Daily COVID-19 testing has doubled  – Health Minister

The Ministry of Health continues to increase Guyana’s COVID-19 testing response with the procurement of adequate COVID-19 tests being made available to the general public.

Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, M.P., during Wednesday’s COVID-19 update, said approximately 2, 219 tests have been conducted daily since the beginning of this year, doubling the amount conducted in 2021.

“If we go back and look at testing generally, in 2020 we did 38, 548 which on average would be about 129 tests per day, in 2021 we did 387, 266 that on average would work out to be 1, 061 tests per day and this year we already would have completed 88, 791 which works out to be 2, 219 per day,” Dr. Anthony said.

Minister Anthony further said “we have increased testing and therefore we are trying to find as much people who are positive as possible.”

Meanwhile, as the suspected Omicron variant continues to circulate, Guyana has recorded 184 new cases within the last 24-hours, with approximately 4, 358 current active cases.

Further, the minister reiterated that over 7,000 children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic began in 2020.

He said if there is any child who would have recovered from the coronavirus but is however suffering from long-COVID, they could visit the GPHC to be examined and treated there.

“Most of these cases were mild, we did have a number of hospitalisation but I think most of those patients would have recovered…

However, if there is any child suffering from symptoms of long-COVID they can always come to the hospital where they would be examined by the multi-specialty task force that we have for COVID,” the minister said.

As of Wednesday, 83.3 percent of the country’s adult population took the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine while 62.3 percent is fully vaccinated.

In terms of adolescents, 45.2 percent of this age cohort took the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine while 32.3 percent took both doses.