Guyanese Online

 Oct 06, 2020  Features / Columnists, By: Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – Ninety-eight (98) new coronavirus cases were recorded yesterday. Based on the global average at least three of these persons will die. (There have been 95 deaths to date; 74 of them since August 1, 2020)
The deaths are going to pile up. With more cases, there are bound to be more deaths. Exponential spread is taking place and this means that there are thousands out there who are infected.

The situation is far direr than the present number of recorded active cases show. For every one person who shows symptoms, there is another who is asymptomatic and spreading the disease.           

Some persons are worried about the reopening of the economy. Given the measures that are being put in place, the reopening is less risky than the present community spread.

The elderly and those with underlying health issues such as hypertension, diabetes coronary disease, HIV, cancers and tuberculosis are at high risk and should be treated as the vulnerable population.

But apart from the elderly in care homes, there is nothing in place to protect the vulnerable. The government wants to keep the economy open because it fears that a lockdown will be more disastrous than keeping the economy open. But if this is the thinking of the government, the least it can do is implement measures which would allow for persons who are above the age of 45 (rather than 60) to work from home or to be on rotation or not to work at all and be paid for not working.

The top corporations in Guyana should begin to ask those members of their staffs who are above the age of 45 and who can work from home, to do so. This will send a signal to the rest of the society – especially the government – that they should follow suit.

The second high-risk group are institutionalized persons. This includes persons in prisons, hospitals as well as those persons whose duties require them to be in barracks such as police and the army.

If the high-risk group is those over 45 years of age and those who are institutionalized, then measures have to be put in place to protect them. This is the only way in which the deaths can be lowered outside of a vaccine.

A vaccine is not going to come to our rescue until the next five months. In fact, even in the United States, hopes are fading that a vaccine is going to be made available until after December.

Many more will die before the vaccine gets here. It has been reported that Guyana is going to be part of vaccine trials. But not many Guyanese are going to volunteer for these trials. If they do some here, people will have to be circumspect in light of the fact that once you are vaccinated you are expected to expose yourself to infection so that the authorities can test whether antibodies are being produced.

It was always going to be difficult to order a lockdown. The economy was in a partial lockdown for far too long and it did not smother the virus’ spread. As such, once the economy began to be opened – and this happened even before the authorities announced their phased re-opening plan, it was always going to be difficult to close it down.

The reopening of the economy has caused problems not just in Guyana but in Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. The number of cases and number of deaths, in these countries have climbed steeply since they began to reopen the economy.

Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, at one stage, had just about half the number of deaths as Guyana even though at that time they had far more cases. Jamaica now has more than 7,000 cases and 120 deaths. Trinidad and Tobago now has 81 deaths from 4,766 cases and Suriname has almost 5,000 cases and 106 deaths.

Guyana’s death rate (total cases/total deaths) is still far higher than all three of these countries. This shows that greater attention has to be paid to treatment.
The coronavirus is exposing how widespread is the incidence of non-communicable diseases. Thousands of persons in Guyana are walking around with underlying conditions and the sad part is that many of them do not know. They are at high risk.

The time has come for the public to put their health ahead of the economy. It is a difficult choice but the government is not going to tighten any social restrictions. Thus, the people will have to take precautions on their own.

It has been weeks now and still the government is not yet up to 300 tests per day when what is needed is more than 1,000 tests per day. It is hard to understand why this problem with the testing cannot yet be remedied.

And if you cannot remedy such a small problem, how are you going to remedy the exponential spread of the virus which is now ravaging the country. The elderly are dying and the young are also dying.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Kaieteur News newspaper.)