Photo: ©Anton Litvintsen/123RF

Cuban health authorities reinforced measures on travelers arriving in the country and internal restrictions to fight against the Covid-19 epidemic, that gained in intensity again after 13 weeks.

Omicron cases rose to more than 70 in the analyzed period.

The Minister of Public Health, José Angel Portal, used Facebook and Twitter social media to announce the new measures.

Among the mandatory ones are prioritized those to apply on travelers arriving from South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, Malawi and Eswatini.

Travelers from the rest of the world, whether or not they are residents of Cuba, they will also have to apply mandatory protective actions among these a “complete vaccination schedule”.

“It will be mandatory to show the negative result of an RT-PCR, made a maximum of 72 hours before the trip, “warned the ministerial note on the internet.

The internal protocols announced based on what happened at the closing of the last week when surged 163 patients more than in the previous seven days.

“The virus remains between us and the behavior of the epidemic in the past week is the best example of this “, Minister Portal explained and called population not to have “overconfidence” in front virus propagation.

Portal “regretted” that “in the global context” the trend is “an increase in infections, and the variant omicron, listed by the World Health Organization as “variant of concern” has expanded to 110 countries of all continents”.

The new measures seek to maintain the national reopening, especially the tourism industry, in order to benefit the very strained economy due to long epidemic.

“Let us resume our daily actions with discipline and strict compliance with established protocols, so that the Cuban family does not have to regret more damages such as consequence of this terrible epidemic”, claimed the minister Portal.