–several GPHC employees among 1,824 active cases being monitored

THE number of COVID-19 cases recorded in a single day reached a record high on Tuesday, when 485 persons tested positive for the disease.

“In the last 24 hours, we had 485 new cases, so our active cases are now 1,824. So, that’s a big jump, it’s probably the highest total we’ve had in a day and maybe these numbers would even go further,” Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, said during Tuesday’s edition of the daily COVID-19 update.

Minister Anthony said that of the active cases, 1,138 are in Region Four; 272 in Region Six; 148 in Region Three; 41 in Region Two; 78 in Region Nine and 74 in Region 10.

“So, you can see cases are going up around the country, and those regions where we have low cases, we are awaiting the test results because we have collected samples, but they have not been processed as yet,” the Health Minister related.

He also said that this trend is expected to continue as the Omicron variant is “highly contagious” and doubles every four days or so.

On the East Bank of Demerara at Diamond, 43 people are infected, 33 at Providence, 20 in Grove, and 17 at Herstelling. In other regions, New Amsterdam recorded 66 cases, while Lethem recorded 45; Bartica, 21 and Wismar, 26.

“Right now, we have 64 persons in hospital, over the last 24 hours I think we had about 10 persons that came into the different hospitals. We currently have 36 persons at the Ocean View hospital, with eight of those persons in the ICU and a few of those persons are intubated. All of them are receiving oxygen, but I think two of them are intubated,” Dr. Anthony said.

The vaccination numbers largely remain the same, but with a slight increase in first dose uptake which now stands at 80.3 per cent of the adult population while booster uptake has also improved.

“Boosters have been going up incrementally… we are at 12,306 booster doses, but we still have a long way to go because of the persons who would have received their second dose. This is just a very small portion of that, so we still have a very long way to go in ensuring that more people get their booster doses,” the Health Minister said.

He also confirmed that a number of employees at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) have tested positive for the disease and are being closely monitored.

“There are a number of persons who have tested positive, both doctors and medical staff. We have been constantly monitoring them and we have taken mitigation measures, so it has not had a big impact so far on service delivery, but if more and more people get sick well then obviously it’s going to have an impact,” Dr. Anthony said.

He related that most of the infected persons are either asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic and are expected to return to work shortly. (DPI photo)