IN the months of April, May and June there were a total of 152 COVID-19 deaths recorded in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the National Infectious Diseases Hospital at Liliendaal, Georgetown but none of those patients were fully vaccinated and only six patients received their first COVID-19 ‘jab’.

This is according to information provided by the Head of Internal Medicine at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), Dr. Mahendra Carpen, during a recent edition of the ‘Your Doctor and COVID’ television programme.

Providing figures on the number of COVID-19 deaths of people who were being treated in the ICU, Dr. Carpen said that there were 11 such deaths in January, 14 in February, 24 in March, 37 in April, 59 in May and 56 in June.

“We see in the local context, greater than 95 per cent of the persons dying were not vaccinated,” Dr. Carpen stated.

It is important to note that all three of the COVID-19 vaccines used locally – the AstraZeneca, the Sinopharm and the Sputnik V – are administered in two doses. Two weeks after receiving the second dose, an individual is considered fully immunised.

Guyana’s COVID-19 vaccination rollout commenced on February 11, 2021 with doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine; the second dose of this vaccine was initially expected to be given some four weeks after the first. Following updated guidelines, however, the Ministry of Health later extended this dosing schedule to 12 weeks (or three months).

At the beginning of March, Guyana also received a donation of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines, produced by China. This vaccine is also administered in two doses and the second dose is given between 21 to 28 days after the first.

With the introduction of the Sinopharm vaccines, it meant that by April, the first set of individuals could become fully immunised against the SARS-CoV-2. In subsequent weeks, more and more people could also become fully immunised.

But, in April, none of the 37 COVID-19 deaths recorded in the ICU were recorded among individuals who received their vaccines. In May, of the 59 people who died at that hospital, only two of them were vaccinated; those two individuals only received their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Meanwhile, in June, where there were 56 COVID-19 deaths recorded in the hospital’s ICU only another two individuals who passed away were vaccinated but they too had only received the first dose of the Sputnik V vaccines.

Commenting on these figures, Dr. Carpen said, “It is a dramatic number, it is too large to ignore and think that this is a coincidence.”

As such, he posited, “There are definitely benefits to the vaccines.”

On numerous occasions, the Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, has emphasised that no fully vaccinated individual has died after testing positive for COVID-19.

During one of his daily COVID-19 updates in June, he explained that vaccinated individuals may become infected with the coronavirus but those individuals would not experience the more severe, or life-threatening symptoms since they are protected by the vaccines.