DESPITE the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recent declaration that COVID-19 is no longer a global public health emergency, Guyana’s authorities are still cautious and are 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 would still have to conduct assessments and determine what they will do following the WHO declaration.

He said that in some countries worldwide, COVID-19 cases are still being reported, and they must determine how this is managed.

He added, “In our case, we have the capability of checking everybody, if we need to test we will be able to test, we have that capacity.”

As such, the health minister said that if cases are found here, the healthcare system here has the experience in how to treat those cases, even as he noted that if they require hospitalisation, 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 many COVID-19 cases that require hospitalisation in quite some time, leaving people to wonder what will become of Guyana’s Infectious Disease Hospital located at Liliendaal.

In this regard, he said that while this might be the case, the health authorities have already been using the facility to manage persons with other infections such as tuberculosis among others.
Meanwhile, in terms of Guyana’s COVID-19 situation as it currently is, he stated that it would be hard to determine whether the country has reached a point where herd immunity was achieved or not.

However, the health minister indicated that throughout the pandemic, authorities here were able to conduct an aggressive vaccination campaign.

Against this backdrop, Dr Anthony said, “What we know is that the vaccines that we gave for first dose, we had very high coverage, second dose we had relatively high coverage as well.”
As it relates to the third or booster doses, he said that not a lot of persons came forward to receive those doses. However, with the primary doses that have been administered, he affirmed that a number of deaths have been averted as a result.

According to the minister, though the WHO has declared COVID-19 over as a global health emergency, it is still important that persons still get inoculated.

He then revealed to the Guyana Chronicle that as of right now, the ministry currently has in stock the most up-to-date COVID-19 vaccines, the bivalent vaccines for those desirous of still receiving the shot.

The bivalent COVID-19 vaccines, according to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) include a component of the original virus strain which provides broad protection against COVID-19, along with a component of the Omicron variant, to provide protection against COVID caused by that variant.

Dr Anthony said, “So by combining that you will have a better immune response, so we do have bivalent vaccines and we have been making it available for those who want to come in and get vaccinated.”

He further noted that persons should still be encouraged to go out and get the COVID-19 vaccine, even as he added that the ministry would continue to administer vaccines across all 10 administrative regions to all categories of persons.

Additionally, he said that the public should still be mindful of the symptoms of COVID-19 and the impact of the disease.

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 $1.6 billion Infectious Disease Facility was commissioned months later, in July 2020.

When Guyana experienced a surge in COVID-19 cases the following year (September 2021), the health minister said that plans for expansion might have to be put in place to cater for this.
Further, Guyana began its COVID-19 inoculation programme in February 2021, beginning with healthcare workers at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation who were on the frontline. The vaccination programme was later expanded to the general public, as the country had received over one million doses of COVID-19 vaccines.