⁍ From a restaurant mixing take-away cocktails to a cosmetics company delivering home-made products by bicycle, Cuba’s entrepreneurs are coping with the coronavirus shutdown in innovative ways.

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⁍ Except for a few offshore resorts, Cuba’s Communist government has kept its borders shut for seven months to curb the spread of infection.

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⁍ The drastic action has limited deaths from COVID-19 to just 122 on the island of 11 million people, but has all but shut down the vital tourist industry.

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– Cuba is in the midst of an economic crisis caused by a deadly virus that has shut down most of the country’s tourist industry. The H1N1 virus has killed 122 people in Cuba so far, though that’s down from a peak of more than 1,000 per day in January, reports the AP. The H1N1 outbreak has hit particularly hard in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio region, which is home to much of the country’s private sector and is a popular destination for tourists from around the world. Most of the H1N1 cases have been in the Cuban capital, which has been locked down by the government for seven months. Reuters reports that as a result of the economic crisis, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel in July announced reforms that include giving “immediate priority to the expansion of self-employment” and allowing private eateries access to state-owned wholesale outlets. It’s not clear how many of the country’s 600,000 self-employed people have lost their jobs as a result of the H1N1 outbreak.