{"id":224332,"date":"2020-07-13T14:31:23","date_gmt":"2020-07-13T18:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=224332"},"modified":"2020-07-13T14:36:10","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T18:36:10","slug":"coronavirus-in-cuba-four-months-living-with-the-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/cuba\/coronavirus-in-cuba-four-months-living-with-the-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronavirus in Cuba: four months living with the pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Help us keep OnCuba alive<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Just a few hours after the first cases of coronavirus were detected in Cuba four months ago, Dr. Francisco Dur\u00e1n, who became the face of the Cuban Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) in the fight against COVID-19, said in his already traditional morning appearances that it seemed the disease was infinite.<\/p>\n

It may be a simple comment in the midst of his usual presentation of data, but he accurately portrayed the serious problem this has become for humanity and, of course, for Cuba, since last March 11 Cubans started getting familiarized with a disease that, to date, has infected 2,426 people on the island.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Otmaro Rodr\u00edguez.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since then, the data has changed quite a bit. If the first positive cases were three Italian tourists passing through the colonial city of Trinidad, the new infections detected in recent weeks through PCR tests all correspond to Cubans, almost always related to other already detected cases.<\/p>\n

The irruption was dramatic. On March 11, the World Health Organization declared as a pandemic a disease that started in the Chinese province of Wuhan, later baptized as COVID-19 and caused by a virus already known to all: SARS-CoV-2.<\/p>\n

As the island started implementing hygiene and safety measures<\/a> and protocols, work and student activities were suspended, transportation was limited, and the industrial or artisanal production of the already unavoidable facemasks increased, and it became normal for MINSAP authorities or specialists to appear before the cameras to report on the advance of the disease and its expansion in the country and the world.<\/p>\n

No one turned their backs on the subject and the messages started aimed at reassuring but also advising the population. Messages of calm and at the same time of alert, of caution, came from the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba <\/a>to the institutes specialized in medicine and the government, in the face of what was to come. Not only was a wave of contagion expected, but a new era of scarcity, a crisis of unsuspected proportions.<\/p>\n

BioCubaFarma, through its president Eduardo Mart\u00ednez, declared in early March that 22 drugs produced in Cuba were part of the protocol envisaged on the island to deal with the coronavirus.<\/p>\n

However, we soon learned that to curb the contagion curve, the most important thing was going to be individual action with immediate collective impact.<\/p>\n