App to help monitor COVID-19 to be released this week

–  4 confirmed cases in Guyana; all quarantined in MOPH facility

—Four quarantine sites set up locally

DPI, Guyana, Tuesday, March 17, 2020

With four confirmed cases of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in Guyana to date, the Ministry of Public Health has implemented several measures to curb the spread of the virus and to keep Guyanese safe.

One of these measures is the creation of an ‘app’ to monitor and evaluate information about the virus. This information will be uploaded to the headquarters of the Emergency and Urgent Care facility.

At a media briefing on Tuesday, Minister of Public Health Hon. Volda Lawrence explained additional steps are being taken to ensure the safety of all including the quarantine of all suspected cases, probable cases and confirmed cases of COVDI-19.

The Health Minister also disclosed that all persons confirmed to have the virus are now quarantined in a Ministry of Public Health facility.

The Ministry has also beefed up its ports of entry health response and is working with the Ministry of Communities to provide additional administrative staff.

These teams are responsible for collecting data from persons who were screened and found to have a temperature above the normal range. “We continue to work with those agencies and businesses where there are a large number of persons employed,” Minister Lawrence noted.

There are currently four quarantine sites in Guyana. The location of these sites was not released in order to respect the privacy of the patients who are being successfully treated.

Additionally, Minister Lawrence has urged all Guyanese to only consume information from reliable sites.

Dependable sources of information include the World Health Organisation’s website https://www.who.int/, the Ministry of Health’s official pages and another health update page that can be found here created by a local technopreneur.