Individuals, businesses still complacent about COVID-19 – Health Minister

The Ministry of Health continues to see a reduction in Covid-19 cases with only 37 new cases being recorded in the last 24 hours.

However, health minister, Dr. Frank Anthony is reminding the population that the pandemic remains and complacency could be fatal for some people, especially those who are unvaccinated or have underlying health conditions.

“We are still not out of the pandemic, omicron is still here with us and it can still infect people, and we can still have severe infections where people are hospitalised and you can also see some of those persons dying,” Dr. Anthony said.

He noted that the COVI-CURB campaign continues with members of the Guyana Defence Force and Guyana Police Force, along with other agencies working with the population to help them understand the measures in place to reduce the spread of the disease.

“While we would have had some measures of success, I think a lot of people have become complacent and there are businesses that were once very vigilant with these measures, have started relaxing them and similarly with various entities,” Dr Anthony said.

“If we relax these measures now, we are still going to see transmission, and therefore this is not some people doing the right thing and others being able to violate the rules. We have to take a conscious decision that all of us have to be involved to make sure that we can protect ourselves and the population, so if all of us do the right thing then the population will be protected,” he added.

As of Monday, Guyana recorded 5, 495 active cases. Minister Anthony said this number is also expected to drop by the end of this week, with less new infections and more people recovering.

There are 99 persons in hospitals across the country, 69 of which are at the infectious diseases’ hospital at Ocean View, with 17 persons in the ICU. Since the pandemic began, there has been 7,831 pediatric cases, 17 of which have died.