(Village Voice) – At over 81 deaths, the month of September 2021 now holds Guyana’s second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths, marking a sharp and sudden change from the decrease noticed previously. Among them was a 5-month-old baby from Region One with suspected heart conditions who died on September 16.
The month with the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in Guyana’s history is May which ended with 98 deaths. However, with a little less than half of the month still to go, the number of deaths in September stood at 81 as of Friday, September 17, 2021.
The COVID-19 death toll was at 706 as of September 17. For the year thus far, the number of COVID-19 related deaths per month are as follows: January – 13; February – 20; March – 36; April – 66; May – 98; June – 80; July – 68; August – 78 and 81 as of September 17.
The first seven days of September saw a whopping 37 deaths. The next seven days resulted in 37 deaths as well while the next three, up to September 17, saw 7 deaths.
Meanwhile, for the first time in Guyana, 10 COVID-19 deaths were recorded on one day (September 10). Other high numbers included 8 deaths on September 1 and 7 deaths on September 5 and 12.
Coupled with this is the daily report of new cases that have all been above 100 per day. Altogether, there have been 1,290 new cases between September 12-17 with the highest number of new cases recorded last Tuesday at 299.
In a recent COVID-19 update, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony said that the Ministry of Health is putting in place a number of contingencies to deal with the rising positive cases and will activate these as it sees fit.
“The more people we get sick with COVID and the more people that are coming down with the more severe form of the disease, we’ll have to reprioritise and maybe non-essential kinds of services we’ll have to close those and re-deploy staff and resources to treat with the severe cases,”
Recently, it was noted that 13 pregnant women have contracted COVID-19 while 107 were at the COVID-19 Ocean View facility and 29 in the ICU as of Friday, September 17.
The high figures noted for September is contrasted with the Government’s vaccination policy which has seen over 341,000 being partially vaccinated and 176,000 fully vaccinated.
Over a period of five days, from September 13 to 17, the MOH has reported that two fully vaccinated persons, four partially vaccinated persons and 9 unvaccinated persons have died from COVID-19.
As of September 13, the MOH began providing information in its daily updates on whether persons who died from COVID-19 were vaccinated, unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.
The fully vaccinated persons who died were a 70-year-old woman from Region Four who the Ministry stated had a known history of comorbidities and a 79-year-old male from Region Four.
