Haiti has received 500,000 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine from the United States, the health ministry announced Wednesday on its social media pages. Until this shipment arrived, Haiti was the only country in the Caribbean that had not received any coronavirus vaccine.
It is the first time Haiti has received any COVID-19 vaccine. Haiti rejected 756,000 AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses in April. Later in May, Haiti began to experience a spike in COVID-19 cases. So the Ministry of Public Health and of the Population (MSPP) accepted a donation of 130,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the World Health Organization.
As of July 6, the latest data available, MSPP counted 19,374 confirmed cases and 487 deaths in Haiti due to COVID-19.
Private importers and distributors of pharmaceutical products are also allowed to import the COVID-19 vaccine, MSPP said in a statement on June 23. It is unclear how much of the doses private companies have received for distribution.