AT a time when the highest-ranking hemispheric health official, PAHO’s Director Dr. Clarissa Etienne is warning the Caribbean and Latin America against lifting COVID-19 restrictions too quickly, news that Guyana is trying to return to normal after two years of the ‘New COVID Normal’ was met with mixed responses at home and abroad.
Europe and North America have already engaged a slew of on-again, off-again removals and reintroductions of protocols and restrictions: From wearing masks and social distancing, to workers having to present ‘COVID’ passports to collect pay, and diners to present vaccination certificates to enter restaurants; from to-ing-and-fro-ing with visitor entry requirements at land, air and sea ports, to insisting on ‘booster jabs’ for already vaccinated people, and the UK providing vaccines to students and children without parental consent.
A question on most minds at the start of the pandemic’s third year is whether ‘COVID’ will finally go away in 2022, as anxiously predicted by many since Omicron arrived last November, and was strangely welcomed by some as the possible ultimate attrition virus that would somehow eventually devour Delta and all other previous Variants of Interest and Concern.
With some Caribbean nations also easing restrictions for holidays without offering safe and healthy guarantees, there’s also worry that a rush to raise restrictions and return to mass-crowd activities as a response to mounting Lockdown Fatigue could be more harmful than helpful; more hurtful than healthy.
But after considering how Guyana has handled the pandemic in the past year, many also understood why President Irfaan Ali would have signed an order ending earlier mandatory requirements, while also still insisting that basic health practices continue to be observed, voluntarily (like wearing masks in public and maintenance of sanitisation stations at workplaces and in public places).
Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony and his teams of advisers and health officials would also have thought long and hard before recommending that Guyana be the first Caribbean nation to dare try kissing or kicking COVID-19 goodbye, by dropping restrictive protocols altogether.
It’s also crystal clear that Dr. Anthony is ‘leading from the front’, as Caribbean people say, starting every day by meeting Online with Regional Health Officers to discuss developments, share new information and statistics, and plan ahead.
The minister also hosts a daily press conference, where he shares new information with the media; again, Online.
Guyana, indeed, has a favourable ‘COVID’ report card.
In December 2021, it was reported that over 70 per cent of Guyana’s teachers were vaccinated, with a higher national vaccination rate and a wider variety of vaccines available than most other CARICOM nations.
Fortunately for Guyana, the anti-vaccination lobby has not been as successful as in most other CARICOM states, where some teachers’ union leaders actually discourage members from vaccinating, and where public service unions publicly agitate and align with the political opposition against governments moving to ensure frontline public service workers (doctors and nurses, police and immigration, air and sea port employees and tourism industry workers, etc.) are vaccinated.
By classifying every health requirement as governments ‘mandating’ new laws that violate individual rights that have been wrongly placed above the Common Good, Caribbean anti-vaxxers have been better able to dissuade The Undecided from taking a jab.
Naturally, Guyana’s private sector offers cautious support for the new changes, but also (expectedly) wants public utility charges to remain the same, which has been guaranteed by President Ali, who’s also announced that electricity and water rates will remain the same.
But, like Guyana, the long-awaited Return to Normal means different things in different CARICOM states.
Guyana can, today, afford to guarantee it will cap utility prices, not raise taxes, examine minimum wage increases, provide more housing, water and electricity and protect the most vulnerable from the worst effects of the virus, but post-‘COVID’ economic realities have actually forced many CARICOM member-states to cut their annual health expenditure allocations.
The number of beds available, and availability of vaccines are both less than required in most CARICOM states, especially in islands with only one hospital.
Guyana’s Health Ministry has to cater for 22 district hospitals, while planning new regional and specialty hospitals and medical schools to ensure the nation can better handle traditional ailments, including diabetes and hypertension, cardiac, communicable and non-communicable diseases, eye care and dentistry, etc.
Then came this week’s interesting news of the recommissioning of the ‘Lady Janet’, Guyana’s only ‘dental boat’; a veritable floating hospital taking dental care to far-flung coastal areas of the vast country, after being left “out of operation” for six years.
The refloated craft’s medical services will also now include others (like maternal and child care), while another ‘hospital boat’ is underway to be floated in another coastal region.
Guyana still has to grapple with issues like continuing and sustaining provision of better care at all hospitals, and coming to grips with the transition pains of converting a private hotel to a hospital; an experience twice shared in Saint Lucia, where a family-owned hotel was converted to the private Tapion Hospital (over three decades ago), and the century-old decommissioned Victoria Hospital was hastily recommissioned in 2020 as the island’s National COVID Respiratory Centre.
In addition, while ‘COVID’ forced the over-delayed commissioning of the island’s brand-new European Union (EU)-funded OKEU hospital, the Saint Lucia government is still counting the still-rising scores of millions of dollars in accumulated cost-overruns associated with the St. Jude Hospital in the island’s south, still under initial construction 12 years after being destroyed by fire.
But the largest country in CARICOM has taken a bold step at the start of the third year of the global pandemic to try to end the long, daily nightmares that’ve visited Guyanese and Caribbean nationals for much too long.
Guyana’s off to a good start, with high hopes and expectations at home and abroad for this new beginning to end successfully.