FIGHTING COMMUNITY TRANSMISSION IN THE DARK

Last week, health authorities conceded that Sri Lanka has reached the community transmission level of the covid-19 pandemic.

- Ranga Jayasuriya

According to the four-level alert system adopted by the Health Ministry, a country is at Alert Level 3 (community transmission level) when several clusters are reported across different districts. That is an escalation from Level 2 when there is only one cluster. And during the Level 4, the final level, cases appear with no connection to any cluster. Activities permitted in the country are subjected to the alert level

This is still a rather generalised gauge of the virus spread. To provide more clarity on the community transmission level and its intensity, the World Health Organization recently provided an update of the transmission classification. Accordingly, the community transmission (CT) classification is divided into four levels, from low incidence (CT1) to very high incidence (CT4). Based on this, local health experts have observed that Sri Lanka is in fact in the level three of community transmission (CT3), defined as high incidence of locally acquired widely dispersed cases in the past 14 days.

During the last six weeks, since the discovery of the first confirmed case of the second wave in Minuwangoda on October 1, new infections have surpassed 15,000. The total number of cases stood at 15,723, yesterday noon, a nearly fivefold increase from the number at the beginning of October.