Rise in COVID-19 cases linked to asymptomatic persons, increased testing - Dr Frank Anthony

Rise in COVID-19 cases linked to asymptomatic persons, increased testing – Dr Frank Anthony

Aug 27, 2020 News

Asymptomatic cases, increased testing are the two main contributing factors to the rise in Guyana’s COVID-19 numbers, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, has said.
According to the Minister, the new positive COVID-19 cases reported daily, suggest that for months, hundreds of cases had gone undetected. Since assuming office, the PPP/C government ordered mass testing to be conducted in all regions of Guyana.
An update from the Ministry of Health indicates that confirmed cases are now over 1000 with over 600 new cases being recorded in early August.
During a recent live streamed interview with the Department of Public Information (DPI), Dr. Anthony explained that he expects more new cases to be confirmed in the coming days.
“It is going to go up more because as we are increasing the number of tests and because we are doing so we are going to see more positives… In the past, testing was very restricted, there were very strict criteria to do the test and therefore you would have had to be displaying symptoms of COVID before you got a test,” he noted.
The Minister noted too that a large percentage of persons are asymptomatic.
“When we looked at what is happening in other parts of the world, lots of people are asymptomatic… they are unaware because they have no signs or symptoms,” the Minister noted.
Added to this, he noted that, previously, less testing was done because there were limited test kits.
According to Dr. Anthony, the PPP/C administration, upon assuming office this very month, managed to garner test kits from various donor agencies countries and organisations to further Guyana’s push to identify and contain the spread of COVID-19.
He said that with this huge demand for more tests, the Ministry is working assiduously to build testing capacity and have more test samples processed daily.
Test samples are being collected countrywide, something Minister Anthony said was not happening before. For instance, Regions Five and Six which were previously deemed COVID- free is now seeing scores of persons coming forward to have tests done.
Meanwhile, the facilities established in Region Four, namely Herstelling, Paradise, Georgetown, along with the mobile units have seen as much as 400 plus samples taken daily to be processed.
Dr. Anthony said too, more private facilities along with another government facility will be supporting the National Public Health Reference Laboratory in processing the high number of tests.

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