Port-au-Prince (AFP)

Deserted to comply with the barrier measures, the Haitian Olympic center has been converted into an emergency hospital dedicated to Covid-19 but the empty beds line up by the dozen in the gymnasiums: the dreaded catastrophe has not yet occurred location.

"We have been open for two weeks and, to date, we have received two patients," says Dr. Rudy Sylien, who manages this treatment center located on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.

Mattresses still under plastic, a large part of the equipment, freshly bought in China by the Haitian state, was placed in rooms normally dedicated to the practice of karate or table tennis.

Even the dormitories designed for athletes were requisitioned to facilitate the rotation of doctors, nurses and health auxiliaries.

- 160 beds, one patient-

"The medical staff assigned to the care building operate on a three-day shift. They therefore stay on site: we feed them and we house them," explains Dr. Sylien.

Nearly two hundred people are assigned to work at the Olympic center, capable of receiving 160 patients but where, during a visit organized for the media on Tuesday, only one patient was hospitalized.

"It surprises us but, at the same time, we can say that we were lucky", recognizes Dr. Sylien as he walks along the rows of empty beds.

Opposite the Olympic center stretch the hills called Canaan: following the 2010 earthquake, tens of thousands of Haitians took up residence there in the most total anarchy.

In Canaan and in the densely populated poor neighborhoods of the metropolitan area of ​​Port-au-Prince, epidemiologists feared a health disaster: a worst-case scenario which has not yet happened.

The most alarmist projections predict the death of more than 20,000 people in the country which has 11.2 million inhabitants. According to the latest assessment, published Monday evening, among the 5,324 people tested positive, 89 died

"It is a happy surprise. We were preparing, for example, to bring the capacity of the Canaan center to 600 beds if necessary," testified to AFP, doctor Jean-William Pape.

Having acquired international renown for his work, in the early 1980s, in the face of the HIV / AIDS epidemic, the Haitian infectious disease specialist bluntly recognizes that official statistics cannot be representative of the scale of the epidemic in the country. country.

"There are deaths which are not counted because people die without being tested, like everywhere in the world", explains Dr. Pape who adds however that "the peak has been reached for the area of ​​Port-au-Prince : the number of cases is falling. "

- Less "nasty" strain -

As Latin America has become the epicenter of the pandemic, the evolution of the virus in Haiti, the poorest country on the continent where health infrastructures are the most lacking, is already generating scientific research.

"I think the strain that attacked New York, northern Italy, France or Spain is worse than the one we have here. It is a hypothesis because we do not yet know what was the strain that we have here: we have samples and we are going to study them ", announces Jean-William Pape.

Less connected to the globalized economy, far from receiving the flow of international tourists who stay in the neighboring islands of the Caribbean, Haiti has late registered a spread of the new coronavirus.

"We have learned from the mistakes of others," said Dr. Pape, who also knows the resilience to which his fellow citizens are forced.

"These are people who are very hard: after two days of fever, they get up to go to work because, if they do not work, they do not eat," laments the doctor.

Dying of hunger today or of coronavirus tomorrow: containment is impossible for a majority of the population surviving daily in the informal economy.

This is why Haitian scientists are careful not to declare victory and urge caution.

"If the epidemic is decreasing in Port-au-Prince, it will continue in the rest of the country, especially with people who have returned from the Dominican Republic," warns Dr. Pape.

According to the International Organization for Migration, 47,000 Haitians have left the neighboring country since the start of the epidemic, without necessarily passing through one of the four official border points where health checks can be carried out.

Sharing the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, the Dominican Republic has registered nearly 28,000 coronavirus patients to date, 675 of whom have died.

© 2020 AFP