Govt secures US$60M to fight COVID-19
President elect Irfaan Ali
President elect Irfaan Ali

— more ventilators, masks, testing machines to be available

By Rabindra Rooplall
GOVERNMENT is mobilising some US$60M from the World Bank, OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Islamic Development Bank, in addition to a $4.5B package it had announced earlier to bolster the national response to COVID-19.
President Irfaan Ali, on Wednesday, during an address to the nation from State House said that those sums are in addition to the US$1M grant received from the Government of India.
Those, he said, were outside of other bi-lateral support received and were in the process of being received.
The President said that he spent the last few weeks consulting with many stakeholders including the private sector, communities, trade union representatives, youths, and healthcare professionals, aimed at arriving at a national holistic plan that integrates every aspect in response to COVID-19.
“So what we have seen is the closure of small business enterprises, our economy declined about four per cent at mid-year, contraction in business by more than 20 to 70 per cent, the loss of jobs, reduced workforce, reduced operations and output due to the implementation of work rotation work schedules,” the President said.
Further, the head of state said the loss of income has led to starvation in many communities, something which is being addressed.
He noted that a holistic plan is being looked to tackle the pandemic, while also targeting measures that would create jobs, ensure the return of income, and improve spending in the economy, while keeping the population in good health.
He said the government is focused on delivering an all-encompassing plan that will hold health and safety paramount, while balancing the need to fortify the economic standing.

“I assure you that your concerns will be dealt with, that the concerns of the business community, parents, teachers, healthcare personnel, we will take all these concerns into consideration and find a balance in addressing this issue,” Dr. Ali said.

Noting that COVID-19 is not only a public health issue, the President said the situation is an economic, financial and social issue and government has been working to implement an approach to bring together all stakeholders.
The objective of the approach, he said, is to ensure the multifaceted aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic is addressed by delivering relief to the strained health system and workers and increasing testing throughout Guyana.
Addressing public health and safety, he said there are needs for stimulus incentives and arrangements to encourage business stability, delivering relief measures to persons affected at the household level and delivering education to children in a non-conventional manner in the COVID-19 environment.
He said that aspects mentioned above are outside other bilateral support that has been received and are in the process of being received.

INTERVENTIONS
To tackle the ongoing challenges, President Ali said a number of interventions have been made to improve the best turnaround time, testing capability, human resource capacity, infrastructure and equipment.

To this effect, President Ali said the government has moved from a situation to where it had less than 10,000 N95 masks in the system two weeks ago, to where there is currently 65,000 available and an additional 5,000 on order.

Testing, he said has moved from 40-60 per day to 96-140 daily. Notwithstanding the significant improvement, there is a backlog of 700 test results.
He explained that this is as a result of the manual PCR machine currently being used, in addition to the lack of medical technologists.
“Two weeks ago, we had one medical technologist working, by the end of this week, 30 new medical technologists will be trained in PCR testing from both the public and private sectors and will be available from next week,” President Ali said.

Additionally, he said two automatic machines will be sourced to cut testing turnaround time from nine hours to two hours, which will clear the backlog and improve the capacity of mass testing which will be necessary in the eventually opening up of the economy and country.

There are four working ventilators at the Georgetown Public Hospital Cooperation but in the new week there will be an additional 29 in the system to be used countrywide.
In addition, healthcare professionals, including doctors have been deployed to hotspots in Regions Seven and Nine.
In dealing with the issues of isolation, the President said the Health Ministry will convert the inoperable infectious disease centre to an isolation facility.
“To this end, arrangements are being made to have a facility that caters for a 150 patients requiring isolation,” the head of state added.

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