–as vaccination rates increase

HEALTH Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, has said that 95.4 per cent or 37,366 persons of the 39,151 persons who tested positive for COVID-19 since it was first detected in Guyana in March, 2020, have recovered.

Dr. Anthony made this disclosure during his COVID-19 update with the Department of Public Information (DPI), on Tuesday.

During the programme, the minister said that the latest statistics show that from the 418,178 COVID-19 tests conducted, 9.3 per cent were positive cases.

Of the positive cases, 1,050 persons succumbed to the deadly virus, representing 2.6 per cent of the persons who were infected. Further, 571 or 54.4 per cent of the deaths were males while 479 or 45.6 per cent were females.

“Males tend to be more outgoing and they are involved more in practices that can put them at risk, so you would find more young men in bars, most of the time they are not aware of the person’s vaccination status … they might be in close proximity to others who are unvaccinated or infected,” Dr. Anthony said.

He added: “So, because of this high-risk behaviour of not wearing masks, being in close proximity with possibly persons who are infected with COVID, I would want to believe that we would see a higher amount of cases among young men and obviously if we are getting more cases among that group of people then ultimately we would see more deaths.”

The Health Minister said that based on the cases, most of the persons who have died were suffering from underlying conditions, with most victims from the older population suffering from diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

“And similarly in the paediatric group, most of the patients who have died again had varying comorbidities… we had a few cases of children that had different forms of cancer, so these children on there on without COVID-19 had very bad prognosis and this was just compounded by COVID-19 and, therefore, we would have seen these deaths occur,” he said.

The latest COVID-19 statistics show that some 410,181 adults and 30,214 adolescents have received their first dose of one of the vaccines the country has made available to citizens.

Those numbers, when broken down, mean that 80 per cent of the country’s adult population and 41.4 per cent of its adolescent population or persons between the ages of 12 to 18 years, have received their first shot of a COVID-19 “jab.”

In terms of second dose, statistics show that 57.2 per cent of the adult population is fully vaccinated, representing some 293,601 persons, while 21,527 adolescents received their second shot, representing 29.5 per cent of that population.

“Booster doses are going up gradually. We have had 10,708 persons receiving their booster dose and again I want to encourage persons to take their booster doses to get protected against Omicron,” Dr. Anthony said.

With the exception of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, for persons to be considered fully vaccinated with the available vaccines, namely, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Sputnik V and Pfizer for adolescents, they must be administered both components of those vaccines.

The Health Minister reminded that COVID-19 is spread by people’s behaviour, so if persons are not adopting safe practices, there is a high possibility of them being infected, with some suffering mild consequences while others could die.

“Different individuals will have different vulnerabilities and we can’t say well this person will get a mild form and that one will get a severe form and that is why everybody needs to really protect themselves,” Dr. Anthony said.

He added: “If you are going to play hide and seek and have parties because you think that’s the right thing to do, you might get away with it because the task force cannot monitor everything. But think about this, you are putting yourself, your friends, your family in danger of getting a deadly disease and is that really necessary.”