The Pan American Health Organisa-tion/World Health Organisation (PAHO/WHO) announced yesterday that following a re-evaluation the number of projected cases in Guyana could reach as much as 20,000 by May 5, 2020. This is an astronomic increase from the projected 1,400 cases announced last week by Minister of Public Health Volda Lawrence.
In an interview with local media, the News Room, PAHO/WHO country representative Dr William Adu-Krow stressed that if Guyanese don’t begin acting differently including practising more stringent physical distancing the country could see as many as 20,000 cases of the Novel Coronavirus by next month.
Adu-Krow particularly lamented that the country’s health system would not be able to handle so many sick persons.
“If (a) minimum 5% of them may need intensive care where we will put them,” he asked, adding that Guyana’s health care system is significantly understaffed.
The new number came after the PAHO/WHO and the Ministry conducted a disease modeling using the basic reproduction number of COVID-19. This number has been established at 2.5 persons in 4.8 days.
This means that for each infected person approximately 2.5 persons are further infected every 4.8 days. International modeling which has used this number has shown that one person can directly infect 406 persons within a month. If each of those 406 persons also infect a similar number there is likely to be an explosion of the disease.
Adu-Krow stressed that citizens must practice social distancing.
“We cannot close airports and inconvenience ourselves, make children stay home and inconvenience the children and parents and then go on business as usual,” he advised.
Guyana currently has 19 confirmed cases of COVID-19 which has so far result in four deaths.
There have been 17 cases with one inconclusive result recorded in Region Four, while one each was recorded in regions Three and Six. The total number of persons that have been tested for COVID-19 now stands at 75 with 19 tests returning positive and 55 tests returning negative results, while one test returned an inconclusive result.
