Guyana records 109 new COVID-19 cases

– Region 4 records whopping 64 cases

The Health Ministry on Friday reported that 109 new COVID-19 cases were detected, thus taking the overall positive cases to over 10,000.
The new statistics provided showed that there are still 225 deaths, four of which occurred on Thursday. Of the active cases, 11 patients remain in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), 57 in institutional isolation, 17 in institutional quarantine and 913 in home isolation.
Some 8801 of the 5123 males and 4884 females have since recovered from the virus. To date, Guyana has tested 86,516 individuals.
An analysis of new cases showed that 30 were detected in Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara); a whopping 64 in Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica); three in Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice); five in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne); four in Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni) and two in Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice).
Cases in Regions One (Barima-Waini), Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), Eight (Potaro-Siparuni) and Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo) remain at 1028, 249, 246 and 440 respectively.
However, Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony on Friday stated that the first round of vaccine administration is progressing smoothly. The remaining healthcare workers or persons over 60 who do not receive the vaccine will be able to do so in the second phase.
“We’re getting closer because our estimated population for the first round, we have about 59,000 persons or so who are 60 years and above and we have about 12,000 healthcare workers from the private and public sector. The vaccines we’re working with is a little bit less than that. We had doses for 50,000 people or so. So, we still have a number of persons who are 60 years and above that we’ll have to administer this vaccine to and there are still a number of healthcare workers,” the Minister related.
He said while the first round has not been exhausted, the second will cater for a younger age range and persons with comorbidities. With the arrival of 200,000 doses of Sputnik V vaccines in the coming weeks, the programme will be expanded. Talks are continuing with other stakeholders who had initially committed to making vaccines available.
“We’re looking at bringing in the Sputnik V vaccine. We want to finalise the logistics of that and with those 200,000 doses, we would be able to immunise 100,000 persons. We are also exploring with COVAX to finalise the dates when the vaccines they promised would come into Guyana. They have now written to say that we would be getting about 24,000 doses of the vaccine…We’re still awaiting word from the Caricom-African Union arrangements to be able to finalise that route of accessing vaccines. There are other initiatives that Caricom has been working on and we’ll see as those mature whether we’ll be able to access vaccines from those arrangements,” Dr Anthony identified.
Symptoms of the coronavirus include fever, cough, tiredness, diarrhoea, pains, sore throat and loss of taste or smell. The more serious symptoms are difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, chest pain and loss of speech or movement. If persons are experiencing symptoms or have been in contact with a positive person, they are asked to contact the COVID-19 Hotline 231-1166, 226-7480 or 624-6674 immediately or visit www.health.gov.gy.