Less than 300 COVID-19 cases recorded for March

The COVID situation in Guyana has taken a break from January’s spike, where less than 300 cases have been reported for the month of March.
Statistics showed that on March 1, the country’s positives were at 62,946. On Saturday, updated statistics showed cases moving up to 63,232. This accounts for 286 cases for the month thus far.
Meanwhile, deaths have remained at 1226. For March, this translates to six reported deaths. There were nine new infections for Saturday. In Guyana, 29,111 males and 34,121 females have contracted the virus.
There are two persons in the Intensive Care Unit, seven in institutional isolation, 76 in home isolation and 13 in institutional quarantine. Total recoveries stand at 61,921 while 564,105 tests have been processed to date.
With the World Health Organisation (WHO) reporting a 9 per cent increase in COVID-19 cases globally within the past two weeks, Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony said this week that local authorities are on the lookout for a possible spike here. The spike in COVID cases globally is being attributed to the BA.2 variant – a sub lineage of the Omicron variant.
“Right now, we’re seeing a surge in cases in a number of countries. Over the last two weeks, the WHO has recorded a 9 per cent increase in cases globally and when you actually disaggregate the numbers, most of those cases are actually coming from the Western Pacific. But these cases do not represent the true number because a number of countries have also not been doing widescale testing so there might be some amount of underreporting and with the use of home kits, it is very difficult to capture the information from home kits…when people do the test at home, very often they do not report it,” Dr Anthony explained during Friday’s update on the novel coronavirus situation.
In Guyana, a total of 437,757 persons or 85.3 per cent of the adult population have received a first dose of a vaccine while 335,935 persons or 65.5 per cent are inoculated with two doses. For the 12 to 17 age group, 34,246 or 47 per cent have received a first dose while 24,917 or 34.2 per cent received two jabs. In terms of booster doses, 56,348 shots have been administered.
If anyone is displaying any of the symptoms associated with COVID-19 or needs any additional information, they are asked to contact the COVID-19 Hotline 231-1166, 226-7480 or 624-6674 immediately or visit www.health.gov.gy.
In the Americas, there have been 150 million cases with 2.69 million deaths. On the global scale, countries have reported 476.3 million cases and 6.1 million deaths.