Guyana seeing significant rise in COVID cases – Health Minister

COVID-19 cases in Guyana have spiked significantly since last week prompting a further and more urgent call from the Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony for the general populace to get vaccinated against the deadly virus.

During his daily COVID-19 update on Tuesday, the Health Minister posited that the deadlier delta variant is probably already in Guyana – all the more reason for persons to get vaccinated.

“As of last week, our numbers were relatively low, meaning that it had dropped to about 800 or so, and then we started seeing a significant increase in those numbers of new cases, and that is very instructive because it is telling us that we probably have a more infectious variant that is now in Guyana,” Dr. Anthony stated.

He added, “And we all know that in many countries around the world, that the Delta variant is becoming the dominant variant so, Delta is now in more than 140 something countries.”

Though the variants of the coronavirus have been devastating countries and threatening an extension of lockdown measures, Guyana has not been able to test or confirm the presence of these variants but the local health authorities are operating under the assumption that multiple variants are here.

There are several variants of concern that have emerged thus far; the Alpha variant originated in the United Kingdom last year and the more dominant and highly transmissible variant, Delta emerged in India, earlier this year.

Because of this, the Health Minister reiterated the importance of getting vaccinated as it is seen as a critical line of defense against the Delta variant.

“If we are going to protect ourselves against Delta, then we really need to make sure that we are vaccinated, and if we are not vaccinated, then we’ll be at a higher risk to get the disease.

“So, I really want to urge people…you will have an opportunity here to get vaccinated…we have more than 110 sites, fixed sites that is, that are operating and you can come to any one of these sites and you can start the process by getting your first dose of the vaccine.”

The Health Minister said that persons have “no rational reason” for not being vaccinated.