– Health Minister says situation is being ‘monitored’

FOURTEEN residents of Warapoka in Region One (Barima-Waini) have tested positive for the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19) and Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, has since disclosed that personnel have been deployed to the community to conduct further testing.

He said this testing is part of the Ministry’s efforts to monitor the situation and to get an accurate representation of the number of positive cases.

“That’s a community we’ll be monitoring as well. We sent in medical teams. We did some swabbing and because we did some swabbing there, that’s how we were able to detect these cases. So our medical team would be more active in that community and, hopefully, we can bring whatever cases we have quickly under control,” the Minister said.

Hinterland regions have recorded a high number of cases. Region One has so far recorded 720 cases; Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni), 377 cases; Region Eight (Potaro-Siparuni), 138 cases; and Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo), 376 cases. Collectively, these cases account for more than 38% of the total cases in Guyana.

Meanwhile, Minister Anthony spoke of the positive outcome of the Kwebanna lockdown. Kwebanna, a Region One community, had gone into lockdown for 21 days after being identified as a COVID-19 hotspot. Since the lockdown began on October 24, the community has seen a steady decline in the number of positive cases. Out of the 71 cases recorded, 37 are still active.
Another indigenous community, St. Cuthbert’s Mission, implemented a similar lockdown measure which began on November 7 and will last for 14 days.

“We worked with the village council. We talked to the residents. We do the education on what is COVID, what you need to do to prevent the transmission of COVID. Of course we do testing on a large scale [to] identify those who are positive and isolate them so [as] to prevent further transmission. So those things are what we have repeated in St. Cuthbert’s and hopefully we’ll start seeing a decline in numbers,” Minister Anthony informed.

Further, he reminded that due to the rapid testing that will be taking place, there is an expectation that the number of confirmed positive cases will rise.
He explained that since residents were not actively following the COVID-19 preventative guidelines, it is expected that several persons have come into contact with the virus.
“Unfortunately we haven’t tested a large percentage of the people in St. Cuthbert’s as yet. It’s an ongoing exercise. Yesterday, we did 104 samples and we’ll get those results sometime today. The previous day, we did 34 samples and we got back 17 positives, so as it is today, we have 186 persons in St Cuthbert’s that are now positive. So because of how they have been interacting in the village, we suspect a lot of people might have been infected, so we continue to monitor them,” Dr. Anthony said.

He said, too, that several teams with specific tasks have been deployed at both villages and will continue to provide assistance to the community councils to help minimize the spread of the virus.

“We have a surveillance team, we have a sanitation team [and] we have a public education team; so we continue to work with the village council in St Cuthbert’s to make sure that people understand more about COVID and how to prevent its transmission,” stated Minister Anthony.