88 new COVID-19 cases recorded in 24h

Public concern about the increased coronavirus cases continue to surface but this spike in positives is linked to heightened testing through public and private institutions.
Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony in Tuesday’s COVID update pointed out that the public testing capacity is supported by three private entities that offer PCR testing. Another eight also provide antigen tests to the population.
For April, Guyana has seen an increase of almost 1000 new cases – a trend which the Minister associated with the amplified tests.
“We’re doing more testing now and with more testing, we’re seeing more cases so it’s not only the Government system that is testing. We have granted permission to a number of private institutions. Some of them have been licensed to do PCR testing so you have three additional laboratories that are doing PCR testing. Then you have probably eight or 10 that are now doing antigen testing. So our antigen capacity has gone up tremendously,” Dr Anthony informed.
Meanwhile, he said more vaccines will be delivered on Thursday as part of the 200,000 Sputnik vaccines purchased by Government. On Monday, the second tranche of 30,000 was delivered at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport.
“We’re expecting some more on Thursday and in terms of the ones from COVAX, we have been told that we should expect additional vaccines through the COVAX mechanism sometime between now and May. There wasn’t a definitive date but we should be getting additional vaccines.”
The Health Ministry is seeking to scale up vaccination as medical personnel become more proficient in the administration campaign. Presently, there are some geographical challenges in reaching the hinterland communities but the Health Minister has assured that everyone will be reached.
“We have deployed to the different regions, enough vaccines for them to use and to make sure that this programme is ongoing. In the hinterland, that can sometimes pose a challenge because sometimes the geographical spread of some of the villages. Therefore, while we’re working in different parts of the hinterland, it would take us some time before we can get to all those villages, to be able to do the immunisation. Nevertheless, we have trained teams of persons in these different regions so that they are able to, from a regional level, roll out this vaccine,” he explained.

New cases
The Ministry’s daily dashboard for Tuesday showed a whopping increase of 88 cases in 24 hours, raising the total positives to date to 11,277. A gender breakdown revealed that 5725 males and 5552 females were infected.
There are now 15 persons in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), with 77 persons in institutional capacity, 1131 in home isolation and 12 in institutional quarantine. A total of 9796 persons have made complete recoveries – an increase of 45.
Regionally, one case was detected in Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), 16 in Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara), 42 in Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), 10 in Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice), five in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne), six in Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni), three in Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo) and one in Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice).
The cases in Regions One (Barima-Waini) and Region Eight (Potaro-Siparuni) remain at 1029 and 247. (G12)