57-year-old man is Guyana’s 201st COVID-19 death

…43 new cases recorded

Another COVID-19 related death was recorded on Saturday, raising the country’s death toll to 201.
The latest fatality is a 57-year-old male from Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), who died while receiving care at a medical facility.
Meanwhile, the country also saw an increase of 43 new cases in one day – raising the confirmed positives to 8772. These cases emerged after 674 persons were tested.
There are, however, 466 active cases: seven patients in the designated Intensive Care Unit, 40 persons in institutional isolation and 419 in home isolation. Another 11 are in institutional quarantine. From the 4514 males and 4258 females that contracted the virus thus far, 8106 have completely recovered. Guyana has managed to test 69,745 people since the virus was detected locally.

New cases
A breakdown showed that new cases were recorded in five administrative regions: 11 in Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara); 25 in Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica); two in Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni); one in Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo) and four in Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice).
Guyanese have been asked continuously to follow the outlined national measures and curfew which were implemented by Government to curtail widespread infection.
On Friday, Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony detailed that the medical teams were trained recently to administer the Sinopharm vaccines – which were recently delivered from the Chinese Government.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we went back and trained our healthcare workers on how to administer this particular vaccine and we have to develop some information booklets that when someone come to get the vaccine, that they also receive the information booklet that explains to them the vaccines, how it works, what are the possible side effects, who can get it, who cannot get it and things like that,” he indicated.
This weekend, the Ministry started rolling out the vaccines. With the 20,000 doses, Guyana will be able to immunise 10,000 persons – continuing with healthcare workers. Dr Anthony reminded that it is one of the effective vaccines developed and will prevent transmission.
He had added that while there is still a small chance of getting the virus, it will be in a milder form. He said Guyana was fortunate to benefit from this tranche, as there is some scarcity now with China vaccinating its large population.

India COVID-19 donation
Today, Guyana will receive a massive donation of 80,000 Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccines – this time from the Government of India. The country is also awaiting 100,000 doses from the COVAX mechanism, also slated to arrive in March.
India has already donated 170,000 AstraZeneca vaccines to the Caribbean – 70,000 to Dominica and the remaining 100,000 to Barbados from which Guyana was given a portion. Guyana rolled out the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine to frontline workers two weeks ago, with some 2000 frontline healthcare workers being vaccinated. (G12)