Q24N – La Habana (Havana). Cuba announced on Saturday a new peak of 910 cases of COVID-19 infection and released new confinement measures in hotels for tourists entering the country, the Ministry of Public Health reported.
The island country has so far (January 30) registered 25,674 infections and 213 deaths associated with covid-19, three of them on Friday, reported Francisco Durán, head of Epidemiology at the Ministry of Public Health.
Among the new measures that will come into force on February 6, “institutional isolation will be implemented for international travelers,” Durán said in his daily report.
This will mean that people arriving in the country will be subjected to a PCR test at the airport and then transferred to isolation centers where they will receive medical surveillance.
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Foreigners and Cubans who do not reside in the country will be isolated in hotels designated by the authorities and their stay must be paid for by visitors. Meanwhile, Cuban residents will remain isolated in a center designated for this purpose free of charge.
In all cases, travelers will undergo a second PCR test on the fifth day and if they test negative, they can leave isolation. All people who test positive in Cuba are hospitalized.
For their part, transport authorities announced that as of February 6 they will temporarily reduce to a weekly and in some cases biweekly, flights from the United States, Mexico, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and the Bahamas.
The restart of flights from Nicaragua, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname will also be suspended, while flights from Haiti will be canceled.
Cuba, with 11.2 million inhabitants, is one of the countries least affected in the region by the coronavirus.