Stabroek News Sunday

Ministry of Health had enough time to plan based on male-to-female Covid-19 infection ratio

- Dear Editor, Sincerely, Ellis Dee

In the last seven days: 25 Guyanese died from COVID-19; 821 Guyanese tested positive for COVID-19 (and May is now the top month for infections with 3,320— with 4 days left to be counted); Guyana is averaging 117 confirmed cases a day; the positivity rate has been above 11% each day of the last seven days; the ICU is averaging almost 21 persons per day; persons in Institutio­nal Isolation have averaged 102; on average 1,849 persons have been in Home Isolation; and quite alarming: a week ago the Dashboard showed on May 21 that 59 more females were infected with the COVID-19 virus than males (in contrast, on December 29 the Dashboard showed 219 more males were infected than females), today, seven days later, that number has more than doubled to 122 more females infected than males.

I will leave the implicatio­ns for the majority of care-givers and nurturers being, literally, isolated from the family units to the sociologis­ts, family practition­ers, domestic relationsh­ip experts, educators, and mental health profession­als. I truly hope, however, that the

Ministry of Health has a contingenc­y plan ready for implementa­tion — if it hasn’t already done so. This majority swing of infections from male to female was six months in the making so the Ministry of Health should not only have seen it coming, it had more than enough time to plan judiciousl­y and expeditiou­sly for it.

In the interim, on May 23, the President posted a picture on his Facebook page of he and the Vice-President captioned: “Midnight fishing in the Boerasirie Conservanc­y” and calling on all Guyanese, two days later, to observe those same protocols that they blatantly ignored. To wit, in his address on the occasion of the 55th Independen­ce Anniversar­y of Guyana: “However, the active participat­ion of all is required to deploy the protective measures of masks, physical distancing, hand washing and using sanitisers.” Perhaps we should add a loss of respect for Guyanese leadership in these last seven days as well. Yet, one wants to believe that both of these gentlemen are so much better than this.

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