CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

The pro­to­cols for en­try in­to Guyana are less strict than Trinidad and To­ba­go, al­though that coun­try has opt­ed to open its bor­ders.

On Oc­to­ber 12th, the South Amer­i­can coun­try re­moved re­stric­tions on in­ter­na­tion­al flights com­ing in, as op­posed to T&T whose bor­ders re­main closed for the most part—on­ly cit­i­zens on char­tered flights with ex­emp­tions are be­ing grant­ed ac­cess.

An­oth­er area where both coun­tries dif­fer is that of quar­an­tine.

As it stands right now, any­one fly­ing in­to Guyana must have a neg­a­tive COVID-19 PCR (Poly­merase Chain Re­ac­tion) test re­sult no old­er than 72 hours.

Once that is achieved, full ac­cess will be grant­ed.

If the neg­a­tive test re­sult is be­yond the stip­u­lat­ed time, then a fur­ther test will be con­duct­ed at the air­port but the per­son will be al­lowed to go to their des­ti­na­tion to quar­an­tine un­til a re­sult is re­ceived 6 to 8 hours lat­er.

"Once you are neg­a­tive you are then al­lowed to go about your busi­ness," Guyana Health Min­is­ter Dr Frank An­tho­ny said on CNC3's The Morn­ing Brew on Mon­day.

In T&T coun­try, any­one re­turn­ing home must be tak­en to State quar­an­tine for 14 days.

There are some sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween this coun­try and Guyana, how­ev­er, when it comes to the eco­nom­ic ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic.

Dr An­tho­ny says as the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor re­mains closed, quite a num­ber of jobs have been lost.

"We have been work­ing with the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor to look at ways in which they can open but ef­fec­tive­ly, most of the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor is closed."

He said these par­tic­u­lar ar­eas can be sites for su­per-spread­ers.

Dr An­tho­ny said the gov­ern­ment has been try­ing to strike a bal­ance be­tween pub­lic health mea­sures and eco­nom­ic mea­sures and this is why the cur­few time was ad­just­ed to 9 pm to 4 am.

He said the Guyana Gov­ern­ment al­so has been run­ning sev­er­al cam­paigns to ed­u­cate the pop­u­la­tion on the im­por­tance of get­ting test­ed, obey­ing health reg­u­la­tions as well as wear­ing masks.

Guyana cur­rent­ly has 600 ac­tive cas­es and the death tal­ly stands at 109 per­sons.