Health Ministry focuses on strengthening COVID surveillance

– 3 new cases recorded in 24h

Developing mechanisms to make early detections of COVID spikes is on the agenda of the Health Ministry, with focus now heavily placed on enhancing its surveillance system.
Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony underscored on Monday that Guyana recognises the challenges in relation to monitoring COVID-19. The capacity to detect, treat and monitor the pandemic locally has been developed throughout the past two years along with the development of infrastructure to support this mechanism.
Now, the Government is looking at increasing its surveillance for early detection.
“Moving forward, what we have done and what we’re working on is how to better strengthen our surveillance system so that we can have an early warning system, where if there is anything happening, we will be able to detect it early. Having that information early, we would be able to take the necessary measures in terms of limiting the spread of the disease,” the Health Minister highlighted during the COVID update.
Dr Anthony underscored that with a robust laboratory capacity developed specifically to test for the disease, the country is now equipped should future pandemics arise.
“We have also been working on developing our laboratory capacity. So, our laboratory services now are much better than they were two years ago. We have lots of capability in terms of doing PCR, which is a very important test in regards to COVID. In future pandemics, depending on what it is, I think using PCR techniques would play an important role. If we strengthen our capacity to use PCR and to have this capacity at the regional level, it would help us in future pandemics.”
The management of COVID has been enhanced with the Infectious Diseases Hospital, which handles primarily infected patients. The Minister said resources for COVID management should not only exist in Georgetown but in all administrative regions.
“The infrastructural work that we’re doing at our regional hospitals, we will be able to cater to patients with infectious diseases. We have also been able, over the last two years, to strengthen our cold chain and to able to store vaccines at different temperature ranges,” he added.
Meanwhile, it was shared that the Ministry is also aiming to rehabilitate patients who have suffered from long COVID. Training will be offered to physicians in the near future to better understand, detect and handle such cases.
“We’re spending a lot more time now focusing our attention on the rehabilitation of these patients. In the first week of June, we will have training for physicians and this would be done for Guyanese physicians. We’re hoping that with the training, a lot more of the medical doctors would become familiar with long COVID. Hopefully, they’ll be able to detect it and offer proper treatment to these patients,” the Minister detailed.

COVID statistics
Only three persons have tested positive for COVID-19 in Guyana within one day, the Health Ministry reported on Monday.
The dashboard showed deaths at 1228 after no fatalities surfaced. Meanwhile, two persons are in the Intensive Care Unit, three in institutional isolation, 124 in home isolation and four in institutional quarantine.
Out of the 63,586 persons confirmed positive in the country, 62,229 have recovered. A total of 29,284 males and 34,302 females were infected within the past two years. Additionally, 604,718 swabs were processed to detect the virus.
Latest vaccination statistics indicate that 440,713 persons or 85.9 per cent of the adult population have taken a first dose while second doses account for 340,305 or 66.3 per cent.
For the 12 to 17 group, 25,305 persons or 34.7 per cent are completely vaccinated.