21 more new COVID-19 cases; 1 in ICU

Dec 09, 2022 News

Kaieteur News – The Ministry of Health on Thursday disclosed that within the last 24 hours 21 new COVID-19 cases have been recorded taking the total number of persons infected for December to 81.

The Ministry released its dashboard data and an analysis of the data shows that thus far the number of cases recorded for the month is almost the same amount recorded for the month of October. In October some 89 persons tested positive for COVID-19 while a total of 189 persons tested positive for the virus in November with three COVID-19 related deaths.

The latest dashboard shows that one patient has been admitted to the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU), five persons are in institutional isolation and 198 persons are in home isolation. To date, a total of 70,232 persons have recovered from the deadly virus.

Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony had reiterated the call for the public to get vaccinated and boosted with one of the COVID-19 vaccines, as local health authorities are seeing a spike in cases again.

“We are again appealing to the general public to take all the necessary precautions because over the last two weeks the cases in Guyana have been going up and hospitalization has been going up,” he said during his COVID-19 update on Tuesday.

Dr Anthony noted that the variants of the virus currently circulating mimic the influenza virus which can lead to persons mistakenly thinking they have the flu.

Meanwhile, the Minister reminded that following the deaths of three persons late November the Ministry arranged for samples to be taken to the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) for genetic sequencing.

“…That’s because we want to understand whether or not which variant is circulating here… whether it’s the same type of variants that are causing deaths among our patients. So this is something that we would do routinely to get an idea of what is circulating and what we need to look out for,” he had disclosed.

Persons are urged to get vaccinated at any of the Ministry’s testing sites located across the country, and continue to wear their masks when in public spaces.