Government fears Delta variant already in Guyana

THE GUYANA GOVERNMENT FEARS THE MORE DEADLY AND INFECTIOUS
DELTA VARIANT of the corona virus may already be in the country and Health Minister Dr
Frank Anthony is imploring the unvaccinated to take the jab.
“So…if we are going to protect ourselves against Delta, then we really need to make sure that we
are vaccinated. If we are not vaccinated, then we’ll be at a higher risk to get the disease. So, I
really want to urge people…to get vaccinated. We have more than 110 fixed sites that are
operating and you can come to any one of these sites (and) start the process by getting your first
dose of the vaccine,” he explained.
Failure to vaccinate will cause a fresh spike in new infections and hospitalisations.
“And as that variant becomes the dominant strain that is circulating in the country, we will see
that it’s going to cause more infections, unfortunately, it is going to cause more hospitalisation
and it is going to cause more deaths,” Dr. Anthony warned.
“As of last week, our numbers were relatively low, meaning that it had dropped to about 800 or
so, and then we started seeing an increase in those numbers of new cases, and that is very
instructive because it’s setting us that we probably have a more infectious variant that is now in
Guyana. And we all know that in many countries around the world, that the Delta variant is
becoming the dominant variant. So, Delta is now in more than 140 countries,” he said.
Anthony renewed the urgent call for more Guyanese to be inoculated against the deadly virus as
the government intensifies its campaign against the global pandemic which has since late 2019
when it was discovered in Wuhan, China, killed 4.4M persons worldwide, and some 600
Guyanese.

Anthony’s latest supplication to Guyanese came amidst his reminder for partially vaccinated
Guyanese to take their second jab of the Sputnik V, AstraZeneca or Sinopharm vaccines. during
his Tuesday’s COVID-19 update.
Guyanese have no valid reason to remain unvaccinated, Anthony reasoned, when “we have the
AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, some J&J that are available to any adult in this country. There is no
rational reason why you should be without the vaccine, if you don’t take that vaccine, it is going
to put you at severe risk,” he reminded.
Guyana recently received some 5,000 doses of the Russian-manufactured Sputnik V vaccine for
those needing their final shot. Further, the country received its first tranche of the Johnson and
Johnson (J&J) vaccine, strengthening its arsenal against the Coronavirus and deadly Delta
variant. Minister Anthony during Tuesday’s update that there were 146 new cases of
Coronavirus in the country, out of 1,917 tests conducted the same day.
Currently, there are more than 1,460 active cases across Guyana, and of these, 90 are
hospitalised. Of that figure, 63 persons are currently housed at the Infectious Diseases Hospital at
Liliendaal, on the east coast, with 22 of the active cases being patients in the Intensive Care Unit
(ICU).