Eddy Jackson Alexis, Secretary of State for Communication, informs the population in general and the users of Toussaint Louverture International Airport in particular that the private jet, registered N666HD from Hong-Kong, with 11 Chinese passengers, including businessmen, landed in Port-au-Prince in the afternoon for a rest stop for the crew and left Port-au-Prince on Saturday morning between 7:10 am and 7:12 am.

Secretary of State Alexis affirms that the Chinese passengers as well as the pilots never had contact with the Haitian soil and that at no time the doors of the plane were opened until its departure from Haiti to Aruba in the Netherlands Antilles.

Alexis recalls that the Government of the Republic, through the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Communications (MTPTC, the Ministry of the Interior and Territorial Communities, the Secretary of State for Public Security, the National Airport Authority (AAN) as well as the Haitian National Police (PNH) have been mobilized so that all measures are taken to avoid any contact between these Chinese passengers and Haitian soil.

Note that the decision to ban passengers and crew from setting foot on Haitian soil is based solely on the fact that the passengers were of Chinese origin and not that they were infected with Coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

Note that this plane, which wanted to refuel in the Bahamas, was first forbidden to land in the archipelago because of the presence of Chinese on board https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-29918-haiti-news-zapping.html the plane then diverted to the International Airport "Las Américas" in the Dominican Republic where it was authorized to make a technical stopover to refuel, but no passenger was authorized to exit the aircraft during this technical stopover. The plane then flew to Haiti for a rest stop.

We can wonder after this incident, if being Chinese has become a symptom of 2019-nCoV ?

This incident measures the extent of the panic faced with this Coronavirus, which benefits from media overexposure, which made 384 dead all Chinese, including 383 in the province of Wuhan in China and only 1 dead from Whuan in the Philippines and 14,380 infected cases. (Laboratory confirmed), all patients in Whuan or from this Chinese province. An epidemic to put into perspective when one compare with the seasonal flu that kills each year worldwide between 290,000 and 650,000 people (source WHO) without any government taking such measures...

HL/ HaitiLibre