Active COVID-19 cases now at 619 after 15 new infections

The Health Ministry reported on Sunday that 15 more persons have tested positive for the novel coronavirus within a 24-hour period.
Consequently, there are now 69,807 confirmed cases in the country. However, only 619 of these are currently active cases, that is, one patient in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the remaining persons in isolation – 594 in home isolation and the other 24 in institutional isolation.
One other person is also currently in institutional quarantine.
To date, some 67,917 persons have recovered from the life-threatening virus thus far – 43 more recoveries than the figure reported the previous day.
Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Guyana over two years ago, a total 676,520 tests have been conducted countrywide and of this, some 31,993 males and 37,814 females were found to be positive.
Of the 15 new cases recorded on Sunday, seven were from Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), one case from Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara), and the remaining seven cases from Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica).
There were no new cases recorded in the other seven 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 has been a spike in COVID cases here, which health authorities have attributed to subvariants of the Omicron strain, such as the BA.5.
To this end, health authorities are urging persons to get vaccinated and for those qualified to get their booster shots.
Latest vaccination figures show that so far, more than 443,977 or 86.7 per cent of adults have taken a first dose, while over 344,642 or 66.2 per cent of persons 18 years and over are fully vaccinated.
For adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17, just over 35,379 or 48.5 per cent have received their first dose, while 25,881 or 35.5 per cent of them have returned for their second dose.
Vaccines administered to children within the ages of five and 11 years, have surpassed 6400 doses which is about 6.3 per cent of that age cohort. Second doses for this group are just over 1070 or 1 per cent.
In addition, in excess of 71,000 persons have returned for their booster shots thus far.
According to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recent figures, some 572,239,451 confirmed cases were reported globally along with 6,390,401 deaths.
In the Region of the Americas, that is, Latin America and the Caribbean, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has increased to 169,953,836 while the death toll in the region has gone up to 2,786,222.
As it relates to vaccination against COVID-19, the WHO also reported that a total of 12,248,795,623 doses have been administered worldwide.