May 16 was the last day the United States lowered its flag at half-mast to commemorate the 1 million lives lost in the new crown epidemic. The US media "New York Times" used a GIF to show the "new crown death mountain" composed of this deceased.
As a self-proclaimed "defender of human rights" developed country, the United States is still the country with the highest cumulative number of confirmed covid-19 cases and deaths.
Screenshot of the New York Times report
However, in stark contrast, Cuba, a Caribbean island country that is only one sea away from the United States and has suffered from its 60-year blockade, has never chosen to "lie flat" under the pressure of tourism recession and economic difficulties, and with the help of self-developed vaccines and effective epidemic prevention systems, it has basically controlled a new round of epidemics.
According to the Cuban Ministry of Public Health, under the influence of the increase in international tourists and the spread of the Omiljung strain, the number of new confirmed cases in Cuba at the end of January exceeded 3,500 in a single day, but it has dropped to 93 cases on May 14. The current COVID-19 mortality rate in Cuba is 0.77%, which is lower than the overall level of 1.76% in the Americas and the average mortality rate of 1.2% in the United States.
The curve of changes in new confirmed cases in Cuba in a single day is shown from the data statistics website worldometers
Cuba's outstanding performance in epidemic prevention is closely linked to the high attention of the government and the response at the national level. In the early stages of the global pandemic, the Cuban government had made a plan ahead of schedule. After the outbreak of the epidemic in Olmiquerong, Cuba has actively promoted comprehensive nucleic acid testing, isolation and treatment of patients, restrictions on the scale of public activities and other epidemic prevention policies, which has enabled Cuba to contain the rebound of the epidemic in more than 4 months.
Not only that, but Cuba was also the first Latin American country to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, and widespread vaccination is also seen as the key to alleviating the epidemic. As of the 6th local time, more than 9.95 million people in Cuba have completed the full vaccination of the new crown vaccine, covering 89.8% of Cuba's more than 11 million people, and it is also the country with the highest vaccination rate in Latin America. In addition, Cuba is the only country that has vaccinated almost all children over the age of 2 against COVID-19.
The Cuban Communist Party's organ, Le Gramar, concluded that the quality of Cuban vaccines and prevention and control strategies are key factors in effectively controlling the outbreak, a combination of Cuba's investment in infrastructure and a clear public health strategy.
"Cuba has health care, public services, education, social security and culture." Rob Miller, director of the Cuba Solidarity Movement, a British political group that has called for the lifting of sanctions against Cuba, lamented that "this is an island nation in the Caribbean that has developed its own COVID-19 vaccine." Imagine what that country would have achieved without a blockade. ”
"Without waiting for the patient to come, let's search for the patient first"
Unlike the United States, which is lax and "lying flat" across the Strait of Florida, Cuba attaches great importance to epidemic prevention work in the early stage of the global epidemic.
According to Cuba's "Granma" newspaper, at the meeting on January 28, 2020, a month before the first confirmed case of new crown pneumonia appeared in Cuba, the Cuban government had formulated a "new crown pneumonia epidemic prevention and control plan", including training medical personnel, preparing medical and isolation facilities, strengthening immigration management and testing, arranging for people to work from home, and setting up an expert team to evaluate and update the plan.
After the first confirmed case in the country in March 2020, the Cuban government stepped up its epidemic prevention measures. According to the People's Daily, the Cuban government launched a house-to-house screening program at that time, mobilizing nearly 30,000 medical students across the country to screen the community and test, follow and isolate suspected cases in isolation centers for 14 days.
"Without waiting for the patient to come, we search for the patient first, which is the meaning of the community investigation." Orolis Otaño, president of the Bedado District Community Hospital in Havana, told the "Globe" magazine reporter that community doctors usually visit their homes once or twice a year, during the epidemic period, community doctors are fully dispatched every morning, and each team checks the residential areas of about 200 people on average, through inquiry, observation and other ways to understand the physical condition of residents, and lock suspected cases at the first time.
To prevent the spread of the epidemic, Cuba has also blocked its borders twice: the first from April to October 2020 and the second from March to November 15, 2021.
In mid-2021, the menacing Delta variant caused a massive outbreak in Cuba, with new cases approaching 10,000 per day. Until November 2021, Cuba successfully contained the Delta outbreak and announced the reopening of the country. The Cuban government says this is thanks to Cuba's efficient epidemic prevention measures and vaccination campaigns. Official figures show that the number of new daily cases in Cuba fell to less than 500 at the time.
On January 11, 2021, local time, Havana, the capital of Cuba, people wore masks to travel from the people's vision
However, since December last year, due to the increase in international tourists and the mutation and spread of the Omiljun strain, the epidemic in Cuba quickly rebounded, with more than 3,000 new cases in a single day, forcing Cuba to announce on January 5 to strengthen entry control, requiring tourists to provide 72-hour nucleic acid negative certificates and vaccination certificates.
In response to the resurgence of the outbreak, the Cuban health department did not "lie flat", but took the initiative to take action. According to a social media announcement by Cuban Public Health Minister Portal Miranda last December, locally confirmed cases at risk in Cuba are sent to specialized health facilities for isolation and treatment, while close contacts are quarantined at home and, if necessary, to health facilities.
Miranda said at the time that in view of the strong transmission capacity of Omilon, Cuba will not hold mass activities during the epidemic prevention period, and will strengthen the vaccination of vaccines and injections nationwide. Screening is also carried out in all parts of Cuba to avoid missing suspected cases.
The Cuban Ministry of Public Health further clarified in the epidemic prevention guidelines issued by the Cuban Ministry of Public Health on January 12 this year that the Cuban health department will provide people with antigen reagents for rapid testing and conduct nucleic acid testing for people who have tested positive for paragens. Among close contacts of confirmed cases, people who test positive for antigens must also undergo nucleic acid testing.
On April 26, at the International Biotechnology Conference in Havana, Miranda once again stressed that Cuba's response to the epidemic relies on infrastructure, organizational capacity, health system and other national responses, and that epidemic prevention measures such as the suspension of some economic activities, restrictions on entry and exit, and the isolation of patients have played an important role in controlling the epidemic, although they have had an impact on the Cuban economy.
Under the tight U.S. lockdown, Cuba's medical resources are not abundant, but the Cuban government has done its best to expand the scale of related facilities and enhance prevention and control capabilities. Miranda said that in March 2020, there were only four laboratories responsible for nucleic acid testing in Cuba, and now that number has increased to 27. By the end of April, Cuba had conducted more than 13.66 million nucleic acid tests.
With the help of a series of clear epidemic prevention strategies such as large-scale screening, timely isolation of patients, and restrictions on public activities, Cuba, which is in difficulty, has been able to contain the new crown epidemic again after more than four months of efforts. At a government work meeting on May 3, Miranda reported that Cuba's covid-19 transmission in April was 40.1 percent less than in March, and the COVID-19 mortality rate fell to 0.14 percent in April, According to the newspaper Granma.
Screenshot of the report in The Granma newspaper
Raúl Guinovart, dean of the School of Mathematics and Computing at the University of Havana, Cuba, noted at the same meeting that the updated mathematical model also makes optimistic predictions about the development of the epidemic in Cuba, "It is expected that in the coming weeks, the epidemic will continue to be under control, and the number of confirmed cases and hospitalizations will gradually decrease." ”
Data released by the Cuban Ministry of Public Health on May 15 showed that on the 14th local time, there were 93 new confirmed cases of new coronavirus in the country in a single day, and there were no new deaths. At present, the cumulative number of confirmed covid-19 cases in Cuba is 1104589, and the cumulative number of deaths is 8529, with a mortality rate of 0.77%. Cuba's ministry of public health said the figure was lower than the 1.76 percent mortality rate in the Americas as a whole. This is also lower than the U.S. average mortality rate of 1.2 percent.
However, the fact that the current round of the epidemic has leveled off does not mean that Cuba's epidemic prevention work will be relaxed. The Granma newspaper posted on April 19 stressing that the decline in the number of new confirmed cases means that the epidemic is gradually under control, but Cuba cannot relax its vigilance, "although the death rate has dropped significantly, but the vulnerable population has always existed." It is very important for them to be responsible and vigilant. ”
"Cuba is a biological giant"
Actively promoting people's vaccinations is seen by the Cuban government as key to alleviating the outbreak. According to the Cuban Latin American News Agency, as of May 6, local time, more than 9.95 million people in Cuba have completed the full vaccination of the new crown vaccine, covering 89.8% of Cuba's more than 11 million people.
The Latin American news agency also quoted Dagmar Garcia, director of research at the Finley Vaccine Institute in Cuba, as saying that Cuba has been vaccinating children with COVID-19 since september last year, covering more than 96% of the 2- to 18-year-old group, becoming the only country in the world to vaccinate almost all children over the age of 2.
In response, the Newspaper Gramar concluded that as one of the countries with the highest vaccination rates in the world, the quality of Cuban vaccines and prevention and control strategies are key factors in effectively controlling the epidemic, which is the result of Cuba's investment in infrastructure and a clear public health strategy.
In June 2021, Cuban people were vaccinated against COVID-19
"Given that we are under sanctions, or given the current situation across the country, if we hadn't started our footing in the [biomedical] industry 35 years ago, it would have been quite difficult to fight COVID-19 now." At the end of March 2021, Eduardo Martínez Díaz, chairman of the Cuban Biomedical Group, a state enterprise overseeing the development of vaccines in Cuba, explained Cuba's anti-epidemic achievements at that time in an interview with the us media democracynow.org.
At present, Cuba mainly administers its own development of Avdala, Sovereign 02 and Sovereign Plus vaccines. The reason why Cuba became the first Latin American country to develop a covid-19 vaccine is also closely related to its own history of biomedical development.
At the beginning of the victory of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959, half of the country's doctors went abroad, leaving fewer than 5,000 doctors left throughout cuba. Fidel Castro, Cuba's first supreme leader, proposed that in the future, Cuba should train excellent doctors on a large scale and fulfill the responsibilities of the revolution to the people; it is necessary to actively develop vaccines to reduce the risk of epidemic transmission, reduce the number of deaths due to diseases, and shift the focus of medicine from treatment to prevention.
The U.S. blockade prevented Cuba from buying proprietary formulations of vaccines from U.S. pharmaceutical companies, and according to the BBC, Castro founded the Finley Vaccine Institute, which allowed Cuban researchers to research vaccines on their own.
A series of policies of the Cuban government have also made repeated breakthroughs in the country's biopharmaceutical industry. As early as the 1980s, Cuba became the first country in the world to develop a japanese meningitis vaccine. In 2015, Cuba also became the first country to receive WHO verification for the elimination of mother-to-child (vertical) transmission of HIV and syphilis.
In addition, Cuba has developed a relatively complete medical system. Statistics from the Cuban Ministry of Public Health show that in 2019, there were more than 100,000 active doctors in Cuba, that is, an average of 9 doctors per 1,000 people, which is the highest proportion in the world. According to the People's Daily, most Cuban doctors serve a primary healthcare network of family clinics and community hospitals. After the outbreak of the epidemic, the Cuban Ministry of Health, together with a number of agencies, has formed an interdepartmental, interdisciplinary medical service complex that can carry out targeted treatment in a timely manner, and try to ensure the supply of ventilators, pharmaceutical products and other medical equipment. Cuba is located in the tropics, and outbreaks such as dengue fever and Zika virus occur from time to time. The rich experience accumulated by the public health system provides a reference for the fight against THE new crown pneumonia epidemic.
"[Cuba] is a biological giant." Gail Reed, executive editor of Medical Review, said in an interview with The New York Times that "Cuba's achievements in this area are undeniable." ”
While the domestic epidemic leveled, Cuba continued to promote vaccine research and development, and on the other hand, it also regarded vaccine exports as one of the ways to revitalize the economy.
According to the Latin American news agency reported on April 14, Eduardo Martinez, president of the Cuban Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Industry Group, said that Cuba is committed to researching a new generation of new coronavirus vaccines to more effectively curb the spread of the virus. Development of candidate "Sovereign 01" and Mambisa vaccines will also continue to be licensed for use in emergencies.
Martinez also mentioned that work to seek recognition of the Cuban vaccine by the World Health Organization (WHO) has made progress, and documents on two vaccine candidates will be submitted to WHO in the future.
In June 2021, nurses in Havana, cuba, prepared the Avdala vaccine
Qatar's Al Jazeera reported in September that Cuba had exported a batch of Avdala vaccines to Vietnam and Venezuela. At that time, Cuba also called on WHO to approve the new crown vaccine developed in the country as soon as possible, and hoped to expand the channels for the export of vaccines in the country.
American Public Radio (NPR) quoted analysts as saying that Cuba's vaccine research and development and production capacity have met the vaccine needs of the country's people, and in view of the current shortage of vaccines in many third world countries, Cuba may consider exporting vaccines to developing countries to obtain foreign exchange earnings.
However, NPR also analyzed that the WHO has not authorized the Cuban vaccine so far, which may become a potential obstacle to exports. Cuba could certainly provide vaccines to countries interested in purchasing them, but if vaccines were approved by WHO or other regulatory agencies, the export of these medical products would be much less difficult.
However, the US media also admitted that although the Cuban vaccine is still in a "marginalized" situation, Cuba has finally done what many countries have failed to do during the epidemic and "controls its own destiny" in terms of vaccination.
Rob Miller, winner of the Cuban Medal of Unity and director of the British political group "Cuban Solidarity Movement", lamented on the 11th when calling on the United States to lift the blockade against Cuba, "Cuba has health care, public services, education, social security and culture." This is an island nation in the Caribbean that has developed its own COVID-19 vaccine. Imagine what that country would have achieved without a blockade. ”
"Every hotel that opens is an income-generating factory for the country"
At the critical juncture of Cuba's commitment to fighting the new crown epidemic, the United States, which is "lying flat" across the sea, has not stopped attacking Cuba, and the blockade it has imposed has intensified.
In January 2021, the outgoing Trump administration announced that it would re-add Cuba to its list of countries that support terrorism. Carlos Alzugai, a former Cuban diplomat, believes that the purpose of the increased sanctions imposed by the United States is to prevent all kinds of resources from entering Cuba, including financial resources, to cut off all sources of financing needed for Cuba's economic development, and to prevent Cuba from importing energy, thereby strangling the Cuban economy.
Cuban Foreign Minister Rodríguez said in June that the U.S. blockade had cost Cuba its economy more than $9 billion during the COVID-19 pandemic. In February of this year, the Cuban Government issued a statement stating that the embargo constituted a massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of the Cuban people, which had cumulatively caused cuba nearly $150 billion in economic damage.
Agence France-Presse and other foreign media said that under the influence of the new crown epidemic and US sanctions, Cuban food imports have decreased significantly, food and medicine are seriously lacking, and the US blockade and tourism recession have brought a huge crisis to the Cuban economy, and the inflation rate was as high as 70%.
In addition to the impact of the epidemic and the US blockade, the Conflict between Russia and Ukraine has also had an impact on Cuba's growing foreign exchange earnings problem. On April 18, the British Reuters news agency quoted Cuban businessmen and local foreign businessmen as saying that the situation in Ukraine has led to a surge in the price of important imported goods such as fuel and grain, which has risen by 25% to 40% this year, putting more pressure on the Cuban government, which lacks dollar reserves.
Cuba's economy minister, Alejandro Hill, also said at the end of March that rising oil prices had affected the Cuban government's plans to cut import costs, and that rising fuel prices and shipping disruptions had also contributed in part to gas shortages and power outages in Cuba.
Reuters noted that Cuba is not a member of the International Monetary Fund or similar international organizations and cannot seek loans from these organizations to ease the crisis. As Cuba earns dollars mainly on services such as exports and tourism to pay for the import of fuel, food, medicine, spare parts and other products, the shortage of foreign exchange reserves has also led to a significant decline in the Cuban government's imports and a slowdown in economic recovery in the 2020-21 period.
Therefore, in order to boost the tourism industry, an important source of foreign exchange, Cuba has no choice but to reopen its doors.
In 2019, Cuba received more than 4 million foreign tourists, and tourism accounted for 10.6% of GDP. But figures released by Cuba's National Statistics and Information Office show that the number of international tourists received by Cuba in 2021 has plummeted to 574,000 in 2021.
Varadero Beach, a tourist resort in Cuba, is pictured by British media
The British "Guardian" also mentioned on May 6 that there are signs that the United States may also increase its crackdown on Cuba's tourism industry in the near future. In the past two weeks, international tourists have complained on social media that the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) flying from Havana, Cuba, to U.S. cities was suddenly and permanently canceled, allowing visitors from some countries to enter the United States visa-free.
The Guardian said the U.S. Embassy was reluctant to explain the matter, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security refused to respond to questions. However, some American Airlines staff revealed to the newspaper that similar situations have become more common recently.
But in order to revive its economy, Cuba must work to revive tourism.
After the outbreak of the epidemic in Olmiquerong, Cuba announced on January 5 that it had tightened entry restrictions, requiring tourists to provide 72-hour negative nucleic acid certificates and vaccination certificates. But Reuters said Cuba, while raising the threshold for tourists to enter, remained open in the hope of injecting vitality into the tourism industry.
On May 6, Cuban President Díaz-Cardin and a number of government officials attended the opening ceremony of the Cuba International Tourism Expo (FITCuba). Prime Minister Mareiro praised Cuba's hotel construction plans, quoting the late revolutionary leader Fidel Castro as saying, "Every hotel that opens is a factory that generates revenue for the country." ”
Cuban Agence Latin America: The minister of tourism said that Cuba's tourism industry is gradually recovering
Cuba's tourism minister Juan Carlos Garcia issued a statement saying that despite the huge difficulties caused by the resurgence of the epidemic in January, Caribbean countries still need to continue to consolidate the achievements made in the past four months. He said that although regional conflicts, economic recessions and other factors have hit the tourism industry, Cuba's tourism industry has shown signs of recovery.
As of April, Cuba had received nearly 450,000 international tourists this year, according to The Latin American News Agency. Although this figure did not reach the level expected and hoped for by the Cuban government, it was also much higher than the same period in 2021, so the Cuban authorities are optimistic about the recovery of tourism.