The Dominican government has contracted enough vaccinations to cover the population. In the “We Are Changing” five-month government overview staged on 18 January 2021 and televised to the nation (Estamos Cambiando), President Luis Abinader said there are vaccinations for all Dominicans. The population of the Dominican Republic is estimated at 10.9 million.
This week the government announced it has ensured a stock of 7.9 million doses of Pfizer BioTech vaccines and 10 million doses of University of Oxford/AstraZeneca. It also contracted two million doses of different firms that are participating int he Covax-World Health Organization vaccine alliance. The first vaccines are expected to be applied before March 2021 to health care workers with the bulk of the vaccines in the third and fourth quarter of the year.
Lawyer Carolina Santana says the government contracted for the first 400,000 doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to arrive on 21 March 2021, for the first 200,000 persons, primarily health care workers.
Vice President Raquel Peña visited the Senate on 19 January 2021 to lobby for the approval of the contracting of 7,999,875 doses of Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. The Senate passed an amendment of Art. 6 of Procurement Agency Law 340-06 so that the law authorize the purchase of vaccines during a pandemic and National State of Emergency without tender procedures. Public Health Minister Plutarco Arias signed the purchase order on Friday, 15 January 2021 for US$95,998,500.
The Pfizer vaccines would begin to arrive in the second quarter of the year. The purchase needs to be approved by the National Congress and has yet to receive a transitory permit from the Drugs, Food and Health Products Agency (Digemaps) of the Ministry of Public Health. The DR has identified eight ultra-freezers suitable to store 400,000 doses of the Pfizer BNT162b2 vaccines. Conversations are taking place to increase the storage capacity to one million doses.
The Abinader administration’s Health Cabinet is in conversations with the Central Electoral Board (JCE) to turn voting stations located all around the country as Covid-19 vaccination centers in 2021 to reach the Dominican population. Dominicans are pre-assigned the voting stations on their ID cards and this would facilitate the distribution of the vaccines. Most of the voting centers are located in public schools that are present are closed for in-person learning.
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