Cuba will request a recent negative PCR test from all travelers arriving on its territory, after reporting a record 217 cases of covid-19 on Thursday, local media announced on Friday.
“As of January 10, all travelers arriving in the country must perform a real-time PCR performed no later than 72 hours before certified laboratories in their countries of origin,” the official Granma newspaper said.
The ruling Communist Party (CCP) newspaper alone reported that Cuba reported 217 cases of new coronavirus on Thursday, including 101 imported cases, “the highest number of infections since the beginning of the epidemic” in March.
He also reported that the decision was part of a group of actions taken by the Cuban government “to increase isolation measures against covid-19, with cases generated mainly by foreign nationals.”
The head of Epidemiology of the Cuban Ministry of Public Health (Minsap), Francisco Durán, said on Friday that “no doubt this measure will have an impact” because “there is a group of people who will not reach (the infected island), and the number of “imported cases will decrease.
At Friday’s regular press conference, Durán explained that the new measure does not repeal the protocol that states that each passenger must undergo a PCR diagnostic test on arrival on the island and then limit their travel to proven results.
Durán pointed out that of Cuba’s 1,311 infections reported in the past 15 days, 838 were imported mainly from the United States, Russia, India, Venezuela and France.
“In a few days we had more imported cases than domestic cases,” said the expert.
Cuba, with 11.2 million inhabitants, has accumulated 10,900 cases of new coronavirus since Friday, with 140 deaths and 9,503 recovered, a much more favorable situation than that shown by some of its neighbors in the region.