Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony yesterday said he believes there is currently no need to have a lockdown in Bartica despite the recent increase in COVID-19 cases in the town.
During a COVID-19 update, Anthony stated that the ministry will continue to monitor the town and the region at large.
“We are going to continue to monitor and if we believe, based on the epidemiological findings and so forth and if we believe there is a necessity to do that, well then we will do that but at this point we don’t believe that that’s necessary,” Anthony said.
He noted that as a result of increased testing in the area, more cases have been detected in the town. He noted that authorities there will continue to do more testing even as the health team in the region has been working to ensure the safety of residents.
Additionally, a large majority of the persons who have tested positive in Bartica, he said, are asymptomatic, with just a few being symptomatic and an even smaller number of persons requiring hospitalisation. “Other than the numbers when we test people, it seems that they have put adequate measures in place to be able to detect and of course contact trace and monitor,” he mentioned.
According to Anthony, authorities there have recognised that a number of persons will be travelling through Bartica and that by the end of this week, new measures will be implemented in collaboration with the “COVI-CURB” initiative.
“We will be putting in some other measures with operation COVI-CURB trying to make sure that persons coming into that area are checked so that we can reduce the incidence of COVID-19 or persons with COVID-19 entering Bartica,” Anthony said.
Under the latest gazetted COVID-19 emergency measures, there is a month-long ban on non-essential travel into and out of Region Seven.
