Cuba a year into pandemic having huge case spike but believes in vaccine 2 minutes read By Lorena Canto Havana, Mar 11 (efe-epa).- A year after detecting its first coronavirus cases, Cuba is experiencing the worst wave yet of coronavirus infections even as it continues to push forward to be the first Latin American country to develop a vaccine to immunize its entire population against Covid-19. Three Italian tourists on March 11, 2020, were the first confirmed carriers of the Sars-CoV-2 virus in Cuba and one of them was the first death. During most of 2020, Cuba kept its borders closed and managed to keep the pandemic at bay with its strategy based on exhaustive contact tracing for those people showing symptoms and on obligatory quarantine and hospitalization of all confirmed cases and their contacts, at the same time that it was sending medical brigades to many countries to help them fight the health crisis.