Health Minister cautions against flouting COVID-19 safety measures

-masking, social distancing reduces infections, deaths 

Minister of Health, Hon. Dr. Frank Anthony is again cautioning the public against gathering in large crowds, putting themselves and others at risk of contracting COVID-19.

The Minister lamented that although it has been one year since the world has been battling Covid, persons continue to flout the gazetted precautionary measures, particularly the guideline to practice social distancing.

“It’s unfortunate that people would still want to gather in large crowds. We put those guidelines to keep people safe, and if you are going to knowingly put yourself at risk, then, I don’t know what else to say because everyone knows that you can come into contact with someone that is probably asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic with the coronavirus.”

Dr. Anthony made this statement during today’s COVID-19 update. He expressed confidence that if more people were to adhere to the safety measures, there would be less infections.

“If people do the right thing and abide by the guidelines, our cases are going to come down, we’ll get less hospitalisation, and eventually, when we get the vaccines and we are able to immunise people, then we can start thinking about some level of normalcy. But until then, people still have to follow these rules. It’s not that we want to punish people, we want them to be safe. So, they have to follow these rules.”

Meanwhile, Minister Anthony said Guyana would take some time to benefit from herd immunity against COVID-19. The World Health Organization estimates that a society can benefit from herd immunity if 70 per cent to 90 per cent of a country’s population is immunised against the disease.

“As you can imagine, this is going to take a couple of months for us to achieve that. However, that would not still be the epidemic. For us to have epidemiological endpoints that would take a little bit more work. There are things that we’re still trying to figure out from the science,” he said.

Meanwhile, the public must observe the gazetted measures, even as the Government procures vaccines for the nation.

Currently the Government is awaiting the arrival of 104,000 free vaccines through the COVAX mechanism. It is also expecting a generous donation of 20,000 Sinopharm vaccines from the Chinese Government and another 149,000 doses through a purchase agreement under the CARICOM-African Union agreement.

Earlier this month, Government received a donation of 3,000 vaccines from the Government of Barbados. Those vaccines, administered in two doses per person, were shared between the CARICOM Secretariat, which received 200 doses for 100 people, and the remaining 2,800 for 1,400 frontline health workers.