Despite several Covid-19 outbreak scares and the rapidly snowballing new wave, the Ministry of Health has not ordered a single ventilator since the first local patient was detected in Sri Lanka on 11 March 2020, The Sunday Morning reported.
This was revealed to The Sunday Morning by a senior medical official attached to the Ministry of Health, who wished to remain anonymous, who added that the number of ventilators available in the country were not adequate to handle a spike in critical patients.
“We have only 630 ICU beds in the country for a population of around 23 million. And only 146 beds have been allocated for Covid management. This is a pathetic situation. No one’s questioning why the Ministry failed to order a few more, at least another 400 ventilators. We don’t have additional ventilators even available,” the senior official stressed.