ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka’s Covid 19 death toll is on the rise and has increased to 16,535 with 12 deaths reported in July, a Health Ministry report showed.A World Health Organisation (WHO) report released on Wednesday showed there is a 22 percent increase in average number of COVID-19 cases reported in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka has withdrawn the mandatory rule of wearing mask on June 10 in the public and thousands of people are now compelled to travel in bus and trains because there is only a few public transport because of fuel shortage.

Health authorities said the average cases per day in the country has increased to around 15-20 cases since mid-July.

“There is no significant increase. Up till the recent past, the average cases reported were around 10 per day but there has been an increase in the average from 15 to 20 cases per day,” Deputy Director-General of Public Health Services Dr Hemantha Herath said.

Health officials are monitoring and taking precautionary measures to prevent the spreading of new COVID-19 clusters in Sri Lanka.Cases since July 11 are an accumulative 431, data from the Epidemiology Unit at the Ministry of Health showed.The number of inward and home based and waiting to be admitted cases have increased by 204 to 578

from a week earlier. Recoveries for this week has been a constant of three per day.Currently 703 patients are receiving medical treatment in health institutes and under home based care system while the total number of patients have increased to 664,704.International Health organizations are keep monitoring the changes of the virus and the new BA.5, a sub

variant of the highly contagious omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, that is reported be highly transmissible which originated in South Africa in February, is currently the dominant variant in the United States.

However, Sri Lanka has not detected the variant so far in the community.Sri Lanka is now offering the fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, which can be obtained at the nearest Medical Officer of Health (MOH) vaccination centre.

Though the 4th dose has not been made mandatory, it is recommended for everyone over the age of 20 and is highly recommended for citizens above the age of 60 and those above 20 with comorbidity.Out of the 22 million population, a 17.1 million have got vaccinated with the first dose while 14.5 million have got the second dose as well.However, booster has been obtained only by eight million so far and the fourth dose has been obtained by 13,959 only.