COVID-19 Case Detection: Cuba's Active Screening Approach.

Gorry, Conner

Meningitis, neuropathy, HIV, dengue-since the 1960s, Cuba has faced its share of epidemics. More recently, Cuban health pro-fessionals tackled domestic outbreaks of H1N1 (2009) and Zika (2016), and worked alongside colleagues from around the world to stem Ebola in West Africa; all three were categorized by WHO as public health emergencies of international concern. In December 2019, China reported its fi rst cluster of pneumo-nia cases, later identifi ed as the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19. In January 2020, Cuban authorities convened a multi-sector working group coordinated by the Ministry of Pub-lic Health (MINSAP) and Civil Defense to tailor its national epi-demic control plan to confront the rapidly-spreading disease. The plan features a national reporting system and database, with standard protocols including early case detection, contact tracing and regularly-scheduled public health messaging. In late January, no fewer than six ministries, plus the National Sports and Recreation Institute, Customs, Immigration and national media outlets, came together to adapt domestic proto-cols and design multi-phase control and response mechanisms to combat the SARS-CoV-2 virus.