COVID-19 cases in Cuba expected to increase in February

HAVANA - Cuba could set a new daily record of more than 1,500 COVID-19 cases by the end of February, scientists said Monday.

The prediction, announced by experts from the University of Havana's School of Mathematics and Computer Science during a coronavirus briefing, is based on a COVID-19 modelling released on Friday.

Data also showed that the island could register nearly 7,000 active cases in the coming weeks, as the number of people infected with the virus would continue to rise through the month before starting to decline in March.

Cuba's daily case count hit new highs several times over the past month as the island on Sunday set a new daily record of 1,012 infections.

The island reported 906 new confirmed cases and two more deaths on Monday, taking its national caseload to 27,592 and death toll to 216.

Health authorities said that January 2021 ended as Cuba's worst month of the COVID-19 pandemic with 70 deaths and 15,536 cases.

The risk of contracting the virus is still high in different territories around the island, said Francisco Duran, national director of hygiene and epidemiology at the Cuban Ministry of Public Health.

"We have tested more than 18,000 samples for the novel coronavirus over the past 24 hours," he said on TV. "At present, there are 3,498 people under epidemiological surveillance."

Of all the new cases registered in the Caribbean nation, 442 were logged in Havana, the epicenter of the sanitary emergency in Cuba.

Indeed, during the ongoing outbreak, nearly 54 percent of the confirmed coronavirus cases over the past two weeks have been registered in 12 municipalities, nine of which are located in the country's capital.

In the meantime, Yateras, a rural town in the easternmost province of Guantanamo, is the only municipality on the island that has remained virus-free since the pandemic began in March 2020.

At present, 5,469 active cases are receiving medical treatment at COVID-19 wards with 49 people in intensive care units across the country.

The Cuban government has adopted measures to increase the number of beds at COVID-19 wards and the capacity to diagnose patients infected with the virus nationwide.

As the pandemic continues to wreak havoc nationwide, a medical laboratory equipped with Chinese technology has been set up in the central province of Cienfuegos.

For the moment, the new health facility would process nearly 500 COVID-19 test samples a day, local authorities in Cienfuegos told media.