949 active COVID cases in Guyana; Health Minister fears numbers underestimated

There are 949 active COVID-19 cases across the country, Ministry of Health Dr. Frank Anthony reported on Tuesday during a COVID Update broadcast.

But moments after releasing these figures, Dr. Anthony said the possibility exists that these numbers may be underestimated because of limited testing or unreported positive cases.

Over the last 24 hours, health officials diagnosed 152 persons with COVID-19. Those new cases took the total active cases to 949.

Dr. Anthony said the cases were being monitored and fortunately the infected persons are doing well although 29 of those positive cases are hospitalised with 17 at the Ocean View Hospital and two persons in the COVID Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

A breakdown of the numbers by region shows Regions Two, Three, Four, Five and Six accounting for most cases with 66, 96, 524, 50 and 147 respectively.

No cases were recorded in Region Eight.

“That number might be underestimated because there are persons who do home testing and are positive and they do not report it so we can’t capture it in our statistics,” Dr. Anthony said.

On Monday, the Ministry of Health recorded 22 new COVID cases from 181 tests, taking the overall number of confirmed cases since March 2020 to, 65, 294.

At the end of Monday, 30 patients were in institutional isolation and 881 were in home isolation.

To date, 63, 143 people have recovered and 1, 238 died.