HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 19 (ACN) Cuban mathematicians and epidemiologists estimate that the country could be reaching the peak of the current COVID-19 wave, according to forecast models presented Tuesday during the weekly meeting of the Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez with experts from the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) who have been in charge, for almost two years, of the scientific and technological innovation activity to fight the coronavirus.
The dean of the School of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Havana, Raul Guinovart Diaz, said that the prospects are more encouraging than in past weeks, although the situation is still complex. He acknowledged that these models may be controversial, but they reveal that Cuba is getting near the peak of the current infection rate, and from there the COVID-19 curve is bound to flatten.
Díaz-Canel commented that, compared to what is happening in the world with the Omicron strain, the number of cases in Cuba has not rocketed and is almost the same as the number of daily medical discharges.
“The disease has not spread as quickly in the last few days, and it seems that we will manage to keep it under some control in the coming weeks, but we must stay alert,” Guinovart Díaz pointed out.
Dr. José Raúl de Armas Fernández, head of MINSAP’s Division of Communicable Diseases, said that some provinces have not yet reached the expected number of cases and, in general, Cuba is bound to reach a plateau and then move down the curve of infection.
Ileana Morales Suárez, director of Science and Technological Innovation at MINSPA, reported that 92.5% of the Cubans have received all the vaccines, whereas the booster dose has been already administered to 45.5% of them. In the meantime, she said, Cuba continues the clinical studies with the nasal vaccine candidate Mambisa.
Dr. Gerardo Guillén Nieto, director of Biomedical Research at the CIGB, explained that Mambisa is being studied as a booster both for those who received the three doses of the vaccine Abdala and for COVID-19 convalescents, and held that three nasal administration devices were successfully tested, including one that Cuba can produce in order to guarantee the vaccine’s sustainability.
Once the tests are concluded, Mambisa will be submitted to CECMED for emergency use approval as one of the 11 COVID-19 nasal vaccines currently under study worldwide.