Govt removes vaccination requirement for entry into Guyana

– less than 80 active cases being monitored

Persons travelling to Guyana no longer need to present proof of vaccination against COVID-19, according to updated measures instituted by the Government.
The new measures were implemented with immediate effect and this was communicated via a letter to all airline operators by the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA).

“Please be guided that the Ministry of Health – Guyana has removed the COVID-19 vaccination requirement for entry into Guyana effective October 7, 2022,” the letter stated.
Back in June, the Guyana Government lifted the COVID-19 testing requirement for international travel.
Persons travelling to Guyana were required to present a negative COVID-19 test, either an antigen or PCR, that was taken within 72 hours of their arrival in the country. But the Health Ministry stated that this requirement was set aside.
At the time, passengers 12 years and older were still required to present documents that they were fully vaccinated before entering Guyana. These new measures were implemented as countries around the world are opening up to visitors and removing COVID-19 restrictions, or testing requirements that were implemented after the pandemic had struck.
Back in June also, the US lifted the requirement for international travellers to produce a negative COVID-19 test to gain entry into the USA. Countries in which no COVID-19 testing is mandated include the United Kingdom, Mexico, Norway, Bahrain, Aruba, Curacao, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica, Sweden, Poland, Grenada, Denmark, Argentina, Jamaica, Greece, Dominican Republic and Italy, among others.
In March of this year, the Government officially announced that numerous changes had been made to the COVID-19 regulations, paving the way for several of these restrictions to be lifted.

New cases
However, statistics released by the Health Ministry on Friday confirmed that it is monitoring less than 80 active COVID cases nationwide. These include 69 in home isolation, two in institutional quarantine, one in institutional isolation.
For the past 24 hours, only seven new cases were detected. To date, 71,368 cases were detected from the time the first case was recorded back in March 2020, with the highest number recorded in Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) with 35,540 cases.
The Ministry also stated that 70,017 persons would have recovered from the deadly virus with a total of 1281 deaths. There are no patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Infectious Diseases facility at Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown.
Subject Minister, Dr Frank Anthony on Thursday did not rule out the possibility that newer strains of the virus may still pose a challenge to the health system.
The Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus has had several subvariants that affected the globe.
Subvariants like the BA 1, BA 2, BA 3, BA 4, BA 5, BA2.75 and others are continuously evolving, making the future of the pandemic uncertain.
“If these strains become dominant and they have a totally different clinical picture, then we might have trouble all over again and that is why we have to be prepared, because we don’t know what these future variants are going to be like and whether they will cause more hospitalisation, some of the researchers are predicting that as winter is coming, in some of the temperate countries, you will start seeing a new surge of cases and if that is the case then we have to be prepared.
“During this pandemic one of the interesting things that we were doing, when we saw something in the US, in two to three weeks’ time, we will see it here in Guyana because of the connections and so forth, so if we start seeing a surge in the US, I think we ought to be prepared,” Dr Anthony said.
The Health Minister noted that even the current low numbers do not accurately reflect the rate of infection, since most people are mistaking it for the flu and not visiting health facilities.
Health workers from across the country are currently engaged in a two-day workshop on Intensive Care Units Management as part of a COVID-19 response programme. The programme is a collaboration between the Ministry of Health and the Clinton Health Access Initiative.