Health Minister explained Cuba's response to COVID-19

Havana, April 26 (RHC) Cuba's Public Health Minister José Ángel Portal Miranda said Tuesday that the COVID-19 pandemic did not take the island's government by surprise since it had a plan to confront the disease that allowed it to act without improvisation.

Presenting the keynote lecture 'Cuba's response to face COVID-19', as part of the International Congress 'BioHabana 2022', he said that the timely implementation of measures and actions for the prevention and control of the virus and the role of human and scientific capital were decisive.

"The premise of the National Health System in the face of the pandemic was that the healthy population should not fall ill, and if they did, they should not become seriously ill, should not die, and should have the least number of after-effects," said the head of the National Health System.

He added that the Cuban model for dealing with the disease was characterized by integrating three fundamental components: epidemiological management, health care management, and science.

"COVID-19 has been the greatest challenge for science in the last decades, never had scientists researched so much of the same subject in such a short time, and for Cuba, this has not been an exception," he said.

"In this period, knowledge has developed in an unprecedented way in the nation," he said. In that sense, he mentioned the obtaining of 'Abdala', 'Soberana 02' and 'Soberana Plus', anti-COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use by the national regulatory authority, and the vaccine candidates Mambisa' and 'Soberana 01'.

He defined the Cuban vaccination strategy as one of the most comprehensive actions and highlighted that Cuba is among the first nations at the international level for its vaccination level, as well as being the country that has achieved progress in immunization in the shortest time.

BioHabana 2022' will be held until next Friday, April 29, at the Havana Convention Center, and through the virtual modality, with more than 900 delegates and guests from 51 countries, including scientists, technologists, and specialists in the health and business sectors.