Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony on Friday reported that more than 115,000 persons have received their first shot of a COVID-19 vaccine in Guyana, even as a high of 214 new infections were confirmed.
During a COVID-19 update, Anthony revealed that the National COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign has been going well despite there being some amount of hesitancy to get vaccinated by numerous persons around the country.
Anthony further noted that 1,800 persons already fully immunized against the virus, which continues to take lives around the world.
He expressed hope that more persons will get vaccinated and urged Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) that may want to assist the ministry with convincing persons to get vaccinated to get in touch with the Ministry.
“We have enough vaccines in the country and we want to get that in people’s arms as quickly as possible. It doesn’t make sense having vaccines in storage and the only way to make it finish is if you get in people’s arm so any NGO who wants to partner with the ministry please reach out and so that we can work with you,” he said.
While the overall campaign has been going well, he added that health teams in regions Seven and Eight have had some challenges because of the geographical location of some communities. He also noted that there is some reluctance to get vaccinated in many indigenous communities but the ministry is exploring ways to address this issue.
Meanwhile, according to Friday’s COVID-19 dashboard, the new infections increased Guyana’s total number of confirmed cases to date to 12,448. The infections were confirmed after some 1,424 more persons were tested, thus increasing the total number of persons tested to 114,286.
According to the regional breakdown provided, the new cases were recorded in nine of Guyana’s ten administrative regions, with Regions Four, Three and Nine recording the highest number of cases, being, 95, 41 and 19, respectively.
There are now 1,536 active cases in the country, with 70 in institutional isolation while another 1,466 are in home isolation. Four additional persons have been admitted to the COVID-19 ICU, thus increasing the total number of patients there to 16.
Sixty-four more persons have recovered which puts Guyana’s total number of recovered cases to 10,916.
