788 new Covid cases reported today as cases continue to rise

788 positive Covid-19 cases were recorded in Guyana and two deaths in the last 24 hours, Health
Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony confirmed delivering his daily Covid-19 update, on Wednesday.
“Over the last 24 hours we were able to detect 788 new cases and this came from 1,878 tests so
the positivity rate has gone up so it’s about 41.95 per cent, and that shows that we have a lot of
people getting positive very quickly,” Minister Anthony said. He continued, “We have
anticipated that these numbers are going to double and we are seeing that happening right now.”
Dr. Anthony said that the total positive cases now stand at 2554, with Region Four having 1648,
Region Six, 338, Region Three, 206, Region Nine, 115 and Region 10 with 82 active cases. He
noted that fifty-nine persons are hospitalised with 36 in the Ocean View hospital, five of whom
are in the ICU. The health minister stressed that despite the rise in cases, he assured citizens that
there is adequate testing capacity at the National Public Health Reference laboratory. “I think we
have the capability of doing at least 2000 PCRs over a 24-hour period, that’s fairly large. We
also have GeneXpert machines that we have placed at the various regional hospitals so they can
do some amount of testing there and with antigen testing it does not require much of an
infrastructure, just the test kits. We have adequate test kits across the public health system and
they are being used,” the minister explained.

Dr. Anthony noted that more than 12 private health facilities have been certified to do testing.
Minister Anthony pointed out that with the increase in cases, persons may panic and want to get
tested, however getting tested too soon after exposure might not get an accurate result. “Don’t go
and swamp the testing sites. We have seen a lot of people showing up at testing sites and
demanding to be tested, but if you go too early you are not going to know what’s your true
status,” he warned.
“You will have to be quarantined first of all and wait at least five days before you go and get
tested. If you go right away and get tested it’s going to show negative. If you go the next day and
get tested it’s going to show negative, so you have to wait that window period out before you get
tested. For these tests to work, a person would have to be infected, they would have to get an
adequate amount of virus in their system before the test can detect it,” the minister declared. He
added that persons showing Covid – 19 symptoms are advised to get tested.