96-year-old unvaccinated woman dies from COVID – 81 new cases, 5 in ICU

A pensioner who tested positive for the novel coronavirus has died, the Health Ministry reported on Saturday.
This latest fatality is a 96-year-old female from Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) who died on Friday, July 22.
Consequently, Guyana’s COVID-19 death toll has gone up to 1269. For the past week, that is, between last Sunday and today, the Ministry reported five COVID-related deaths.
However, another 81 people have tested positive for the virus within a 24-hour period. This is according to the latest statistics released by the Health Ministry on Saturday.
Active cases in the country are now at 868. This includes five patients in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the remaining persons in either home (833) or institutional (30) isolation.
Five other persons are also in institutional quarantine.
To date, some 67,276 persons have recovered from the life-threatening virus – 164 more recoveries than the figure reported the previous day.
Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Guyana over two years ago, a total 673,362 tests have been conducted countrywide and of this, some 31,818 males and 37,595 females were found to be positive.
Of the 81 new cases recorded on Saturday, two were from Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam); three more from Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara); 42 cases from the Demerara-Mahaica region, another eight from Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice); four cases from Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne); one other case from Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni); 18 from Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo) and the remaining three cases from Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice).
There were no new cases recorded in the other two regions across the country within the reporting 24-hour period.
After a prolonged period of declining cases, the Guyana Government, back in March, removed most restrictions as the country moves to recover from the pandemic and return to normalcy. But in recent weeks, there have a spike in COVID cases here, which health authorities have attributed to the BA.2 and now BA.5 subvariants of the Omicron strain.
Latest vaccination figures show that so far, more than 444,700 or 86.7 per cent of adults have taken a first dose, while over 344,400 or 67.1 per cent of persons 18 years and over are fully vaccinated.
For adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17, just over 35,300 or 48.4 per cent have received their first dose, while 25,837 or 35.4 per cent of them have returned for their second dose.
Vaccines administered to children within the ages of five and 11 years, have surpassed 5600 doses which is about 5.6 per cent of that age cohort. Second doses for this group is just over 1070 or 1 per cent.
In addition, in excess of 67,500 persons have returned for their third dose booster shots thus far.
Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony during his recent COVID update pointed out that the vaccination campaign has become relatively slow – something they want to change.
“We would like [the vaccination figures] to be much more,” Dr Anthony stated.
The Health Minister urged persons with flu-like symptoms to get tested since the BA.5 infection presents with regular cold/flu symptoms.
“You can have a runny nose, a congested nose or you can have an itchy throat, sore throat or you can have fever, body aches – all these are typical symptoms of someone who has flu. So, I think a lot of people, who would experience these symptoms… they’re thinking that they have flu.”
“But I would advise them that they go and get a test done just to rule out COVID. Because if it is COVID, you would want to prevent transmission. You wouldn’t want to be walking around in the public… for that matter, you should be at home and self-isolate. We just need people to do the right thing,” Minister Anthony implored.
According to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recent figures, some 565,207,160 confirmed cases were reported globally along with 6,373,739 deaths.
In the Region of the Americas, that is, Latin America and the Caribbean, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has increased to 168,183,683 while the death toll in the region has gone up to 2,779,572.
As it relates to vaccination against COVID-19, WHO also reported that a total of 12,219,375,500 doses have been administered worldwide.