Cuba reports 1,244 cases of Covid, the third highest number since the start of pandemic

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Cuba reported on Tuesday 1,244 new cases of covid-19, the third-highest number of daily infections since the first SARS-Cov-2 positive confirmed in March last year, informed the Ministry of Public Health (Minsap).

The Caribbean country, which has exceeded 1,000 cases per day for eight consecutive days, now has 126,755 infected people and 826 deaths, 12 of them confirmed in the last 24 hours.

Of the total number of infections today detected after processing 21,995 samples, 1,205 are autochthonous cases, and 39 are imported.

There are 27,227 people admitted to Cuban hospitals: 6,712 confirmed cases, 4,353 with suspected symptoms, and the rest under epidemiological surveillance.

Havana concentrated most of the infections of the day with 600, followed by the western province of Mayabeque (128) and the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba (100).

In the Cuban capital, with a population of 2.2 million, a night curfew and other measures are in force to curb the transmission of the coronavirus.

In that territory and other at-risk areas of the country, a health intervention study began last week with two of the five vaccine candidates developed by Cuba against the coronavirus: Abdala and Soberana 02.

So far, more than 440,000 people have received the first dose of these formulas, which are in the third and last phase of clinical trials, so they do not yet have pharmacological registration or authorization for emergency use.

The authorities expect to obtain this authorization -which would make possible the start of the mass vaccination campaign- next June, once the results of the clinical trials are released.

Abdala concluded the application of doses of the third phase of clinical trials, while Soberana 02 should do so in the next few days.

Cuba is not part of the Covax mechanism created by the World Health Organization for middle and low-income countries to access vaccines, nor has it purchased them in the international market.