Tag Archives: Cuba

Coronavirus surge pushes Cuba’s healthcare system to brink

By Sarah Marsh

HAVANA (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 inoculated 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 inoculated, 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.

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh in Havana; Additional Reporting by Nelson Acosta in Havana; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Latin America’s resurgent left and Caribbean spurn U.S. policy on Cuba

By Sarah Marsh

HAVANA (Reuters) – The United States doubled down on its tough stance and sanctions on Cuba after historic protests in the Communist-run island last month and said it would seek to support protesters.

But many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, a region which is still scarred by Washington’s backing of coups during the Cold War and has shifted leftwards in recent years, are asking it to back off instead.

President Joe Biden branded Cuba a “failed state” in the wake of the July 11-12 protests over an economic crisis and curbs on freedoms. His administration imposed new sanctions on those who cracked down on protesters and promised the politically important Cuban-American community more actions were coming, like efforts to help Cubans circumvent “censorship”.

While the fresh sanctions are largely symbolic, they suggest a return to a period of détente under former President Barack Obama is not forthcoming.

The right-wing governments of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Honduras joined the United States last week in issuing a statement condemning mass arrests and calling for full restoration of disrupted internet access.

Yet only 20 foreign ministers worldwide joined in signing the letter, signaling how relatively isolated Washington is on its Cuba policy, analysts said. Even U.S. allies like Canada who have condemned the Cuban crackdown and supported protesters’ right to freedom of expression did not sign.

Meanwhile, Cuba’s leftist allies in Latin America and fellow Caribbean island nations have focused their reaction on the contribution of the U.S. embargo to the country’s current humanitarian crisis, urging Washington to lift sanctions. Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia have sent aid.

Some countries in the region have also warned against U.S. meddling in Cuba’s domestic matters.

These regional divisions came to the fore last week when the Organization of American States had to postpone a meeting on the human rights situation in Cuba due to objections by more than a dozen member states.

“Any discussion could only satisfy political hawks with an eye on U.S. mid-term elections where winning South Florida with the backing of Cuban exiles would be a prize,” wrote Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the OAS, Ronald Sanders, in a column published on digital platform Caribbean News Global.

“The task of the OAS should be to promote peaceful and cooperative relations in the hemisphere, not to feed division and conflict.”

He had sent a letter on behalf of 13 countries from the Caribbean Community or CARICOM – which though small, represents a significant voting block in the OAS – urging the body to reconsider the “unproductive” meeting, while other countries sent similar missives.

REJECTION OF OAS, FOREIGN MEDDLING

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said last month the OAS should be replaced “by a body that is truly autonomous, not anybody’s lackey”, sentiments echoed by Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez.

He also said he thought Biden must make a decision about the embargo against Cuba given that “almost all countries of the world” are against it, while Fernandez said it was up to no other country to decide what Cubans should do.

Mexico, Argentina and Bolivia all shifted left in recent years, while Peru last month voted in a socialist leader and Chile and Brazil appear poised to move to the left in elections due this year and next.

“We appreciate countries that defended the Latin American and Caribbean dignity,” said Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, who has accused U.S.-backed counterrevolutionaries of being behind the protests following years of open U.S. funding of democracy programs on the island.

The Chair of the OAS Permanent Council described the objections to the Cuba meeting as particularly unusual.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said it was “deeply disappointed” the OAS meeting did not take place, adding: “The people of the Americas have a right to hear from the Inter-American Commission on Human rights about the situation in Cuba”.

“We will continue to work within the OAS to press for democracy and human rights in Cuba and throughout the Americas and are confident this informational meeting will indeed take place in the coming days.”

William LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University in Washington, said the problem was the OAS had under Secretary-General Luis Almagro “adopted a strident partisan stance totally aligned with U.S. policy”.

Biden was inheriting a regional foreign policy from former U.S. President Donald Trump focused mainly on Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela, that had alienated much of Latin America, said LeoGrande, pointing out the Latin barometer opinion poll showed a sharp decline in the image of the United States.

The OAS General Secretariat declined to comment while the State Department spokesperson said “Almagro’s leadership in supporting democracy and respect for human rights in the Americas” had returned the OAS to its original purpose.

Biden, a Democrat, had vowed during his presidential campaign to ease some of the sanctions on Cuba tightened by his predecessor Donald Trump, a Republican, raising hopes of a return to the Obama-era détente.

But analysts say the protests have complicated his leeway to do so, especially after he made a poorer-than-expected showing with voters in south Florida’s anti-communist Cuban-American community, which backed Trump’s tough policies toward Havana and helped him win the presidential election battleground state.

The Democratic National Committee last week launched a digital ad campaign in Florida highlighting Biden’s “commitment to the Cuban people and condemnation of communism as a failed system.”

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh; Additional Reporting by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Alistair Bell)

COVID still devastating in the Americas, health agency says

BRASILIA (Reuters) -COVID-19 continues to inflict a devastating toll on the Americas, with Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador and Paraguay among the countries with the world’s highest weekly death rates, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on Wednesday.

Cases have more than doubled in the United States over the past week, mainly among unvaccinated people, PAHO Director Carissa Etienne said in a briefing.

The more transmissible Delta variant of coronavirus has been detected in 20 of the 35 countries in the Americas already, she said.

Cuba is seeing higher COVID infection and death rates than at any other point in the pandemic there, she said, adding that more than 7,000 minors and nearly 400 pregnant women have tested positive there in the last week.

Over the last week there were over 1.26 million COVID-19 cases and nearly 29,000 deaths reported in the Americas.

Infection hotspots have been reported in Argentine provinces bordering Bolivia and Chile, and in Colombia’s Amazon region.

“As COVID continues to circulate, too many places have relaxed the public health and social measures that have proven effective against this virus,” Etienne said.

So far, only 16.6% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, as countries in the regions have yet to access the vaccines needed to keep their people safe, she said.

“The good news is that vaccines work against the variants, including Delta, in terms of preventing severe disease and death. The bad news is that we do not have yet enough vaccines to stop community transmission,” Etienne said.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Tropical Storm Elsa passes by Key West, heads towards Florida Gulf Coast

(Reuters) -Tropical Storm Elsa was moving past the Florida Keys on Tuesday morning and heading toward the west coast of the state, where it was expected to make landfall on Wednesday morning after dumping heavy rain over Cuba.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in a Tuesday morning advisory the center of Elsa was about 65 miles west-northwest of Key West and moving in the north-northwest direction at around 10 mph (17 kph), with maximum sustained winds of around 60 mph (95 kph).

A hurricane watch was in effect from Egmont Key, in the Tampa Bay region, to the Steinhatchee River some 180 miles north along the Gulf Coast.

“Slow strengthening is forecast through tonight, and Elsa could be near hurricane strength before it makes landfall in Florida,” the Miami-based weather forecaster said.

After a Wednesday morning landfall along Florida’s Gulf Coast, the storm is forecast to move north-northeastward across the southeast of the United States through Thursday, dropping 2-4 inches of rain across the Florida peninsula.

The arrival of tropical storm-force winds and rain was threatening to impede the search and rescue effort at the site of a condominium building collapse in Surfside, Florida, near Miami, where crews have sifted through rubble for 12 days in hopes of finding survivors. As of Tuesday morning, 32 people were confirmed dead and 113 were still unaccounted for, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said.

Tornadoes were possible on Tuesday across Florida and possible on Wednesday in north Florida, southeast Georgia and the low country of South Carolina, the NHC said.

Elsa has already killed at least three people and caused damage to infrastructure and agriculture in Caribbean islands southeast of Cuba, such as St Lucia and the Dominican Republic.

More than 100,000 people in Cuba were evacuated from flood-prone areas or unsafe housing in the potential path of the storm, most going to homes of family and friends, but thousands also went to government shelters, state-run media reported.

The NHC said tropical storm conditions would continue over parts of Cuba during the next several hours, with flooding possible.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter and Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru; Editing by Alison Williams and Andrea Ricci)

Many key China issues still ‘under review’ at Biden’s first 100 days

By Michael Martina and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As U.S. President Joe Biden’s first 100 days come to a close this week, a number of key policy positions and contentious issues remain “under review,” to use the White House’s terminology.

They stretch from deep-seated economic issues a generation in the making to controversial policies introduced by Republican President Donald Trump’s government, which preceded the Democratic Biden administration.

Many relate to China, the United States’ strategic competitor, a rivalry that Biden has starkly defined, most recently in a speech to Congress on Wednesday, as a struggle between democracy and autocracy for control of the global economy in the 21st century.

The Biden administration has begun to flesh out an overarching strategy to compete with China that relies on renewing relations with partners like India and allies like Japan and South Korea, and heavy domestic investment.

But critics say slow reviews of specific policies could cost U.S. companies and the economy.

After Biden’s speech, Republican Senator Mitt Romney told reporters, “I don’t believe we yet have as a nation a comprehensive strategy to deal with a China intent on dominating the world, eventually.”

“We don’t have the luxury of time to sit around and marvel at the problem,” said one Republican aide in the House of Representatives, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We need action and specific policies in place.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the Republican criticism of their policy reviews. Democrats argue privately, however, that the administration is still racing to get crucial jobs filled.

Biden has yet to name an ambassador to China and many other countries, or to fill a key post at the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees exports of critical U.S. technology to China.

Administration officials have said they will look to add “new targeted restrictions” on some sensitive technology exports to China in cooperation with allies, but have not offered further details.

TARIFFS ON CHINESE GOODS

The Biden administration has said it will conduct a thorough review of U.S. tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on nearly $400 billion worth of Chinese goods, but it has not given a deadline.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a recent interview that the United States was not ready to lift the duties, in part because of the leverage it gives American negotiators.

The tariffs cost U.S manufacturers $80 billion, the Tax Foundation think tank reported last September. China has fallen short of pledges to buy U.S. goods made in a January 2020 trade deal.

SUPPLY CHAIN REVIEW

Biden launched a 100-day review of risks to critical supply chains in February, citing the United States’ need for secure, diverse, dependable goods in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, electric vehicle batteries, and rare earth minerals.

The Defense, Commerce, Energy, Agriculture, Transportation, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services departments are expected to submit reports addressing supply chain resiliency due one year after the February order.

INVESTMENT BAN

The Biden administration also has not addressed how it will use a tough sanctioning tool introduced by Trump that would prohibit U.S. investments in Chinese companies that the previous administration said were owned or controlled by the Chinese military.

NORTH KOREA

The Biden administration has signaled for weeks it is finalizing a broad review of North Korea (Successive U.S. administrations have sought to persuade the Stalinist country to part with its nuclear weapons.) A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday the administration was “closer to the end of that review than we are to the beginning,” but offered no details.

The White House has shared little about the review and whether it will offer concessions to get Pyongyang to return to talks. It has simultaneously signaled a hard line on human rights, denuclearization and sanctions, while making diplomatic overtures that officials say have been rebuffed by Pyongyang, which has long demanded economic sanctions relief.

CUBA, VENEZUELA

Biden promised during the 2020 presidential campaign to reverse parts of Trump’s harsh measures against Cuba, and aides have said they are looking especially at Trump’s last-minute decision to designate Havana as a state sponsor of terrorism.

But the new administration appears to be in no rush. And any significant move of this type would risk a political backlash in the crucial swing state of Florida ahead of the 2022 congressional midterm elections. Trump’s hardline approach was popular among the Miami area’s large Cuban-American population, helping him win the state in November though he lost the presidential election.

Among the other issues still being decided are how to craft a new policy on Venezuela, where Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions failed to dislodge socialist President Nicolas Maduro, and how to close the internationally condemned U.S. military prison for foreign suspects at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

(Reporting by Michael Martina, Matt Spetalnick, David Brunnstrom, Andrea Shalal, Trevor Hunnicutt and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Editing by Heather Timmons and Jonathan Oatis)

Cubans turn to herbal remedies, barter amid medicine scarcity

By Rodrigo Gutierrez

HAVANA (Reuters) – Dayana Rodriguez says her son is overwhelmed with scabies but she has not been able to find any of the treatments prescribed by their doctor at the poorly-stocked pharmacies in Havana so she is now turning to a herbal remedy instead.

Even as Cuba is leading the race to become the first country in Latin America to develop its own COVID-19 vaccine, the country is suffering acute shortages of basic medicines amid its worst economic crisis in decades.

“There aren’t any of the ones they prescribed him, Benzyl benzoate, or the other one for itching too that used to be in all the pharmacies,” said Rodriguez, buying medicinal plants at a shop on a commercial boulevard in Central Havana.

Nine families in Havana told Reuters they were struggling to treat outbreaks of scabies, a highly infectious yet preventable skin disease, due to medicine shortages.

Three doctors consulted by Reuters who declined to be named said they had resorted to advising their patients to boil up a mix of herbs to apply to their skin to provide temporary relief for scabies as it was futile to prescribe medicines that are scarce. One of those doctors also recommended a veterinary treatment for one of his patients.

Cuba’s healthcare system, built by late leader Fidel Castro, is one of the revolution’s most treasured achievements, having produced results on a par with rich nations using the resources of a developing country and in spite of the decades-old U.S. trade embargo.

But cash woes in the ailing state economy since the fall of former benefactor the Soviet Union have taken their toll on both healthcare facilities and the availability of medicine.

Over the past few years, the decline in aid from ally Venezuela, new U.S. sanctions and the pandemic have plunged Cuba into its worst economic crisis since the 1990s.

Health Minister Jose Portal reported on state television last year that as of June around a 116 basic medicines were scarce. Of those, 87 were produced locally and 29 imported.

Florencio Chavez, who has run a medicinal plant shop for 25 years, recommends guacamaya francesa, cundeamor, neem, Parthenium hysterophorus to treat scabies. He says demand for herbal remedies has risen in recent years.

Cubans have also set up groups on social media to barter medicines or other products for those they need, while the black market is thriving on the streets and online.

CHRONIC SHORTAGES

Cuban authorities started talking about chronic shortages of drugs, including basic ones like those treating hypertension and contraceptives due to a cash crunch in 2017, saying it had had to slash imports of inputs necessary for local production.

Last year, the country said shipping delays due to the pandemic had exacerbated the situation, as had U.S. sanctions.

While medicine is theoretically exempt from sanctions, the sanctions still are a strong disincentive to overseas medical providers, who might risk being fined, and the embargo hurts the economy across the board so there is less cash for imports.

Some senior citizens like Yolanda Perez, 80, who suffers from glaucoma, complain they do not have the stamina needed to line up at pharmacies overnight in the hope of grabbing their share of scant deliveries.

“It’s been six months since I was last able to get my latanoprost,” the drug that helps prevent her from going blind, she said.

Authorities in the eastern province of Holguin in January warned Cubans not to turn to the black market though because some drugs were not what they advertised and could even be harmful.

“The problem is people are despairing over the lack of medicine,” wrote a reader identified as Arcela under an article on the topic in state outlet Juventud Rebelde. She said her sister had had to buy black market antibiotics.

“That’s why they resort to these methods.”

(Reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Christian Plumb and Aurora Ellis)

Sugar harvest no sweetener for Cuba’s ailing economy

By Marc Frank

HAVANA (Reuters) – Hopes in Cuba that sugar exports would soften an economic slowdown and plug an exchangeable currency gap appear in vain, with state media reports of output at least 200,000 metric tons short of forecasts for the end of February.

While no longer a top export and behind other foreign revenue earners such as medical services, tourism, remittances and nickel, sugar still brings Cuba hundreds of millions of dollars a year from exports, including derivatives, while also producing energy, alcohol and animal feed at home.

Like other industries, agriculture and cane cultivation face structural problems in the Communist-run import dependent command economy, which the government is only just addressing.

In the last six months it has adopted monetary and other market-oriented reforms, but these will take time to kick in.

Julio Andres Garcia, president of the Caribbean island nation’s sugar monopoly AZCUBA, said in December that the state-owned industry would produce 1.2 million metric tons of raw sugar in 2021, similar to the previous year.

Cuba’s output has averaged around 1.4 million metric tons of raw sugar over the last five years, compared with an industry high of 8 million tons in 1989.

The harvest runs from November into May with peak yields from January through mid-April.

Reuters estimates based on available data and local sources that this year’s harvest will come in under one million metric tons of raw sugar for the first time since 1908, and perhaps as low as 900,000 tons, a 25% decline.

All 13 sugar-producing provinces were behind schedule as March began, and the five largest producers Ciego de Avila, Camaguey, Villa Clara, Holguin and Las Tunas provinces by between 25,000 and 50,000 metric tons of raw sugar each.

The harvest has been plagued by a dearth of fuel and spare parts for mills and machinery, cane shortages and low yields and a COVID-19 outbreak in at least one of 38 active mills.

Cuba consumes between 600,000 and 700,000 metric tons of sugar a year and has a 400,000 metric ton toll deal with China.

Tough U.S. sanctions and the pandemic, which have gutted tourism, have cut into Cuban foreign exchange earnings causing scarcity, job losses and an 11% economic contraction in 2020.

So far this year appears no better, with the pandemic keeping visitors away, no change in U.S. policy and the scarcity of foreign currency leading to shortages of fuel, agricultural inputs and a general scarcity of even basic consumer goods.

The government reported that foreign exchange earnings were just 55% of planned last year, in part because the harvest came in 300,000 metric tons short, while imports fell between 30% and 40%. It did not provide further details.

“There is no reason to believe the shortfall will be made up and every reason to believe it could become worse,” a Cuban sugar expert said, requesting anonymity due to restrictions on talking to foreign journalists.

(Reporting by Marc Frank; Editing by Christian Plumb and Alexander Smith)

As pandemic eases elsewhere, some Caribbean states face worst outbreaks yet

By Kate Chappell and Sarah Marsh

KINGSTON (Reuters) – In Jamaica, which won praise for containing its coronavirus outbreak last year, patients now overflow into corridors on chairs and stretchers in some hospitals, prompting the Caribbean nation to open three emergency field hospitals.

While global new infections start to decline, a handful of countries across the Caribbean, including the larger islands of Jamaica and Cuba, are suffering their worst outbreaks since the start of the pandemic following social gatherings over year-end, quarantine violations by visitors and growing complacency.

The number of total confirmed cases has almost doubled in the first two months of the year in Jamaica. It has risen around fourfold in Cuba, eightfold in Barbados and around tenfold in St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, according to Oxford University’s Our World in Data database.

In one of the most tourism-dependent regions of the world, authorities have had to reimpose lockdowns and curfews, while reducing flights and hiking quarantine restrictions, further delaying a revival of their fragile economies.

Some Caribbean nations have started inoculating citizens – thanks, in particular, to an Indian donation of the AstraZeneca vaccine – yet broad coverage still looks far off. Cuba is launching late phase trials of two of its own vaccine candidates this month.

“Once the capacity of the health system becomes threatened, we could see a spike not only in the numbers infected but also in those dying from the disease,” Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness warned in a broadcast address to the nation on Sunday.

The effect of COVID-19 in Caribbean countries has been mixed. In Jamaica, deaths have risen 1.4 times since the end of the year and now stand at 422. Cuba’s death toll of 324 is well under the world average per capital – a statistic the government largely puts down to a good healthcare system and experimental treatments – but the number of deaths has doubled there so far in 2021.

Tiny St Vincent and Grenadines registered its first COVID-19 death this year and has now had eight fatal victims.

While most of the Caribbean islands still have adequate hospital capacity to deal with the crisis, in Jamaica, all beds dedicated to COVID-19 isolation were full as of Feb. 26, according to the health ministry.

Holness announced more capacity was being added and lockdown restrictions tightened, including a new stay-at-home order for those aged 60 and above and a ban on access to beaches.

“We are not coping. We are physically and emotionally drained,” said a nurse who did not want to be named for fear of losing her job.

SLOW VACCINE ROLLOUT

Caribbean leaders have complained about difficulty accessing vaccines and hoarding by rich nations amid a slow rollout of vaccines by the United Nations-backed COVAX alliance created to ensure poor countries across the world are not left behind.

Jamaica, which has nearly 3 million inhabitants, will receive a donation from India of 50,000 vaccine doses on or before Thursday, Health minister Christopher Tufton said on Sunday at the briefing alongside Holness.

The island nation should also start receiving its 124,800 doses via the COVAX facility this month, and 1.8 million via the African Medical Supply Platform from April.

But depending on which vaccine is secured, Jamaica still needed to source up to an extra 1.5 million doses to fulfill its aim of inoculating at least 65 % of the population by March 2022, Tufton said.

The prospects for an immediate economic recovery in the face of a slow vaccine roll-out are dim, said Therese Turner-Jones, general manager of the Caribbean Country Department for the Inter-American Development Bank.

“It’s going to be another difficult two years ahead,” Turner-Jones said. “Absent a healthy environment, there is not much you are going to do that will get back to business as usual.”

The Caribbean Development Bank said last Thursday it projected growth of 3.8% in its 19 borrowing member countries this year after a contraction of 12.8% last year, with vaccine availability one risk to that forecast.

Still, Cuba could hold a ray of light. It already came through for the Caribbean in terms of sending doctors to neighboring islands throughout the pandemic.

Now, the regional biotech heavyweight says it is already mass producing two of its four vaccine candidates in order to launch late phase trials in March.

Should its vaccine candidates triumph – becoming the first Latin American homegrown COVID vaccines to be approved – then its neighbors and regional allies could benefit.

(Reporting by Kate Chappell in Kingston; Additional Reporting by Sarah Marsh in Chester, UK, and Rob Edison Sandiford in Bridgetown; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Trump returns Cuba to U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism

By Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration on Monday announced it was returning Cuba to the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Cuba was being blacklisted for “repeatedly providing support for acts of international terrorism” by harboring U.S. fugitives as well as Colombian rebel leaders.

Pompeo also cited Communist-ruled Cuba’s security support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, which he said had allowed the socialist leader to create “a permissive environment for international terrorists to live and thrive within Venezuela.”

“With this action, we will once again hold Cuba’s government accountable and send a clear message: the Castro regime must end its support for international terrorism and subversion of U.S. justice,” Pompeo said in a statement.

The terrorism list decision followed months of legal review, with some administration experts questioning whether it was justified, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Trump has clamped down on Cuba since coming to power in 2017, tightening restrictions on U.S. travel and remittances to Cuba, and imposing sanctions on shipments of Venezuelan oil to the island.

Trump’s hardline Cuba policy was popular among the large Cuban-American population in South Florida.

Syria, Iran and North Korea are other countries on the list.

(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick, additional reporting by Daphne Psaledakis in Washinton and Sarah Marsh in Havana; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool)

Hurricane Laura approaches U.S. Gulf Coast forcing tens of thousands to evacuate

(Reuters) – Hurricane Laura was bearing down on the U.S. Gulf Coast on Tuesday, threatening fierce winds and storm surge from San Luis Pass, Texas to Ocean Springs, Mississippi and prompting thousands to evacuate before an expected Thursday landfall.

The storm strengthened to a hurricane as its center moved northwest over Cuba early Tuesday at 16 miles per hour (26 kph)with sustained winds of 70 miles per hour (110 kph), and it was due to intensify over the next two days, the National Hurricane Center said.

The Texas city of Galveston imposed a mandatory evacuation order on Tuesday after the storm’s track veered westward overnight towards to the island community of some 50,000 people. The storm was 620 miles (1,000 km) southeast of Galveston on Tuesday morning.

“It’s imperative that you make plans this morning to secure your homes and move you and your family to safety off island,” acting Mayor Craig Brown said in a statement on Tuesday.

More than 330,000 residents living in Jefferson and Orange Counties in eastern Texas were also placed under a mandatory evacuation order on Tuesday.

On Monday, the mayor of Port Arthur, Texas, an oil town of 54,000 people 85 miles (137 km) east of Houston, ordered a mandatory evacuation, giving residents until 6 a.m. on Tuesday to leave.

Laura is projected to make landfall in the Texas-Louisiana border region late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning as a major hurricane, possibly Category 3 on the 5-step Saffir-Simpson scale for measuring hurricane intensity, the NHC said.

“This has the potential to be the strongest hurricane to hit since Hurricane Rita,” Louisiana Governor John Edwards said at a Monday evening news conference, referring to the Category 5 hurricane that hit in 2005.

The storm comes on the heels of Tropical Storm Marco, which weakened sooner than expected and made landfall on Monday in Louisiana before dissipating.

Laura skirted the southern coast of Cuba on Monday but did not cause as much damage as it did in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where it killed at least 10 people.

The coincidence of Laura’s storm surge with high tide along the Gulf Coast from High Island, Texas to Morgan City, Louisiana could result in water levels rising as high as 11 feet, the Miami-based forecaster said.

Rainfall along the coast near the Texas-Louisiana border, as much as a foot of water in some places, was expected to cause widespread flooding.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Marguerita Choy)