Anthony urges public not to be ‘complacent’ in response to Omicron

The Minister of Health yesterday urged persons not to be complacent as it relates to the spread of the novel coronavirus in Guyana.

Dr Frank Anthony made these remarks during his daily COVID-19 update where he stated that over the last 24 hours, 87 new cases have been recorded. “So over the last 24 hours we had 87 new cases so that has gone up from the 40 cases or so that we normally see but I suspect that might be a little bit of the backlog over the holidays.”

As such he noted that there are currently about 780 active cases with 28 persons in hospitals across the country and six persons in the Intensive Care Unit. This, he said, will be monitored by the authorities to see whether cases are going to go up.

And with the rapid spread of the new Omicron variant in other countries, Anthony warned that the nation is a long way from being over with the pandemic. “I really want to urge people not to be complacent because a lot of times people tend to be very complacent, they feel because the numbers are dropping we are over the pandemic.”

He observed that the rate of transmission is propelling the amount of cases that countries are recording and went on to say, “… the number of cases are doubling so that’s how fast this is spreading, this is spreading faster than anything that we have seen before and Omicron also has the capability of evading immunity.”