More than a hundred people are admitted to intensive care rooms in Cuba due to complications related to dengue or chikungunya, according to official sources.
As reported by the Ministry of Public Health of Cuba (Minsap)this Tuesday There were 105 patients in that delicate situation, of which 70 were minors..
The figure contrasts with the 19 children who were in that condition a week ago.
The Vice Minister of Health Carilda Peña explained in a television intervention that the accumulated chikungunya cases —the main arbovirosis circulating in the current epidemic—was 34,824, after the detection of 934 patients on Monday.
Regarding dengue, Peña said that the health system registered 66 new cases the previous day, although, for the second day, it did not offer an updated total of infected people, the agency reports. EFE.
Health authorities maintain the set of dengue cases in 2098a figure that differs from the one managed by the OPS —based on Minsap statistics— which reported 9,602 patients between January and September, with 115 seriously ill and three deaths, the Spanish media reports.
Epidemic in the midst of the crisis
The epidemic, a term used for the first time by the Cuban Government on November 12 to characterize the current outbreak of these two diseases, found fertile ground in Cuba to spread months after the first cases were detected last July in Matanzas.
In recent days, the Health authorities confirmed that only in November they had already been detected more than 10 thousand cases of chikungunyawith an average of more than 500 daily cases, although the most recent official reports exceed and even almost double that figure.
This Monday, the vice minister herself explained that in the previous week there were 7700 new cases of that diseasean increase of 23.2% compared to the previous week.
Furthermore, he assured that the island maintains active transmission of arboviruses in 14 of its 15 provinces
Cuba’s current economic crisis limits prevention capacity, mainly through massive fumigation against mosquitoes. Also control actions, the application of tests to confirm the type of disease and care for the sick.
In this scenario, the Health authorities admit that the official figures are an under-record because A good number of patients do not go to hospitals. Therefore, the number of real cases is surely higher than those officially reported.
EFE / OnCuba
