The Ministry of Tourism of Cuba announced this Monday that the country It will gradually reopen its borders to tourists from November 15 and it will eliminate, since then, the requirement to present PCR tests to enter the island. The flexibility, explained the portfolio, is possible thanks to the progress of the vaccination campaign against the coronavirus.
“Having the advancement of the vaccination process in Cuba” and “its demonstrated effectiveness and the perspective that more than 90% of the population will complete their vaccination schedules in November, the conditions are being prepared to gradually open the country’s borders as of November 15, “the Ministry said in a statement.
The requirements to enter Cuba
The current requirements to enter Cuba are similar to those applied by Argentina and other countries in the world: the authorities require that travelers arrive with a negative PCR test, that they take another at the airport upon arrival and then be in quarantine until the results of a third test carried out five days later are available.
With the reopening of borders planned for mid-November, however, “Hygienic sanitary protocols will be relaxed upon the arrival of travelers, which will be focused on monitoring symptomatic patients and taking temperature, “announced the Ministry of Tourism.
As specified, the diagnostic tests They will be carried out randomly, the PCR will not be required upon arrival and the traveler’s vaccination certificate will be recognized.
Tourism, hit by the pandemic
Tourism, one of the main sources of foreign exchange for the Cuban Government, suffered a severe blow with the coronavirus pandemic, which since the end of March 2020 has forced the island to partially close its borders.
Between January and July, the country received 270,639 foreign visitors, just a quarter (21.8%) of those captured in the same period of 2020 (1,239,099).
Currently, the number of flights arriving in Cuba is very limited and only a few Russian and Canadian tourist charters regularly arrive at certain resorts in the country reserved for this purpose.
Deprived of foreign exchange from tourism, the authorities have drastically reduced imports, exacerbating the shortage of food and medicine.
Vaccination in Cuba
Cuba, which developed its own vaccines against the coronavirus (Abdala and Soberana), currently has a third of its population immunized and hopes, by November, to have raised that coverage to 92.6% of the society.
The island, given the increase in infections, also launched a vaccination campaign for girls, boys and adolescents from two to 18 years old, a measure that it imposed as a condition to reopen schools.
Cuban vaccines, which for the moment were not recognized by the WHO, are based on a recombinant protein, the same technique in which the American company Novavax and the French Sanofi are working.
In recent months, the island registered the worst contagion data of the entire pandemic and is already close to 700,000 cases. Specifically, the Ministry of Public Health has recorded 696,904 infections, 7,230 of which were confirmed in the last 24 hours.
In the last day they were also detected 85 deaths from the virus, bringing the total death toll since the start of the pandemic to 5,788. Currently, in addition, there are 120 patients in critical condition and 280 in serious condition.
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