Havana/“We don’t get sick, but many around us do,” he tells 14ymedio Timur, a 38-year-old Muscovite who has just returned from a vacation in Varadero with his family. “In our group, three people arrived in Russia with fever, and from what I could tell, many of the hotel workers were or were still sick.”
In the first days of December, several Russian media have reacted with alarm to the epidemic in Cuba, alerting potential tourists and questioning the safety of traveling to the Island.
The middle Life.ru quoting epidemiologist Guennadi Onishchenko, from the Academy of Sciences, urged Russians to return their travel packages abroad, recommending spending the next year-end holidays “near Moscow, instead of risking contagion in tropical areas.”
For its part, the tourist portal Tourdom public that the “Russians on the island” could be at the “epicenter of the epidemic” and some Telegram channels such as Mash report that there are already infected Russians.
The diary Gazette also qualify the situation is “critical” and states that in the areas of greatest spread it is estimated that there are “around 1,500 Russian tourists” at this time, and that among them, at least “fourteen have already had the disease in a mild form” during their vacations in November.
Despite this, and although the symptoms can be very annoying (high fever, rashes, intense joint pain), some experts cited by these media minimize the risk for “healthy tourists,” especially if they stay in coastal areas and hotels with health controls.
A local tourist agent interviewed by Tourdom, Elena Lapina, affirms that “there are no massive outbreaks among tourists,” since resort areas such as Varadero or Cayo Coco, where Russians usually stay, are relatively isolated from the urban centers of the epidemic. For its part, the insurance company Euroins stated that to date they have not received reports of travelers sick with dengue or chikungunya.
From Moscow, Yulia, a travel agent, assured 14ymedio who is very aware of the epidemiological situation on the Island, although at the moment there are no tourists there.
“Several colleagues do currently have clients and we exchange information. In general, trips are maintained, although we are somewhat worried. As far as we know, they are fumigating twice a day in the hotels against mosquitoes, so I hope that the epidemic remains under control,” he says.
However, the fact that there are Russian tourists who have already fallen ill shows that the risk exists, despite the recommendations that they stay in resorts, take care of themselves with repellents and avoid urban areas to “get around” the epidemic.
The contrast between the health warning and the version of tranquility from the tourism sector is evident. In this context, the average traveler thinks twice before buying tickets to Cuba, which threatens to become a new blow to Russian tourism, already in the doldrums within the fragile Cuban tourism sector.
The latest data from the National Office of Statistics and Information (Onei) confirm that until October 2025 The Island received 1,477,892 visitors, a figure that represents a 20% drop compared to the same period in 2024. This negative balance is partly due to a 36.2% drop in Russian travelers (99,908 for the first ten months of this year, instead of 156,614 in 2024).
This trend does not seem to be changing with the measure taken by a Russian tour operator, which planned to redirect vacationers who had to travel to Venezuela to Cuba, following the announcement of the total closure of Venezuelan airspace by the president of the United States, Donald Trump, since so far there are no massive cancellations for this reason. Comments from Russian vacationers on social networks show that not all are willing to change Margarita Island for Varadero.
