Dominican Minister of Public Health, Daniel Rivera
The Dominican Minister of Public Health, Daniel Rivera, asked his Haitian counterpart on Wednesday to begin the vaccination process against the coronavirus pandemic in neighboring Haiti.
“I invite the Haitian minister to vaccinate, because remember that they rejected the five million doses of AstraZeneca’s covax program,” said the doctor.
Daniel Rivera also called on the Haitian official to “assume the role of an island.” “We are an island, an island policy, not a border policy, but they have to help us by vaccinating their citizens,” he said.
On Tuesday, Haitian President Jovenel Moise expressed alarm at the “strong” return of covid-19 to the impoverished country while announcing that “vaccines will be available” for the nation, one of the few in the world not begun immunizing against the disease.
“In the last two weeks, the situation is very serious. We record more than 70 people every day testing positive for covid-19, and the trend is increasing every day,” Moise said during the traditional presidential address on the occasion of Flag and University Day.
Haiti has been relatively unaffected by the coronavirus and, according to data offered by Moise, the infected in the country are about 14,000 and the dead 271.
Although the statistics do not reflect the true magnitude of the pandemic in Haiti, due to the limited detection capacity of the virus, covid-19 has not caused the collapse of health services.