Negative RT-PCR report required for traveling to Guyana

The negative report of the Reverse Transcriptase-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) Test has been still mandatory for every traveller before entering the Caribbean region. The statement has been given by the Guyanese government. While supporting the statement, they said that the requirements had been made mandatory to mitigate the effect of the COVID-19 virus in the region.

Dr Frank Anthony, Health Minister of Guyana, said that the other nations have been accepting the TR-LAMP testing technique’s report. The Guyana government’s protocols would be remaining the same.

Dr Frank Anthony, Health Minister of Guyana, said that first of all, he didn’t know that how widespread that technique was in terms of testing, but RT-LAMP basically means reverse transcriptase loop-mediated isothermal amplification, what that really means was the technique used for the testing had been varied slightly. What that really does, when they use the word isothermal, which means that it was running the amplification at a fixed temperature, that was 65 degrees Celsius, which differs from what they did with PCR, where they had a variable temperature.

Dr Anthony said that the new testing technique for COVID-19 has been relatively new, and it had not yet been used widely. He also noted that most countries had already built their capacities to perform PCR tests, and the RT-LAMP technique might need to show major changes for Guyana to adopt that.

Dr Frank Anthony, Health Minister of Guyana, said that they had all the equipment to perform PCR, and while that has supposed to be a simplification unless the cost has been going to be significantly less, meaning equipment and reagents, he didn’t see a lot of countries converting to PCR. So right now, as far as he was aware, there was minimal use of that. Some countries might prefer that, but what was the standard protocol that had been adopted by most countries in the world was to use the RT-PCR, which most countries then had the capability of doing, which had general accessibility, and that’s what they were using.

Dr Anthony said that till Monday evening, 232,599 persons had taken their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, expressing 47.8 per cent of the country’s adult population.

He said that expected 107, 421 Guyana’s people have been fully vaccinated, showing 22.1 per cent of the country’s adult people.