A brigade of 52 Cuban doctors and nurses travelled to Lombardy on Saturday in response to the request for help from that region of northern Italy, the most affected by the coronavirus pandemic in the European country.
During this day, the team of doctors arrived at Milan Malpensa Airport, as reported by the Cuban ambassador to Italy, José Carlos Rodríguez Ruiz. As they walked through the corridors of the terminal, specialists were greeted with applause.
Highly qualified and experienced island specialists in epidemics such as Ebola will assist their Lombard colleagues, who work in extreme conditions and hospitals overwhelmed by the rapid rise in the number of serious cases.
They will join a dozen Chinese doctors already in the area and will be assigned to a new field hospital in Bergamo, the province with the highest number of sufferers.
Italy, the country hardest hit by the epidemic, already accumulates 4,825 deaths with coronavirus, 793 in the last 24 hours alone, making it the nation with the highest death toll, above China, where the outbreak of the new coronavirus began in late December at the end of December Past.
This is the sixth medical brigade to travel to fight COVID-19 off the island, where the Government insists that the situation is controlled at the moment, all cases are imported and there is no local contagion.
Groups of Cuban specialists are already in Suriname, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Venezuela and will soon be in Granada, the Chancellery of the Caribbean country reported.
The Welsh members the Henry Reeve International Contingent, created by the late former President Fidel Castro in 2005 to assist in disaster situations and epidemics. His work in some 20 nations earned him a World Health Organization award in 2017.
According to official data, since the Ebola epidemic in 2014, Cuba has received requests to send 12,000 health professionals abroad.
“There is a national feeling of wanting to cooperate. We receive messages from volunteers willing to leave anywhere to help with this global health situation,” the director of Medical Collaboration at the Cuban Ministry of Public Health (Minsap), Jorge Juan Delgado, told the state press.
The island’s medical cooperation is present in 37 countries with COVID-19 cases. According to the authorities, no Cuban doctor has become infected and everyone “is in good health.”
Country without tourists and on alert
Cuba decided to follow the example of several countries in the region and close their borders for a month, except for residents of the island and commercial activities, starting next Tuesday.
The decision comes after public concern increased and network petitions accumulate in the face of the growth of imported cases of the disease.
In the coming days, 60,000 tourists will be managed, including almost 2,000 Spaniards, who will not be stranded on the island since Havana has not limited its airspace.
Meanwhile, the Chancellery today reported the return of hundreds of islanders from Nicaragua, Haiti and Guyana.
Cubans and returning residents will have to keep two weeks of quarantine in health units.
The Government has called for social estrangement measures, will promote telework, support the self-employed who are affected and guarantee state salaries.
At the moment Havana rules out closing schools, universities, shops, restaurants and declaring curfews. President Miguel Díaz-Canel emphasized a national television appearance that will later take “stronger measures” if necessary.
21 cases
Cuba so far counts 21 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and keeps 716 people in preventive isolation in health facilities, as well as “community” surveillance over another 28,139, according to the most recent part of the Ministry of Public Health.
The Minsap has not issued a new statement since Friday night, when it raised the figure to five new positive cases.
Of the diagnosed patients, two are in serious condition: a Cuban interned at the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine and an Italian who remains isolated and under treatment at the Fermín Valdez Domínguez Military Hospital in the eastern province of Holguín.
The only one killed at the moment is a 61-year-old Italian man who was one of the first three diagnosed cases in the country, all tourists from that European country.
An American with the virus was evacuated from the island on Friday in an air ambulance. The patient returned to the United States with his wife in “stable state,” Cuban health authorities detailed.
