COVID-19 has claimed the lives of 10 children in Guyana since the country confirmed its first imported case back in March 2020, says Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony.
The minister provided details about eight of those fatalities. “Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve had 10 children who died of COVID-19. So, we’ve had seven males [and] three females. In terms of age, we’ve had three children who are less than one year old, we had a four-year-old, a five-year-old, an 11-year-old, a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old,” the Minister said.
He said that most of the children developed breathing problems trigged by “COVID pneumonia” before passing. He added that a majority of the children suffered from underlying medical conditions that were amped up by the COVID-19 virus, resulting in rapid deterioration.
“Many of them have these conditions for a while and when they got infected with COVID, it accelerated these conditions, resulting in them dying,” he said.
Between March 2020 and November 21, 2021, more than 4,700 children tested positive for COVID-19.
Dr Anthony is appealing to parents and guardians to ensure that their children get vaccinated as Guyana intensifies its adolescent vaccination campaign, with hopes of extending the process to include children from five to 11 years. Just recently, a European regulator greenlighted the Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for this age category. Rollout targeting this age group commenced more than a month ago in the United States with close to a million children vaccinated within the first week.
