Baby with suspected heart complications dies from COVID-19

A five-month-old baby girl with a suspected congenital heart condition is among Guyana’s latest COVID-19 deaths, the Ministry of Health revealed on Friday.

The News Room was reliably informed that the baby girl was air dashed to the Infectious Diseases Hospital from Region One (Barima-Waini) on Thursday after she tested positive for the virus.

The News Room understands that the baby girl presented with severe respiratory distress, low saturation and a poor pulse upon arrival at the COVID-19 hospital.

She had to be intubated and was placed in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where she died a few hours later. Information reaching the News Room revealed that the infant was reportedly abandoned by her parents and was being cared for by an aunt.

Doctors also observed that she suffered from a respiratory illness along with congenital heart disease since birth. This is the fifth child to have died from the disease in Guyana. Previously, an 11-year-old cancer patient who died at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) on November 6, 2020, was later classified as a COVID-19 death.

On November 29, 2020, a 6-day old baby boy of Region Three died while receiving care at a medical facility. In May, this year, a young 17-year-old boy also succumbed after he was infected with COVID-19. And in July, a 16-year-old boy, who was receiving treatment in the ICU, also died.

Meanwhile, two more men died from the dreaded disease on Friday as well – a 69-year-old and 79-year-old both from Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), taking the country’s death toll to 706. The latest fatalities also mean that for the month of September, 81 persons have died thus far.

The 79-year-old was fully vaccinated while the 69-year-old was partially vaccinated.

Additionally, 241 new COVID-19 infections were recorded on Friday from a total of 1, 689 tests taking the total number of confirmed cases to 29, 072.

The new cases were reported in the following regions; Region One (10 cases), Region Two (three cases), Region Three (48 cases), Region Four (96 cases), Region Five (14 cases), Region Six (six cases), Region Seven (21 cases), Region Eight (23 cases), Region Nine (10 cases) and Region 10 (10 cases).

To date, 24, 820 persons have recovered from the dreaded virus.

There are 35 patients in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit, 164 are in institutional isolation and 3, 347 are in home isolation.