Cuba calls on 28,000 medical students to fight coronavirus

University students visited 1 million people, from house to house. Cuba has 16 confirmed cases and one death

The Cuban regime announced on Friday, the 20th, that it had invited about 28,000 medical students to participate in an “active research” in the cities of the island. The objective is to find suspected cases of Covid-19 , the disease caused by the new coronavirus , before the epidemic spreads throughout the Caribbean country.

The task delegated to university students consists of going from house to house to identify suspected cases and report to the Ministry of Public Health (Minsap). More than 1 million people were seen until Thursday 19 and “several major cases of acute respiratory infections” were detected, according to the head of the University of Medical Sciences in Havana, Jorge González, at a news conference.

“This activity does not consist of carrying out any exam or having any physical contact with people (…) We do not even guide the entrance to the houses, but keep the distance”, said González. The collected data is then handed over to Minsap, responsible for “conducting a thorough epidemiological investigation”.

In all, Cuba has 16 confirmed cases of Covid-19 , the majority of which are elderly people who came from regions severely affected by the disease, such as Italy and France. However, the island records only one death.

The 65-year-old victim was one of four Italian tourists who arrived in Cuba and showed symptoms of fever, dry cough and chest pain. At first, Cuban doctors said that the evolution of the three confirmed cases was “favorable” and that none were in danger of death.

Classified as a pandemic by the United Nations (WHO) , the new coronavirus has already reached 160 countries, infecting 209,863 and killing 8,778. According to the WHO daily bulletin, on Thursday 19 alone, 16,556 new infections were identified outside China.