A tropical storm warning was issued for several Cuban provinces, including Havana, as well as Jamaica, the Florida Keys and Florida’s southwest coast, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on Sunday morning, stated an Al Jazeera report.

The Cuban government has sheltered 23,000 people at its facilities while many people have gone to the homes of their relatives, and the sugarcane and cocoa crops have been moved ahead of the storm, the report said.

On Sunday, the storm registered maximum sustained winds of 95 kilometres per hour, but those could get stronger over the day and into Sunday night as it approaches Cuba’s south-central coast.

“However, gradual weakening is forecast to occur on Monday when Elsa moves across Cuba. After Elsa emerges over the Florida Straits and the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, some slight restrengthening is possible,” the agency said, quoted Al Jazeera.

One person was killed in Saint Lucia, according to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, it informed.

A 15-year-old boy and a 75-year-old woman died on Saturday in separate events in the Dominican Republic after walls collapsed on them, according to a statement from the Emergency Operations Center, it added.

The storm caused severe damage in Barbados with more than 1,100 people reporting their houses were wrecked, including 62 homes razed to the ground as the government promised to provide temporary housing to avoid crowding people in shelters amid the pandemic, it said.

Haiti, a country especially vulnerable to flooding and landslides, reported uprooted trees, informed Al Jzeera. The country's agriculture sector has suffered losses, according to initial assessment, it added.