Cases of the novel coronavirus have significantly dropped since the spike earlier this year due to the Omicron variant.
With fewer new infections and lesser hospitalisations being recorded, the Guyana Government had removed majority of the restrictions that were put in place to protect the population against the spread of the virus. These included the removal of the mandatory mask-wearing policy and vaccination requirements.
This is the path taken by many countries around the world. However, Covid-19 cases are surging again in many jurisdictions such as the United States and Europe, owing to the BA.2 variant – a sublineage the Omicron variant.
Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony has already contended that it is only a matter of time before Guyana is hit by this new wave of infections and as such, he is encouraging citizens to be prepared by ensuring their immunity levels are high.
“Around the world, they had similar things, they had a wave of BA.1 and now in some parts of the world, they’ve gone into a wave of BA.2…so I think eventually, we are going to see BA.2 coming to Guyana because, we’re so interconnected,” Dr Anthony explained.
“BA.2 might be slightly more transmissible [but] the clinical outcome does not differ from BA.1 so we can expect a milder version in most cases where the clinical presentation would be more of an upper respiratory track-type of infection.”
“Now, if people are vaccinated and boosted, then, they would have a milder form of the disease, especially those persons who are older and who would have various comorbidities…I think for them, its very important that you get boosted,” he added.
To date, 438,714 persons or 85.5% of the adult population have received a first dose of a Covid vaccine while 337,660 or 65.8% are inoculated with two doses.
For the 12 to 17 age category, 34,358 or 47.1% are fully vaccinated while 25,094 or 34.4% received two jabs.
Booster doses stand at 59,585.
“If these numbers remain as low as it is, and we have a BA.2 wave, then I think a lot of older people and people with comorbidities can actually get sick,” Dr Anthony emphasised, lamenting that a lot of people are “complacent”.
Based on available data of transmission, severity, reinfection, diagnostics, therapeutics and impacts of vaccines, a WHO team reinforced in February 2022 that the BA.2 sublineage should continue to be considered a variant of concern and that it should remain classified as Omicron. The group emphasised that BA.2 should continue to be monitored as a distinct sublineage of Omicron by public health authorities.
In fact, BA.2 has doubled in prevalence over the past two weeks in the US and now represents more than 34% of Covid-19 infections that have undergone genetic sequencing, according to data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week.
Though BA.2 is rising in the US, leading public health officials in that country are not expecting another dramatic surge in cases, largely due to the level of immunity the population has from vaccination and the fierce outbreak during the winter Omicron wave.
“The bottom line is we’ll likely see an uptick in cases, as we’ve seen in the European countries, particularly the U.K.,” White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci had said.
BA.2 now represents about 44% of all positive cases in London as of March 10, according to the UK Health Security Agency.
Guyana’s Health Minister had previously assured that the government has not dismantled any of its systems and therefore, if/when the new surge hits, the country will be prepared.
“We haven’t dismantled our systems…hospital beds, ICU beds, we have them across the region. So, if people need hospitalisation, the systems are there to take care of them and we still have our testing capacity…so the systems are all in place, we haven’t dismantled them,” he had pointed out.
