— 52 new cases detected in 24h
The Health Ministry on Sunday reported that four more persons who tested positive for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) have died.
These latest fatalities are a 64-year-old male who was unvaccinated and died on November 17; a 57-year-old male who was fully vaccinated and died on November 20; and a 58-year-old female who was also unvaccinated and died on November 19 – all from Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne).
The other fatality was a 69-year-old male from Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara) who died November 18. His vaccination status is unknown.
With these, the total number of deaths from the pandemic in Guyana is now 976. Consequently, the COVID-19 death toll for the month of November has gone up to 50.
However, new statistics released by the Ministry showed that another 52 persons have been tested positive for the deadly virus in the last 24 hours.
This now takes the total number of COVID-19 cases in the country to 37,325. However, only 1955 of these are currently active cases including 10 patients in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the remaining 1945 persons in isolation, that is, 67 in institutional isolation and the other 1878 in home isolation.
Additionally, there is also one other person in institutional quarantine.
To date, some 34,394 persons have recovered from the life-threatening disease in Guyana – 13 more recoveries than the figure reported the previous day.
Moreover, a total of 381,276 persons have been tested for the novel coronavirus thus far and of this, 17,590 males and 19,735 females were found to be positive.
Of the 52 new cases detected on Sunday, three were from Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam); four from the Essequibo Islands-West Demerara region; a whopping 21 cases from Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica); 12 from Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice); two cases from the East Berbice-Corentyne region; another four from Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo) and six more cases from Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice).
There were no new cases recorded in Regions One (Barima-Waini), Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni) and Eight (Potaro-Siparuni).
The Guyana Government launched its COVID-19 vaccination exercise back in February and continues to roll it out across the various regions in order to achieve herd immunity and reduce the number of COVID-19 infections.
In Guyana, there is vaccination coverage of some 77 per cent first doses in the adult population and of that, 52.1 per cent of persons who are 18 years and older have received their second doses. Additionally, some 19,796 adolescents are fully immunised.
Only last week, the Health Ministry announced that from today it will be administering booster shots to persons 50 years and older. This is in keeping with studies that have found that after 6 months of taking a second dose, the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines start to wane.
Persons are, nevertheless, encouraged to get immunised since the COVID-19 vaccine provides a layer of protection against severe symptoms of COVID-19.
But as more people continue to get vaccinated, authorities are urging the public to continue observing all COVID-19 preventative measures, particularly masking in public, social distancing and frequent hand washing and sanitising.
The measures also include vaccination requirements to access any public building such as restaurants, places of worship, schools as well as Government buildings.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), some 255,324,963 confirmed cases were reported globally along with 5,127,696 deaths.
The WHO also reported that in the Region of the Americas, that is, Latin America and the Caribbean, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has increased to 95,549,241 while the death toll in the region has gone up to 2,327,095.
Recent figures show a total of 7,370,902,499 vaccine doses have been administered worldwide.
