RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Cuba reported on Saturday 1,029 new cases of Covid-19 and for four consecutive days has surpassed the barrier of 1,000 daily infections, including the record of 1,077 reported the day before.
The country has accumulated 78,382 infections and 431 deaths, two of them in the last 24 hours, according to the daily report of the Ministry of Public Health (Minsap).
Of the new positives detected after processing 20,974 samples in the 23 molecular biology laboratories of the country, 1,019 are autochthonous, and ten are imported.
A total of 26,034 persons remain in hospitals: 4,806 active cases -32 in critical condition and 49 serious-, 3,975 with suspected symptoms and the rest under epidemiological surveillance.
Havana has the highest number of cases, with 570 new cases reported, followed by the western province of Matanzas (100) and the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba (80).
A nighttime curfew is in force in the Cuban capital, and schools, restaurants, bars, and beaches remain closed, among other restrictive measures.
The shortages resulting from the economic crisis force people to take to the streets and stand in long lines to buy food and other basic products, making it difficult to contain transmission in this territory.
The country is developing five of its own vaccines against the coronavirus, two of which -Soberana 02 and Abdala- are in the third and final stage of clinical trials to evaluate their efficacy.
In parallel to these trials, the health authorities have launched “controlled intervention studies” in Havana and the eastern part of the island, which foresee the massive administration of these two vaccine candidates, including 1.7 million people in the capital.
Neither of these drugs has yet been authorized for emergency use or registration, something the authorities expect to achieve around June.
Cuba has also not acquired vaccines on the international market, nor is it part of the Covax Mechanism created under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO) to favor equitable access to immunization in low- and middle-income nations.
Source: efe/dw/br