Is Sri Lanka Showing Symptoms Of A Third Wave?

Even though vaccination drives have begun to immunise healthcare workers against COVID-19, the general public is yet to receive their doses. While the World Health Organisation and Sri Lanka’s allies have promised to donate more vaccines when people would have access to these vaccine remains a doubt. On the other hand the number of positive cases are once again on the rise and the number of deaths too has been significant over the past few days. Although we have now learned that controlling a pandemic is no easy task, many wonder how the situation worsened from a properly controlled first wave at the onset of the pandemic last year.

- Kamanthi Wickramasinghe

MACHINE MALFUNCTIONS AND PANDEMIC MAFIA

“There has to be public and social measures to control COVID-19, but the Government doesn’t seem to be doing any of them as of late,” opined All Ceylon Medical Officers Association Secretary Dr. Jayantha Bandara. “One of the first steps is to have border control. PCR tests should be done on all passengers who arrive in the country and they should be sent in for a two weeks quarantine period. But this didn’t happen during the past few months and we saw how the Ukrainian tourists were touring the country. The second step is to do mass-scale PCR testing within the country. We have to accept the fact that we are now at the community transmission stage even though the Ministry of Health and the Epidemiology Unit keep on denying it. How can we do PCR testing when the machines are not functioning properly, we are short of reagent supply and laboratory facilities?,” he questioned.

“As per the Government statistics less than 1000 positive cases are being reported daily. But we do not know if these are actual figures. Even to do surveillance, we are lacking human and physical resources. Another concern is the ICU bed capacity. When positive cases are admitted to hospital they have to wait in line because the bed capacity is full. The government doesn’t seem to be having any plans to expand these facilities,” he added.