Cuba and the world in the face of COVID-19: complexity increases with the Delta variant

HAVANA, Cuba, Jul 14 (ACN) Throughout the early stages of the pandemic, Cuba maintained very low figures of prevalence of the new coronavirus, but in June and so far in July, with the expansion of the Delta variant, statistics indicate that the country is no longer an exception with respect to the world.

Lorenzo Somarriba López, director of Health Surveillance of the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP), told ACN that three factors are currently influencing the considerable increase of cases throughout the country: the dispersion of new; the low perception of risk among some sectors of the population; and the decrease in the levels of exigency on the part of the authorities.

This has also affected other countries in the region which during the year following the onset of the pandemic had a very low prevalence of the virus.

On a daily basis, MINSAP collects and studies data on the global situation provided by the Worldometer platform, a reference website that publishes estimates and statistics in real time regarding the behavior of the pandemic in each country.

In terms of the total number of active cases since the beginning of the pandemic, Cuba was ranked 77th as of last Monday, with 250,527 patients, whereas in terms of total deaths, it climbed to the 98th place, with 1,608 deaths.

Of the total number of active cases, Cuba had 36,836 less than countries with a similar number of people, such as the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Bolivia. Last week, however, the number of infected per one million inhabitants placed us in 12th place worldwide, above countries such as Argentina, Spain, Panama and Brazil.

Despite Cuba’s unfortunate rise in COVID-19-related deceases, our mortality rate remains very low, with 0.64% of deaths compared to the world’s 2.16% (2.62% in the Americas). With 186 total deaths and 14 deaths per million inhabitants, Cuba ranked 32nd in the last week.

Last week, Cuba’s number of single-day infections, active cases and patients in intensive care wards reached an all-time high, a fact that sets off the alarm bells and the need for stricter measures to tackle infection in the Island.