Health Minister believes COVID-19 variants are here

Jul 19, 2021 News

Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony

Kaieteur News – Over the last three months, health authorities have been noticing a spike in COVID -19 hospitalizations as well as in deaths. Not only that, but children are now being affected with a more severe form of the deadly disease.
The Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony suggests that the reason for all of this, is that health authorities assume the presence of all the COVID-19 variants are in the country, and that people are exposed to it.
Recently, countries such as the United States of America (USA) have been hit hard with a new variant of COVID-19 virus, the delta variant, which is causing high numbers of new infections being recorded there.
Some variants of COVID-19 are the alpha variant which was detected in the United Kingdom, the beta variant from South Africa, the P.I variant that originated from Brazil and the delta variant from India.
Dr. Anthony during his interview explained that when these variants emerge and they become a variant of concern it is due to the fact that they are more transmissible. “They have the potential to perhaps, to evade the immune system and that is why they become variants of concern,” he highlighted.
While noting that gene sequencing would have to be done to definitely confirm the new variants, the Minister said that people traveling in and out of the country on a daily basis, would have already exposed the nation to these emerging variants.
“Right now, while the delta variant probably was first discovered in India, it is now the dominant variant in the US, and we have travel back and forth from the US on a daily basis. So one can assume that we have different types of variants that are circulating in Guyana,” he added.
According to the Health Minster, sequencing would not make much of a difference in terms of understanding what steps can be taken because treatment options will still remain the same, and so too, would be the preventative measures.
In terms of protecting oneself from such variants, the Minster said he is reminding persons to get vaccinated. “Because once you are fully vaccinated you are more or less protected against the virus,” he concluded.

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