The vaccination process gets off to a good start

Just 11 months and 16 days after the first imported case of Covid-19 was registered, the Dominican Republic began the vaccination against the virus yesterday, starting with the Ramón de Lara Military Hospital’s health personnel, the first to become a center hospital for Covid in the country.

The vaccination began at the time when the country registers 2,975 deaths from Covid and 231,095 cases with positive diagnoses, as well as a daily notification of high mortality, with 16 recent deaths captured in yesterday’s report, as well as 764 hospitalized patients, 245 in Intensive Care Units and 127 connected to ventilators because of the disease.

Also, amid a high incidence of infections, with a daily positivity of 16.60% and for the last four weeks of 15.15%, that is to say, for every 100 PCR tests made, more than 15 are positive. To guarantee the control of the virus in a country, it is recommended that the positivity is kept below 5%.

Epidemiological report number 334 issued yesterday records the diagnosis of 532 new positive cases captured in the last 24 hours and 49,023 active cases with the virus. The total recovered is 179,097 patients.

Since the beginning of the pandemic to date, 1,149,682 samples have been processed in the country both in the national public laboratory Dr. Defilló and private clinical laboratories.

Covid beds’ occupancy remained yesterday at 28%, showing a sustained reduction in recent weeks, in 46% of ICU beds and 31% of ventilators.

The country’s fatality from Covid is 1.29%. The provinces of Greater Santo Domingo, Santiago, Duarte, La Altagracia, La Vega, San Cristóbal, and Puerto Plata are among those with the highest number of deaths.

First vaccinated

The first to receive the Covid vaccine in the country was internist medical colonel Ramón Familia Alcántara, deputy medical director of the Ramón de Lara hospital, who received the vaccine from the Minister of Public Health, Plutarco Arias, during an activity led by the president of the Republic, Luis Abinader and the vice president and head of the Health Cabinet, Raquel Peña.

The second person to be vaccinated was Major Víctor Martínez, the hospital’s medical staff mentioned above, and Major Josefina Jiménez de la Cruz, from the nursing staff.

At that center, doctors, nurses, and support personnel were vaccinated on the first day.

At the Ramón de Lara hospital, where the 62-year-old Italian Claudio Pascualini was admitted, the first imported positive case was confirmed in the country on March 1 of last year.

He was hospitalized for 54 days after continually testing positive for the virus in PCR tests.

Moscoso Puello and Marcelino Vélez

Other centers.

The immunization also included personnel working with Covid in hospitals with high demand for infected patients, such as Francisco Moscoso Puello and Marcelino Vélez Santana. At the same time, the vaccines were distributed to centers in different parts of the country.

Yesterday, the Moscoso Puello hospital had occupied 70% of its Covid Intensive Care beds and 40% of its regular care beds. The Félix María Goico hospital only had 33 and 57% of its beds available, respectively, while the Marcelino Vélez Santana had only 44% of its Covid beds available.