Almost 50% of Guyana’s recorded COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic even as Guyana’s effective reproductive rate as it relates to the spread of the virus has increased.
This is according to Pan American Health Orga-nization/ World Health Organization Representa-tive to Guyana, Dr William Adu-Krow, who in an interview with Stabroek News, disclosed that 48% of the COVID-19 cases recorded in Guyana since March are asymptomatic. This factor led to a change in the criteria for testing in the country.
Initially, he said that the global criteria for testing was used, however, after being changed locally based on the percentage of asymptomatic patients, a number of cases were recorded. “We decided that we are going to open up and not go by the global testing criteria but that’s if you were a contact, we will test you without asking you to go into self-quarantine and so that’s why we have the [increased] cases”, he said.
While Dr. Adu-Krow stated that he does not believe that more cases are being recorded because testing has increased, he mentioned that it plays a role however as persons who have no signs or symptoms of the virus are spreading the virus. “People who are asymptomatic are spreading the disease and people who are also positive, don’t want people to think that they are positive, so they are pretending and going out and doing their normal duties” the PAHO representative said. He added that a number of persons who are afraid of possible stigma or discrimination are being irresponsible and spreading the virus.
Guyana’s second surge in COVID-19 cases, he stated, could be attributed to persons having a callous approach to Guyana’s emergency health measures which were implemented. “Why did we have this second surge? Because gradually we were opening up society and people said ‘well it will affect that person it wouldn’t affect me’”, he posited.
Meanwhile the representative noted that PAHO has played an important role in assisting in Guyana’s response to COVID-19 even before the outbreak here. So far the organization has provided training for medical technologists to be able to conduct testing for the novel coronavirus in the country. Approximately 30 additional persons were trained so as to increase testing around the clock at the National Public Health Reference Laboratory. Further they have assisted in the procurement of a number of items necessary to assist in the fight against COVID-19 including testing kits, adding that about 95% of the test kits that have been used in the country were procured by PAHO.
PAHO has also provided advice and assistance in public health to battle the virus.
He said that the government’s has done well so far in response to the pandemic as the stringent measures are good and globally are scored at 92% in terms of how effective they can be in slowing the spread of the virus. However, in terms of the country’s response, he said that the country is not doing too well as persons are not adhering to the measures that were put in place. “Now we have over a thousand cases and we are increasing almost by 40, 50 at a time within 24 hours and that’s not good. Persons have to take it seriously,” Dr Adu-Krow said.
“The good thing is this is the first pandemic that we don’t need to have gadgets, we don’t need to have medications in the extreme form to be able to survive, it’s just public health measures. So I don’t see why we cannot obey those public health measures so that we can eventually open society safely and still be safe” the PAHO Representative queried.
Additionally he mentioned that it is not time to fully open society as cases are rising. To this end he said that it was commendable that President Irfaan Ali had stated that the measures during this phase of the country’s opening will be maintained well into September. Further he mentioned that two things have to be considered before countries consider fully opening society. That includes a decrease in the effective reproductive rate in the country and also having the effective reproductive rate below one. “Our effective reproductive rate, even though it fell from 3.5 to almost 0.3 is climbing again, now its 1.2, now we cannot [reopen society].”
The reproduction rate is a key measure of how fast the virus is growing. It’s the average number of people who become infected by an infectious person. If the rate is above 1.0, the virus will spread rapidly. When rate is below 1.0 the virus will stop spreading.
The country’s positivity rate also has to be considered before opening the country, however Guyana’s positivity rate is over 20%. This he said means that communities are still saturated with a number of cases and those cases must be found, isolated and treated.
He went on to say, “If persons wear masks, if persons coming from overseas we can test them and immediately determine their status or have them quarantined while we wait for their test results and if people don’t go out if they don’t need to go out and if people have cough and sneeze etiquette then we could open society and still be safe.”
