Local outbreaks and 180 sick health workers: Havana grapples with COVID-19
Even as Cuba’s official statistics were showing a decrease in new coronavirus cases, Havana itself got another taste of how contagious the new virus really is: One woman was patient zero in a massive outbreak that started in a store and spilled over to a lab facility and a state transport company.
The outbreak, which has sickened 124 people so far, began at the popular La Época store, a supermarket in Centro Habana area that sells food, home appliances and various household items. It was closed to the public but was working to fulfill orders from state enterprises.
The woman who is believed to have first spread the disease there continued working six days after she first showed symptoms, the city government top epidemiologist, Yadira Olivera, said in the live show “Mesa Redonda,” Round Table, on Monday night.
Sixty-three confirmed cases of coronavirus have been traced back directly to La Época. The first case was detected on May 19, according to the official newspaper Granma. A few days after, cases began to pile up at the AICA pharmaceutical lab, especially among workers in the packing section. Most were asymptomatic, Olivera said.
The wife of a worker at the store had taken the disease to the lab, which produces generic drugs, Cuban officials said. Forty-eight people got sick there.
La Época store is also believed to be the source of a smaller outbreak in a state transportation company that is part of the Interior Commerce Ministry, where another 13 people contracted the virus so far.
Havana has now become the center of the island’s epidemic, accounting for 1,090 of the 2,017 confirmed cases of coronavirus reported till Tuesday.
Hidden in a local newspaper’s report was another sobering statistic for the city: As of May 25, 180 health workers in the capital, mostly doctors and nurses, have contracted the virus. That’s almost 20 percent of the 942 total reported ill at the time, according to official data published by the newspaper Tribuna de La Habana.
The paper said staff at the Salvador Allende hospital in El Cerro, also known as La Covadonga, and Luis Díaz Soto Naval Hospital, in Havana del Este, were the most affected by the virus. Both have been treating COVID-19 patients.
Cuban authorities have kept quiet about the high number of healthcare workers getting ill. However, news of the outbreaks in Havana are a warning that the epidemic might be harder to control than officials believed.
As government data was showing the island was flattening the curve of new cases, Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel called last week for his country to deliver “the final blow” to the disease and start thinking about reopening plans.
But this week, the Cuban leader lamented that the new cases linked to La Época came when “we were supposed to have enough control of the disease,” Granma reported. He blamed the setback on “negligence.”
“We still continue to make mistakes, and whenever there is an oversight, look what happens,” he said.
The local press reported that some workers at the store were fired or disciplined.
As a response to the increased number of cases, government authorities in Havana expanded the number of beds for COVID-19 patients. They also warned state companies, workers and the general population to follow the rules, such as mandatory face coverings.
But “local events of transmission,” as the health officials dubbed the local virus outbreaks, have been taking place since the first cases were reported in March. Most have been happening indoors.
In April, at least 18 people contracted the virus in an event linked to the Puentes Grandes supermarket in the capital. A homeless shelter in El Cotorro, on the outskirts of Havana, became a virus hot spot, where at least 92 people got infected. At the time, government officials also lamented the contagion took place just when the number of new cases appeared to be going down at the beginning of May.
A similar event happened in a nursing home in Villa Clara, a city in Cuba’s central region, where at least 47 seniors and 14 workers got ill. The outbreak was also blamed on the staff: one doctor, two nurses, and a security worker. The governor of that province, Alberto Díaz, vowed to impose “disciplinary measures to those who didn’t fulfill their duties.”
People infected with the coronavirus have been found in the 15 municipalities within the city of Havana, so the government is faced with the possibility that contact tracing and isolation practices might not be enough to contain the virus if testing capacity is not seriously ramped up.
Almost 3 percent of the 37,351 coronavirus tests carried out in Havana came back positive. More impoverished neighborhoods with high population densities like Centro Habana and El Cerro are among the hardest hit.
But the virus might be more widespread, since only 1.75 percent of the entire population In Havana has been tested.
On Tuesday, deputy Prime Minister Roberto Morales Ojeda, a former public health minister, said city authorities needed to carry out at least 1,500 daily PCR coronavirus tests that are more reliable, “and not only to contacts and suspected cases.”
“We must go further,” he said, “Because of the number of asymptomatic [patients found], the clinical investigation is not giving us much information.”
Follow Nora Gámez Torres on Twitter: @ngameztorres
This story was originally published June 3, 2020 at 5:26 PM.