St Ignatius COVID-19 measures proving tough to implement

Two new COVID-19 deaths push toll to 454

The indigenous community of St Ignatius has been seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases and even two deaths within the last month, but its codependency and proximity to Lethem has made in impossible to implement stringent measures.

On Monday, the village council of St Ignatius located in the Central Rupununi, Region Nine, instituted several measures including a six pm to six am curfew on residents in an effort to curb the spread of the virus in the community.

According to Toshao Winston Lorentino, while the number of COVID-19 cases in the community had not been more than five for weeks, the death of two elderly persons prompted doctors to conduct swabbing in the community. He disclosed that the two persons died suddenly at their homes and were tested after their deaths. Their results returned positive.

“Nobody knew they had COVID. They probably thought they had some other sickness but they died at their homes,” he said.

Since then the cases have increased rapidly and the community now has more than 40 active cases. With the increasing number of cases on a daily basis and the constant breaches of the COVID19 measures, Lorentino said the village council considered a lockdown but after much consideration it was decided against. He disclosed that persons living in St Ignatius work in Lethem and vice versa.

Before implementing the measures discussions were held with the relevant persons and everyone felt it was necessary considering the daily rise of infections.

“We want the cases to drop. It’s been a month and it continues to rise. Everything was normal before but people are not adhering to protocols especially the young people,” Lorentino complained. He noted that many persons are refusing to get vaccinated against the virus because of the conspiracy theories that are circulating.

“I have tried to lead by example and got vaccinated. It’s the young people that don’t want to take it but they are also not adhering to the measures so the cases are spreading,” he said before adding that majority of the persons who are infected with the disease are asymptomatic so the virus is transmitting very easily.

Region Nine has almost 400 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with the majority being recorded in St Ignatius and Sand Creek in the South Rupununi.

Lorentino says he hopes that residents will adhere to the measures that the village council has instituted saying that it is only being done to protect them.

Two new COVID-19 deaths along with 125 new cases were recorded yesterday.

The Ministry of Health has disclosed that the total number of deaths as a result of the virus now stands at 454. The two fatalities were identified as a 68-year-old woman from Region Four and a 55-yearold man from Region Six. They both died while receiving care at a medical institution.

Meanwhile the country’s total number of confirmed cases now stands at 19,359 with the new cases that were reported. These cases came after 2,018 more tests were done which has increased the total number of tests done to date to 180,632.

The new cases were reported in eight out of ten administrative regions: Region One - 11, Region Two - 2, Region Three 14, Region Four - 53, Region Five - 2, Region Six - 24, Region Nine - 4, and Region Ten - 15.

There are now 1,588 active cases, 115 of whom are in institutional isolation while another 1,473 are in home isolation. Some 20 persons are now patients at the COVID-19 ICU and 56 more persons have recovered from the virus. Guyana now has a total of 17,297 recovered cases.