Joanna Dhanraj

Though two elderly men of Potarinau, South Rupununi are believed to have died of the COVID-19 virus last week, this cannot now be confirmed as a sample taken from one can no longer be tested and the other was not tested at all.

With the closure of the Wales sugar estate at the end of 2016, 774 private farmers who supplied the factory with cane were also affected and while many have had to find other alternatives to provide for their livelihoods, a few are hanging on and are now supplying the Uitvlugt sugar estate although now, they cultivate less than a quarter of the acreage that they did four years ago.

The year 2020 will be one that goes down in history for current global pandemic and how drastically many of our lives have changed as a result of it.

For years Yolanda Marshall kept her talent hidden in an exercise book, but fortunately it did not remain there.

The approximately 1700 sugar workers who were once employed at the Wales Sugar Estate and facing financial hardships have seen the past four months of the COVID-19 pandemic take an even greater toll on their livelihoods in a manner best described as ‘rubbing salt into the wound’.

Venezuelan Carlos Jerez, who goes by the stage name Karlo, began singing very early in life.

The family of the latest COVID-19 fatality, a sixty-nine-year-old woman who died on Saturday while in isolation at the West Demerara Regional Hospital (WDRH) have since alleged that she contracted the virus while she was a patient at the Georgetown Public Hospital.

We see them almost everywhere we go but it’s likely that few of us take notice of them or the efforts they put into their work, which is not as easy as it may appear.

The question regarding the difference between art and craft is one that perhaps may never be definitively answered.

Although a death certificate has been issued for Lethem teacher Donna Ambrose-Greaves, indicating that she died as a result of several factors inclusive of a pulmonary haemorrhage, disseminated intravascular coagulation, pneumonia, and COVID-19, her husband says that he was told that no autopsy was possible.

A number of stores along the Vreed-en-Hoop Stelling Road that had closed as a result of the lockdown brought on by the coronavirus pandemic have since reopened but business is far from normal with these stores doing fifty per cent or less of their normal sales.

A Lethem nursery school teacher died at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC) on Saturday night after testing positive for COVID-19.

With each new day, Andre Brandon puts himself at risk of contracting the novel coronavirus disease but his passion for his job knows no bounds.

Just like the red lipstick she flaunts makes a statement in the way she looks, Michelle Playter has been doing the same on the runway, in makeup artistry, and most recently with music.

Dr. Derron Moonsammy, the doctor-in-charge at the Kumaka District Hospital in Moruca, is one of the over 70 persons to have contracted the coronavirus in the sub-district and is currently in isolation.

The Cummings Lodge fire that claimed the lives of a family of three on Saturday also left 28 persons homeless.

After 29 years of painting signboards and logos for prestigious companies as well as productions held at the National Cultural Centre (NCC), signboard artist Max Massiah is looking to hang up his brushes.

First year CAPE student Beyonca Makayda Clarke writes poetry in which she targets social and trending issues, some of which she has personally experienced and conquered.

The Canal Number Two health centres will be hosting a screening programme for the general public tomorrow and the medical personnel there say that despite the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, they intend to contribute to the prevention of the spread of the virus and will continue to serve the public. 

Dancehall singer/songwriter Clayton ‘Maad Raas’ Smyrna is celebrating his 43rd birthday today, by dropping his newest single, “Dem Boys”, which speaks of his personal experiences in the local music industry.