The South African version of the new coronavirus has arrived in Cuba.
“An asymptomatic passenger was detected by surveillance in ports and airports,” Dr. María Guadalupe Guzmán of the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine said in a statement Friday. Although the case was “imported”, Guzmán did not rule out that the version was already circulating locally.
Both Guzmán and the director of epidemiology, Francisco Durán, denied that the outbreak of the first weeks of the year was related to the South African version and attributed it to the fact that the population does not comply with the health protocol.
Cuba has reached 20,060 cases – 530 registered on Thursday – of which 188 deaths.
Cuba, which gained relative control of the virus last year with entire provinces that have not reported cases in more than 100 days, has begun easing restrictions on authorizing commercial flights in November for the arrival of tourists and Cubans living abroad. The protocol included performing tests on arrival and quarantine at passengers’ homes, but due to increasing cases, the restrictions were tightened, restricting countries of origin and requiring a negative test before boarding.
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Currently, there are territories that have closed their schools again, traffic restrictions and the closure of some economic activities. The use of the thigh and social distance are mandatory.
Durán indicated that the country from which most cases of arrival with COVID-19 sick passengers were detected was the United States, where the largest community of Cuban emigrants lives.
Recent variants of the virus that have appeared in the UK, South Africa and Brazil are not necessarily more lethal, Guzmán and Durán agreed, but they seem to be spreading more easily and scientists have said they will therefore lead in many cases, deaths and hospitalizations.
Moreover, mutations could eventually lead to a reduction in the capacity of vaccines as they are developed to date.
Cuba began testing this week by immunizing about 900 people – up to 150,000 in the next few weeks – as part of studies with its Sovereign 02 vaccine candidate, created by its own laboratories.