Cuba has taken a rigourous approach to curb the coronavirus outbreak — helped by the Caribbean island nation’s preventive, universal and well-staffed healthcare system, centralisation and use of coercion.

New cases have dropped to less than 10 per day on average from a peak of around 50, and two thirds of the island is virus-free, according to official data.

Monday was the ninth consecutive day with no deaths from Covid-19, while the highly infectious disease continues to rage throughout the Americas.

“We could be shortly closing in on the tail end of the pandemic and entering the phase of recovery from Covid,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel said this weekend.

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