While government has announced the removal of the COVID-19 restrictions, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony said employers could choose whether or not to keep their mask and vaccination policies.
The health minister said the decline in coronavirus cases globally is one of the reasons government has lifted the public health measures. He said however, that the health ministry will continue to monitor Guyana’s active cases.
“If people want to continue wearing their masks they should, if work places want to keep masking, if work places would want to have a vaccination policy in place, they should. So, we’re not telling people don’t have these things…but every institution would have to decide what are the procedures it would like to embrace,” the minister said.
He reiterated the importance of getting inoculated with both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine as well as a booster shot, as it is necessary to prevent the severe form of the disease and the emergence of new variants.
“We don’t have zero cases in Guyana, we still have cases…however one of the good things has been that we’re not seeing as many cases as we were let’s say in January,” he said.
Minister Anthony noted that if there is a future spike in cases, the relevant precautions would be reinstituted to keep citizens safe.
“If we notice that things [positive cases] are going up then obviously we’ll have to take the relevant precautions so this would take the form of both public health measures and other measures that are necessary,” the health minister noted.
Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Mohabir Anil Nandlall, S.C said Monday that the amended guidelines of the public health measures were the first step towards Guyana regaining normalcy.
A number of countries, including those in North America and Europe have already made drastic moves to reopen their countries.