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Two of the confirmed cases are Cubahidraulica Company workers who returned from South Africa and tested positive for COVID-19 while staying in mandatory quarantine.
On Thursday, Cuba’s Tropical Medicine Institute Pedro Kouri (IPK) detected four Omicron COVID-19 strain cases in travelers who came from Africa and remain asymptomatic.
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Two of the confirmed cases are Cubahidraulica Company workers who returned from South Africa and tested positive for COVID-19 while staying in mandatory quarantine.
The other cases correspond to an Ethiopian citizen and a Somalian tourist who arrived in Cuba from Kenya on Dec. 13 and were isolated because they tested positive for a PCR-RT test.
Health authorities identified four people with whom the tourists may have been in contact since arriving in the country, but all of them remain also asymptomatic and tested negative for the virus.
Cuba vaccine coverage compared to UK, World and its nearest neighbours. Hard truths are hard to swallow: pic.twitter.com/XIV0MEoON4
— Cubastudies (@cubastudies) December 16, 2021
To respond to the epidemiological challenges that Omicron might cause in the future, Cuban scientists will soon start trials to test the effectiveness of the Abdala and Sovereign 02 vaccine against it.
“We will reproduce the entry of the strain into the human body in a high-biosafety laboratory. The Omicron strain sample will be mixed with cells that have the ACE2 receptor —which the virus needs to enter our cells— and blood from people vaccinated to test the effectiveness of our vaccines," Finlay Vaccine Institute (IFV) scientist Daniel Garcia detailed.
"Our researchers are prepared to put our country at the forefront of efforts to fight the pandemic. If our vaccines do not prove to be effective against Omicron strain, we will design others specific to this strain," lFV Director Vicente Verez stated.
#Cuba | President Miguel Diaz-Canel described the ALBA-TCP as a real moral fortress that honors to the region. pic.twitter.com/ETBAQJ26Re
— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) December 15, 2021
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