Eastern Cuba reinforces sanitary measures due to new COVID-19 outbreaks

GUANTÁNAMO, Cuba, Jul 14 (ACN) As Cuba copes with the tension caused by new COVID-19 outbreaks, the province of Guantánamo is expanding its hospital capacities, implementing new health protocols, tightens surveillance among the most vulnerable social sectors, and prepares for the oncoming health intervention in the region.

After four days of vaccination, the administration of the first dose of the anti-COVID-19 immunogen Abdala to about 160 patients with chronic renal insufficiency, and to more than 400 residents of the five nursing homes of this territory, its Psychiatric Hospital and its Psychopedagogical Medical Center, has just concluded.

Miralis Rodríguez García, coordinator of the vaccination process in the process, told ACN that the inoculation of nephrotic patients and other at-risk groups took place successfully at local hospitals.

The province of Guantanamo is experiencing its third and strongest pandemic outbreak, this time marked by the circulation of several more contagious strains of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. In the last 15 days, over 2,500 confirmed cases have been reported, which has caused the saturation of the installed capacity of isolation centers, a situation that is being reversed today with the opening of new facilities for this purpose.

A dozen places opened in the last week raised to 60 the number of these facilities for confirmed and suspected cases.

In the midst of the no less complex economic crisis, intensified by the U.S. economic, commercial and financial blockade, the Government is striving to provide these centers with the essential resources and trained professionals such as the brigade of recently graduated local doctors who have joined the fight against the pandemic in the last few days.

As part of the current effort to protect people’s lives, the province of Guantánamo keeps administering Abdala to the volunteers who received placebos in Phase III of the clinical trial, while the necessary arrangements are being made to start soon, in hundreds of vaccination sites, a health intervention bound to cover more than 400,000 inhabitants.