Contagion has already spread to 23 districts

by SURESH PERERA

With the number of Covid-19 patients in Sri Lanka fast approaching the 10,000 mark, the country is on the verge of a critical pandemic situation, a top medical official warned.

“The danger is that countries which had reached 10,000 in terms of corona virus infected persons, had seen the figures doubling in no time”, says Dr. Jayaruwan Bandara, Deputy Director of the Medical Research Institute (MRI).

He said that many countries, which topped 10,000 Covid-19 cases, experienced an unprecedented leap thereafter with figures of patients swiftly zooming to 20,000 plus in an alarming upward trajectory.

“We have to make a concerted effort to tackle the transmission of the virus and keep the emergence of new infections at bay in a bid to overcome the health crisis”, he stressed.

Dr. Bandara said the deadly infection has already spread to 23 districts in Sri Lanka but there’s every possibility that it may have crept into the other two districts as well and remain undetected.

The government has set out a series of public health guidelines to prevent the spread of the virus, and it is important to keep in mind that strict adherence to the preventive measures will help in a big way to bring the situation under control, Dr. Bandara emphasized.

“We are doing our part, and it is in the hands of the people to prevent the virus from spreading any further through responsible behavior in the face of a grave crisis”, he continued.

The elderly should take additional precautions as the infection could prove fatal, particularly to those with underlying diseases, he cautioned.

“Hypothetically, if there are 500 positive cases in every 1,000 people we screen, there will be 1,500 patients for every 3,000. One can imagine how frightening such a scenario will turn out to be”, he elaborated.

Asked about reports on the delay in PCR reports reaching patients, Dr. Bandara said there have been complaints that some reports take as many as four to five days to be released.

“Earlier, we used to issue PCR reports within 12 hours but with the surge in the number of infected patients, there is a delay”, he said.

Asked whether a PCR screening system break down has led to the accumulation of more than 10,000 reports, he said he was not aware of it but with numbers spiraling there was cause for delays.

On whether the corona viral strain that infected people in the Minuwangoda and Peliyagoda fish market second wave had a heavier load, he replied, “Yes, the strain is stronger than the previous eruption”.

Asked whether the health authorities have “lost control over tackling the contagion”, as claimed in some quarters, the Health Ministry’s Director of the Epidemiology Unit, Dr. Sudath Samaraweera, countered “if we have lost control, we will say so”.

When asked for his thoughts on the gravity of the Covid-19 situation in the country, he said: ‘Don’t bother me. I can’t be talking to the media saying the same thing all the time. I have work to do”.

“What some of these people should realize is that the support of the media is imperative in this hour of need to create greater public awareness”, a senior medical official said.

With the virus going haywire, health officials may be under tremendous pressure, but being hostile to the media is simply counter-productive in a crisis situation, he added.

“After all, the media is not to be blamed for the mess up”.