Saying there is a high possibility that COVID-19 variants are already in Guyana, Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony on Friday argued that even with confirmation the preventative measures to be adopted wouldn’t change as persons would still have to continue wearing masks and social distancing to avoid getting infected.
However, Anthony said confirming the presence of COVID-19 variants in Guyana is not a priority as this will make no difference in preventing transmission and treating infected patients.
“Right now sending samples for [gene] sequencing wouldn’t make much of difference in terms of the way we are treating patients… We would try to [send samples for gene sequencing] but again it is not a priority because we are assuming that all the different strains are circulating,” Anthony said during the daily COVID-19 update.