Cuba reports 833 new cases of covid and two associated deaths

Havana, 19 Mar The Cuban Ministry of Public Health (Minsap) reported this Saturday in its daily epidemiological part 833 new cases of covid-19 in the previous 24 hours and two deaths related to this disease. The figure seems to corroborate the rise in cases experienced in recent days, with numbers moving away from around 500 cases as of the day of the previous week. In recent days, the authorities have reiterated calls for prevention and caution. There are currently 3,000 active cases, of which 5 are in critical condition and 13 are serious. The island has accumulated 1,080,686 infections and 8,506 deaths since the first patient was detected, in March 2020. The provinces with the newest positives are the central provinces of Sancti Spiritus (140 cases), and Ciego de Ávila (120), as well as the eastern province of Holguín, with 90. These figures are produced when the last regrowth, associated with the omicron variant, which reached 3,800 cases a day at the end of January, was being considered controlled. This wave was however far from the nearly 9,000 infections per day of the previous one, the most serious in two years of pandemic on the island, recorded between July and August 2021. About 90% of the population — 11.2 million inhabitants — have completed the immunization scheme with local coronavirus vaccines: Abdala, Soberana 02 and Soberana Plus. In addition, more than 6.1 million Cubans have received a booster shot. Cuba does not integrate the Covax mechanism of the World Health Organization (WHO) for low-income nations to access vaccines, nor did it buy them on the international market. CHIEF jpm/cfa