SL has brought pandemic under control: Health Services Chief

By Sandun A Jayasekera

Despite the number of Covid-19 deaths surging to nine after 26 days with yesterday’s death of a 52-year-old woman from Modara in Colombo, Sri Lanka remains one of the frontline countries in the world that has  brought the pandemic under control, Director General Health Services (DGHS) Dr. Anil Jasinghe said.   

He said yesterday that the death ratio in Sri Lanka was around 1% of patients but in most developed and rich countries like the US, UK, Italy, Spain, France and Korea it was alarmingly 13% or more.   

Commenting on the detection of 31 more naval ratings who are on vacation and two others bringing the total number of new infections to 33 on Monday night, Dr. Jasinghe said they have been detected as the Health Ministry had fast tracked PCR tests to nearly 2,000 per day.   
“Out of 33 new detections on Monday night 31 are from the Welisara Naval detachment and two others - a 13 year old boy and a 70 year old woman who have closely associated with the infected navy men,” he said.   
Dr. Jasinghe said Covid-19 patients in Sri Lanka fortunately did not have serious complications in the lung, heart, respiratory tract or in other organs like in many other countries and that has contributed for their fast recovery and low death ratio.   

• 20 more Covid-19 detections were made yesterday taking the total up to 771 infections

Commenting on the woman who succumbed to the viral infection at the Homagama District Hospital on Monday night, Dr. Jasinghe said she was a kidney patient and a relative of an infected Naval rating.   
The cremation of the victim woman was performed under health guidelines and World Health Organisation (WHO) safety regulations at the Kotikawatta crematorium late on Monday night.   

Meanwhile, 20 more Covid-19 detections were made yesterday taking the total up to 771 infections.   
Consultant Physician of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID), Dr. Eranga Narangoda said 8 Covid-19 patients were released yesterday from the NIID after full recovery bringing the number of patients fully recovered to 213 and the total number of confirmed hospitalizations to 523.   

Two patients were admitted to the NIID yesterday while the NIID had its full capacity of 148. There were no other patients at the ICU of the NIID, he added.