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HAVANA, Aug 11 (Reuters) – Cuba is bringing back hundreds of doctors working abroad and converting hotels into isolation centers and hospitals in order to battle a COVID-19 crisis that is overwhelming healthcare and mortuary services in parts of the Caribbean island.

The country, which managed to contain infections for most of last year, is now facing one of the worst outbreaks worldwide, fueled by the spread of the more-infectious Delta variant, even as it races to vaccinate its population.

Cuba’s rolling seven-day average of confirmed COVID-19 cases has surged eightfold within two months to 5,639 per million inhabitants, ten times the world average.

One in five tests are positive, four times the benchmark 5% positivity rate cited by the World Health Organization. The seven-day average for confirmed COVID-19 deaths is around 52 per million inhabitants, six times the world average, although the real number could be much higher accounting for potentially undiagnosed cases.

The COVID-19 surge has come amid Cuba’s worst economic crisis in decades that had already resulted in medicine shortages and long queues for scarce goods that made implementing lockdowns tricky.

The predicament has come as a shock to some in the Communist-run country where the right to public healthcare is considered sacrosanct.

“I witnessed queues of more than 20 hours, people dying in the corridors (of the polyclinic),” wrote Ana Iris Diaz, a professor at the university of the central Cuban city of Santa Clara and self-professed “revolutionary”, in a Facebook post that went viral this week.

“I saw an elderly woman die after several hours of waiting and four days without an antigen test or PCR. Simply put, I saw what I would have hoped to never see: the collapse of our health system.”

Cuba’s Communist government did not reply to a request for comment. It has denounced the United States for tightening sanctions, saying this has also slowed down its vaccine rollout due to the difficulty of acquiring inputs. Critics blame more Cuba’s inefficient state-run economy.

“We are at the limit of our capacity for infrastructure, resources, medicine and oxygen,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel told a government meeting on COVID-19 on Monday.

INCINERATOR BREAKS UNDER STRAIN

Cuba was a COVID-19 success story last year, managing to contain the outbreak, dispatching doctors all over the globe to help and even developing its own vaccines, which it started applying in recent months.Deaths in Cuba since the start of the pandemic are still only a half of the global average, according to official data.

The death toll is rising fast though.

In the eastern province of Guantanamo, artist Daniel Ross said a 30-year-old friend of his who caught COVID-19 had recently died due to a lack of medicines and oxygen.

“Here, we fight COVID-19 with Azitromicina, which costs 16 pesos usually in the pharmacy, but they haven’t had any for months now,” he said, adding that the cost had surged to 3600 pesos, equivalent to $150 on the black market.

Also infected and struggling to breathe, he said he was doing inhalations with yagruma leaves but sometimes could not even heat water because of the power outages that have become more frequent lately.

Ihosvany Fernandez, director of communal services in the province of Guantanamo, said on local television that total deaths there, from any cause, had surged at the start of the month to more than 60 per day from around 12 on average usually.

Official data show no more than 10 COVID-19 death daily in Guantanamo for those days suggesting underreporting in deaths from the respiratory disease.

One of the province’s incinerators had broken down due to overuse, said Fernandez, so they were installing another and using a variety of state vehicles to transport the corpses given insufficient hearses.

So far, a quarter of Cuba’s 11.2 million inhabitants have been innoculated with its two most advanced vaccines that officials say have proven more than 90 % effective in phase three trials.

In one bright spot, the case-fatality rate in Havana, where nearly two thirds of the population has now been fully innocculated, was just 0.69 % compared to 0.93% for the rest of the country in the first week of August, according to official data, suggesting the shots are working.

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NIA CHARLESTOWN NEVIS — The influx of sargassum, a brown seaweed with berry-like air bubbles, is causing havoc on the fishing industry in Indian Castle and other parts of St. Kitts and Nevis.

Mr. Stephen “Mackie” Moore, President of the Indian Castle Fisherfolk Association, gave an account of the impact of the sea weed on the fisherfolk in Indian Castle, an area in Nevis known for its thriving fishing grounds.

“It has impacted us negatively especially in recent times. As everybody would know this is the gateway to one of the best fishing grounds in Nevis and it is one of the very few areas in Nevis that you would require a vehicle to pull you from the sea after you’ve finished your voyage, and that has become very difficult especially when you have a large influx of sargassum… It is compounded by the fact that you cannot plan too far ahead since we have the influx of sargassum…

“It’s difficult for those who ply their trade from the shore. It is difficult even for our group who has a fledgling seamoss industry. The sargassum has reaped havoc on us really. We have lost three plots to sargassum coupled with COVID, and so it has done untold damage to the industry, and you factor in the difficulty getting to the sea, the risk of your prop getting caught in the sargassum, the safety issue because the sargassum makes the area around the shore very dark which is a ground for sharks and all that and so it’s difficult on many levels,” he said.

The seaweed, which originates from the sea between Brazil and West Africa, has also been affecting the fishing communities on the island and is normally more intense in the summer months.

Mr. Moore added that in July the influx of the sargassum was the worst he has seen in the area. The association sought assistance from the Nevis Island Administration to clear away the sea weed in an effort to offer fishers in the area temporary access for fishing for at least one day.

“The best way to deal with sargassum is to wait it out but while you wait it out it was again negatively affecting the livelihood of fishers, so to expedite things we got the government involved in the way of backhoes and excavators… We cleared the area.

“We know that was just a temporary fix just…to bridge that gap for the fishers that it would have their livelihood attended to but we know it was not a long-lasting solution but, yes, they assisted us in clearing the area. It took almost a week to get it together actually, so at least you could get a day fishing,” he said.

Meantime, a press release dated August 10, 2021, issued by the St. Kitts and Nevis Information Service (SKNIS) indicated that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Marine Resources in St. Kitts is currently in the process of researching the possibility of utilizing the sargassum sea weed for fertilizer and animal feed.

The release quoted Dr. Marc Williams, Director of Marine Resources in St. Kitts, as saying that most of the sargassum which arrives in St. Kitts and Nevis is due to the increases in atmospheric temperatures and the nutrient enrichment in the ocean.

He said prior to 2012, the sea weed acted like a fish aggregating device and fishers used it to catch mahi-mahi, skipjacks and other pelagic species but that has changed.

“What we have seen since 2012 is that the sargassum seaweed is coming in a large abundance which has prevented fishers from going to fish as well as creating a lot of health issues for the communities that are affected by it,” Dr. Williams said.

In St. Kitts and Nevis, the communities on the Atlantic which are affected by the influx of sargassum are Indian Castle, Long Haul Bay, Herberts Beach in Nevis and Frigate Bay, Keys, Cayon, Tabernacle, Saddlers, Parson’s Ground, and Dieppe Bay in St. Kitts.

Dr. Williams used the opportunity to advise persons in the Federation to refrain from using the seaweed as food because of its high arsenic content.

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US Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Robert Menendez of New Jersey have written to President Joe Biden seeking US aid for Haiti in the wake of its presidential assassination.

 

President Joe Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

August 9, 2021

We write to express our deep concern with the political and security crisis in Haiti and the heinous assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and attack on First Lady Martine Moïse. Given that Haiti’s caretaker authorities have requested our assistance, there is an important role for the United States to play in helping our close neighbor in the aftermath of this tragedy.

We urge your administration to assist the Haitian authorities as they investigate this brutal attack and to cooperate with international partners to ensure justice and accountability for all individuals involved. We further implore your administration, in coordination with international partners, to engage in a diplomatic effort with a broad range of democratic actors across Haitian society to build the consensus and confidence needed to hold credible presidential and parliamentary elections. As part of this effort, the United States should work with the United Nations and partner nations to help address the alarming levels of criminal violence that have terrorized Haiti’s population and displaced tens of thousands of people. We recognize that this is a daunting challenge which will not be achieved quickly.

Over the past year, Haiti has experienced a startling rise in criminal activity, kidnappings, human rights violations, and a growing humanitarian crisis. President Moïse’s murder is only the latest in a wave of uncontrolled violence. In recent weeks, more than 20 Haitians were killed in Port-au-Prince, including human rights activist Antoinette Duclaire, who was brutally shot to death. We encourage you to aggressively use sanctions and other authorities to deny visas to and freeze the assets of the individuals responsible for these barbaric attacks.

Amidst this climate of violence more than 13,000 who were displaced during the month of June. Millions of Haitians lack access to food, water, fuel, and other basic items. Growing popular frustration and the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic have contributed to a widespread loss of hope in the country and daily street protests. The United States should continue to work with Haitian civil society and the international community to help respond to urgent humanitarian needs while promoting self-reliance.

We strongly support free and fair presidential and legislative elections in Haiti as a necessary step to overcome the current political crisis. However, an electoral process will only be successful if it is deemed credible by the majority of Haitians, meets international standards, and facilitates the participation of a wide range of political and civic actors. Less than 25 percent of Haiti’s electorate participated in the country’s last elections, underscoring a widespread lack of

trust in the process. We urge your administration to work with our diplomatic partners to engage Haitian political leaders, civil society, the private sector, and traditionally underrepresented populations in order to forge a broader social consensus in support of new elections and a consensus agenda for the current interim government. We believe the integrity and inclusivity of this process is essential to an outcome that has public confidence and support.

Additionally, we firmly believe that a safe and secure environment is essential to ensure that Haitians can actively participate in their country’s democratic process. The United States should continue to work with the international community to help the Haitian National Police (HNP) to facilitate acceptable electoral conditions, to fully investigate and prosecute the assassination of President Moise, and improve the professionalism of its force to effectively protect Haitians. Given our geographic proximity to Haiti, the ongoing pandemic, as well as previous instances of mass migration from Haiti, this is a pressing national security concern.

Considering the urgency of the situation, we respectfully request that you accelerate efforts to nominate a new U.S. Ambassador to Haiti. As Ambassador Michele Sison has been nominated for a new position in the State Department, it is imperative that our embassy not have a lapse in leadership during this critical time. As you consider candidates to serve as our next ambassador, we encourage you to select someone with a deep understanding of the country, extensive diplomatic experience responding to crises, and a record of effective collaboration with civil society and multilateral institutions.

Congress has provided billions of dollars in assistance to the Haitian people in response to disasters, both natural and man-made. This assistance has made the U.S. the single largest source of humanitarian assistance to Haiti. This includes assistance for improving access to agricultural markets, preventing and responding to gender-based violence, and improving access to public health services. The United States has also provided support to the Haitian National Police, which increased its force to more than 15,000 officers and built new commissariats in regions previously without a police presence. At the same time, it is important to ensure that our investments do not perpetuate Haiti’s dependency on foreign assistance or empower those who have cared more about enriching themselves than improving the lives of the Haitian people.

A safe, prosperous, and democratic Haiti is in the best interest of the United States and the Western Hemisphere. We therefore urge you to stand in solidarity with the Haitian people. We know you share our commitment to help enable the Haitian people to choose their next leaders in a free, fair and transparent manner. We thank you for your attention to this important matter and look forward to working with you to advance and uphold stability and democracy in our hemisphere.

Sincerely,

Marco Rubio U.S. Senator
Robert Menendez U.S. Senator “

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Olympic medalists will get one complimentary no-limit nights’ stay in the highest room category at any Sandals or Beaches resort in the region, as well as luxury BMW transportation from their house to the resort of their choosing, if available.

Athletes who represented their country, in any event, will also enjoy four-night luxury holidays at a Sandals Resort on their home island.

Because the much-anticipated Beaches Saint Vincent is still closed, the contingent from St Vincent will spend their holiday in St Lucia.

Commenting on the teams’ outstanding achievements in getting to the Olympics and standing on the podium, Stewart said, “It takes a great amount of sacrifice, hard work, dedication and consistency to even make it to the Olympics. Our Caribbean athletes have shown admirable grit, tenacity and a fighting spirit and as a Caribbean brand, entirely committed to the development of the region and showcasing our regional talent, we are beyond proud of every single athlete who went out there to represent their country.”

The competitors will get complimentary accommodations in recognition of their excellent
accomplishments and perseverance during an Olympics marred by delays and uncertainty owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“These games and the performances our athletes have delivered have been just what we need to lift our collective spirits. We can never thank our athletes enough for everything they do for their countries and we cannot express enough what it means to all of us but we are certainly going to make sure they have the best vacation experience of their lives when they redeem their well- earned prizes,” said Stewart.

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