Allowing more Guyanese to come home could overwhelm healthcare system

Allowing more Guyanese to come home could overwhelm healthcare system – Nagamootoo

Apr 14, 2020 News

Leader of Guyana’s National COVID-19 Task Force Moses Nagamootoo said that the opening of Guyana’s airspace could see as much as 5,000 Guyanese in the diaspora returning home, and that could overwhelm Guyana’s healthcare system.

Leader of the National COVID-19 Task Force, Moses Nagamootoo

Nagamootoo made this statement in the most recent edition of his Guyana Chronicle column, My Turn, following a Saturday press conference where he was questioned about government’s consideration of Guyanese who may be stranded overseas.
“Should the restriction be lifted, as is being advocated by some, Guyana could quickly have an inflow of between 2,000 and 5,000 persons. Possibly more,” Nagamootoo stated.
As a result of measures to curb the spread of the deadly virus, Guyana has closed its airspace, with the exception of certain special cases, until early May. While the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) has granted special permission in the past for Guyanese abroad to return, Government is not willing to grant any more such concessions.
Nagamootoo said that “any relaxation of the strict containment measures could see a dramatic, over-night rise in both the infection rate and the number of deaths.”
This would be especially concerning, given that many Guyanese in the diaspora are residing in the US, the nation which is emerging as the new epicenter of the virus.
“Our first case was imported from Queens in the Big Apple, where already close to 40 Guyanese nationals have died. Among them are two well-known tycoons in the airline industry – Billy Braithwaite and Jim Bacchus,” Nagamootoo said.
He described the extent of the spread in the US in his column: “In all, over 20,000 persons have died in the United States, out of which figure some 8,000 were from New York where a mass grave has been dug in the middle of Hartland Park. There, in make-shift boxes, would be buried the bodies of persons who have neither been identified nor claimed by their relatives. In the United States, the confirmed cases have climbed close to 600,000 of which some 160,000 are from New York.”
He cautioned that his writings on the US are not to scare Guyanese at home, but to illustrate how rapidly the virus could spread, if there aren’t strict enough measures in place.
That said, Nagamootoo said that he empathises with Guyanese who want to return home, some of whom might be legitimately stranded whilst on vacation or on business.
However, the question of whether those stranded should be granted leniency to return home exposes a glaring deficiency in Guyana’s preparedness infrastructure to handle an influx of thousands, i.e., Guyana’s lack of capacity to quarantine and/or isolate those persons.
Nagamootoo said, “Upon their return all of them have to be screened, placed in quarantine and tested. Some of them might possibly be hospitalized. Such inflow at this time would be enough to overwhelm and literally kill our health care system.”
An April 11 update on Guyana’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic from the Civil Defence Commission (CDC) makes this evident. Presently, there are only four national quarantine and isolation facilities, with a collective capacity of 254. The task force is scrambling in its efforts to set up more of these facilities, with three currently in planning. The Cliff Anderson Sports Hall and the National Gymnasium are being prepared as well, with a combined capacity of 550 persons. The Ocean View International Hotel is also being prepared, but the capacity has not been determined.
The most recent study on the Guyana situation by the Pan American Health Organisation/World Health Organisation (PAHO/WHO) and the Ministry of Public Health had projected that Guyana could see over 20,000 cases of the novel Coronavirus by May 5.