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Haiti announces a state of emergency after confirmed cases.

Haiti announced a state of emergency on Thursday after two patients were confirmed to have the coronavirus.

Both patients were being treated in the University Hospital of Mirebalais, in the country’s central plateau. Both had been out of the country recently.

In a televised news conference on Thursday evening, President Jovenel Moïse announced the closure of schools and universities, that meetings of more than 10 people were forbidden and a nightly curfew for the Caribbean’s most densely populated country.

If extreme precautions are not taken, the virus could quickly overwhelm the country, warned Elizabeth Campa, senior health and policy adviser for Zanmi Lasante, the Haitian nonprofit organization that runs the Mirebalais hospital in partnership with the government.

The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti has only 124 intensive care unit beds for a population of about 11 million, and the capability to mechanically ventilate fewer than 70 patients, according to a recent survey of hospitals done by the Research and Education consortium for the Acute Care in Haiti study group.

But given that 75 percent of the population live in deep poverty, on less than $2.50 a day and without access to electricity or clean water, it is hard to imagine how many could survive the containment measures being carried out in places like France and Italy.