The third wave of the deadly coronavirus is hitting Guyana hard with a total of 38 persons battling for their lives in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Liliendaal, Georgetown, Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony reported on Monday.
And that figure can be considered the highest number of patients hospitalised in the ICU since Guyana recorded the first COVID-19 case and death in March 2020.
The surge in new infections continues as over the last 24 hours, 101 new cases were recorded from a total of 1,948 Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests.
The Health Minister, in his daily COVID-19 update, stated that Guyana currently has 2,200 active cases with 122 patients requiring hospitalisation. Of that figure, 100 patients are currently housed at the COVID hospital at Liliendaal.
“Those numbers are saying that we have to be a bit more cautious,” Dr. Anthony commented.
Even worrying, the Health Minister pointed out is that “almost 99 per cent” of the patients hospitalised are unvaccinated; the same goes for the patients in the ICU.
The Health Minister made another desperate plea to the general public to get vaccinated. It is suspected that the deadlier Delta strain of the coronavirus is in Guyana, though no tests have been conducted to confirm same.
The Delta variant has been contributing to increasing COVID-19 infections, hospitalisations and deaths across the world. It is a mutated strain of COVD-19, and this means that it is different from the earlier novel coronavirus that began spreading around the world.
The Health Minister had said that health authorities are working with the assumption that the Delta variant is here and continues to implore on persons to protect themselves.
Thus far, only 168,201 persons are considered fully vaccinated against the virus; this equates to 32.8 per cent of Guyana’s adult population.
Additionally, 320,747 persons or 62.5 per cent of the adult population have received their first jab while 9,998 adolescents have received their COVID-19 vaccine.
