Hundreds COVID-positive but Health Minister thinks a lot more out there

More than 300 people are currently infected with the novel coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19 but Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony believes that many more persons are infected.

The Health Minister, during his COVID-19 update on Friday, said that 349 people are infected with the disease. In the past 24 hours alone, another 31 people were infected.

Of the number of infected people (referred to as active cases), 13 people are hospitalised with three of those patients receiving critical care in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit at the National Infectious Diseases Hospital at Liliendaal, Georgetown.

Still, Dr. Anthony believes that these official figures are lower than the number of people actually infected locally.

“The numbers that we are presenting is really an underrepresentation,” he said.

What the Health Minister believes is that many people believe they have the common flu, which would see them experiencing similar symptoms to a COVID infection.

Because of this belief, he opined that people may not seek COVID-19 tests to verify whether they were infected.

The full regional breakdown of Guyana’s active cases are as follows:

Region One: 14 cases

Region Two: 37 cases

Region Three: 32 cases

Region Four: 151 cases

Region Five: Four cases

Region Six: 16 cases

Region Seven: 53 cases

Region Eight: one case

Region Nine: eight cases

Region 10: 33 cases