COVID-19 pandemic in the Dominican Republic
On 31 December 2019, the Health Commission of Wuhan, Hubei, China, informed the WHO about a cluster of acute pneumonia cases with unknown origin in its province.
[20] Twenty Dominican doctors were exposed to the virus while celebrating their 30-year medical school graduation anniversary on board the Costa Favolosa cruise ship around the Caribbean.
[27] On 17 March, President Danilo Medina gave an address to the nation and declared a state of emergency, announcing a series of measures to try and stop the spread of the virus.
Schools were to remain closed through 13 April, and public employees who are 60 years of age or over, or those with a pre-existing health condition, must stay confined to their residences.
[32] March 31, 2020, President Danilo Medina appointed (Decree 140–20) Doctor Amado Alejandro Baez as his senior advisor for Public Health and chief executive officer for the Presidential COVID-19 Committee.
[33] The Presidential COVID-19 Committee was tasked with creating public-private partnerships as well as developing public policy, strategies and operations to combat COVID-19 at a national level.
The centerpiece of the strategy was "Public Value in Crisis Model" piloted on April 12, 2020, at San Francisco de Macoris (SFM) Duarte province.
[37] The Public Value in Crisis model was reproduced successfully in multiple other provinces and more recently became the hallmark on the National District strategy under the leadership of Mayor Carolina Mejia.
On April 22, 2020, The first Dominican Epidemiology Intelligence Center was developed by the Presidential COVID-19 Committee under the leadership of Minister of Defense Lt General Paulino Sem, Counter Admiral Lee Balester and Doctor Amado Alejandro Baez.
[39] After the successful implementation of the C5i Epidemiology Intelligence Fusion Center, the Dominican Ministry of Public Health viewed this model as very important and effective and proceeded reproduced this effort four months later in August 2020, creating the MOH "Center for Public Health Intelligence" [40] After the epidemiological impact of COVID-19 post the July 5th 2020 presidential elections, the DR experienced a peak in positivity on July 23, after which a continuous deceleration was noticed up to late September, this prompted a formal public congratulations by the World health Organization to the Dominican Government on Sept 24th 2020 [41] the drastic improvements were noted on positivity rates, case fatality ratios and hospital capacity utilization, clearly this being evidence of all collective efforts of prior and current (August 16) authorities.
Similarly on Sept 25th 2020, Dominican media reported the country as having one of the lowest mortality rates in the region (CFR ~1.9%)[42] A number of provinces decided to limit access to their territories to avoid contagion from COVID-19, such as San José de Ocoa,[43] and El Seibo, which remained case-free (as of March 26, 2020).
