The National COVID-19 Task Force (NCTF), the Ministry of Public Health and various other ministries and government agencies along with non-governmental organisations Monday evening held an emergency multi-stakeholder meeting on the alarming increase in confirmed COVID-19 cases in parts of Regions 1 and 7.
Decisions were taken to implement enhanced containment measures within the affected areas in these regions and these will be gazetted shortly.
The enhanced containment measures will include cease work orders for specific areas in the mining sector, screening, wider testing, checkpoints and other measures in several locations within regions 1 and 7. Specific details will be provided subsequently.
These measures are necessary and urgent by the medical experts so as to prevent the wider spread of COVID-19 in these two regions along with other regions.
The emergency meeting was chaired by Chairman of the NCTF, Moses Nagamootoo and attended by Khemraj Ramjattan and Sydney Allicock, Volda Lawrence, Raphael Trotman, Ronald Bulkan, Nicolette Henry, Pan-American Health Organisation-World Health Organisation (PAHO-WHO) Country Representative Dr. William Adu-Krow, UNICEF Country Representative Sylvie Fouet, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Shamdeo Persaud, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr. Karen Gordon-Boyle, multiple Permanent Secretaries and several technical and medical experts from the Ministry of Public Health, the Health Emergency Operations Centre and the Guyana Defence Force.
To date, the total number of confirmed cases recorded in Guyana is 205.
It is unclear how many COVID-19 cases have been detected in Regions 1 and 7 as the Ministry of Public Health has not been giving regular regional breakdowns of the positive cases.
In its update last night, it was only noted that of the 21 new cases announced, 18 are from Region One.
