The cases of covid-19 have stagnated slightly in recent days, as mathematician Raúl Guinovart Díaz, responsible for forecasts for the Cuban government, said on Tuesday. This Wednesday, the Ministry of Public Health has added 2,967 new infections, detected the previous day, although the worst data is that of the three deceased who are added to the list of official deaths, 8,348 in total.
The specialist, dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computing of the University of Havana, maintained at yesterday’s meeting, before the authorities’ staff, that the forecasts are better than expected despite the fact that they are still moving in figures little desirable.
Just seven days ago, Guinovart Díaz said that they were calculating a progressive increase for several weeks that could last until the first quarter of the year. “[Habrá un] rapid growth in the number of confirmed cases, with high peaks, which could strain the health system, but also an abrupt decline by mid-March,” he said.
“You have to be very attentive to the situation, but the trends show some control of the epidemic in the coming weeks”
Now, the specialist corrects the omens and considers that the peak is being reached to begin the descent. According to their data, the report of daily infections is close to that of medical discharges and growth has slowed in recent days. “You have to be very attentive to the situation, but the trends show some control of the epidemic in the coming weeks,” he said.
Pedro Mas Bermejo, vice president of the Cuban Society of Hygiene and Epidemiology, expressed himself this Tuesday in the same sense as his colleague and said that the forecast made by the University of Sancti Spíritus with data from the last 20 days shows a concordance “very close”.
The information allowed Miguel Díaz-Canel to show off his chest regarding the global context in which ómicron has led to a doubling of covid-19 cases. Cuba, he argued, is maintaining between 3,000 and 3,500 instead of touching the 6,000 that it would have reached according to international trends of this contagious variant.
The virologist Amílcar Pérez-Riverol told last week that the Island had many factors against it to face this new wave of coronavirus that could put the hospital system to the test, such as the queues or the poor means of protection. However, he also spoke of the immune strength that could eventually protect Cubans, thanks to vaccination and naturally acquired antibodies due to the high incidence of the previous delta wave experienced this summer on the island.
At yesterday’s meeting, the authorities once again claimed the weight of vaccination, which they encourage to continue reinforcing, and recalled that there is a vaccine candidate very close to approval, Mambisa, which is administered through the nasal route.
This drug, which had fallen into oblivion, is in two phase 2 studies, one as a booster dose of three Abdala punctures and another as a booster too, but in convalescents.
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