Effective 1/01/21 - 1/10/21,  curfew in DR has been extended.   Being inside by 5p on weekdays and 12pm on weekends is not worth visiting guys.  I recommend Colombia or Brazil at this point.    My trip to Santo Domingo is 1/23 and will certainly cancel if these curfew hours remain.   

Check out the article below: 

https://dominicantoday.com/dr/covid-19/2020/12/30/curfew-will-be-from-500-pm-and-on-weekends-at-12-noon/

 

 

It seems to me that this revised curfew plan  will shift ‘essential’ goods/supplies shopping from what is often early weekday evening and weekend daytime (Saturday in particular) to weekend morning(s?), thereby compressing greater numbers of rushed and pressured people into retail spaces, notwithstanding distancing, etc, as opposed to spreading out this activity more sensibly. With barely any advanced notice to try to stock up ahead of time. 

My point applies to the extent that the country leans towards a 9:00-17:00 economy. In my northern city this kind of mitigation structure would be seen to exacerbate community transmission risk, even given lack of public pushback. 

The idea of bringing down the hammer for 10 days, attempting to wash out the typical contagion period factor of the same duration, while ensuring the infection reproduction number stays no greater than 1.0 and the approximate 2-month new case incidence doubling does not shorten, is good in principle. However, I thought that curfews were most intended and useful to dissuade gatherings that tend to uptick later in the day. 

The impact on transmission will likely be discernible by the weekend of Jan 16-17. Testing rates may drop during the stricter curfew, so it may be difficult to make an assessment at the point a decision needs to be made about the exigency of extending it beyond the point in question.

The health authorities also asserted that a recent testing blitz in shopping malls yielded a 17% rate of current CoV positivity. That would put the true point prevalence at 165 or more times the reality suggested by reported incidence metrics for the country. Something is not adding up there.

Edited December 31, 20205 yr by Riobard

Confused enough yet?

State of emergency extended to end of February, so I expect the curfews etc as well. 

The CoV new case incidence for LRD has increased by about 50% over the second week of the revised curfew. As this trend will likely be interpreted as an indicator of alarming rates that would have otherwise occurred, I would not expect a relaxation of measures for some time to come.

Curfew adaptation (20 seconds) ...

There is some discussion occurring about adding more permissible afternoon hours on Saturdays along with imposing curfew earlier on Sunday morning. This would allow more of a window for stocking up of supplies for an extended Sunday stay-at-home order. 

Lol.  Trying to find an alternative.  Cartagena and Mexico are my options.  I haven’t cancelled DR as of yet.   I also need to consider where I would take the COVID antigen test to reenter the US. 

Edited January 16, 20215 yr by NomadicVibe

If you do end up visiting LRD the country is offering free PCR tests to tourists that require them to return to their home nation. Hotels will coordinate the procedure. Up until about end of March for now. 

I imagine that if you are staying in a platform-based rental such as Airbnb you will have to use one of the local health units, but they are accommodating tourism testing needs.

That said, the government is not ruling out an incoming travel ban if new case incidence continues to increase. These rumblings are suggestive of extension of the current curfew law as well. 

Vaccine purchase acquisition contracts portend a sufficient national supply but, as for all but innovative Israel trading prospective observational cohort efficacy data for Pfizer/BioNTech supply priority, the timing of dose administration suggests months out from now. 

Edited January 20, 20215 yr by Riobard