17-year-old, 4 others are latest COVID-19 deaths

A 17-year-old lad is among five new COVID-19 deaths reported by the Ministry of Health on Wednesday.
The teenager, a resident of Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), died on Monday.
Included in those fatalities is a lone female, a 63-year-old resident of Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice) who died on Tuesday.
Two males, an 84-year-old and an 87-year-old, both of Region Four, also succumbed on Tuesday. Another Region Four resident, a 70-year-old male, died last Friday from the novel coronavirus as well.
According to the Health Ministry, these patients were admitted with COVID-19-like symptoms, and died while receiving care at medical institutions. Samples taken at the time of their admission subsequently returned positive.
With these five latest fatalities, the total number of deaths from the pandemic in Guyana has gone up to 587. Thus far, in the month of August, the COVID-19 death toll has climbed to 38.
Meanwhile, another 120 persons have contracted the deadly virus, taking the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 23,795.
The Ministry’s updated COVID-19 Dashboard on Wednesday revealed that 15 patients are in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU), while 1068 persons are in isolation; that is, 88 in institutional isolation and the other 980 in home isolation.
This takes the active cases in Guyana to 1083.
Additionally, there are five persons in institutional quarantine.
To date, some 22,125 persons have recovered from the life-threatening disease; 75 more recoveries have been recorded in the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, a total of 248,706 persons have been tested for the novel coronavirus since the outbreak of the pandemic here last year. Of this number, 11,563 males and 12,232 females were found to be positive.
Of the 120 new COVID cases recorded on Wednesday, three were detected in Region One (Barima-Waini), one was detected in Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), 24 were detected in Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara), a whopping 72 were detected in Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), four were detected in Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice), nine were detected in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne), three were detected in Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni), one each was detected in Region Eight (Potaro-Siparuni) and Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo), and the remaining two cases were detected in Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice).
In order to curb the rising number of cases in the country, the Guyana Government launched its COVID-19 vaccination exercise back in February, and is aggressively rolling it out in the various regions across Guyana in order to achieve heard immunity.
So far, some 59 per cent of the adult population has received their first dose of the vaccine, and recent data puts this figure at more than 288,000 persons. Meanwhile, fully immunised persons in the country have exceeded 30 per cent, with 148,000 of the population who are 18 years and older having also received the vaccine.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as at Wednesday, some 208,470,375 confirmed cases were reported globally, along with 4,377,979 deaths.
WHO also reported on Thursday that in the Region of the Americas; that is, Latin America and the Caribbean, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has increased to 80,709,034, while the death toll in the region has gone up to 2,056,686. (G8)