COVID-19 pandemic – greatest threat to Guyana

Dear Editor,
The virus has spread throughout the country. Every day, more infected persons are being identified, and more deaths are being recorded. The airports are being opened, and you do not have any control of the spread on the virus internally. You are asking for trouble.
You have 1000 persons (500 Police and 500 army personnel) involved in “soft enforcement” for the COVID-19 virus. You do realise that “soft enforcement” is an oxymoron. Worse yet, you are using personnel from the Police Force and the Defence Force; I do not believe these people will be experts in “soft enforcement”. However, be that as it may, what exactly have you established will be the outcome of this exercise? Pray, tell.
By what percentage or quantity would you be able to reduce the spread? Would you be reporting progress results from time to time? I would recommend that you reorient these efforts: Instead of having 1000 persons performing soft enforcement on 750,000 citizens, may I suggest that you direct their energies to those persons already infected with COVID-19? They should help them with their isolation, direct other social services to meet their needs, do contact tracing and identify additional persons to be isolated, and also send suspected persons for testing.
Now, this process could use the services of personnel from the Police Force and Defence Force.
Right now, you have 843 persons isolating at home. These are the spreaders; concentrate your resources here: Help them isolate effectively; help them with masks for themselves and family members; help them with food, if needed; move them if they cannot isolate in their home environment; contact trace them, you might find other infected persons; help them with their home isolation. Direct those persons who have no symptoms of infection, but could be at risk, to be tested, effectively nipping spread of the disease in the bud.
If we are capable of handling 300 tests per day, then it should not be difficult for us to direct this capacity to those identified through the contact-tracing process.
I am hard pressed to understand why, as a country with such a small population, we are letting this virus spread get away from us.
Think about this another way: What if we have 843 killers on the loose? And what if we know exactly where the 843 killers are living? How hard would it be to stop the killing? A COVID-19-positive person could also be a killer. Let us do what we have to do to prevent him/her from spreading the virus, which could result in death.
Once you have this working smoothly, you can open up the economy and let the remaining 749,000 go about their daily lives, with mandatory mask-wearing in public. You would not need the Police to enforce mandatory mask-wearing. Educate the public, and the public would police for you, because they would want to stay protected.
The Stabroek News’ article of October 18, 2020, titled “Caregivers, other relatives not tested despite death of woman with Covid-19”, is an example of what is wrong with our pandemic management systems. These are the salient reported facts:
1. The woman was sick, and was being treated at home by relatives. Her condition was deteriorating and she was moved to a health facility. She was then taken to the GP Hospital.
2. She was tested on admission, and housed in the GPH COVID-19 ICU.
3. As per death certificate issued, she died either because of COVID-19 infection, or the COVID-19 virus was a contributory factor in her death. In any case, she was infected with COVID-19 at the time of death, while being treated in hospital.
The following are the red flags from this unfortunate event:
1. It is unknown whether the patient had been infected prior to admission, or after admission, while in hospital. This is not the first time that reports are coming from the people that their relatives are contracting COVID-19 in hospital, and subsequently dying.
2. There was no contact tracing or testing of the caregivers, relatives, friends, neighbours, and other persons who had come into contact with the COVID-19 person.
What is apparent from this incident are the following:
1. GPHC’s COVID-19 protocols are not working. Virus spread could be happening at the hospital itself.
2. There is no organisation or system in place to contact trace and test for each positive case.
The hospital administration should really have a closer look at what is going on at the GPHC. Maybe an audit of the protocols using past cases would be helpful in identifying control and safety gaps.
Please stay safe, and let us hope for the best.

With regards,
Sase Shewnarain