MIAMI, United States. – The government of Panama included Cuba on its list of “high risk” countries due to the high rate of COVID-19 contagion in the island, according to the standards of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the United States.
The Office of Public Health of Panama (Dirección de Salud Pública de Panamá), through Resolution 2294 and “in accordance with daily epidemiological analysis showing confirmed cases per one million inhabitants,” determined which countries would be considered “high risk due too high transmission of COVID-19 and the incidence of variants classified by the WHO to pose risk or concern: Alfa, Gamma, Lambda and Delta.”
Also on the list, together with Cuba, are included the United States, Guatemala, Costa Rica, French Guyana in the Americas. Countries also considered “high risk” are the United Kingdom, Greece, Israel, South Africa, Mongolia, among others.
The Panamanian government has not specified in what way classifying Cuba as a “high risk” country due to coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 transmission, may affect travel of Cubans to Panama.
Regarding the United Kingdom and South Africa, for example, the Panamanian government had already suspended entry to individuals who had visited those two countries within 20 days of their arrival in Panama.
According to official data from Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP), August is considered the worse pandemic month in the island. According to Dr. Francisco Durán García, national director of Epidemiology at the ministry, in the 31 days of August, 265,121 contagions and 2,532 deaths from COVID-19 were reported. Those numbers determine an average of 8,552 coronavirus cases reported daily and 82 fatalities every 24 hours.
“August, the worst month from a pandemic perspective, was very difficult, we will remember it as the worst,” stated Durán García in one of his daily press conferences.
This past Sunday, MINSAP reported 86 new fatalities due to COVID-19, including a pregnant 34-year-old woman from Granma province, and a 13-year-old girl from Mayabeque province.
From the beginning of the pandemic in the island, the institution has reported 5,703 deaths due to coronavirus. However, the official statistics have been contested by activists and the independent media, who accuse the Havana regime of withholding the true numbers of the pandemic.
Also, this Sunday, MINSAP reported 9,221 new patients sick with coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which raises the number of patients in the island diagnosed with COVID-19 since March 2020, to 689,674.
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