Vaccination is essential for safe reopening of schools – Health Minister

Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony has supported the move for a complete reopening of schools and has signalled a greater reason for adolescents to get immunised.
This week, Education Minister Priya Manickchand indicated that all schools will be reopened on April 25, the first full-scale activity in two years. Sharing his perspective, the Minister said this factor will allow authorities to address the issue of learning loss.
“I think it’s important that we return back to school. Children would have been out of school for the past two years or so and despite our efforts to continue their education, it is not the same as if you’re in a classroom and teachers are working directly with you. I know that the Ministry of Education felt that there has been a substantial learning loss and that they have to work on a plan to see how they can recover this learning loss. It’s important that we do that,” Dr Anthony noted.
He added that in Guyana, cases have been relatively low. For now, active cases are just over 100.
“From a COVID point of view, the pandemic is still on. Fortunately, we have not been seeing a lot of cases recently and we will continue to work and put all the measures in place to see what is happening with the pandemic. Every day, we are still finding cases, they’re not as high as may be in January but certainly, there are still cases. Therefore, people still need to be adopting the measures and maintaining them.”
However, he reiterated that the adolescent population should get immunised against the virus. Since the start of the rollout for this category, numbers have been relatively low. A total of 34,193 first doses or 46.9 per cent; with 24,832 second doses or 34 per cent.
“Vaccines are available and it is astonishing that you have something that can help to reduce the severity of COVID and we still have hesitancy where parents are not allowing their children to come forward and get vaccinated,” he underlined.
The Minister has advised that in order to facilitate a safe reopening, vaccination is a key element. For the five to 11 age group, the Government is working to access vaccines. To keep them safe until then, they are encouraged to wear a mask and practice other sanitisation methods.
However, there is still a concern that this cohort will also see low coverage, owing to parents not consenting for their children to be vaccinated.
“In the vaccination rates that we’re seeing in the 12 to 17 age group, it’s not really encouraging because we have these vaccines right now and yet we have some amount of hesitancy and parents are not bringing their children for the 12 to 17. So, when we get the vaccines for the 11 to 5, I hope that we will get parents bringing out their children, because the Government is investing substantial sums of money to be able to acquire these vaccines.”
Nevertheless, he reminded that different vaccines are used in the five to 11 category when compared to the 12 to 17; and adult population.
In the under-19 age group, some 10,078 cases were recorded as of Monday. The breakdown translates to 1424 from zero to four; 1951 from five to nine; 2508 from 10 to 15; and 4295 from 15 to 19.

New cases
The daily detection of positive COVID-19 cases has shown seven new cases as of Tuesday, with deaths remaining at 1226. Confirmed cases have reached 63,202.
A total of seven patients are in institutional isolation, 111 in home isolation, 11 in institutional isolation and 18 are in institutional quarantine. Out of the 29,102 males and 34,100 females that contracted the virus, 61,853 have recovered.
Some 560,648 COVID-19 tests have been administered since the virus was detected here.
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.
Globally, almost 458.4 million people have tested positive for the virus and six million have died. In the Americas, more than 149 million confirmed cases have been reported with over 2.66 million deaths.