Region 6 man is latest COVID-19 fatality

…79 new cases

The COVID-19 death toll in Guyana has risen to 980 after another person who tested positive for the novel coronavirus died.

According to the Health Ministry on Wednesday, this latest fatality is a 55-year-old man from Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne), who died on Tuesday. He was fully vaccinated.

This now takes the total number of deaths from the pandemic in the month of November to 54.

Meanwhile, some 79 more persons have contracted the life-threatening virus, according to the Ministry’s updated COVID-19 dashboard on Wednesday.

Consequently, the total number of confirmed cases in Guyana is 37,524, but only 1809 of these are currently active cases. These include 12 patients in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the remaining 1797 persons in isolation – 75 in institutional isolation and the other 1722 in home isolation.

There are also three more persons in institutional quarantine.

To date, some 34,822 persons have recovered from the life-threatening disease – 106 more recoveries than the figure reported the previous day.

Since the outbreak of the virus here in March 2020, approximately 384,343 persons have been tested for the novel coronavirus of which 17,680 males and 19,844 females were found to be positive.

Of the 79 new cases detected on Wednesday, three were from Region One (Barima-Waini); five from Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam); seven from Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara); 24 from Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica); two from Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice); a whopping 37 cases from East Berbice-Corentyne, and one case from Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni).

There were no new cases recorded in Regions Eight (Potaro-Siparuni); Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo) and 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) on Wednesday.

In order to reduce the number of COVID-19 infections and achieve herd immunity in the country, the Guyana Government launched its COVID-19 vaccination exercise back in February and continues to roll it out across the various regions.

Booster shots

The Health Ministry this week started administering booster shots to persons 50 years and older, persons who have comorbidities and are more at risk of contracting the virus, and frontline health workers. This is in keeping with studies that have found that after six months of taking a second dose, the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines starts to wane.

During Wednesday’s update, Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony disclosed that nearly a dozen studies have been conducted around the world, including by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that indicate the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines significantly drops after six months of being fully vaccinated.

With AstraZeneca, immunity reduces to about 44 per cent while with Pfizer, it drops to about 62 per cent, studies have found.

“So, if you had a Pfizer or Moderna, six months after the second dose, it’s recommended that you get a third dose. If you had a J&J (Johnson and Johnson) vaccine, two months after, you should get another dose. Sinopharm has cited studies out of Argentina where Sinopharm was used quite a lot and from those studies, they too have seen a waning of immunity and again, a recommendation from those studies is that you use a third dose. There are other studies in Europe pertaining to AstraZeneca that shows it wanes after six months and there have been studies done in Russia… and the Middle East pertaining to Sputnik,” the Minister explained.

According to Dr Anthony, the Health Ministry has used these various studies to come up with a regimen to administer the booster shots.

Earlier this week, the Health Minister had reported that persons who took the Pfizer, Moderna or AstraZeneca vaccines can use Pfizer as the booster shot; while those who receive Sputnik V will get a Johnson and Johnson dose as a booster, and those with Sinopharm will get another shot of that jab as a booster.

“So, we have used all of these different studies to come up with the current formulations that we have in terms of giving booster doses because as you can recognise, we have used a variety of vaccines here in Guyana… so we have to get the corresponding booster for which we have put out a table and our vaccination sites are following those instructions,” he stated.

With the Ministry commencing the administration of booster shots this week, Dr Anthony said that arrangements would be put in place to visit the various elderly homes and make necessary house calls to give those fully-vaccinated persons their third shot.

Vaccination stats

So far, some 397,612 or 77.5 per cent of the adult population have received a first-dose vaccine while 53.2 per cent or 272,701 persons 18 years and older are fully immunised.

With regard to adolescents (aged 12-17), some 28,874 or 39.6 per cent of them got their first dose while 20,075 or 27.5 per cent are fully vaccinated.

According to the Health Minister, there is a slow uptake among adolescents. He underscored the need to amplify these figures especially if schools are to be fully reopened for in-class sessions.

Nevertheless, as more persons 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 sanitising.

The measures also include vaccination requirements to access any public building such as restaurants, places of worship, schools as well as Government buildings. (G8)