Former Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka has highlighted the need for strict social distancing measures due to “the current explosion of the Delta variant” of the coronavirus in Sri Lanka.
Issuing a statement, the opposition MP said Sri Lanka has reached an explosion level of infection in the COVID 19 pandemic.
All our health institutions are overwhelmed and the deaths are mounting each day. The health care staff is also being affected with many falling ill and some making the ultimate sacrifice with their lives. The trends in our country are among the worse in the world. Our death rate per 1 million population has become the worst in the world this week.
It is clear that we could have prevented the current crisis. If not for the boorish, incompetent, and inconsiderate nature of those who run this government the spread of disease could have been well curtailed. In the above context, the death which occurs now should rather be considered murders instead of deaths due to disease, he said.
MP Champika Ranawaka further said this government was so quick to claim that it had “won” against the disease and it’s the “first” in the world to do so. However, it is now clear that the government had manipulated data and figures to paint a false picture while the disease was fast spreading in the community. In fact, the forecasting module of the world-famous IHME of Washington University has predicted that the average death per day by 19th August would be 107. However, the actual number (which the government announced) was 186 surpassing the predicted value by 78%. The forecast of the IHME is that a peak in the death curve will be reached by 22nd September with a minimum expected number of deaths being 127 and the maximum being 702 with an average of 350 death per day. Alarmingly, Sri Lanka is already ahead of the curve in relation to the number of deaths per day and if things continue at this rate, it could well surpass the IHME prediction.
Due to the exponential increase of patients and surmounting deaths, many experts have advocated imposing strict social restriction methods. There has never been a government so insensitive to the hardships and woes of the public as this government. It continues to ignore the call by the public and marches on. The general public has now resorted to take matters unto themselves and propose “self lock-downs”. Many Medical and professional organizations and civil movements now propose a “lock-down” to curtail the situation.
The consensus among the medical fraternity is clear. The need for strict social restrictions is based on scientific evidence. It is known that the virus has an incubation period of 3 to 14 days. Hence, a person who is infected can spread the disease to others for a period of at least 14 days. Therefore, any “lock-down” or strict social distancing measure should follow the virus cycle, which is periods of 14 days. The WHO group discussion on the situation of Sri Lanka recommended at least 4 weeks of strict social distancing akin to May 2021 to arrest the rapid spread of disease, he pointed out.
Stating that many countries in the world adopted “lock-down” methods to curtail the disease spread, he said, however, what they used was a swift lock-down and a systematic relaxation of regions one by one, and what we see in Sri Lanka is quite the opposite.
MP Patali Champika Ranawaka said “We urge the government to heed the call by the medical fraternity and the civil society. We also emphasize the need to protect and give due respect and gratitude to those brave men and women in health care service. There should be a mechanism to protect them and care for them when they fall ill.”
It is the responsibility of the government to look after the wellbeing of the public and especially those who are underprivileged during periods of lock-down. We urge the government to implement measures to protect the poor and helpless by reducing the prices of essential items by relieving tax, he added. (NewsWire)