The Japanese government on Friday, June 5, 2020 raised the travel alert level for Cuba discouraging their citizens from traveling to the Caribbean island.
This travel alert is supposed to be applied to areas that have recently seen a rise in coronavirus infections.
Worldometer that tracks coronavirus numbers by country, with data provided by countries, reports that Cuba has had a total of 2,133 cases, 83 deaths with 1,848 recovered. According to this data, the new daily cases have declined from 74 per day on May 2nd to 14 per day on June 5th.
This raises some questions.
Does Japan know something other countries do not know about Cuba's reporting on Coronavirus? Do other countries believe the data provided by the Castro regime, despite a history of covering up past epidemics, and placing their nationals at risk?
Cuban-American economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago said in a Harvard webinar on May 1, 2020 that in Cuba, “there is no independent entity that can report its own [coronavirus] figures or criticize the government’s data.”
According to data reviewed by the Miami Herald and reported by Nora Gamez, "in the week ending on March 21 there were 144,095 newly reported 'acute respiratory illnesses.' By March 28, the number of new weekly cases of people with acute respiratory diseases rose to 188,816, more than double the weekly average this year. 'Not only could the increase be explained by a COVID-19 outbreak, it most likely does reflect the COVID-19 outbreak based on when it started and what has been going on in the world,' said Dr. Aileen Marty, an expert on infectious tropical diseases and director of the Florida International University Health Travel Medicine Program."
In less than a month (March 15 - April 4th) the Cuba based, Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine, "reported 491,494 cases of acute respiratory diseases." This was a dramatic increase from measurements taken in Cuba over the past five years, and the months prior to March 2020.
It also points to a far more serious outbreak that has probably killed many more than the number officially reported by Cuban officials. This would explain why Japan has raised the travel alert.
The only remaining questions are: Will the American government do the same or tighten up its screening of travelers coming back to the United States from Cuba? Or Will Hialeah remain a hotspot in Florida for the transmission of COVID-19?
Kyodo News, June 5, 2020
Japan raises travel alert level for Cuba, 17 other countries
Kyodo News
TOKYO - Japan on Friday raised its travel alert for 18 countries, including Algeria and Cuba, to Level 3, urging against any trips to these areas that have recently seen a rise in coronavirus infections.
The countries, mostly in Africa and Central America, are expected to be added to a list of over 100 countries subject to an entry ban for foreign travelers, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told a press conference.
The other countries are Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Costa Rica, Eswatini, Georgia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Iraq, Jamaica, Lebanon, Mauritania, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Senegal.
Level 3 is the second-highest tier of the Foreign Ministry's travel alert system, with Level 4 being a call for immediate evacuation.
Travel in and out of Japan has virtually stopped due to restrictions meant to prevent the spread of COVID-19, with foreign visitors plunging 99.9 percent and that by outbound Japanese dropping 99.8 percent in April from a year earlier.
Japan currently denies entry to foreign travelers who have been to any of 111 countries and regions -- including the United States, China and South Korea, as well as most other parts of Asia -- within two weeks of their arrival.