COVID-19 restrictions to be lifted next week -President Ali announces

After two years of battling the COVID-19 pandemic and with the number of active cases now below 200, the Government of Guyana has decided to move in the direction of ending all of the COVID-19 protocols next week.

In a brief interview with News Source on Sunday, President Ali said the move is in keeping with all that is being done globally.

“It’s in keeping with our proactive and progressive way in which we have dealt with this issue and if you look globally, everybody is moving to rely on public health education and responsibility and moving in a direction where the society has to start living”, the President said.

Guyana’s vaccination programme against COVID-19 has been doing well with 85% of the country receiving the first dose of one of the COVID-19 vaccines while 65% of the country is now fully vaccinated.

The President said although restrictions will be lifted, the National COVID-19 Task Force will continue to work. He said the Task Force will focus its attention on a heavy vaccination campaign and will continue to ecourage safety measures.

The President also said the private sector and civil society will be working closer with the Task Force to continue educating the public about the virus and vaccination.

Last Friday marked two years since COVID-19 was first detected in Guyana and the country recorded its first death. Since then, the country has recorded 1,224 deaths and over 63,000 cases.

The deadliest month for the pandemic in Guyana was September 2021 when 173 persons lost their lives to the virus.

The month with the highest number of new cases was this past January when a whopping 20,536 new cases were recorded.

But the number of new cases and deaths has been declining over the past month forcing the relaxation of some of the national restrictions that have been in place for the past two years.