No country in the world except Sri Lanka sent medicine to homes of all who got themselves registered in a clinic at any state hospital. No country in the world except Sri Lanka has `quarantine centres’. Today Sri Lanka stands in this highly successful position in the world in controlling COVID-19 due to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s scientific approach towards the issue and taking key serious decisions before other countries in the world taking such decisions, Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi said.
According to Minister Wanniarachchi, because of the timely and scientific decisions taken by Sri Lanka, the number of COVID-19 patients increased in Sri Lanka by one, four, ten or twelve during a period of five or six weeks while other countries in the world showed drastic and rapid increases by hundreds and thousands of COVID-19 positive patients within few days. Sri Lanka can get rid of COVID-19 if the country can hang on in this tight situation for some more time. By April 19th or 20th all possible COVID-19 patients in Sri Lanka will appear and the people who had it without any symptoms or with mild symptoms will be completely recovered. All what we, Sri Lankans need to do is stay at home without going out for some more time. Then the country can be saved from COVID-19.
Minister Wanniarachchi pointed out that Sri Lankan health authorities very seriously considered the 15 percent possibility of contracting COVID-19 by health staff after observing the rest of the countries in the world and made sure that those shortcomings do not take place in Sri Lanka. That is how the safety of health staffs ensured. The only responsibility of all patients is telling the truth to the health staff. Any Sri Lankan or a foreigner now in Sri Lanka gets flu like symptoms such as fever, headache, cough, sneezing etc all what they need to do is calling 1390 or 1999 and obtain instructions. Then they should follow the instructions given to them. The instructions are given over the telephone by well qualified team of doctors.
Minister Wanniarachchi stressed that Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is provided to all required health staff. All required medical facilities, including ICUs, human resources, 30 state hospitals etc to treat 2000 or more COVID-19 patients are now ready but Sri Lanka will stop long before reaching that number if all people cooperate and stay at home for the rest of the required period following instructions given by the Government.
It was Sri Lanka and India (Pune) which had the PCR test, the Gold Standard for testing COVID-19 in the region in the beginning. The PCR test can detect a COVID-19 positive patient earlier than other tests. At the moment the PCR test can be conducted at11 locations in Sri Lanka and this number is to be increased up to 15 shortly. All required human resources such as virologists and microbiologists will be supplied to do PCR tests. This PCR test will be done for all required individuals in Sri Lanka. When N95 masks are not available for health staffs anywhere in the world, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa got them down to Sri Lanka, she said.
All three (3) contact circles of all COVID-19 patients had been traced successfully with the assistance of the Armed Forces. Sri Lanka has this number of COVID-19 patients at the moment because some individuals did not follow the instructions given by the Government, violated all rules and regulations and lied to health staffs, she said.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa takes decisions in connection with imposing and lifting curfew after obtaining a report from the Epidemiology Unit and consulting all the other experts in all relevant sectors. Sri Lanka is in this very satisfactory position because of his scaientific approach to handle COVID-19 giving due place to health professionals, she said.Sri Lanka carry out quarantine process in the best way possible and no other country in the world does it successfully like Sri Lanka. It was the army which made it a reality in few days by working hard. No individual put with another in Sri Lankan quarantine centres. Only Sri Lanka is very successfully doing it, she said.
The Minister pointed out that only four COVID-19 patients did not tell the truth because some of them were drug addicts. All the contacts of all COVID-19 patients had been traced with the assistance of Armed Forces and health staff especially PHIs and properly quarantined. So far only individuals returned from foreign countries, their family members and their contacts got infected with COVID-19. It was due to the hard work done by the Government.
The country should walk forward slowly for another six (6) months to go back to the full speed as before. The National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID), Medical Research Institute (MRI) etc will be developed in order to face similar situations that can arise in future, she said.
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