Folk medicines not approved to treat corona virus

FOLK MEDICINES ARE NOT APPROVED to treat the ongoing highly contagious and
deadly coronavirus pandemic reiterated Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony.
Instead of trusting herbal medicines, Dr Anthony urged Guyanese to follow the scientific
gazetted guidelines set out by the Government, in an effort to protect themselves and others from
the COVID-19 disease.
“Well herbal medicine is what it is. It’s not scientifically proven, it’s just people making a
concoction and having faith that it would somehow protect them, that’s not science. So, I urge
people if they really want to get protected, they have to take the measures that we’ve been
announcing, and of course get vaccinated,” the minister counselled.
The minister cautioned during his COVID update Thursday, that the COVID-19 vaccines
currently available, are still the best defense against the virus.
Opposition legislator, Jermaine Figueira earlier this week suggested that herbal medicines
prevent the spread COVID-19.  Advisor minister Anthony, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, demanded an
immediate retraction and apology for what he labelled as “reckless and irresponsible” statement
from Figueira.
Ramsammy said Guyanese must continue utilising current public health measures, including
masking, sanitisation, physical distancing and getting inoculated, all of which are based on
scientific evidence.
Any suggestion of other measures to cure COVID-19 without scientific evidence, is “even more
reckless,” Ramsammy, a former health minister said.
“This trend is going to go up if people are not taking precautions because what we are seeing
now is a surge as I keep saying over the last couple of weeks. We were anticipating this because

with a new, more contagious variant, we are going to see more cases, especially if people are
going to be complacent,” Minister Anthony said.
“So, if people are not wearing their masks properly, they’re not doing the distancing, they’re not
sanitising, they’re gathering in groups and being very irresponsible, then we are going to see
surges of cases,” the health minister stressed.
He continued, “So, right now, over the last 24 hours for example, we have another 240, new
cases. So, that’s going to take our active cases up now to 2,709.”
So far, 327,519 persons who have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while
171,084 persons are fully vaccinated, minister Anthony said.
Meanwhile, Dr Anthony said that 16,768 children 12 to 17 years old have received their
first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.