Havana, August 8 (RHC) – As daily counts of new COVID-19 cases continued to tick upwards in Havana city this week, authorities ordered a reopening rollback, and as of Saturday morning, the capital was reverting to stricter shutdown rules to ward-off the resurgence of the disease.

Addressing the daily media update on COVID-19 Saturday, Public Health Minister Jose Angel Portal Miranda said that 59 people had tested positive to SARS-Cov-2 on Friday, and 14 of them were diagnosed in Havana.

Portal Miranda recalled that the peak of the pandemic in Cuba was reported between the months of April and May and that since last July 21, there has been a spike in daily cases.

"This puts the country in a very difficult situation. Today we have 356 active cases, people admitted to our institutions, which is 12.3% of the cases, when we had gone down to 2% of confirmed cases, and as admissions are increasing, serious cases are also growing, today we have 7 in our hospitals."

The minister added that although most cases are reported in Havana and Artemisa provinces, because of the mobility reported over the last few weeks island-wide, the country is witnessing a new epidemic outbreak that threatens all its population.

Just a few days earlier, on July 20, the island had announced its first day with zero cases detected. Since August 1, there have been 255 confirmed cases, 90% of all cases reported in July.

“When it seemed that we were moving towards a definitive control of the disease, now the situation will last longer and the prognosis indicates that the problem is about to become uncontrollable if we all do not take the measures that have been defined by the country. The threat grows with each passing day, ” said the Minister.

Portal Miranda stressed that human health is a public asset that every citizen has the responsibility to protect.