– 196 new infections
The Health Ministry on Sunday reported that one more person who tested positive for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has died.
This latest fatality is an 89-year-old female from Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), who died on Sunday. According to the Ministry, the woman’s vaccination status was unknown at the time of her death. 
With this, the total number of deaths in Guyana from the pandemic has gone up to 1,181. Consequently, the COVID-19 death toll for the month of February is 11.
However, new statistics showed that 196 new infections were detected within a 24-hour period thus taking the total confirmed cases to 61,600 of which only 5,674 are currently active cases.
This includes 15 patients in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the remaining 5,659 persons are in isolation, that is, 119 in institutional isolation and the remaining 5,540 in home isolation.
There are an additional 17 persons currently in institutional quarantine, according to the Dashboard.
Moreover, some 54,745 persons have recovered from the life-threatening disease to date – five more recoveries than the figure reported the previous day.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the country, approximately 517,421 persons have been tested so far and of this, some 28,421 males and 33,179 females were found to be positive.
Of the 196 new cases reported on Sunday, three were from Region One (Barima-Waini); 10 cases from Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam); 25 from Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara); a whopping 109 cases from the Demerara-Mahaica region; eight from Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice); another 14 cases from Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) and the remaining 27 cases from Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo).
There were no new cases recorded in Regions Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni), Eight (Potaro-Siparuni) and Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Upper Berbice) within the 24-hour period.
While it is on the decline now, the surge in COVID-19 cases over the past several weeks has been attributed to the Omicron variant, which though not deadly is highly transmissible.
As such, health authorities are urging persons to get vaccinated, and for those who are qualified to get their booster shots, in order to add a layer of protection against the virus.
Latest figures show that so far, over 425,702 or 82.9 per cent adults have taken a first dose while more than 315,960 or 61.6 per cent of persons 18 years and over are fully immunised.
For adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17, some 23,000 or 31.8 per cent of them are fully vaccinated, while over 41,000 persons have returned for their booster shots.
But as more people continue to get vaccinated, authorities are urging the public to continue observing all COVID-19 preventative measures, particularly masking in public, social distancing and frequent hand washing and sanitizing – which are more significant now with the rapidly-spreading Omicron variant.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) recent figures, some 386,548,962 confirmed cases were reported globally along with 5,705,754 deaths.
In the Region of the Americas, that is, Latin America and the Caribbean, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has increased to 138,060,024 while the death toll in the region has gone up to 1,782,777.
As it relates to vaccination against COVID-19, WHO also reported that a total of 10,040,768,270 doses have been administered worldwide.
