 A team of 113 Cuban medical professionals arrived in St. Lucia recently to support the island's national response efforts for COVID-19. The team comprised of 100 nurses, 6 general practitioners, 4 intensive care physicians, and 2 epidemiologists. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sharon Belma George commended the government and people of the Republic of Cuba for their commitment to provide assistance in healthcare to end the battle against COVID-19. The Department of Health and Wellness has been monitoring closely the escalation in the classification of the outbreaks and in collaboration with all stakeholders as strengthening systems to reduce the possible impact on our population. One important gap that we recognized was that of human resource capacity in relation to healthcare workers to support the expected increases within the community respiratory clinics and the respiratory hospital. This led to us reaching out to the Cuban government for supporting this regard. Minister for Health and Wellness, Senator the Honourable Mary Isaac, lauded the solidarity of the Cuban government and says she's extremely grateful for the immediate assistance to help St. Lucia fight COVID-19. It is with a lot of excitement and emotion that I look at you here today. And I know the effort, I know the work, I know the solidarity that has gone into you being who you are today and you come in here to help us in St. Lucia. I am just so, so thankful and so grateful and I thank God for your presence here today because we really need you. We need your assistance and just the way that you present yourself, it is so professional. I can see that you are here to help us. Ambassador of the Republic of Cuba to St. Lucia, His Excellency Alejandro Simán Casmaré emphasized on the strong ties of friendship between St. Lucia and Cuba and encouraged the medical professionals to accomplish their mission diligently. Today we are proud and honoured to receive this group made of doctors, nurses, biomedical engineers, they have come from different provinces of Cuba. As you can see they belong to different generations, some of them have more experience, some of them less, most of them are women which is good, but all of them, they have in common the commitment to work together with the government and the people of the sister island of St. Lucia in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. The discipline, determination and organization that each of these health professionals showed, the speed and the complete disposition in which they responded to this call, they made it possible for them to arrive in St. Lucia in short, in such a short period of time. The Cuban medical professionals are currently undergoing quarantine for 14 days before commencement of duties. Reporting from the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Health and Wellness, I am Fena Leptun.