-Health Minister says

ALTHOUGH the World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared that COVID-19 is no longer a public health emergency, Guyanese authorities are still being cautious and are continuously monitoring the situation here.

This is according to Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony, who in an exclusive interview with the Guyana Chronicle stated that each country will still have to conduct assessments and make determinations as to what they will do moving forward following the WHO declaration.

He stated that in some countries across the world, COVID-19 cases are still being reported and they have to determine how this is managed.

“In our case, we have the capability to check everybody. If we need to test, we will be able to test, we have that capacity,” he added.

As such, the health minister said that if cases are found here, those in the healthcare system have the experience in terms of how to treat those cases.

He noted that if hospitalisation is required, there is still the capacity for that.

“We have people trained, we have the beds, we have all the other things that are necessary to treat COVID,” he said.

The country has not recorded a high number of COVID-19 cases that would require hospitalisation in quite some time which leaves people to wonder what will become of Guyana’s Infectious Disease Hospital located at Liliendaal.

In this regard, the minister said that while this might be the case, the health authorities have started to use the facility for the management of persons with other infections, including tuberculosis.

Guyana recorded its first case of the novel coronavirus on March 11, 2020, which happened to be the same day that the WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic.

The reported $1.6 billion infectious disease facility was commissioned months later in July 2020.