Any fresh COVID wave in future could cause extensive harm to non-recipients of vaccines

There is a possibility of causing danger to people who had obtained only the first and second COVID vaccine doses, if another COVID wave emerges in the future.

Chief Epidemiologist Dr. Samitha Ginige today said that those people who are vulnerable to being hospitalized after infection may lose their lives due to more complications.

The clinical tests conducted across the country revealed that the people who received the booster vaccines are being prevented from getting infected, deaths and complications.

That is why the health ministry recommended people who are over 20 years old to receive the first booster vaccine from last November. 

Only eight million of the total of 14.4 million people who are over 20 have received booster vaccines.

The rest have not received the boosters as yet.  Therefore, there is a possibility of hospitalisation, complications and deaths among people who did not receive the booster vaccines, if a fresh wave of COVID strikes.

Globaly, there has been a gradual increase in the spread of the dreaded COVID-19 virus over the past couple of months in European, Asian and American countries.

Therefore, we should take proactive measures to control the situation. With the global situation, there was a considerable increase in the number of COVID positive cases in the country in the past ten days.

The number of positive cases reported has increased to 50 per day from the cases reported daily which was lesser than 20 in the past ten days.

There is a possibility of increasing the number of COVID deaths every time in line with the increase in detection of COVID positive cases. Therefore, it is a challenge to control the situation before it becomes worse. (Chaturanga Samarawickrama)