Guyana records highest number of new covid infections for a day

The number of Covid -19 infections in Guyana has hit a record high for one day with 485 new cases recorded in a day, Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, M.P., revealed on Tuesday.

“In the last 24 hours we had 485 new cases, so our active cases are now 1,824, so that’s a big jump, it’s probably the highest total we’ve had in a day and maybe these numbers would even go further.”

Minister Anthony noted that of the active cases 1,138 are in Region Four, 272 in Region Six, 148 in Region Three; 41 in Region Two; 78 in Region Nine and 74 in Region 10.

“So, you can see cases are going up around the country, and those regions where we have low cases, we are awaiting the test results because, we have collected samples but they have not been processed as yet,” the health minister confirmed.

He also noted that this trend is expected to continue as the Omicron variant is “highly contagious” and doubles every four days or so.

On the East Bank of Demerara at Diamond, 43 people are infected, 33 at Providence, 20 in Grove, and 17 at Herstelling.

On the East Coast, 17 infections were recorded in Non Pareil, 49 in Kitty, Sophia 36, Lodge 35, and La Penitence 27. There are cases in all the wards.

In other Regions, New Amsterdam recorded 66 cases, Lethem 45, Bartica 21 and Wismar 26.

“Right now, we have 64 persons in hospital, over the last 24 hours I think we had about 10 persons that came into the different hospitals. We currently have 36 persons at the Ocean View hospital, with eight of those persons in the ICU and a few of those persons are intubated. All of them are receiving oxygen but I think two of them are intubated,” Dr. Anthony said.

The vaccination numbers largely remain the same, but with a slight increase in first dose uptake which now stands at 80.3 % of the adult population while boosters’ uptake has also improved.

“Boosters have been going up incrementally, so today, we are at 12,306, booster doses but we still have a long way to go because of the persons who would have received their second dose. This is just a very small portion of that so we still have a very long way to go in ensuring that more people get their booster doses,” the health minister said.

Meanwhile, the health minister also confirmed that a number of staff from the GPHC have tested positive for the virus and are being closely monitored.

“There are a number of persons who have tested positive, both doctors and medical staff we have been constantly monitoring and we have taken mitigation measures so it has not had a big impact so far on service delivery, but if more and more people get sick well then obviously it’s going to have an impact,” Dr. Anthony said.

He noted that most of those affected are either asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic and are expected to return to work shortly.