Health Minister urges greater level of monitoring – as active COVID-19 cases rising

Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, MP, said the increase in active COVID-19 cases remains a concern, and is again urging persons to take responsibility in protecting themselves and family from the deadly disease.

The health minister during Wednesday’s COVID-19 Update, said Guyana has recorded 3,368 active cases, with 313 cases on Tuesday alone. This, he attributes to the surge in the Delta variant.

“Because of the Delta surge, we are going to see an increase in cases. Over the last 24 hours, we would have conducted 2,346 tests, both private and public institutions, and we had over the last 24 hours, 313 cases, this is perhaps the highest that we have gotten in a 24-hour period.”

Of those active cases, 1,955 are from Region Four and 805 from Region Three.

“So, again, I hope that people are paying close attention to these numbers because unless you take precautions, and those are the standard precautions that we’ve been talking about: masking and social distancing and sanitising, and of course getting vaccinated, if you don’t abide by these rules, unfortunately, you are going to get infected and if you’re unvaccinated, you can end up in the hospital.” 

Minister Anthony further noted that constant monitoring to ensure persons are compliant with the basic COVID-19 regulations has to be everybody’s business.

“If people are non-compliant and we see those persons then we should tell them. So, it’s not just a task force business, somebody’s going to be running around trying to enforce all of this, we, each one of us, if we want to be protected, then we have to talk to those who are not doing the right things. It’s only by all of us doing the right things that we as a population, as a country would be protected, so it’s everybody’s business and we have to change our behaviour, we have to adjust, or we’re going to get sick.

So far, some 141 persons are hospitalised with Covid across Guyana. Ninety-nine are at the Ocean View facility, 31 of which are in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Another 17 are at the GPHC’s obstetrics department.”

Minister Anthony said with increased cases, hospitalisation is also increasing.

Meanwhile, 534,108 doses of the Covid vaccine have been administered to the population, to date. Some 19,131 doses of the Pfizer vaccine were given to children ages 12 to 17. For the adult population, 339,206 (66.1%) took the first dose, while 175,848 (34.3%) are now fully vaccinated against the Coronavirus.