In late 2019 and early 2020, the news of the spread of a new virus frightened the entire world population by the speed with which they alerted international organizations that the virus was spreading.
In the absence of an immediate solution to stop the disease, all countries decided to take drastic measures, including confinement and strict mobility restrictions on citizens to control the transmission of the coronavirus, putting all hopes on a vaccine to vaccinate. he put an end to the deadly disease.
In October this year the Dominican Government signed an agreement with the British biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to purchase 10 million doses of its candidate vaccine against Covid-19, AZD1222, developed in conjunction with Oxford University.
However, the American laboratory Pfizer, which works in conjunction with the German biotechnology company Biontech, was the first to have an approved vaccine that is already beginning to be placed in the United States and England.
Given the doubts of the Dominicans when it will arrive and what the vaccine will be distributed in the country, President Luis Abinader assured that the Dominican Republic will be among the first to obtain the vaccine when it is available to other countries.
The president said the country is enrolled in all vaccines that are in process.
“What you can be sure of is that this is one of the countries that should have the vaccine first, that we already have all the logistics ready, just waiting for it to be available for other countries,” said the head of state, who speak after giving the first picazo of the work of extension of the telephone attention Teleperformance.
He said that “there are two vaccines in process, which are those of Pfizer and AstraZeneca, we are registered in all of them … in all of them we are to attend to it”.
He assured that the Ministry of Public Health has the logistics prepared of how the vaccine will be distributed upon arrival in the country.
“Since the Ministry of Health has its logistics ready, I will ask the (health) Cabinet to hold a press conference to inform all the logistics at the national level of how vaccination will go,” said Abinader . He said that only two countries have started the vaccine which is where the origins of these laboratories are, but as there are many of them that are still in the process of confirmation from regulatory bodies.
President Abinader said that although cases of people infected with coronavirus have increased, the disease is still under control.
Increase in cases
The president expressed that the measures that have been arranged by the Government are for prevention. “These measures are basically preventive because we still have … because although they have increased one percent of the infections is still under control, what we want is to avoid to walk towards normality”
He called on the population to cooperate with the authorities and to continue to comply with sanitary measures to prevent the spread of viruses.
“That’s why we ask him … we know that these confinements are hateful, the least we want is us, the Armed Forces and the Police do not want to be on the streets, they are tired too, like the Dominican population, but they are coming. .we are leaving and the Dominican people have made a great effort what we ask is that we will please make an extra effort to get out of this pandemic, which we will do next year, “he said.
A journalist asked the president, if having granted the pardon of free traffic on 24 and 31 until one in the morning would not lead to conflicts between the police and people in a state of intoxication, to which the president replied “only we are talking about two days, it is the 24th and the 31st so they can go to the family house to spend it with the family, but remember that always until 6 pm is that the sale of alcohol “.
He said that with this new provision, the Government seeks to enable families to share, but always with the required distancing. “We ask him … why should we have this balance in which they can enjoy with their family but at the same time maintain that there is this distance we will try to achieve this balance, I ask the people Dominican Republic, in which we can have this balance that they can be, together with their loved ones, together with their family but at the same time with the required social distancing, “he said.
Global cases of Covid-19 amounted to 72.5 million yesterday, after 359,000 infections were reported in the last 24 hours to the World Health Organization (WHO), according to a report by the EFE agency.
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Thousands of lives
President Abinader said when signing the agreement on October 30 last year, that with the arrival of the vaccine in the country would be saving thousands of lives to be the first to receive it.
US $ 8 million
While the vice president Raquel Peña expressed that the final investment is not made until the vaccine is approved, but that they nevertheless already had the commitment to make a first payment corresponding to US $ 8 million, “which is the great support that we have received from the private sector “.