The National Laboratory for Public Health Reference
Public Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony says there are now more COVID-19 positive cases because the reason for testing has changed.
Latest available figures show that there have been 44 new cases in the last 36 hours.
A total of 74 people were hospitalized, They include 11 in the Intensive Care Unit. Another 383 were isolated at home under strict conditions.
Nineteen others have been quarantined to see if they will develop the COVID-19 symptoms.
He says that when the virus first appeared here in March, authorities decided to test people only if they showed signs or symptoms, because there were not enough kits. However, the health authorities have decided to change the criteria for testing. “Now that we do, we no longer have those rigid criteria. We test people who have symptoms. We test people who come to the hospital. We test people who are asymptomatic who come because they somehow feel they were at risk, “he said.
The Minister of Public Health said that people are also being tested through contact-tracing who have been exposed to COVID-19 positive individuals and so “we have increased testing in a big way and, therefore, we will find many more cases.”
Since March, the number of positive cases has reached a total of 925, of which 426 have been recovered and 31 others have died.
Asked why so many people have died in rapid succession in the past nine days – rapidly increasing from 21 to 31 – the Minister of Public Health said that a number of their parents had other illnesses, while a number of younger patients responded differently to the virus. “We have seen a few cases where people are younger and develop complications. This disease, the severity of the disease … There are certain people whose bodies will react negatively to fighting the virus and some of those individuals will die. There are not many people who will find it difficult that their reaction to the body is far above normal and that would contribute to their untimely persistence, ‘he said.
Dr Anthony said although treatments and ventilators are available, people worldwide would die severely affected.
The Government of Guyana has taken steps to reduce the backlog of more than 700 tests by training more medical technologists to use the only laboratory equipment to perform PCR tests. The government said more and more modern PCR machines would take over to perform more tests in less than eight hours.
