Izzy Gerstenbluth receives the vaccine.
(image anp / Prince Victor) –
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Willemstad
It is eerily quiet on the Handelskade in the old heart of Willemstad. Due to the strict lockdown, shops are closed, people are at home, tourists are away. Sometimes a car passes the man sitting on a wooden bench on the quay. ‘Good job! ‘, a driver shouts through the open window: good job! Others honk or wave.
“I really don’t know who the people are,” says Izzy Gerstenbluth. But they do know who he is: the government epidemiologist on Curaçao, Jaap van Dissel of the Caribbean island. Gerstenbluth (63) and his team have been trying to cope with the covid pandemic for over a year now. Initially that went astonishingly well. But in the meantime the number of infections is exploding.
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