With more than 500 febrile cases in the last seven daysthe Sancti Spíritus health authorities assured that in that province there is no presence of the Oropouche virus.
According to the doctor Carlos Ruiz Santos, director of the Provincial Center for Hygiene, Epidemiology and Microbiology, in that territory a protocol very similar to that of dengue is applied; a disease that, in turn, reported 22 cases in the last week, with a greater presence in the municipalities of Yaguajay and Trinidad, indicates a report from the official newspaper Escambray.
So far, the authorities say that the confirmed cases at the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK), in Havana, are of this disease and not of Oropouche.
Nevertheless, The alert is activated because in the province there are favorable conditions for the development of the transmitting mosquitohe Culex quinquefasciatus.
The explanation provided by the specialist indicates that This vector “lives in the weeds, in puddled waters, and in the province there are favorable conditions”.
“These days,” he added, “there is an increase in rain; The territory has an important group of leaks, residual discharges, weeds. There is a complex environmental situation, which must be paid attention to,” said the official.
In addition, he stated that “a number of people can enter the home and other patients, even if they only present non-specific fever, without any serious symptoms, due to their health condition, they must go to a health institution.”
Among them it included patients with some warning sign, such as abdominal pain, abundant diarrhea or other types of complex symptoms.
Ruiz Santos clarifies that the procedures to identify if it is Oropouche or if it is dengue are done in the territory itself and “in the IPK One called real-time PCR is set up and is being used in this case in an X number of people.”
Last May 27 The Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) of Cuba confirmed the presence of cases of Oropouche fever in the province of Santiago de Cuba.
The official note released by the MINSAP indicated that after “monitoring and surveillance actions of non-specific febrile syndromes in the province of Santiago de Cuba, the presence of the Oropouche virus was identified in two Health areas of the municipalities of Santiago de Cuba ( Ernesto Guevara) and Songo La Maya (Carlos J. Finlay), based on samples studied at the national reference laboratory of the Pedro Kourí Institute (IPK).”
Till the date several provinces of the country have declared the presence of this disease.
The last friday, a 22-year-old young man from Santiago de Cuba who was admitted with Oropouche symptoms died in that town.
Richard Daniel Nieves Chavecoresident in the II Frente municipality, was studying a Bachelor’s Degree in Pedagogy in the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Oriente, specializing in Geography, of which he was in his fourth year.
