Cuba will require all travelers arriving in its territory on a recent negative PCR test, after reporting a record 217 cases of covid-19 on Thursday, local press announced on Friday.
“As of January 10, all travelers arriving in the country must carry out a real-time PCR performed at most 72 hours in advance by certified laboratories in the countries of origin,” the official Granma newspaper noted.
The ruling Communist Party (PCC, the only) newspaper noted that Cuba reported on Thursday 217 cases of the new coronavirus, including 101 imported, “the highest number of infections since the outbreak began.” March.
He also reported that this decision is part of a group of actions taken by the Cuban government “to increase containment measures against covid-19, with cases generated mainly by nationals from abroad.”
The head of Epidemiology of the Cuban Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP), Francisco Durán, said this Friday that, “indisputably, this measure had an impact”, as “there is a group of people who do not go to arrive (on the island infected), and decreased the number “of imported cases.
In his usual press conference on Friday, Duran explained that the new measure does not override the protocol that states that each traveler must undergo a PCR diagnostic test on his arrival on the island and then limit their displacements until they have the results of this test.
Duran stressed that of the 1,311 infections that Cuba reported in the last 15 days, 838 were imported, mainly from the United States, Russia, India, Venezuela and France.
“In several days we had more imported cases than domestic cases,” the expert pointed out.
Cuba, with 11.2 million inhabitants, had accumulated 10,900 cases of the new coronavirus so far this Friday, with 140 dead and 9,503 recovered, a much more favorable situation than some of its neighbors in the region show.