Employees exploiting COVID-19 quarantine protocols for sick days – Health Minister

Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony on Wednesday said members of the Private Sector needs to put better policies in place to ensure that their employees do not take advantage of the COVID-19 protocols, particularly the need for quarantining in cases of exposure to the virus, in order to stay away from work.
During his daily update on the COVID-19 situation in Guyana, Dr Anthony explained the importance of going into quarantine if persons are genuinely exposed to someone who has tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
However, he disclosed that there are some employees who are taking advantage of this protocol, and using it as an opportunity to get additional days off from work.
“There are reports of some persons who, maybe every two weeks they have become exposed to somebody [infected with COVID]. If there’s a pattern like that, it is obvious that that employee or that person might just want days off, rather than, you know, being genuinely sick with COVID. So, some persons are exploiting the situation of claiming that they have been exposed to someone who has been positive for COVID, and that then can be problematic,” the Minister stated.
Dr Anthony’s remarks come in light of growing concerns over the number of staffers who abuse the system to stay away from work.
Similarly, there have also complaints of some employers who are forcing staff members to work even after they have been exposed to the deadly virus, and could possibly transmit it if they too are infected. According to the Health Minister, there needs to be a balance of such exploitative situations with genuine reports of exposure to COVID-19. To this end, he suggested that businesses come up with a system to verify reports of suspected exposure from employees in order to ascertain whether they are genuine cases, thus not putting others at risk, or they are abusing the protocols to stay away from work.
“We have to balance these two things, and I guess different workplaces would have to get policies where they can verify these reports from employees,” Dr Anthony posited.
When a person suspects they have been exposed to the virus, he/she is required to go into quarantine for at least five days before they get tested. This is because if the virus was just contracted, it is unlikely to be detected in a COVID test in the early days.

Once found to be positive, that person is required to go into isolation and avoid contact with others, so that the virus is not transmitted.

According to the Health Ministry’s updated COVID-19 Dashboard on Wednesday, there are currently nine persons in institutional quarantine in Guyana, while a total of 2,044 persons are in isolation; that is, 56 persons are in institutional isolation and the other 1,988 persons are in home isolation.
Minister Anthony said during his update that the Health Emergency Operations Centre (HEOC) continues to monitor those persons who are in quarantine and isolation, once they are reported to the Ministry.
“So, we monitor both of these situations; quarantine especially, if it is reported to us, because a lot of times those are not reported to us, but certainly, with isolation, we do monitor that,” the Minister said.
“With the records that we have, we know those persons who are positive, and through the telephone system, we are able to contact those persons [who are isolating at home] and to see whether or not they are experiencing signs and symptoms, severity of those signs and symptoms, and then if it becomes very severe, to get them into the hospital. And, of course, we advise them about remaining isolated from the rest of the household, because if they don’t, they are going to infect the whole household.”
On the other hand, the HEOC is also responsible for conducting contact-tracing, but according to Dr Anthony, this is sometimes challenging when there is a high number of active cases, and especially so with cases in remote hinterland areas.
“So, if you have 2,000 active cases, to each of those cases, sometimes you have to do contact tracing of maybe five to 10 persons, and that can become very challenging very quickly, depending on which region you’re in,” the Health Minister explained. (G8)