Health care system to be “reprioritised” as COVID-19 hospitalisation increases -Min. Anthony

─ majority of cases in Regions Three, Four

Health care facilities across the country will be “reprioritised” to facilitate the rising number of hospitalisations for COVID-19.

Health minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, MP, said with the increase in hospitalisation, non-essential services may be closed so that health workers could be deployed to assist in the treatment of COVID-19 patients.

Dr. Anthony made the statement during Thursday’s COVID-19 update.

“Well obviously, we’ll have to reprioritise, because the more people we get sick with Covid and the more people that are coming down with the more severe form of the disease, we’ll have to reprioritise and maybe non-essential kinds of services we’ll have to close those and re-deploy staff and resources to treat with the severe cases, s0 we have a number of contingencies in place and we’ll activate them as is necessary,” Minister Anthony noted.

Meanwhile, so far, Guyana has seen some 3,441 active cases, with the majority recorded in Region Four with 1, 964 and Region Three with approximately 854 cases.

“Over the last 24 hours we have seen a number of cases, a number of persons who have tested positive, we’ve had 308 persons who’ve tested positive and that’s from 1, 794 tests

“So indeed, we are seeing cases and with an increase in cases we expect that we will get more people being hospitalised.”

As of today, 150 persons are hospitalised across the country. Of this number 107 are at the Ocean View facility in Liliendaal (ECD), with 34 patients in the Intensive Care Unit. Some 13 pregnant women at GPHC are currently infected with the deadly disease.

The minister continues to urge persons to get vaccinated and practice all precautions to protect themselves and others.