Treating patients classified as high risk well in advance and doing it in a differentiated way, through intensive surveillance, is among the main modifications made to the Cuban Protocol for the clinical management of patients with COVID-19
Author: René Tamayo León | internet@granma.cu
January 27, 2021
The President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, guided the evaluation of the new publications and medicines that are being applied in other countries to analyze their relevance and application in our country.
Treating patients classified as high-risk well in advance and doing it in a differentiated way, through intensive surveillance, is among the main modifications made to the Cuban Protocol for the clinical management of patients with COVID-19.
The update of the procedure, in its Version 1.6, is in correspondence with the epidemiological context of the country at this time, when it faces the third peak of the pandemic caused by the SARS-COV-2 virus.
It pays special attention to “high risk” patients, a classification that refers to those people with a greater possibility of transition to severity, due to the comorbidities they suffer and due to their socio-demographic characteristics.
The category was refined in its definition, as it is the decisive group to decouple the incidence of mortality from COVID-19, explained the DrC. Rolando Pérez Rodríguez, Director of Science and Innovation at BioCubaFarma and member of the Technical Advisory Group to face the pandemic.
The new version was presented at this week’s meeting of the President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, with scientists and experts who participate in science and technological innovation activities in the face of the new coronavirus.
Pérez Rodríguez pointed out that the update of the protocol also broadens the description of the treatment to these patients, and gives greater precision to the characteristics of the hospitalization rooms where cases that are not serious are admitted, but have a high risk of going to the hospital. gravity.
In the meeting, where the Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, and the Vice Prime Ministers Roberto Morales Ojeda and Inés María Chapman Waugh participated, it was reported that the modifications have already begun to be implemented, especially in Havana.
The President of the Republic indicated to accelerate its application in the rest of the territories, especially in those where the situation is more complex and are in an epidemic stage of limited autochthonous transmission, such as Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo.
The modifications projected by the Technical Group include updating the protocol for the category of suspected patients, according to which everyone with a positive antigen test for the disease will be treated with interferons, while those classified as high risk will receive Itolizumab, Heberferon / Heberón and Jusvinza.
Among other modifications, the clinical treatments were renewed for the confirmed patient category, and volumes and interventions were set for them, according to the classifications of asymptomatic, mild symptomatic low risk, high risk, and severe or critical.
The update of the Cuban protocol for the clinical management of COVID-19 requires, however, that people go to the doctor before the first symptoms described for the disease, said Vice Prime Minister Dr. Roberto Morales Ojeda, a member of the Political Bureau.
He also indicated to the Health system to carry out efficient active investigations, which guarantee the effectiveness of the work carried out by the family’s medical offices, as well as by mass organizations and students of Medical Sciences and their teachers, for the early identification of sick or suspicious people.
The technical group proposed new studies to introduce in Version 1.6 of the Protocol, among them, a controlled trial of the substitution of Heberon for Nasalferon in asymptomatic patients, and to develop a controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of the use of convalescent serum in the control of viral load in high-risk patients.
He also recommended evaluating the results of complementary studies in symptomatic low-risk and high-risk patients for greater precision of prognostic values, with a view to refining stratification.
The President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, guided the evaluation of the new publications and medicines that are being applied in other countries to analyze their relevance and application in our country.
In the meeting with scientists and experts who participate in science and technological innovation activities in the confrontation with the new coronavirus, the update of the prognostic models of COVID-19 was presented, as usual by the DrC Raúl Guinovart Díaz, dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computing at the University of Havana. He considered that the current peak of COVID-19 in the country corresponds to the behavior in the rest of the planet, so that in the coming days a growth of those confirmed is predicted, but also of the number of recovered patients.
