In the aftermath of the Aug. 14 earthquake in Haiti, medical and other professionals are warning that a COVID spike is inevitable, especially given that less than 1% of Haiti’s population of 11 million are vaccinated. The destruction of crucial medical facilities, and the fact that thousands of homeless will be housed in close quarters in shelters, often without even such simple protections as masks, hand sanitizer or social distancing, creates the breeding ground for the virus. At latest count, 87,000 homes were destroyed. Officially, Haiti has 20,500 COVID cases and only 575 deaths, but this is almost certainly an undercount, due to the lack of testing and the fact that many people, especially in remote areas, don’t—or can’t—go to a hospital when they become ill.
Even before the earthquake, Haiti’s hospital network operated with dramatic deficits, lacking the kind of ICUs and oxygen supplies needed to treat serious COVID cases, in addition to a sporadic electricity and water supply. But, the situation now is far worse, especially in the hardest-hit southern and western regions. Daniel Aldrich, a professor at Boston’s Northeastern University, warns that just as there was a cholera epidemic following Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, conditions on the ground now are ripe for COVID to take off, the News@Northeastern website reported him as saying.
