GEORGETOWN, Guyana –Guyana Friday reported 847 new cases of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pushing the country’s active cases to 4,295 and worrying health officials that most of the new cases were among young people.
Dr. Frank Anthony (file photo)“I would say that the most active grouping where we are seeing these cases is this younger grouping that is really mobile, moving around from place to place, probably going to bars and restaurants and things like that. They are the ones who we are seeing that are getting infected,” Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, told the daily COVID Update news conference.
“We have 80 persons in hospital with 52 of them currently at the Ocean View hospital and we have five of those persons in the ICU at Ocean View. Generally, across the system with the hospitalized patients, we have 14 of them who are on oxygen”, Dr. Anthony said.
The Ministry of Health said at least 26 new infections were detected in the 15 to 19 age group, 22 in the 10 to 14 category and 21 new cases in the five to nine year age group.
The ministry also recorded two additional deaths from the virus, pushing the death toll to 1,064 and 42, 385 infections since March 2020.
Dr. Anthony said that in the past few days, the Ministry of Health has seen an increase in the number of persons seeking their second-dose vaccine shots. More than 80 percent of the adult population has received a first dose of one of the COVID-19 vaccines while close to 60 percent of the adult population is fully vaccinated.
“We are seeing more people coming for the booster, which is a good thing but there are still a lot of people who are unvaccinated, they have not gotten a single dose as yet and that’s approximately 20 percent of our adult population still remains unvaccinated.”
In the past four days, Guyana has recorded a significant spike in new COVID-19 cases and Health officials fear the situation will get worse in the coming days as the fast-spreading Omicron variant moves across the country.
“Most of these persons who have tested positive, they are mildly symptomatic because you see from hospitalization numbers, not a lot of these persons are in hospitals but rather, they should be in isolation…
“(Infected) people must stay home and don’t be in contact with others because if they are and they are not wearing masks and taking precautions then they would be able to spread the virus to other people,” the Health Minister added.
