Guyana records 967 new COVID-19 cases in 24hrs

Jan 07, 2022 News

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By Allyiah Allicock

Kaieteur News – With the Omicron variant likely in Guyana, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony on Thursday reported that the country has recorded 967 new COVID-19 cases.
While announcing that the new cases derived from 3,226 tests, Minister Anthony during his daily COVID-19 update said the new figure now pushes the country’s active cases to 3,481. Since the start of the New Year, the country continues to see a surge in new cases. From January 1 to date, approximately 2,816 persons have tested positive for the virus. On January 1, it was reported that a total of 206 cases were recorded, on January 2 a total of 281 were recorded, on January 3, 98cases were reported, on January 4, a total of 485 were recorded, and on January 5, the Ministry recorded 779 new cases. Out of the new and active cases in the country, the majority has been detected in Region Four.
A breakdown of the active cases in the country shows that there are 2,289 cases in Region Four, 374 in Region Six, 285 in Region Three, 160 in Region Nine, 110 in Region Seven, 107 in Region 10, 83 in Region Five, 58 in Region Two, 14 in Region One, and one in Region Eight.
The minister had attributed the spike in cases to the new easily transmissible variant in circulation right now, Omicron.
During an emergency press briefing on this state of affair, Minister Anthony on Wednesday revealed that “Based on the current epidemiology, what we are seeing, we believe strongly that there is omicron here. From the 28 of December right onto now, we have seen a doubling of the cases, so on the 28 of December we had about 40 cases and as of today (Wednesday) we have had 788 cases within the last 24 hours. These numbers are going to go up. Fortunately, most of the people that tested positive have mild symptoms, some of them are asymptomatic and we have not seen an explosion of hospitalisation.”
President Irfaan Ali who was also part of the press briefing urged Guyanese not to panic but that the situation was under control. The President had revealed that the Government has all the capacity and capability to deal with the situation as it emerges and encourages those unvaccinated to get vaccinated.
“What we learn so far from the science and experiences is that vaccination with booster minimises the impact of this new variant… We don’t have control over the new variant and how it will operate but we have control over our own actions,” the President explained.
In terms of their response to deal with the surge, Minister Anthony stated that the Ocean View and other Regional hospitals have been built to deal with COVID-19 infections emerging. “So we have the capability and in our hospitals we have prepared just in case we have to hospitalise people that we have the capacity to hospitalize. At the Ocean View Hospital we have the capabilities of hosting a total 195 patients, and in all our regional hospitals we have built capacity to be able to manage COVID-19 patients,” Dr. Anthony commented.
Noting that there is capacity to handle the COVID-19 situation, it was revealed at the briefing that a total of 200 health care workers had tested positive for the virus.
According to President Ali, 75 nurses, 50 doctors and 41 technicians across the health sector have contracted COVID-19. He added that 50 percent of the nurses and 70 percent of the doctors are from the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC). It was noted that the Obstetrics and Gynaecology (OBGYN) and the Paediatric departments at the GPHC were where the cases emerged.
The Head of State assured however, that it has not affected the service delivery at the GPHC. “While most countries moving in a direction of cutting off service delivery from the public health care system we are not heading into that direction because we believe that the system can manage and operate even with the challenge we have now,” he added.
Addressing the rise in cases, Medical Director at the GPHC, Dr. Jeffery Fawcett said that meetings were held with the Minister where a contingency plan was established to deal with the issue arising. Some of the decisions made are the change in the type of masks the staffs would be wearing; implementing a more stern screening process at the gate and the tightening of the visitation protocol at the hospital. Despite the rise in new cases, it was announced by the President that schools will not be closed.
Opposition concerned
The main Opposition on Thursday during a news conference expressed their disappointment with the Government’s call to keep school open. Member of Parliament, Ganesh Mahipaul, said that not enough consultation was done regarding the reopening of schools. Meanwhile, in its COVID-19 daily update, the Health Ministry reported that four more persons who tested positive for COVID-19 have died. According to the Ministry, the latest fatalities are that of three men, a 62-year-old from Region Two, a 47-year-old from Region Six, and a 42-year-old from Region Four and also from that region was a 48-year-old woman who passed away. Their deaths now take the country’s COVID-19 death toll to 1,064. The ministry’s dashboard data shows that six persons are admitted in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU), 75 in institutional isolation, 3,374 in home isolation and five in institutional quarantine. To date, a total of 37,866 persons have recovered from the virus.

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