Around 80 schools in the province of Guantánamo, Cuba’s easternmost province, will temporarily close their doors due to the rebound in COVID-19 cases in that territory.
According to the Department of Education in Guantánamo, 82 educational institutions are suspending their teaching activities, of the 779 open in the province, the local newspaper Venceremos reported this Tuesday.
The most affected municipality is the provincial capital―currently in the autochthonous transmission phase of the disease―where 70 of its 106 schools have recessed since Monday, a measure that affects 30,850 students, the source noted.
For its part, in Niceto Pérez―also in the autochthonous transmission phase―seven schools located in the La Yaya and Vilorio people’s councils closed, while the 46 remaining schools located in that municipality will maintain their functions for the time being.
The city of Guantánamo also saw the closure of five provincial centers, in which students from various municipalities study, while the departure of students from eight boarding schools, four of them provincial and the same number in Niceto Pérez, was ordered, Venceremos said, according to which eight day-care centers and six semi-boarding schools were reorganized in the provincial capital and classes are maintained in 13 primary schools and a mixed center in peripheral areas of the Guantánamo capital, as well as in the remaining municipalities, under strict sanitary measures.
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Among the institutions affected by the suspension of classes in Guantánamo are the José Maceo Exact Sciences Vocational Complex, the Simón Tames Polytechnic Institute, the Music and Dance schools, the 14 de junio special education school and the Rafael Freyre Sports Initiation School, says, for its part, Granma newspaper, which quotes Raquel Laviste, provincial director of education.
Laviste announced the opening of television spaces, in coordination with the territorial telecentre, aimed at the more than 38,000 students of the different educational levels that are affected throughout the province. These spaces will be maintained “as long as the current epidemiological situation lasts,” the publication noted.
Granma added that public passenger transportation was also suspended in the state and private sectors in the two municipalities with autochthonous transmission of the virus―Guantánamo and Niceto Pérez―and that as of this Tuesday, “interprovincial passenger transportation is interrupted until the territory returns to normality.”
Guantánamo is, along with Havana, Matanzas, Santiago de Cuba and Villa Clara, one of the provinces hardest hit by the current COVID-19 outbreak in Cuba, which according to the authorities was triggered by the opening of the Cuban borders and non-compliance of the sanitary standards established for international travelers and their families. This situation has set off alarms on the island, which in recent weeks has seen infections grow steadily and several negative records in daily and active cases in the country.
