Dr. Anthony – 20 samples sent to CARPHA to test for Omicron variant

Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, revealed that the ministry has sent 20 samples taken from
COVID-19 patients to the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) to test for the Omicron
variant.
He noted that Guyana recorded a spike in COVID-19 cases at the end of December.  This, health
officials suspected, was due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant which was however
found to be less severe with a shorter duration period. “One of the things that we do is to take
samples from patients and we send them to confirm which variants are circulating in Guyana and
over the weekend we would have sent 20 samples to CARPHA for confirmation,” Dr Anthony
said.
He continued, “Clinically we’re convinced that we’ve had in the late December, January,
February period we would have seen a conversion from Delta to Omicron because of the clinical
picture that we’ve been seeing.”  Minister Anthony stressed that the samples will confirm
whether or not the variant is circulating in the country. He said the results are expected within the
next two to three weeks.
Meanwhile, the health minister noted that positive cases have been decreasing significantly, with
14 new cases recorded over the last 24-hours. There are currently 1, 841 active cases. However,
the minister said this number is expected to drop during this week. Further, he said that 66
persons are currently hospitalised, 50 of whom are being treated at the Ocean View Hospital with
nine persons in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).