Monitoring large number of isolated COVID patients a challenge – Dr. Anthony

There are about 13,644 people who are currently infected with COVID-19 after testing positive for the novel coronavirus and Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony says that it has become difficult to monitor all of those individuals in isolation.

Unless an individual is experiencing the more severe or life-threatening symptoms of COVID-19, the local authorities permit home isolation during the period of recovery.

While infected individuals are in isolation, it is expected that staff from the Ministry of Health would call to monitor people’s symptoms.

If those symptoms worsen, the staffers would advise the patients to go to a COVID treatment centre. If not, after the isolation period, people would be allowed to return to their normal lives.

“Now the volume is quite large, so we decentralised the monitoring of people and each region has responsibility for monitoring people,” Dr. Anthony said on Monday during his daily COVID-19 update.

That means that the regional health authorities have been tasked with monitoring all of the patients in home isolation.

Since Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) is Guyana’s most populated region and it has the most infected people, Dr. Anthony said that the Health Emergency Operation Center (HEOC) has been aiding monitoring efforts.

“We continue to do that, but it is challenging because of the volume of patients that we currently have,” Dr. Anthony said.

Meanwhile, the number of people hospitalised after experiencing the more severe symptoms of COVID-19 has been increasing as well.

There are now 153 people hospitalised across Guyana, with 101 of those patients receiving care at the National Infectious Diseases hospital at Liliendaal, Georgetown. Of that number, there are 20 patients receiving critical care in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

Dr. Anthony continues to emphasise that vaccination will help to protect people from becoming seriously ill.

He reported that 420, 591 adults (or 82 per cent of adult population) have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose; 308,392 adults (60.1 per cent of adult population) received both a first and second dose, and 33,980 people have taken booster shots.

In the adolescent category, some 32,237 teenagers have taken at least their first Pfizer COVID vaccine dose, while 308,392 teenagers have taken their first and second doses.