How is Cuba preparing for the phenomenon of mutant strains? How likely are these virus variants to escape a vaccination response with the different vaccine candidates in trials and already approved vaccines? The appearance of SARS-CoV-2 mutations has posed an even greater challenge to the international scientific community, faced with the question of whether the immunogens in development will be effective against the new variants.
The Minister of Public Health, Dr. José Angel Portal Miranda; the president of BioCubaFarma, Dr. Eduardo Martínez Díaz, and Dr. María Guadalupe Guzmán, director of the Center for Research, Diagnosis and Reference of the IPK, appeared this Thursday at the Round Table to address these issues.
The international situation does not show concrete signs of improvement and the epidemiological scenario continues to be very complex. Globally, new cases of COVID-19 increased for the sixth consecutive week, with more than four million new infections reported last week.
The number of new deaths also grew by 11% last week and 71,000 new deaths were reported. In this way, deaths related to the coronavirus throughout the planet exceeded three million last Tuesday.
Offering these data at the beginning of the Round Table, the Minister of Public Health affirmed that “for you to have an idea, it took the world more than a year for the global death toll from coronavirus to reach two million. The next million deaths were added in just three months. This shows how the disease has been behaving and the seriousness and danger of the situation ”.
During the past week, in addition, the Americas region reported more than 1.3 million new cases and more than 37,000 new deaths, for a 3% and 15% increase compared to the previous week. "In a general sense, there has been an increasing trend in the incidence of weekly cases during the last six weeks," said Portal Miranda.
The highest number of new cases was reported in Brazil, the United States and Argentina, with a very complex situation, while the highest number of deaths has been concentrated, in the case of the region, in Brazil and the United States.
“It is not surprising that, with some 57 million confirmed cases of coronavirus, and the Americas being the continent hardest hit by the pandemic, several countries in the region are reinforcing measures against the disease this week due to the increase in infections and deaths. ”He added.
In that sense, he gave as an example and alert of what could happen in the case of Chile. As announced by the Ministry of Health of that country, since the end of March, more than 13 million people have returned to quarantine there, in order to combat the increase in coronavirus cases. The measure was taken because in the last week, new cases increased by 17% and in the last two weeks, by 36%, despite the fact that the vaccination campaign in that country is one of the most advanced in the region. , with more than 45% of its population vaccinated.
International media reported that infections are rising three times faster than at the worst moment of the first wave last year, and that the Chilean health system is beginning to put into crisis, especially for the care of critically ill patients.
The excessive confidence of citizens, derived precisely from the rapid vaccination campaign, and that it began when the new variants were already present in the country, have pointed out the Chilean health authorities, are among the causes of the increase in cases, said the Minister.
“We could put examples from other countries in any of the regions of the world, but this example is sufficient and illustrative to know that the measures that we have planned for control are those that we have to ensure well to be able to cut the transmission.
“Numerous media and international organizations such as the WHO also warn that this latest global resurgence of COVID-19 infections is challenging the efforts of countries. Today, international experts say that this wave is related to more infectious variants of the virus and also to the public fatigue experienced by societies in most countries in the face of closures and other restrictions.
“This panorama is not, saving distances, alien to Cuba, which has also experienced an exponential growth in infections. We could say that we are on a plateau, but it ranges from around 1 000 new cases every day.
“It is a very high figure that we are obliged to decrease, because as long as the number of infections continues to grow, if the transmission of the virus does not slow down, the situation would be much more difficult than it already is. it is and could compromise the response that the health system and the various sectors and agencies involved in controlling the epidemic have so far given. And we cannot allow that ”, said Portal Miranda.
“We have to keep working. Today what is circulating in the country is the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which generates COVID-19, because there have been alerts, movements in networks, false alarms, and what we have really been demonstrating in those territories where there is an increase of the number of cases, it is that what is circulating is this virus ", he clarified.
http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2021/04/08/ante-nuevas-variantes-del-…- effectiveness-of-Cuban-vaccines-video /
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