… 66 new cases detected in 24h
The Health Ministry on Tuesday reported that two women who were tested for the novel coronavirus have died thus taking the total number of deaths to 899. One of the women was unvaccinated while the immunisation status of the other is unknown.
The fatalities are a 62-year-old woman from Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) and a 60-year-old from Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam). They both died on Monday.
However, new statistics provided by the Ministry showed that 66 new cases were recorded in 24 hours.
The total number of confirmed cases in the country now stands at 35,170 – 16,623 men and 18,547 women. There are 23 persons in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU), with four persons in institutional quarantine, 76 in institutional isolation, and 3239 in home isolation.
Guyana has conducted 348,832 COVID-19 tests thus far. To date, some 30,933 persons have recovered from the deadly virus.
Meanwhile, with US health advisers meeting on Tuesday to debate whether the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should grant emergency authorisation to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, Guyana’s Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony is already anticipating an approval and indicated that the country is prepared to begin such a rollout from next week.
“Starting from next week, we’re already examining the possibility of doing the vaccination for the 11 to 5 age group because we’re anticipating that the US FDA would approve the Pfizer vaccine for this age group as well,” he revealed on Tuesday during an update on the COVID-19 situation here.
The coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech is currently approved in the United States for people aged 12 and older. This vaccine is also already being used in Guyana to immunise its adolescent population.
In Guyana, 26,966 or 37 per cent of that age cohort have received a first dose while 17,489 or 24 per cent are fully immunised.
However, Dr Anthony has already expressed concerns over an apparent slowdown of the uptake of the vaccine among this population and he noted that authorities are working closely with the Education Ministry to boost the numbers.
In this regard, the Health Minister encouraged parents to ensure their children are immunised so that they can stand a better chance at fighting off the disease.
According to reports, Pfizer has said its research showed that younger children should get a third of the vaccine dose currently being given to the older age group.
While initial research had shown that children are at lower risk of contracting the virus and if they do, they get the milder form of the disease, the situation has been changing with the spread of the variants.
To date in Guyana, over 5000 children have been infected with the virus and some of them have also died.
