To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
Former Brazilian president with ten person entourage arrived in Cuba with COVID-19 on December 21, 2020. Did they bring a new variant?
Reuters quoted on June 8, 2020 Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel claiming they "could be shortly closing in on the tail end of the pandemic and entering the phase of recovery from COVID.” Official media echoed this same line at the time. Six months later and COVID-19 continues to be a challenge in Cuba, and the regime on December 28, 2020 placed new travel restrictions on flights to and from the United States, Mexico, Panama, the Bahamas, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Data provided by official regime sources used for the above chart.
However, ideological considerations apparently continue to take precedent over health concerns. Brazil right now is a COVID-19 disaster, and the Biden Administration is maintaining Brazil on its list of COVID-19 travel restrictions. The Guardian has described the COVID-19 situation in Brazil as a "complete massacre, a horror film." This did not deter the Castro regime from inviting the former president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, from traveling to Cuba to take part in a Oliver Stone documentary.
According to Reuters, "Lula tested negative before flying to Cuba on Dec. 21 and then positive five days later in Havana in tests that showed that he was infected before arriving on the island." Nine out of the 10 members of his entourage tested positive for COVID-19 and one of them spent two weeks hospitalized in Havana, reported the wire service. It is a safe bet that Raul Castro and his minion, Miguel Diaz-Canel, were already vaccinated against the coronavirus, but what about the other Cubans exposed when they came in contact with the Brazilian delegation? Did the former Brazilian president have one of the variants that is wreaking havoc in the South American country, and may be causing re-infections of individuals who have already contracted COVID-19 or been vaccinated?
The Castro regime, which provides data on health indicators without independent experts to corroborate their claims, has been reporting that they had COVID-19 under control and until the fall of 2020 kept reporting very low numbers. There was reason to question this data.
Cuban demographer Sergio Díaz-Brisquet interviewed by Nora Gamez of the Miami Herald on May 5, 2020 explained that “preventive measures were taken late, and many have not been implemented fully, mostly because the government does not have enough resources. There is not even enough soap.” Mr. Díaz-Brisquet added in the same article that “Cuba has other health indicators such as an aged population and higher percentages of people with pre-existing conditions that would suggest they have a more serious problem."
Cuba watchers understood that the official line did not reflect the reality on the ground. Cuban-American economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago observed in a Harvard webinar on May 1, 2020 that in Cuba, “there is no independent entity that can report its own [coronavirus] figures or criticize the government’s data.”
According to data reviewed in the Miami Herald by Nora Gamez:
"In the week ending on March 21 there were 144,095 newly reported 'acute respiratory illnesses.' By March 28, the number of new weekly cases of people with acute respiratory diseases rose to 188,816, more than double the weekly average this year. 'Not only could the increase be explained by a COVID-19 outbreak, it most likely does reflect the COVID-19 outbreak based on when it started and what has been going on in the world,' said Dr. Aileen Marty, an expert on infectious tropical diseases and director of the Florida International University Health Travel Medicine Program."
In less than a month (March 15 - April 4th) the Cuba based, Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine, "reported 491,494 cases of acute respiratory diseases." This was a dramatic increase from measurements taken in Cuba over the past five years, and the months prior to March 2020.
Recurring news over 2020 by independent and outlawed Cuban news outlets was that there was a lack of medical personnel in the island and that unqualified personnel were being recruited to treat patients.
Under the Castro regime there is a history of under- reporting outbreaks of Dengue in 1997, Cholera in 2012, and Zika in 2017 that impacted not just Cubans, but visitors to Cuba. Cubans who blew the whistle during these prior outbreaks were jailed by the Castro dictatorship and declared prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International in 1997 and 2012 respectively. Havana initially got away with the 2017 Zika coverup, but contact tracing cases of tourists from around the world who had contracted this virus, that causes catastrophic birth defects, led back to Cuba. Researchers reported that thousands of Zika cases had not been reported.
This history led some to reason that this was happening again with COVID-19. Castro regime officials falsely claimed throughout February and March 2020 that Cuba was a safe harbor with effective treatments for Wuhan Virus for visiting tourists. Worse yet, propaganda outlets claimed that they had a vaccine in February 2020. Now Cubans have to worry about the extent of COVID-19 in the populace while not having independent sources to verify the official story, and knowing that this regime has a poor track record of giving accurate information on disease outbreaks, especially when it gets in the way of the tourist industry or their health care claims.
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