help if work in the mines were restricted. At the moment, work has stopped at just three of the 30 mines in Upper Silesia.
Closing mines is a delicate topic in Upper Silesia. "A mine isn't a shop. If you close it, you can't open it again," a miner from the Jankowice mine in Rybnik told the Polish website money.pl. "If the mine lies fallow for 3-4 days, fire can break out, and all our work will have been for nothing. You have to keep digging and pumping water out in the mine, at least a little bit. There mustn't be a complete break," he said.
Despite the risk of infection, the miner wants to get back to a steady work rhythm as quickly as possible. "I hope they start doing proper tests at last, then there won't be the stress of worrying that you will be infected. But you can't talk about keeping 2 meters (6 1/2 feet) from each other; that's impossible for us."
