Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony yesterday disclosed that seven more persons, including a 31-year-old woman, who were infected with COVID-19 have died.
He also disclosed that there are currently 13 pregnant women hospitalised at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) with the virus.
These disclosures were made during the minister’s daily COVID-19 update yesterday. More information on the seven deaths were later provided in a statement by the Ministry of Health (MoH). The statement disclosed that the six of the persons who died were women, ages 31, 43, 73, 84, 87, and 88. The seventh was a 62-year-old man. The seven were all residents of Region Four and they all died while receiving care at medical facilities.
Anthony noted during the update that none of the persons who died were vaccinated against the virus.
Guyana’s COVID-19 death toll now stands at 654. For the month of September up to yesterday, 29 infected persons had already died.
Meanwhile, Anthony disclosed that there were 13 pregnant women in the GPH’s maternity unit. According to the minister, these women are from in all parts of Guyana but due to their complex pregnancies they were referred to the GPH for medical attention. He said that all patients of the GPH are required to be tested upon admission and it was as a result of this that the women were found to be infected with the virus.
As a result, he said, the hospital will need to make special arrangements to ensure that these women deliver their babies safely.
He added that the number of pregnant women who are infected with the virus almost doubled overnight as it was only the day prior that there were only seven women who were infected with the virus in the maternity ward.
“We had predicted because of a Delta surge we are going to see more [COVID-19] cases… The Delta variant is one that is more transmissible. Some scientists [have] said that one infected person can infected about nine others,” he noted.
Guyana is yet to officially confirm the presence of a variant here as local authorities have not sent samples for testing since the start of the year.
Meanwhile, according to the COVID-19 dashboard, 161 new cases had been confirmed from 1,728 tests that were done. Of these new cases, 73 were from Region Four, 49 from Region Three, 19 from Region Two, 8 from Region Five, 4 from Region Ten, 3 from Region Seven, 1 from Region One and 2 each from regions Six and Nine.
Anthony disclosed that there are currently 560 active cases in Region Three with Tuschen on the East Bank Essequibo recording the highest number in the region with 53 cases. He said that there 384 cases on the East Bank Demerara in Region Four, with 67 in Grove, 59 in Diamond and 32 in Eccles – the three communities with the highest number of cases in the area.
In Central Georgetown, he said, there were a total of 538 active cases. These are all scattered but Kitty has the highest number of cases, with 77, followed by Sophia with 44 cases and Cummings Lodge with 30.
On the East Coast Demerara, he added, there were 442 active cases with the highest in Mon Repos, which had 33. He added that there are 74 active cases in Region Seven, of which 60 were in Bartica.
Anthony said that while locking down of communities that are COVID1-9 hotspots is an option, the government has not considered it.
The dashboard also showed that there were 37 persons in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit, 2,249 persons in home isolation, 136 persons in institutional isolation and 8 persons in institutional quarantine. According to Anthony, 105 of that number are hospitalized at either the GPH or the Infectious Disease Hospital at Liliendaal.
“It is challenging with so many very sick people coming into the hospital and the persons who need extra attention we have to put them in the ICU. We just want to appeal to everyone—please go get yourself vaccinated. People require both doses to be immunized and can start today if you haven’t gotten vaccinated because they work, are effective and protect people,” he added.
Anthony also disclosed that 322, 586 of the Guyanese adult population have been vaccinated with one doses of a COVID-19. He said that this accounts for 62.9% of the adult population. In addition, he said 169,209 have been vaccinated with both doses and this is about 33% of adult population.
Some 12,563 children between the ages 12 and 18 have already been vaccinated with a first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. This accounts for 17.2% of children within this age range. The rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine campaign for adolescents is ongoing in regions Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Nine and Ten. The campaign was extended to regions One and Seven yesterday and will soon extend to Region Eight.
Anthony noted that 5,406, persons were vaccinated on Monday.
He said that the government is hoping to get as many persons vaccinated as soon as possible, especially children.
