Dear Editor,
From the very inception, we, as a country, have failed to take control of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were doing all kinds of other things instead of controlling the virus.
For a small population as ours, it should never have been a challenge to control the spread of the virus. Simply put, you need to trace everyone who had come into contact with the virus, and take them out of circulation so that they do not spread the virus further. That is it!
None of this requires special skills or qualifications or expertise. For it to become a challenge simply means we are doing something wrong.
Public Health already has the reputation of maltreating people in isolation or quarantine. The result is that people will not volunteer to come forward, even if they know they were in contact with a COVID-19-positive person. We have to change how we treat people during isolation, so they will be encouraged to come forward.
If I were to become a positive case, I would not be able to identify all the persons I have been in contact with over the previous 2 weeks. It is fantasy to believe that you can retrace your movements directly for over two weeks and report that accurately. This has not been effective thus far.
You have to involve the public in having them come forward and voluntarily identify themselves. People will have to be educated to understand that it is their public duty to come forward and identify themselves, as it is the only means we have to control the spread. Additionally, there should be some form of penalty for persons who fail to respond; they could be knowingly be infecting others, and that is not right.
At this point, we can either control the few thousand who have been in contact with a COVID-19- positive case, or we can lock down 750,000. I say no to lockdown.
Lockdown will not stop the spread. Lockdown will not reduce the deaths or the hospitalisations. We have to get serious with the contact tracing. We have to hire staff. We have to have the faces of all new COVID-19 cases for at least 1 week in all media as follows:
1. All the daily newspapers
2. Facebook pages
3. All the TV stations every hour on the hour
4. All the radio stations every hour on the hour
5. All the churches have to be involved in education and contact tracing
6. Every Guyanese has to be encouraged to help with contact tracing. After all, we are our brother’s keeper.
It does not matter if the number of persons capable of spreading the virus is 10 or 10,000. We need to get them under control and stop the spread.
The COVID-19 gazetted orders gave the Government so much power that they may even have the right to take your firstborn in the name of COVID-19; so, I don’t know what is holding back the Government.
Lockdown is an admission of failure. It’s too early in the life of this Government to admit failure over something as simple as contact tracing and isolation.
Yours respectfully,
Sase Shewnarain
