–amid reported sighting of COVID-19 quarantine escapee

TOWN Clerk Ms. Sharon Alexander, just after noon on Monday ordered the immediate closure of the New Amsterdam Municipal Market, after receiving word that an escapee from a Demerara quarantine centre was seen shopping there.

According to Ms. Alexander, staffers of the Regional Health Services swooped down at the market, where they apprehended the alleged COVID-19 quarantine escapee, who happens to be a woman.

Thereafter, vendors were ordered to suspend sales for the day and “pack  up”, while Municipal workers, with the exception of those who work with the Town’s Constabulary, were asked to go home.

Vendors told the Guyana Chronicle that what gave the woman away, was the suspicious manner in which she was acting whilst enquiring about certain ‘bush medicines’.
But, according to the vendors, regional health officials had been on to her the moment she entered the market, as they had a photograph of her, and were quick to identify and apprehend her.

The latest on the matter is that she has since been taken to an unknown destination.
When contacted, Director of Health Services Jevaughn Stephens told the Guyana Chronicle that they learnt of the woman’s escape from quarantine via a call to the hotline, alerting them to what had occurred, and advising that she had been last seen in the vicinity of the New Amsterdam Market.

“Consequently, we dispatched our rapid-response team to verify and collect the patient,” Stephens said.
Following the Town Clerk’s ‘shut-down’ order, officers of the Regional Environmental Health Department have been mobilised to sanitise the municipality.

Since Guyana recorded its first COVID-19 fatality in mid-March with the death of a 52-year-old remigrant East Coast Demerara woman, New Amsterdam followed closely early last month with the passing of a 78-year-old retired nurse, who had just before her demise returned from the United States.

In the wake of her passing, the streets and Municipal complex have been sanitised, hand sinks have been installed around the township, and business hours have been shortened.