Isla de la Juventud could control the outbreak of COVID-19 in a month
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Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez said today in this city that the special municipality of Isla de Juventud could control the re-outbreak of COVID-19 in a month, if the investment in the molecular biology laboratory is worked quickly.
The delay in sample processing and the real-time response of the polymerase chain reaction (known as PCR) tests become a handicap for prompt action with suspects and first contacts of confirmed positive cases, explained Israel Velázquez Batista, sector director of Public Health.
He elaborated on the fact that the samples are sent Monday, Wednesday and Friday on health flights to the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK), where the diagnosis is made, for which there is an exposure to risk due to the delay of the result.
After seven months and 15 days without reporting confirmed positive cases to the new coronavirus, from November 23 to date, the territory accumulates 128 infected with the SARS CoV-2 virus, of them, 115 native, 13 imported and the rate of lethality at zero.
This reality conditions the urgency of establishing the modern laboratory, whose investment is limited to the construction of a septic tank, approval of the environmental license by the delegation of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment and the adaptation of premises in the Hygiene Center and Epidemiology, said Mayor Adiel Morera Macías.
Roberto Morales Ojeda, deputy prime minister, said that due to this complex epidemiological situation, the second Cuban island is in the phase of limited autochthonous transmission with an incidence rate in the last 15 days of 99.4 per 100 thousand inhabitants, a of the highest in the country.
He indicated reinforcing the work of health promotion, adhering to the new code of life, guaranteeing active clinical research, especially to groups in vulnerable conditions, applying the clinical method with an epidemiological approach and working in accordance with biosafety measures.
Díaz-Canel Bermúdez stressed that the territory has experience to cut the chain of infections in the shortest possible time and the existence of a modern laboratory will give it more autonomy, therefore, this work can be concluded in the current month because the technical equipment is in the country.
The violation of biosafety protocols and indiscipline are causes of the current outbreak in the country, called to learn to live with SARS CoV-2, because when the epidemic is controlled Cuba will reopen its borders, he said at the fifteenth meeting of its type in the national territory.