Cuba says 25 health workers are sick, orders stricter quarantines to contain coronavirus
Cuban authorities warned Wednesday that they have identified several cases of local transmission of the coronavirus and announced that 25 health workers, including 14 doctors and eight nurses, also contracted the disease.
Public Health Minister José Ángel Portal said at a press conference that one of the doctors was in critical condition. Two technicians and an ambulance driver are also in the group.
Portal said some of the infected staff had contracted the virus from patients who did not initially show symptoms of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
The minister said that an “important transmission event” took place in the Calixto García Hospital in Havana, one of the largest in the capital.
“We are in condition to close it” and transfer the patients to other centers, he said.
The official also reported “a smaller event” of transmission in the Manuel Fajardo Hospital, also in Havana, a hot spot for the virus.
Since the start of the pandemic, the Cuban government has been sending medical personnel to various countries in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. It recently sent 101 nurses to Barbados.
But with the increase in cases, Portal announced that the health authorities were “qualifying” personnel to work in intensive care units in the country.
“Working with critically ill patients in intensive care is a very exhausting task,” he said. “We are preparing staff to support our units.”
Military will enforce quarantines
On Tuesday, the Council of Ministers decreed that the country had entered the stage of “limited local transmission” and that the Defense Councils, a military body operating throughout the country during emergencies, will impose quarantines to limit movement in neighborhoods or municipalities where there is local transmission.
The government had asked the population to stay at home and go out only to work or to conduct essential activities. But images and videos from the island, where food is scarce, show frequent lines in front of stores. Authorities have complained that many do not abide by the new regulations or keep a safe distance in public.
The government had already implemented quarantines in two communities in the province of Pinar del Río and the neighborhood known as El Carmelo in Havana.
As of Tuesday, 457 people had tested positive for COVID-19, and 12 had died, mostly over the age of 60. Ten other patients were in critical condition.
In a single day, 61 new cases were identified as the government expands its capacity to carry out tests.
The health minister said the country has five laboratories to process the samples, having recently added two in Havana. The total number of tests carried out so far is 9,410.
According to data from the World Health Organization obtained by the Miami Herald, as of April 1 the organization had sent Cuba three lots of testing kits, good to conduct roughly 15,200 tests.
Last week an official from the Ministry of Public Health announced that the country had more than 40,000 conventional molecular diagnostic tests and had obtained 100,000 rapid tests that allow a diagnosis of COVID-19 to be made in 30 minutes.
The official did not say where they came from, but the Xinhua news agency reported that China had donated them.
The rapid tests “will be applied to the people we have in isolation centers and to those who arrive in the country,” said Dr. Francisco Durán García, national director of epidemiology at the Health Ministry.
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This story was originally published April 8, 2020 at 2:40 PM with the headline "Cuba says 25 health workers are sick, orders stricter quarantines to contain coronavirus."