The Cuban Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal, confirmed this Saturday the decrease in new cases of COVID-19 during the last two weeks, despite the circulation of the BA.2 version of the Ómicron variant.
Except for the western province of Pinar del Río, “in the other territories of the country the incidence rate of positive cases has decreased in the last 14 days,” the minister said in a meeting with experts who advise the Cuban government on the pandemic.
The head of Health added, quoted by a press release from the Presidencythat only the provinces of Mayabeque (west), Ciego de Ávila and Camagüey (both in the center) remain above 100 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
#Cuba ends this week with a decrease in its figures related to the COVID-19 epidemic, as the experts and scientists who advise the Island Government in confronting this disease had predicted in their forecasts. ??https://t.co/JTqymrtCQM
— Cuba Presidency ?? (@PresidenciaCuba) April 16, 2022
So far this year, 197 people have died from complications associated with the disease. The indicator remains at 0.15%, according to Portal at the meeting led by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The total number of deaths since the first case reported in Cuba in March 2020 thus amounts to 8,520, which represents a lethality of 0.77% throughout the pandemic, a figure highlighted by the official as one of the lowest in the world.
The minister also commented that so far “we have no other variant identified in the country” and recalled that BA.2 is more transmissible, “but it does not behave differently in the clinic than the BA1 variant that was circulating.”
Cuba reported 402 new cases on the day, which represents a decrease of 16.1% compared to the previous day, according to data from the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) handled at the meeting.
One person died of COVID-19 and 402 new infections this Friday in Cuba
The Caribbean country experienced its worst moment of the pandemic between July and August of last year when it reported nearly 9,000 infections per day.
The scientists who advise the Government assure that the control of the epidemiological situation responds, in large part, to the progress of the vaccination campaign.
Close to 90% of the Cuban population –9.9 of the 11.2 million inhabitants of the island– completed the immunization schedule with the local vaccines against the coronavirus: Abdala, Soberana 02 and Soberana Plus.
In addition, more than 6.2 million have also received the booster dose.
Cuba does not integrate the Covax mechanism of the World Health Organization (WHO) so that low-income nations have access to anticovid vaccines, nor did it buy them on the international market, but instead opted to develop them in its own biotechnology industry.
