Daily COVID infections continue to rise; Health Minister urges businesses to enforce guidelines

As positive COVID-19 cases continue to rise daily, Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony is urging businesses to enforce the gazetted COVID-19 guidelines.

Within 24 hours, 308 new infections were recorded from 1,794 tests, while 76 deaths have been recorded for September alone.

The majority of the persons who have died were unvaccinated. Since March 2020 Guyana has recorded a total of 701 COVID-19 deaths.

Dr. Anthony, speaking during his daily COVID-19 update on Thursday, said with the upsurge in cases there is also an increase in hospitalisation.

Currently, there are 150 persons affected with COVID-19 in hospitals across Guyana.

The Infectious Diseases Hospital at Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown, accounts for the majority of those hospitalised with 107 patients. Of this number, 34 are in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

“We have an increase in the hospitalisations as shown by these numbers,” the Health Minister stressed.

As cases continue to increase, Dr. Anthony said hospitals will have to be converted to COVID Hospital and non-essential services will have to close.

The health care workers from these services will then be deployed to treat COVID patients.

The Health Minister continues to urge persons to get vaccinated to protect themselves from experiencing severe symptoms of the virus if they test positive.

To date, 66.6 per cent of the adult population have received their first dose of a COVID vaccine, while 34.4 per cent are fully vaccinated.

About 27 per cent of children between ages 12 and 18 have received their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.