Cuban Medical Brigade This Way Cometh

Dean Barrow

Cuban doctors are being deployed to various countries where COVID-19 has been established. A group is already in Italy where the death count continues to increase. A Cuban Medical Brigade arrives in Belize later this week via private charter from Guatemala City.  The team of doctors will be deployed to San Pedro in the first instance to provide medical assistance for persons suffering from COVID-19.  According to PM Barrow, arrangements had to be made for a Guatemalan aircraft to transport the doctors to Belize since our local airline companies do not have a vessel large enough to seat all sixty-two persons.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“There is help arriving for our medical frontline personnel.  We have already chartered a couple of planes out of Guatemala, we wanted to use Tropic Air but they don’t have a big enough carrier.  They do have a plane that’s larger than the rest of the fleet but that would have involved something like four trips and it is sixty-one or sixty-two medical personnel that we are getting from Cuba, so we had to source charter flights out of Guatemala City via our embassy.  The bottom line is that there will be two flights, Wednesday and Thursday.  The larger of the two planes is the one that will be going to Havana on Wednesday, so the bulk of the medical personnel will be arriving on Wednesday and then the balance on Thursday.  We’re going to house them at the Belize Biltmore Plaza Hotel.”