Two more COVID-19 positive patients died yesterday and a total of 130 more cases were confirmed, while Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony admitted that better enforcement of the emergency measures in place, including the national curfew, is needed to curb the spread of the virus.
The Ministry of Health reported the death of a 71-year-old Region Two woman with COVID-19, who died while receiving care at a public medical facility, while Region Six Chairman David Armogan last evening confirmed to Stabroek News the death of a 34-year-old man with COVID-19 who was in institutional isolation at Rose Hall, East Canje, Berbice.
Based on information gathered by this newspaper, the man was initially admitted at the New Amsterdam Public Hospital due to underlying health issues.
However, he was moved about one week ago to the facility in Canje after he tested positive for COVID-19.
A source told Stabroek News that the man was expected to be transferred to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in Georgetown but that was not done since regional health officials were told that the ICU is presently full.
Armogan last evening noted that the patient suffered from other illnesses for a while.
With the latest deaths, the country’s COVID-19 death toll now stands at 75. The death of the patient in Region Two represents the first fatality for the region and as a result all the regions in Guyana have now registered COVID-19 deaths.
With the rising death toll, particularly over the past month, the PPP/C administration that assumed office on August 2nd, has faced growing criticism over its handling of the pandemic.
In the National Assembly’s Committee of Supply, where the budget estimates for the Health Ministry were scrutinised, APNU+AFC parliamentarian Tabitha Sarabo-Halley yesterday questioned the minister on the government’s policy to prevent the spread of the virus as she noted that the minister has been very vocal on the treatment and cure aspects. “Most of what you said is dealing with the cure and not the prevention aspect,” she said.
Anthony, in response, stated that there is indeed a need to focus efforts on the prevention aspect and the government has been doing so but enforcement remains a problem. “We have the order that is in place that talks about the curfew. However as you all know, when we leave here, we are still seeing a lot of people are breaching these orders so we have to get a lot more enforcement,” Anthony said.
He added that the ministry has had meetings with law enforcement agencies where they discussed ways in which enforcement of the measures can be strengthened. “We need to do more law enforcement. We have been working with various stakeholders to try to spread that message and I think one of the things that would help us is if we have some coming together between political parties and so forth so that message can be a unified message going out to everybody,” he added.
He also cited educational programmes in which the ministry has been collaborating with various stakeholders to have a wider reach.
Anthony also said the ministry also has a risk communication plan for which they have repurposed funds from a John Hopkins University grant. He added that they were also able to get the approval from the Global Fund to reprogramme US$395,000 towards preventative action.
Priorities
While the committee was examining allocations under policy development and administration under the Ministry of Health, Sarabo-Halley asked the minister about the government’s general policy on COVID-19 given the recent increase in positive cases and deaths as a result of the virus.
In response, Anthony noted that one of the government’s priorities since entering office is to ensure that there is no shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for frontline health workers as he noted that when he took up the position of Minister of Health there was less than 1000 N95 masks available for them.
Another priority, he noted, is to ensure that hospitals that will be treating patients have the relevant equipment necessary to provide the needed quality of treatment, which included having CPAP machines, BiPAP machines and ventilators. He noted that the ventilators that were at the Georgetown Public Hospital were not fit and more had to be brought in.
“Those ventilators, of course, were not fit for the purpose because those ventilators were ventilators bought to be used for the transportation of patients and they don’t work for more than two hours and they shut down. So they have a limited stroke of time and they are not for continuous monitoring,” Anthony noted. The situation was remedied, he said, while adding that more ventilators are expected next month while the acquisition of some 30 or 40 more is being pursued.
As it relates to the treatment of COVID-19 patients, the minister stated that they were able to source medicines that they know would help patients who were hospitalised. He mentioned that the ministry has ensured that there are adequate stocks of dexamethasone along with Ivermectin, which are drugs that are used to treat patients. He also pointed to recent access to Remdesivir, which is another drug that is used to treat COVID-19 patients and he said critical patients have been able to benefit from the use of the medication.
Anthony also noted that there were previous challenges with testing for the virus in the country—there were less than 1,500 test kits when he entered office and now there are some 50,000 test kits available. He further stated that the ministry has ordered and is awaiting the arrival of an extractor for the National Public Health Reference Laboratory which will aid in the faster processing of samples. Anthony added that they are also expecting the donation of another extractor from the Government of China and it should be here by the end of the month. “In terms of testing in the public health sector, we are going to by early October be able to process more than 1,000 samples per day” he indicated even as he added that in the private sector a number of facilities have boosted their capacity as well.
The minister added that the country has “gene expert” machines which can be repurposed for COVID-19 testing. The reason that has yet to be done, he explained, is that the ministry was having challenges in sourcing cartridges for the machines.
“We have five of them. We have already serviced the five machines and we are sourcing [cartridges] through PAHO. We are expecting within a week or so to get 1,052 cartridges to come into the country and once we have the cartridges, we will be able to use those machines and deploy them to the regions,” Anthony said.
More cases
Meanwhile, according to the Ministry of Health COVID-19 dashboard that was released yesterday, 130 additional cases were confirmed, bringing the total number of known cases in the country thus far to 2,709. The comprise 96 from Region Four, 11 from Region Three, 7 each from regions Seven and Nine, 4 from Region Two, 1 each from regions Five, Six and Ten, and 2 from Region One.
The numbers released by the ministry indicated that the latest results come from 497 samples.
According to the dashboard, 1,490 persons in total have recovered, while 16 persons are in the COVID-19 ICU, 235 in institutional isolation, 895 in home isolation, and 76 persons in institutional quarantine.
(Additional reporting by Bebi Oosman and Laurel Sutherland)
