This energetic response from the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) has been matched by equally zealous measures carried out by Cuban State Security and police.
Brigades of college students released from classes have been deployed to isolation centers to tend to those stricken by the virus even though they lack medical training. Any Cuban exhibiting symptoms was quarantined, and thousands of foreigners were sequestered in hotels. Just as fifty-two doctors and nurses landed in Italy brandishing Cuban flags and a portrait of Fidel Castro, 28,000 medical students were ordered to canvass homes throughout the island in search of possible cases of coronavirus. The spread of Covid-19 has given Cuban State Security a pretext for escalating its attacks on its domestic critics. For Cuban authorities, any struggle against an outside force-be it an insurgency, capitalist cultural influence, or an infectious disease-inevitably becomes a symbolic battle against internal enemies. The positive press reports about the medical missions deflect attention from the less savory measures that Cuba has adopted to control the crisis at home. While these medical services are welcome, they also serve a symbolic purpose by tacitly endorsing socialized medicine. In the midst of a pandemic that has crippled health care systems in the developed world, Cuba has projected an image of international solidarity by dispatching its medical missions to countries that have been hit hard by the coronavirus. Carina del Valle Schorske in Manhattan.
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This is the current edition in a running series of dispatches by New York Review writers that is documenting the coronavirus outbreak with updates from around the world that began March 17–22 and has continued through March 23–29, March 30–April 5, and April 6–12.
A man wearing a face mask walks by a mural depicting Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba, May 13, 2020
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