Cuba confirms 6,460 new cases of covid-19 and 65 deaths

Havana, July 16 (EFE) .- Cuba confirmed this Friday 6,460 new cases of covid-19 and 65 deaths, indicators that show the complex epidemiological situation that the country is going through, according to the Ministry of Public Health (Minsap).

With the new infections detected on the day, including 40 imported, the country has 269,546 positives and 1,791 deaths since the start of the pandemic 16 months ago.

In the labs, 47,356 samples were processed to detect the day’s cases, according to the Minsap report.

67,993 people are admitted to hospitals and isolation centers: 43,434 active cases -134 critical and 171 serious-, 18,236 with suspicious symptoms and the rest under epidemiological surveillance.

By province, the west of Matanzas again concentrated the highest number of positive SARS-Cov-2 cases with 1,888, followed today by Havana (763) and the Ciego de Ávila power plant (620) .

The health crisis was one of the factors behind Sunday’s anti-government protests, which left one dead and hundreds detained, according to independent civil society organizations.

In the territories at risk, including the capital, a health intervention study is being carried out with Abdala and Soberana 02, the two most advanced of the five formulas that Cuba is developing against the coronavirus.

The first of them, which has shown a 92.2% efficacy in clinical trials, has received an authorization for emergency use and is the first Latin American vaccine against the coronavirus.

Soberana 02, for its part, is awaiting this clearance after showing 91.2% efficacy with two doses and an additional dose of Soberana Plus, another of the compounds that scientists on the island are studying.

More than a million, of the 11.2 million Cubans, have received at least one dose of these formulas in clinical trials and intervention studies developed alongside that of health.

Cuba has not purchased vaccines on the international market, nor is it part of the WHO Covax mechanism created to enable low and middle income countries to access them.