Virus sets its sights on Greater Santo Domingo

Santo Domingo.- The impact the COVID-19 is having on San Francisco de Macorís (northeast), the main municipality of Duarte province, where out of 83 confirmed cases there have been 21 deaths, should compel the authorities and society in general to set their sights on Greater Santo Domingo and other provinces with a higher number of inhabitants and therefore a greater number of human conglomerates in sectors where there is overcrowding and squalor.

As Duarte is the first province with massive community transmission and with a population of only 299,583 inhabitants, the numbers of deaths and the demand for medical care have left many responses to the health system in the area, which has been forced to transfer patients to other provinces, such as Santiago, where the two important private centers there have already said that their isolation areas are full and have no capacity for more patients with symptoms of this contagious disease.

This evidence reveals that Santo Domingo needs not only to speed up massive isolation areas with the required adaptations for patients with mild symptoms and for direct contacts of positive patients, but to establish more health centers, whether public or private, specialized only for patients with this disease, apart from those that already exist, such as the Ramón de Lara Military Hospital and the National Police Hospital, which is already requiring more specialists to meet current demand.