Over 20,000 COVID-19 cases recorded in January

Jan 31, 2022 News

Kaieteur News – In March 2020, Guyana recorded its first confirmed COVID-19 case. At the end of that year, a total of 6,391 confirmed cases were recorded in the country.
In this month alone, over 20,000 COVID-19 cases were recorded, which have tripled the number recorded for 2020 alone. Kaieteur News analysis shows that from January 1st to 30th, a total of 20,230 confirmed COVID-19 cases were detected in the country.
Not only did the cases skyrocket in this month, but daily cases increased tremendously in January surpassing 1000 cases a day. Health officials began noticing the increase in cases at the ending of December just as the busy Christmas season was over.
At the end of the first two weeks in January, some 9,483 persons had tested positive for the virus. During that period, the highest number of cases recorded in just a 24-hour period was 1,186, on January 13. It should be noted that the majority of these cases were recorded in Region Four, and other regions such as Regions Three and Six.
Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony had attributed the increase in cases to the easily transmissible variant called Omicron. During an emergency press briefing on the issue, the Minister said, “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.”
In response to the new surge, President Irfaan Ali, asked the public not to panic, saying that his administration has the situation under control. Notably, like the new infections, cases of children dying from the virus in January were alarming. Since the year began, six children under the age of 10 have lost their lives to the deadly disease. In just one week of the month, January 9 to 14, four children died. Overall, a total of 17 children have passed away from the virus since the pandemic started. Meanwhile, on Sunday the Ministry of Health reported one new COVID-19 fatality, a fully vaccinated 65-year-old woman from Region Four who died yesterday. As a result of this, the country’s COVID-19 death toll has moved to 1,166. In its daily COVID-19 dashboard, the Ministry recorded another 353 new infections, taking the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 59,803. The dashboard data also shows that 16 patients are admitted into the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU), 203 persons in institutional isolation, 11,324 in home isolation and six in institutional quarantine. To date, a total of 47,094 persons have recovered from the virus.

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