HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Guam’s Covid-19 community and travel protocols remain unchanged over the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, which appears to be making more young children sick compared to the previous variants, based on initial information, Department of Public Health and Social Services officials said.
The United States on Wednesday confirmed its first Omicron case in a passenger who arrived in California on Nov. 22.
Guam has no capacity to determine the different variants already on the island.
On Monday, Guam sent 73 new specimens to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for genome sequencing to identify the variants already present on the island, just weeks after the island emerged from a surge caused by the highly virulent delta variant.
Chief public health officer Chima Mbakwem spoke Thursday during a DPHSS Covid-19 briefing about the new batch of specimens sent to the CDC. The department still was waiting for the results of the genome sequencing on the samples it sent to the CDC in October, he said.
Studies and testing on the Omicron variant are ongoing, according to Dr. Robert Leon Guerrero, interim chief medical officer for DPHSS, and DPHSS territorial epidemiologist Ann Pobutsky.
But Leon Guerrero and Pobutsky said there’s cause for concern about the new variant, including it being highly transmissible.
“There’s still a lot of studying ongoing but there are some hints out in South Africa anyway. There’s increased risk of hospitalizations in children with this new variant,” Leon Guerrero said. “Whether that pans out to Europe or whether it pans out to the U.S. and/or Guam, we don’t know yet, but it is concerning that it seems to be making more children hospitalized, so more sick than the previous variants.”
This was based on preliminary information about a high number of hospital admissions of infants under 2 years old from an area in South Africa hit by the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.
To date, only children 5 and older can be vaccinated against the virus that causes Covid-19.
The best Guam residents can do at this point to protect themselves is to continue to wear masks, wash their hands properly, watch their distance, stay home when sick, and get fully vaccinated and receive booster shots, Leon Guerrero and other DPHSS officials said.
Stricter rules
The Biden administration is expected to announce stricter travel requirements to stave off the spread of the Omicron variant.
Mbakwem said in the event the White House or the CDC recommends stricter testing rules for all travelers, Guam will implement them as well, but with the option of tailoring them to the island’s situation.
Among the White House plans is a requirement for everyone entering the U.S. to be tested one day before boarding a flight, regardless of vaccination status or country of departure.
Another is requiring all travelers be retested within three to five days of arrival.
Guam follows CDC recommendations, health officials have said. Right now, fully vaccinated international travelers to Guam are required to show proof of a negative PCR test result collected no more than three days prior to departure, or a valid negative antigen test result collected a day prior to boarding a flight to Guam.
Unvaccinated travelers go through the same rules, and are required to undergo quarantine at a government facility.
Most deaths among unvaccinated
Pobutsky said, in 2021, only 15% of 140 deaths occurred among those who were fully vaccinated.
In the past three weeks, all Covid-19-related deaths were among unvaccinated patients, she said. The death toll since March 2020 is 266.
Pobutsky also said case rates among the unvaccinated are close to three times higher than among the vaccinated.
She noted a small increase in case rates among the unvaccinated.
DPHSS officials said it would take more time to see whether the Thanksgiving holiday resulted in any clusters of cases.
300,000 tests
DPHSS research and technical systems analyst Vince Campo reported that Guam cumulatively has conducted 300,000 Covid-19 diagnostic tests.
Nearly 84% of those tests were molecular tests, such as the Abbott ID NOW, and the rest are antigen tests, such as the Abbott BinaxNOW, DPHSS said.
Guam’s positivity rate continues to fall, DPHSS said, and is now at 2.5% of all tests.
Moreover, Guam’s Covid-19 positive test result numbers have fallen to less than 20 a day, on average, and the Covid Area Risk Score is less than 1. It was 0.5 as of Thursday.
The number of Covid-19 patients hospitalized was down to 11 on Thursday. DPHSS also reported 125,695 residents being fully vaccinated.
Jason Flory of Barrigada and his wife Jennifer Flory, not pictured, got their vaccine shots at the Barrigada mayor’s office on Thursday.
