MIAMI, United States.- Under the title “Covid-19 has damaged the reputation of Cuban health”, the British weekly The Economist placed the island among the 20 worst countries in the world with respect to mortality related to the virus, higher even than that of the United States.
According to the report, based on official figures published weeks ago by the state-run National Statistics and Information Office (ONEI), the excess mortality from Covid-19 in Cuba in 2021 was 550 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.
“This revised death toll would put it in the top 20 worst countries in the world. It would also make Cuba an outlier in the region: the average in the Americas is 368,” said the publication, which uses infographics from the Oxford University data journalism project Our World in Data.
The numbers of excess mortality in Cuba contrast with those of the United States, where 354 were reported per household of 100,000 inhabitants.
“Officially, by August 2022, Covid-19 has killed 8,529 of the 11 million inhabitants of Cuba. But our model estimates that the actual number could be much higher. Excess mortality, the gap between how many people have died in a given period, regardless of cause, and how many deaths would normally have been expected, suggests that as many as 62,000 Cubans may have died as a result of the pandemic. headquarters in London.
“That 600% increase over the official toll is likely the result of inadequate testing and other issues. Officials may also have underestimated deaths.”
The Economist mentioned among the causes of this situation the high rate of aging of the population, the budget cuts for the health system and the shortage of essential supplies, which “were taking a toll even before the pandemic.”
“After the outbreak, hospitals were quickly overwhelmed; oxygen, personal protective equipment and medicines were in short supply. And while many Cubans are now vaccinated, the country has been slow. Deaths peaked in August 2021, during the Delta wave,” the report reads.
The Economist even questioned the behavior of the Cuban authorities regarding vaccination. The publication drew attention to the fact that the government of Havana, instead of resorting to allies such as Russia and China to start vaccinating its population much earlier, bet everything on its own vaccine candidates, a decision that meant that, by the summer of In 2021, the peak of the pandemic in the country, “only about 35% of Cubans had received a full course of vaccines (…) compared to 64% of the British and 54% of the Americans.”
Covid-19 “has brought to light something that Cubans have known for a long time, but that the authorities wanted to keep secret: the country’s health system is not what it used to be,” concludes The Economist.
While the Cuban health system collapsed, and complaints on social networks became increasingly common, the authorities on the island assured that everything was going well and praised its handling of the pandemic, above developed countries such as the United States.
According to figures published last June by ONEI, 167,645 people died on the island last year, and the total population fell by 68,380 people.
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