A total of 20 samples have been sent to the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) in Trinidad and Tobago for testing to determine which variants of the novel coronavirus have been circulating in Guyana.
Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony says results are expected in two to three weeks.
“As you know one of the things is to take samples from patients and we send them to confirm which variants are circulating in Guyana and over the weekend we would have sent 20 samples to CARPHA for confirmation.”
“So, we’ll expect the results of sequencing in perhaps two to three weeks now and once we get that, we’ll let you know what are the variants that are circulating,” Dr Anthony said.
Previous tests conducted on samples sent from Guyana has confirmed the presence of the Delta variant and while there is no official confirmation of the Omicron variant, health authorities are confident this strain is here.
“We are convinced that we’ve had in the in late December, January, February period, we would have seen a conversion from Delta to Omicron because of the clinical picture that we have seen over this period of time,” the Health Minister said.
To date, 428,716 or 83.6 per cent of the adult population have received a first dose of a Covid vaccine while 321,948 or 62.8 per cent have received two doses.
For the 12 to 17 age cohort, 33,129 or 45.4 per cent have received a first dose of the Pfizer vaccines, while 23,705 or 35.2 have received both doses.
In terms of booster doses, 46,217 persons have received their jabs.
