After crossing the halfway point of a planned two-week lockdown, the indigenous community of Kwebanna, in Region One, is still seeing new cases of COVID-19 but its Toshao Paul Pierre believes it has nonetheless been effective in stemming transmission.
The community went into lockdown on October 25th after a significant spike in novel coronavirus cases was recorded.
Pierre said lots of testing has been done so far in the community and a few more cases have been discovered. Additionally he mentioned that of the 19 cases that were recorded in the region on Sunday, about six of those cases were from the Kwebanna community.
During a COVID-19 update, Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony had said that the increase in cases in Region One has been linked back specifically to Kwebanna and some of the neighbouring communities. He had also said that there were approximately 62 active cases in the Kwebanna village.
Asked about food and other supplies in the village, Pierre said that a survey within the village has showed that shops in the community should have enough stocks to last for another week. “The shops, I think, here have enough maybe to last us another week according to a survey,” he said, while adding that the community is at a good standing in relation to supplies.
Additionally, Pierre said that residents have been adhering to the measures implemented to curb the spread of the virus in the village. The Toshao said that persons in the community are now more cautious and are wearing masks and doing other things to keep themselves safe. He is hoping that even after the lockdown ends villagers continue to adhere to the COVID-19 emergency health regulations. He said that they cannot be careless to then have a second phase or spike in the region.
Pierre added that even as the lockdown has been effective it has been hard on persons who are used to moving freely in and out of the village for business and other purposes. “Well the lockdown is good, it’s effective but at the same time persons are accustomed to movement, we are accustomed to going over to Moruca to do business and so on,” he noted.
Anthony said that monitoring the situation in the village has been an ongoing process and that the ministry hopes to get the situation under control within two weeks.
Meanwhile, Pierre said that law enforcement teams from the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Defence Force are also on the ground in the region. He added that a Health Ministry team that has been deployed to the community has been doing sanitisation of buildings, awareness campaigns and has even distributed face masks.
