Cuba Reports the First Case of the Coronavirus Omicron Variant

HAVANA, Cuba. – Cuban health authorities reported this Wednesday, December 8^th the first positive case of the Omicron variant of coronavirus SARWS-CoV-2, according to information published on the website of Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP).

The individual is a medical worker on internationalist mission who returned home from Mozambique last November 27^th and went on to his place of residence in Pinar del Río province.

“On November 28^th, he developed a fever and a sore throat. He immediately sought help from

his health providers who administered an antigen test that was positive. He was hospitalized according to established protocol at ‘Leon Cuervo Rubio’ Hospital,” according to a MINSAP note.

According to the report, that same day the patient had a PCR test which resulted positive for COVID-19. After sending a sample to the “Pedro Kouri” Institute of Tropical Medicine for sequencing, the test was repeated, this time resulting negative. The patient was discharged.

Information published this Wednesday specifies that it was not until December 8^th that the sequencing of the positive sample was obtained, thus confirming the presence of the Omicron variant of coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 in Cuba.

In early December, MINSAP also informed that another Cuban patient, who arrived in Cuba from South Africa and who tested positive for COVID-19, was not a carrier of the Omicron variant as indicated after IPK performed the relevant studies.

That case involved a 41-year-old traveler who arrived in Cuba on November 25^th. When he tested positive to COVID-19 on the 30^th, alerts went off throughout the Cuban health system in anticipation that he would be an Omicron variant carrier.

The Omicron variant was first reported on November 29^th in South Africa by the president of that country’s medical association, Dr. Angelique Coetzee.

Just a few days after learning about the existence of Omicron, Cuban health authorities announced they were working on specific vaccines against the variant.

We are manufacturing “a variation of the Soberana Plus vaccine with Omicron RBD protein, and this protein is being developed at the present time,” according to researchers at the Finlay Vaccines Institute (IFV, by its Spanish acronym) who participated in the official television program Mesa Redonda.

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