20 samples sent to CARPHA to test for Omicron variant – Health Minister

Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, M.P, said the ministry has sent 20 samples taken from COVID-19 patients to the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) to test for the Omicron variant.

Guyana recorded a spike in COVID-19 cases at the end of December.  This, health officials suspected, was due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant which was however found to be less severe with a shorter duration period.

“One of the things that we do is to take samples from patients and we send them to confirm which variants are circulating in Guyana and over the weekend we would have sent 20 samples to CARPHA for confirmation.

Clinically we’re convinced that we’ve had in the late December, January, February period we would have seen a conversion from Delta to Omicron because of the clinical picture that we’ve been seeing,” the minister noted.

Dr. Anthony said the samples will confirm whether or not the variant is circulating in the country. He said the results are expected within the next two to three weeks.

Meanwhile, positive cases have been decreasing significantly, with 14 new cases recorded over the last 24-hours. There are currently 1, 841 active cases. However, the minister said this number is expected to drop during this week.

Further, 66 persons are currently hospitalised, 50 of whom are being treated at the Ocean View Hospital with nine persons in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).