Cuba shows a slight decrease in indicators regarding COVID-19

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 31 (ACN) Francisco Duran Garcia, national director of epidemiology of the Cuban ministry of public health, reported today that the country is in a flattening stage with a tendency to decrease, according to the indicators regarding the COVID-19 reported in the recent week.

At the usual Monday press conference on the behavior of the current pandemic, he commented that in the fourth week of January there was a slight decrease in health indicators, however, he insisted on the need not to be cautious and to maintain the measures to prevent the disease, mainly in minors and vulnerable groups.

In January, 76,198 positive cases of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus were diagnosed in Cuba, 72,253 more than during the whole month of December, he pointed out.

Undoubtedly," Duran Garcia stated, "January is going to be a month with a high number of confirmed cases, above what we had in October, November and December.

After three months of decreasing, the figure increased in January due to the high contagiousness of the omicron variant of the virus and the non-compliance with the measures taken by some people, he mentioned.

During the last week of the month that concludes today, 20,559 people were diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2, 2,360 less than the previous week, the expert affirmed.

Regarding pediatric cases, Duran Garcia expressed his concern about the increase in this indicator, and called attention to the increase of cases in children from zero to two years of age.

He indicated that in the most recent week, 4,261 cases were registered (609 per day), which shows an increase compared to previous weeks.

The specialist explained that the provinces with the highest incidence of the disease during the week were Holguin (500), Ciego de Avila (248), Guantanamo (215), Sancti Spiritus (204), Artemisa (200) and Matanzas (192), which accounted for 53.9 percent (%) of all cases diagnosed during the week.

The number of autochthonous and imported cases decreased; the country registered 20,287 autochthonous cases (2,264 less than the previous week) and 272 imported cases, a figure that also decreased compared to the previous week.

The imported patients of the week came mainly from Canada (100), Russia (46), the United States (23), Spain (15) and Mexico (11).

Duran Garcia lamented that in the fourth week of January, 34 people died in the country, 11 more than the previous week.