The Galapagos on the road to collective immunity

Audio 02:36

Aerial view of the Galapagos Archipelago, Ecuador.

wikimedia.org

By: Eric Samson Follow

6 mins

The Galapagos, a World Heritage Site, could be a safe destination for tourists from all over the world in June.

The Pfizer laboratory has indeed agreed to advance the delivery of sufficient doses to vaccinate the entire adult population by June and achieve the famous group immunity. 

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On the small fish market in Puerto Ayora, pelicans have long replaced foreign visitors who have deserted the archipelago. Here, the population depends on tourism to more than 80% and the saleswoman Isabel Heras has struggled to make ends meet. “

 We only sold our fish to locals. It allowed us to survive but it was hard because with the pandemic, the Galapagos closed for months, tourism fell and many restaurants and hotels closed,

 ”she regrets.

For a year now, the population has therefore had recourse to the D system, like the sailor Arturo Alvaro: “ 

The fishermen made a statement on the radio asking the inhabitants to raise a little money to enable them to buy fuel.

In exchange, they gave them fish…

 ”

39-year-old taxi driver Luis Jiménez discovered barter.

“ 

As there were no tourists to transport, I stayed at home.

From time to time, I made exchanges with the farmers of the island.

They called me when they had products to transport and they gave me bananas, oranges, tangerines, yams…

 ”.

More than six months ago, the Ecuadorian government and the chairman of the Galapagos Governing Council Norman Wray began negotiations to obtain the doses to vaccinate the some 20,000 adults in the archipelago.

“ 

The economic impact of the pandemic has been terrible here, but we need to vaccinate first for a health issue,”

explains Norman Wray.

 We have improved our health care system, installed laboratories and 12 intensive care beds that did not exist before the pandemic.

This has allowed us to treat all our cases of Covid-19 here in the Galapagos, even the most serious ... But if the virus develops here aggressively as it does on the continent, for us it would be fatal 

”.

Responsible for the vaccination strategy in the archipelago, Doctor Juan Ochoa of the Ministry of Public Health has a very clear objective: “ 

We are trying to block the progression of the pandemic so that tourists can return to a safe place.

There will never be zero covid, but if ever a person is contaminated in one way or another, we know that the impact will be much less if the adult population is totally immune 

”.

At a rate of around 1,500 people vaccinated daily, the entire adult population of the Galapagos is expected to have received their two doses by the end of May-early June.

Even if it will not be totally free from the virus, the archipelago will then be the safest province in Ecuador, hoping that this message will be enough to bring back foreign tourists.

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  • Ecuador

  • Coronavirus

  • Vaccines

  • Tourism