Cuba has just exceeded one million cases of covid-19 since the first contagion was detected in the country in March 2020. The day before, according to the report from the Ministry of Public Health released this Sunday, there were 3,562 new positives and five deaths, which places the number of active cases on the island at 16,449 and the accumulated infections at 999,193, including 8,340 deaths.
By provinces, the eastern province of Camagüey was the one that registered the highest number of new positives, with 414, compared to 358 and 330 in the western provinces of Mayabeque and Artemisa, second and third with the most cases, respectively.
Experts assure that Cuba is facing a “new wave of infections” linked to the spread of the omicron variant and expect the rise to continue over the coming weeks. They estimate, however, that lethality could be kept at low levels.
New cases are rising significantly in Cuba since the second half of December
The new cases have been rising significantly in Cuba since the second half of December, although they are still far from the highs of the previous wave, between July and August of last year, when 9,000 daily infections were exceeded and close to one hundred. of deaths per day.
Given the improvement in the epidemiological situation, schools were reopened in November and international tourism, a key sector for the economy, was reactivated. Although not everything has been favourable, through social networks several Canadian visitors have shown what they consider a nightmare vacation after testing positive just before leaving the island and spending a period of quarantine in small rooms, with poor quality food and paying $150 per day.
According to official data, more than 87% of the country’s total population -11.2 million inhabitants- have received the complete schedule of three doses of one of the three Cuban-made vaccines against covid-19: Abdala, Soberana 02 and Sovereign Plus.
Cuba is not part of the Covax mechanism of the World Health Organization created to access vaccines against covid-19, nor did it buy them on the international market.
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