It’s the seasonal flu that Dominicans need to be concerned about, says Zacarias Garib, director of the Immunization Program of the Ministry of Public Health. Garib observed that Dominicans are all talking about the coronavirus, when there are thousands of cases of influenza in the country. He says in the past four years, 61 persons have died from the flu. Some 6,993 flu cases have been reported.
The local coronavirus panic is such that commercial labs report being out of influenza test kits, and medicine such as Tamiflu is also out of stock.
Garib said that locals should consider getting the flu vaccine that he said could minimize the risks of catching influenza. He said the government has distributed 258,000 flu shots available to the general public at state hospitals nationwide.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in the United States alone, the flu has already caused an estimated 22 million illnesses, 210,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 deaths this season.
The H1N1 outbreak in 2009 resulted in 1,632,258 cases and a fatality of 17.4%, compared to the 37,558 confirmed cases of the Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (NCP) that is originated in Wuhan, China. This number includes 37,251 cases in China and 813 deaths (including one outside of China) as of 9 February 2020, according to the World Health Organization.
10 February 2020