— says Health Minister

HEALTH Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, on Friday stated that COVID-19 is not over and as such persons should still be cautious and adhere to the measures that are in place to protect them.

Dr. Anthony made these remarks during Friday’s edition of his COVID-19 update where he was asked about the advice he would give to persons who may be attending Mashramani events that are to be hosted over the weekend.

He noted that he was not sure about Mashramani activities that would be hosted over the weekend but added that while the curfew has been lifted all other measures remain in place.
As such, he mentioned that persons who would be promoting any activities would first need to seek guidance from the National COVID-19 Task Force.

“COVID is not over, what we have is we have seen Omicron wave and those numbers have been dropping but we still have cases and if we are not careful those cases can still spike,” the minister said. With that he added that with the Omicron variant there are various sub-types of the variant and in some countries one of those sub-types are circulating and as such now creating a resurgence of the virus.

One such case, he indicated, could be Denmark which had previously relaxed measures and are now seeing an increase in cases. However, Dr. Anthony indicated that many of the countries that have relaxed measures have had higher vaccination rates than Guyana inclusive of the administration of booster doses.

He expressed: “Once we start opening up like this and if we open up too soon, we are going to see spikes in cases and therefore we cannot be complacent. We have to be mindful that we are still in a COVID-19 pandemic and therefore we have to make sure that we take the necessary precautions.”