May’s COVID-19 death toll climbs to 97 with 5 more fatalities

…143 new cases detected
…41.9% of Guyana’s adult population vaccinated

The COVID-19 death toll for the month of May has gone up to 97 after five more fatalities were reported on Wednesday.
According to the Ministry of Health, these new fatalities include a 90-year-old female from Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara) who died on May 21. The other four deaths – a 54-year-old female and a 68-year-old male, both from Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni), and a male from Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) and a female from Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice), both 65 years – were all recorded on Monday last.
The Ministry explained that these patients were admitted with COVID-19 like symptoms but died while receiving care at various medical institutions across the country. It was noted that samples were taken at the time of admission, and the results subsequently returned positive.
With these five new fatalities, the total number of deaths from the pandemic in Guyana is now 396. Only Tuesday, two other fatalities were reported. May became the deadliest month since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus here last year after surpassing April’s 66 COVID-19 deaths.

New cases
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry also reported on Wednesday that another 143 persons have tested positive for COVID-19.
This, according to the updated COVID-19 dashboard, now takes the total number of COVID-19 cases in Guyana to 17,257.
However, only 1834 of these are currently active cases. This includes 19 patients in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the remaining 1815 persons in isolation, that is, 97 in institutional isolation and the other 1718 in home isolation.
Additionally, there are also four other persons in institutional quarantine.
On the other hand, the number of persons who have recovered from the life-threatening disease to date has gone up to 15,027 – some 148 more recoveries than the figure reported the previous day.
So far, the total number of persons who have been tested for the novel coronavirus in Guyana some 156,180, of which 8537 males and 8720 females were found to be positive.
Of the 143 new cases detected on Wednesday, three were from Region One (Barima-Waini), 11 cases from Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), 12 from Region Three, a whopping 50 cases from Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), four from Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice), 13 from Region Six, another three cases from the Cuyuni-Mazaruni region, 28 in Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Essequibo) and the other 19 cases from Region 10.
There were no new cases recorded in Region Eight in the last 24 hours, according to Wednesday’s Dashboard.

More persons taking vaccines
The Guyana government launched its COVID-19 vaccination exercise back in February and is aggressively rolling it out in the various regions across in order to achieve heard immunity. Only earlier this week, the vaccination campaign reached the milestone of immunising some 200,000 persons with their first dose of the COVID-19 jab.
In this update on the COVID-19 situation in the country, Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony on Wednesday disclosed that more people are turning up to get inoculated thus taking Guyana closer to achieving herd immunity, which will decrease the possibility of persons being infected with COVID-19. To achieve herd immunity, close to 500,000 individuals in the country must be vaccinated.
As of Tuesday, 203,847 persons have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. This represents 41.9 per cent of the country’s adult population. When it comes to those who are fully immunised, the number stands at 70,778 or 14.5 per cent of persons 18 years and older.
A further breakdown of these figures shows that some 70.5 per cent of persons 60 years and above have received their first jab. First doses were also administered to 38.3 per cent of persons in the 40 to 49 age group and to 33.7 per cent of those in the 18 to 39 age category.
“So, the numbers are going up but we still have a lot of work to do,” the ministry noted.
In fact, Dr Anthony pointed out that while the overall vaccination figures are raising, some regions are still lagging behind. This is the case with the Upper Demerara-Berbice region.
“Region 10 continues to be an outlier in terms of not getting enough people vaccinated so we still have Region 10 lagging. They’re just a little bit above 10 per cent whereas the national average is closer to mid-forty’s and that’s for the first dose vaccines. So, there is still a long way to go with Region 10 and we have to keep pressing and continuing the work there,” Minister Anthony noted.
Meanwhile, as more people continue to get vaccinated, the Health Minister is urging the public to continue observing all COVID-19 preventative measures, particularly masking in public, social distancing and frequent hand washing and sanitising. The measures also include a 22:30h (10:30 pm) to 04:00h (4 am) national curfew.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of Sunday, some 170,812,850 confirmed cases were reported globally along with 3,557,586 deaths.
Who also reported on Sunday that in the Region of the Americas, that is, Latin America and the Caribbean, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has increased to 67,594,259 while the death toll in the region has gone up to 1,656,049.