Cuba eliminates mandatory quarantine for travelers from South Africa

Havana, February 12 (RHC)--Public Health Minister José Ángel Portal Miranda reported Saturday that it was proposed, and approved, to eliminate the mandatory quarantine measure for travelers coming from South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, Malawi and Esuatini.

During the meeting of the Government's Temporary Working Group for the prevention and control of the pandemic, the health minister said that the decision was based on the current epidemiological situation worldwide and particularly in Cuba. Travelers coming from those countries are also exempted from the mandatory taking of samples at the entrance to our ports and airports, and will be governed by the protocols that apply to those arriving from other places.

In this week, the tendency to decrease the number of cases of COVID-19 has been consolidating, only in two days there were more than one thousand, but we have to continue attending to people with certain situations of vulnerability, especially the sick elderly.

The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, reiterated to be alert to the risk posed by the late arrival to the hospital care system of elderly people positive to the SARS-CoV-2 virus with complications.

The President pointed out that it is these incidences that are having the greatest influence on the level of deaths from the disease, which, although not high, must be reduced, he claimed.

In this regard, he argued that very elderly people are dying with a group of complications, and it is necessary to prevent them from running these risks, and in this, he said, the measures taken in the primary health care system have a great influence, where the family doctor must visit them systematically to determine if there are any cases with these complexities.

When making an evaluation of the COVID-19 epidemic in Cuba at the present time, when it is being brought under control, Díaz-Canel stressed that these results are closely linked to the effectiveness of Cuban vaccines and the immunization of the population, even in conditions of the presence of the Omicron variant.

In the world, in most countries, the peak caused by this strain has exceeded even the previous ones; however, in Cuba it has remained well below those we had previously, emphasized the First Secretary.

Today the country, Díaz-Canel reflected, remains under the new normality, it has fewer restrictions than at other times, the school year continues to develop, and the economic activity is developing and reactivating, and I believe that this is how we must continue working, he said.