Francisco Durán García admitted that the official figures of people sick with arboviruses in Cuba “do not always correspond to reality.”
MIAMI, United States. – Cuba is going through a “complex” epidemiological scenario due to the simultaneous circulation of dengue and chikungunya, with thousands of sick people and a growing impact on the child population, as recognized by the national director of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP), Dr. Francisco Durán García, in an official update broadcast on Cuban Television this Wednesday.
Only in the previous day, that is, this Tuesday, 3,103 new suspected cases of chikungunya were registered throughout the country, a figure that Durán described as “high for one day of diagnosis.” In total, 2,216 patients with this disease remain hospitalized, 125–126 of them in hospitals and the rest under home admission, while 63 patients are in intensive care rooms, with 44 serious cases and 19 patients in critical condition, all under 18 years of age, which confirms the strong impact of the outbreak on the child population.
Official figures that do not reflect the entire reality
Durán began his intervention by admitting that official data does not capture the real magnitude of the problem. “The figures collected in the statistics (…) do not always correspond to reality,” he warned, pointing out that many sick people do not go to the doctor and, therefore, do not appear in the records.
The epidemiologist stressed that the update does not seek to convey a false calm, but rather to offer minimum protection tools to the population: “In addition to updating the situation, the information is a bit… not to bring peace of mind, because really, for those who are in a lot of pain, as we have seen, it is difficult to give them peace of mind, but it does provide information that allows people to protect themselves.”
In the last 24 hours, according to the official himself, 1,706 patients with non-specific febrile syndrome were detected, and 3,226 were admitted. 84.1% of these people were admitted to their home, under the supervision of the family doctor and nurse, while 16.9% were hospitalized. In total, 47,125 patients remain hospitalized in the country due to fever that authorities link to ongoing arboviruses.
Endemic dengue and expansion of chikungunya
Durán recalled that dengue is an “endemic” disease in Cuba, with years of circulation and several previous epidemic outbreaks that have caused a significant number of deaths. Currently, he said, there is dengue transmission in 14 provinces and 43 municipalities. In addition, 349 new cases of the disease were diagnosed throughout this Tuesday.
Chikungunya, however, is now the greatest concern “due to the number of cases, due to the symptoms it produces, which are extremely painful,” the official stated.
The epidemiologist added that the clinical picture of chikungunya is “very symptomatic and very characteristic,” which allows many cases to be identified by clinical and epidemiological criteria, although not all are confirmed by laboratory. He stressed that there is “a significant number of confirmed cases in all provinces of the country” and greater transmission in 14 provinces, without offering a detailed breakdown by territory.
Regarding the Oropouche virus, he explained that no new cases have been diagnosed since September, despite the fact that tests continue to be carried out, and assured that “that is not the main health problem” at this time, unlike chikungunya.
Impact on children
In addition to the 63 patients in intensive care (44 serious and 19 critical), Durán highlighted that all critical cases are under 18 years of age and described the risk for the child population as “very important.” “It really affects the child population,” he stressed when assessing the combination between the clinical aggressiveness of the virus and the progressive saturation of services.
However, the official assured that, for now, the health system maintains the capacity to care for the most vulnerable patients. According to him, Cuba has 3,703 beds intended for the care of patients with chikungunya, and “at this time we do not have patients who require admission (…) who cannot be admitted,” referring to children and adults with comorbidities.
A central part of the intervention was dedicated to the difficulties in vector control. Durán revealed that the mosquito infestation Aedes aegypti —the main transmitter of dengue and chikungunya— reaches 0.70%, an index that he described as high: “This is a high infestation, when a region, when a country, when it has that infestation, it means that there are significant possibilities of transmission.”
Although he listed anti-vector control actions—intra- and extra-domiciliary fumigation, abatement, and others—he acknowledged that “they are still insufficient.” In the official’s own words, there are legitimate complaints from the population related to the non-existence of a massive fumigation campaign throughout the country.
The director of Epidemiology explained that only 79% of what was planned in terms of fumigation was carried out the day before and that 223 teams did not go out to work, of which 163 were stopped due to lack of personnel. “The greatest difficulties are often [son] in the personnel and in the equipment,” he acknowledged. The rest of the equipment was stopped due to technical breaks.
At the close of his appearance, the epidemiologist responded to the versions circulating about a possible presence of the West Nile virus on the Island, after reports in international media of a tourist who had presented symptoms compatible with that fever.
Durán flatly denied that possibility and stated that no case of West Nile virus has been diagnosed in Cuba. He explained that they trust the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK) and its laboratories, which he considered “a reference in the region of the Americas,” and assured that samples from “hundreds of cases” are processed there without the pathogen having been identified.
Regarding the symptoms, he maintained that “the West Nile virus, which causes a febrile illness, has nothing to do with chikungunya, except for the fever,” and stressed that the clinical picture of chikungunya is much more complex and painful.
