Assuring the inhabitants of Guyana of "the full mobilization of the State" against the galloping epidemic of Covid-19, it is the mission of the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, who arrived Sunday July 12 in this French territory of South America whose hospitals are under great strain.

For his first trip to Overseas since his appointment to Matignon, Jean Castex should focus on the health issue of this territory of 300,000 inhabitants, in the midst of the ascending phase of the Covid-19 epidemic and where hospitals are in strong tension.

Accompanied by the Minister of Overseas, Sébastien Lecornu, and the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, he landed, protective mask on the face, on the Matoury air base, AFP noted. The medical resuscitation module for operations was presented to them on board an Airbus A400M military transport aircraft.

# COVID19
ℹ📝 CovidInfo of July 11

➡️ 245 positive cases out of 1188 tests carried out.

ℹ 3 deaths to be deplored at @ CHCayenne973.

📍174 Cayenne Island
📍1 Grand-Santi
📍16 kourou
📍22 Macouria
📍5 Mana
📍3 Montsinéry
📍1 SGO
📍23 SLM

Strength and courage to loved ones and caregivers. pic.twitter.com/J3C2mWwO9H

- ARS GUYANE (@ars_guyane) July 11, 2020

He will go to Cayenne to the interdepartmental crisis center which has just been installed, under the orders of the crisis director, Patrice Latron, who arrived Thursday from Paris. He must also meet hospital and elected staff. Then he will go to the Cayenne hospital and the Pasteur Institute.

Guyana, still under a health emergency like Mayotte, had 5,949 confirmed cases of Covid-19 on Saturday - including 130 hospitalizations and 23 intensive care patients - and 26 deaths. The peak of the epidemic is expected in the second half of July.

The head of government intends to note that "the Republic is united and united and that it in no way abandons Guyana", he declared in an interview with the newspaper France-Guyane.

"I come [...] with the desire to prepare France for a possible second wave [but] by preserving economic life, social life", warned Jean Castex on Wednesday.

Proximity to Brazil

The epidemic has increased sharply in Guyana since the deconfinement, while the territory had been relatively spared when the metropolis was faced with the full expansion of the virus. Guyana was confined on March 16 to stage 1 of the epidemic, counting less than 10 cases.

But since May, due in particular to the proximity of Guyana to neighboring Brazil, which has been badly affected, the virus has been harming the already fragile health system. The three hospitals in the area - the Cayenne, Kourou and West Guyanese hospitals in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni -, already mobilized for patients victims of leptospirosis or dengue fever, started the weekend last their white plans.

The former overseas minister, Annick Girardin, who came at the end of June with health reinforcements, had launched a call for national solidarity to bring in more carers, estimating that a total of 300 additional reinforcements were needed to allow increase the number of intensive care beds, very low (around thirty in Cayenne currently).

More than a hundred members of the health reserve are already on site and, on Friday, 22 soldiers from the health service of the armies and health equipment arrived to support the Center hospitalier de l'Ouest guyanais (CHOG) in Saint -Laurent du Maroni.

A civil security field hospital has also been set up at the Cayenne hospital center to receive "non-Covid" patients.

Health evacuations

Population and elected officials regularly claim the arrival of the military field hospital which was already mobilized in Mulhouse as well as in Mayotte during the crisis and which has resuscitation beds. Impossible according to the Minister of Health, because it is a structure "which takes a long time to be dismantled, transported and reassembled".

Several medical evacuations of patients have been carried out to Guadeloupe and Martinique, but the lack of places in West Indian hospitals are starting to be felt, said the director of the Regional Health Agency (ARS), Clara de Bort.

To curb the epidemic, targeted reconfinement measures in certain districts or communes have been put in place, and a curfew is in force.

The Prime Minister is notably expected by the Mayouri Santé Guyane collective, made up of the main militant and political forces behind the great social movement of 2017, which calls for additional measures and means against the epidemic, and in particular a greater number of tests.

"There are structural difficulties which I intend to tackle", such as "Guyanese access to public services and healthcare or to the capacity of the local economy to generate employment and prospects, "said the Matignon tenant in France-Guyana.

With AFP

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