Daily News Editorial

COVID-19: Testing the key

Wednesday 01st, April 2020

If the symptoms of COVID-19 infection are similar to that of acute influenza, how do we know we are afflicted by the new, highly infectious disease? And, since the virus spreads rapidly from person to person, we will certainly need to know it fast enough to avoid infecting others.

Just as with all other diseases currently known and treated by the medical sciences, the diagnosis of COVID-19 is done by tests. Body samples are taken and analysed in laboratories and the result will indicate the nature of the infection.

The current challenge is to design testing systems that enable the quickest possible accurate diagnosis. After all, the earlier we know who and how many are COVID-19 positive, the quicker we can act to prevent them from infecting others. And, most importantly, the sooner the treatment of victims, the easier it is to prevent fatalities.

Medical scientists the world over, from the World Health Organisation (WHO) to our own medical scientific community, are unanimous in seeing testing as the core means of fighting the epidemic. In the long term, ultimately, it is hoped that a vaccine will be developed to prevent infection. Till then, it is prompt diagnosis that is the primary measure of preventing a contagion.

But this means test systems that are proactive rather than reactive. That is, rather than wait for symptoms to show sufficiently to suspect COVID-19 and then seek the test, there needs to be constant testing of people in different parts of the country – at public transit points, gathering places – to identify not only the number of infections but also the geographical spread. Such systematic testing will enable anticipation of directions of viral spread and the potential for increases of infections. At the same time, such proactive testing will ensure early diagnosis and thereby save lives.

The more convenient such testing is for the public, the easier it is to ensure the maximum public participation in testing. Simply put, there are broadly four stages in testing for a disease such as COVID-19.

Firstly, there is the stage of noting symptoms and engagement with the testing authorities. Secondly, there is the procedure for providing body fluid samples for analysis. Then, there is the analysis of the samples in a suitably equipped laboratory. The fourth stage would be the medical response to the diagnosis, either by treatment of the patient or by the discharge of the person because she/he is cleared of the disease. Sometimes, the cleared person may be subsequently monitored for a period just in case the infection arises later. Or, the person could be asked to under-go self-quarantine.

South Korea, which has had thousands of COVID-19 positive cases, is being held up as an example of a country that has taken swift and extensive steps to counter the spread of the infection. The success of South Korea is based on the most pragmatic measure of maximising the testing of the population so that those infected are identified as early as possible.

When COVID-19 initially hit Sri Lanka with that single case of a foreigner (who was successfully treated), the medical specialists here were quick to develop a test kit. It was one that could be used in a convenient interaction with potentially affected persons. However, to date the testing procedure currently in use throughout the world needs several hours for sample analysis at specialised laboratories, though at least one company has developed a five-minute test.

Even as it consolidates its early systematic handling of COVID-19, the Government is already moving on to the logical next stage in fighting any lethal and volatile contagion: proactive testing of people across the country. The medical specialist community is already busy developing test procedures designed for convenient public use on a mass scale.

It is not an easy task and certainly an expensive one given that it requires the urgent deployment of design systems, production mechanisms and rigorous ensuring of scientific quality standards.

The medical scientific community, which is broadly unanimous about the need for extensive and systematic testing of the population, is looking to the Government to facilitate the process at the earliest. They point out that the current success in responding to the contagion by slowing down the spread cannot be sustained in the long term unless the spread itself is anticipated comprehensively and stopped.

They point out that some level of mass sample testing at centres across the country will be the final means of containing the epidemic in a viable manner which reduces the greater costs of having to deal with any expansion. Our medical scientists and administrators are already known to be in close consultation with counterparts in South Korea and China as well as the WHO in this regard.

This is the moment for the business community, too, to contribute with design and innovation in cost effective medical engineering on the one hand and investment in mass production on the other.

The Island Editorial

Virus and food

Wednesday 1st April, 2020

Whoever would have thought a microorganism would put the brakes on the seemingly unstoppable process of globalisation? All countries have walled themselves off and are now hermit kingdoms, just like North Korea, to all intents and purposes. They are frantically guarding their national borders to protect themselves against COVID-19. This kind of hysterical response to the threat is not without a tinge of xenophobia, which is frowned on by the civilised world.

With the world now in the quarantine mode, as it were, speculation is rife that there could be a shortage of some agricultural commodities, in this country, owing to lockdowns in India, etc. Given the huge local demand for food items, in India, which has about 1.3 billion people, restrictions are bound to be imposed on its agricultural exports. There was a shortage of big onions, here, a few weeks ago, due to a poor crop yield, in India. So the possibility of a shortage of food items, imported from India as well as other coronavirus-hit countries, sooner or later, cannot be ruled out. We can only hope that such a situation won’t come to pass.

It has become patently clear from the present crisis and the attendant problems that the local food production has to be increased substantially. Fortunately, wholesalers usually maintain buffer stocks of imported food items, in March and April, to meet the Avurudu demand. Had the country been hit by coronavirus after the traditional New Year, panic buying would have caused a severe food shortage. It is hoped that action will be taken to replenish food stocks urgently.

The problem with lessons learnt from crises is that they are soon forgotten, as we have argued in a previous column. A world grain shortage, in the early 1970s, jolted Sri Lanka into increasing its local food production to face the resultant food crisis. The then SLFP-led United Front (UF) government swung into action with revolutionary zeal. The people were encouraged to grow their own food as far as possible, and home gardening became the order of the day. However, the government unnecessarily resorted to extreme action, which hurt the public, who grew resentful. It chose to ignore the people’s suffering, and the arrogance of power became its undoing. The country benefited immensely from the national cultivation drive, which would have lessened our heavy dependency on food imports. Unfortunately, it did not find favour with the UNP government, which came into power in 1977, and adopted economic liberalisation and promoted imports. If the momentum of the campaign to increase local food production had been maintained, during the last four decades or so, perhaps the country wouldn’t have been so desperate for food imports, today.

We have seen several much-advertised cultivation drives, over the years, but all of them, launched by Heads of State, at colourful ceremonies which cost Citizen Silva an arm and a leg, withered on the vine for want of state assistance afterwards, and we are where we are; even kurakkan (finger millet) is imported to meet a shortfall in the supply thereof. Cheap imports have taken their toll on the local food production due to the short-sighted policies of successive governments. There have been instances where rice was imported shortly before the commencement of the harvesting season, here, so as to bring down the prices of rice and, thereby, enable big-time millers to purchase paddy at extremely low prices and hoard it. This kind of exploitation has caused many farmers to give up paddy cultivation, unable to recover even the cost of production. In the early noughties, some political pundits advocated that paddy fields, in the Western Province, be filled up and factories built thereon because it was cheaper to import rice than to produce it here. They were also responsible for bankrupting Sathosa in a bid to privatise it and pocket kickbacks.

It may be possible to make use of the current situation to promote home gardening while action is taken to meet the immediate needs of the people.

Daily Mirror Editorial

If we did not have our rice stocks.....

April 01, 2020

Calamities and crises have the ability to add rationality and sanity to otherwise capricious human mind. They awaken men to the reality and that nothing else but life itself is the most precious thing in life. It’s not that posh car or the highflying top job or that much awaited cruise to Alaska. What you thought necessary all these years out of greed, is now redundant. Your social status or prestige hardly matters. Being alive and breathing is the most important thing in life. It’s simple healthy living with family that matters.

For centuries, if not millennia, right-thinking men took pains to drive this point home. However, the overambitious and the greedy stifled their voices and got the human race into a vicious cycle of instability and greed. The consumerist agenda urged people to fulfil their greed at any cost instead of managing them.

As Coronavirus or COVID-19 rages the world, the informed people are recalling the wise words by philosophers, academics, economists and others, which the human race have ignored all these years only to fall into the depths of misery.

There is a long list of thinkers. Among the many names that come to mind is E. F. Schumacher with his iconic book “The Small is Beautiful”. Published in 1973, the book by this German-born British economist went on to expose the fundamental flaws of the modern western civilization and its economies and urged the world to replace it by more self-sufficient, manageable systems, which have average man’s happiness in the forefront. Among his many proposals was a suggestion to the Buddhist countries to go with what he called ‘Buddhist Economics”, which he saw as the ideal model. Schumacher lamented that the Buddhist nations had started following the alien western model which is based on economic liberalization that had proven to be a massive failure, instead.

"Despite this pathetic state of affairs, some hundreds of thousands of determined farmers toiled on. Thanks to them today, though the country is locked down, still there is enough rice for a few more months"

“……therefore, production from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life, while dependence on imports from afar and the consequent need to produce for export to unknown and distant people is highly uneconomic and justifiable only in exceptional cases and on a small scale,” Schumacher argued in his book.

Nothing better could have been suggested to an island nation like Sri Lanka which realized the importance of food security belatedly. In fact it is in the process of figuring it during this phase of the coronavirus epidemic.

Till two weeks ago, for nearly four decades or so, political leaders happily imported rice citing the high cost of production here. Farmers were neglected and hundreds of thousands of paddy lands were abandoned due to poor patronage by consecutive regimes. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) continued to harp on the need for food security for governments here. But nothing worked.

Despite this pathetic state of affairs, some hundreds of thousands of determined farmers toiled on. Thanks to them today, though the country is locked down, still there is enough rice for a few more months. It is anybody’s guess as to what would have happened, had the remaining farmers too given up agriculture. With no ships coming, Sri Lanka would have been forced to starve!

It is high time the rulers realize their mandatory duty towards farmers. There is no other option left for us, but to be self-sufficient and if possible, make Sri Lanka the ‘Granary of the East’ once again.

Daily News Editorial

Maintaining law and order amid the health crisis

Tuesday 31, March 2020

As we enter the third week of lockdown in the whole country, we are keenly aware that the country’s police and security forces are proceeding with numerous regular duties in addition to the multiplicity of new tasks dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

After all, the enforcers of law and order must continue to deal with the entire set of normal crime, social violence and misbehaviour. Criminal investigations must proceed. Round-ups of narcotic dealers are done. All kinds of other misdemeanours by citizens must be dealt with – from domestic violence to smuggling to cybercrime.

Yesterday, Police sleuths probing last year’s Easter bombings announced their capture of a key suspect in that extremist terror attack – the main accomplice of the suicide bomber who attacked the Zion Church in Batticaloa city. With nearly a year passing since the Easter terror campaign, our police investigators can be seen to be doggedly pursuing the perpetrators without let up, whatever the other, momentous, national distractions.

Meanwhile, the Navy, earlier last week, announced the apprehension of a large stock of narcotics on board some fishing craft off the south Eastern coast. The smugglers were also caught.

At the same time, the national cyber network monitors have identified and warned the public regarding certain new computer software being offered on the Internet that are actually invasive malicious programmes aiming to invade computers, steal data and, sow a little digital mayhem for the benefit of a cyber criminal ring.

The nation must certainly appreciate the sheer hard work of our guardians of law and order and national security who must undertake all these routine tasks over and above the taxing new labours in response to the ongoing health crisis.

Tried and tested emergency response systems in the country are now in overdrive as they cope with a sudden, new, emergency that is of an entirely new nature and of an unprecedented scale.

At the same time, the continuous curfews across the island mean that, due to severe restrictions on social interactions and physical movement of people, there is less opportunity for certain types of crime, especially crime in the public sphere. Robberies are less, although it is likely that, as the curfew regime drags on, petty criminals will get tempted to venture out in less monitored neighbourhoods. While drug peddling on the street is not viable, that will still not completely deter illicit ‘delivery’ to addict customers.

The general public is, thus, challenged to both rigorously practice the social hygiene measures while, at the same time, remaining alert for other social threats in the form of not only petty crime and human misbehaviour, but also subversive activities by extremists whenever they arise.

These are indeed testing times and, while our various contingency response agencies are ultra busy, we must steadfastly maintain our own composure and step up to the challenge of patience in the face of new hardships and inconveniences. And we do this even as we grittily and rigorously practice those ‘must’ social hygiene requirements – washing hands and staying apart.

As our medical community (as well as the world’s medical authority, the WHO) now exhorts constantly, we must stay apart to stay alive – as individuals and as a society.

There is no doubt that little Sri Lanka, despite its relative poverty, has already done better than most of the rich countries in meeting the COVID-19 threat. This success has already been noted by global health monitoring agencies.

The Government, no doubt, still faces the challenge of providing more and more Novel Coronavirus test kits to test as much of the population as possible. Hopefully, we will get more outside help in this expensive exercise. China, Japan and South Korea have already stepped forward to help with generous gifts of this equipment. We must hope that our private sector will also contribute by helping make this equipment domestically.

As at yesterday evening, the death toll from COVID-19 had risen to two persons and the count of infected cases to 122. Nearly a dozen COVID-19 patients have successfully been treated and have completely recovered from the disease. While over two thousand ‘suspect’ cases remain in quarantine, and many more are likely to be added to that number as and when fresh infection cases are detected and their contact persons are identified and corralled for quarantine.

Amid all this, our police and Security Forces work to maintain the peace and law and order in order to provide us with the socially stable foundation to devote our energies to fight this potentially devastating biological menace. Ultimately, however, it is us, all Sri Lankans, who must make it work.

Given the untiring labours and sheer bravery of our healthcare community and security agencies, the citizenry must not betray that whole endeavour by a mediocre laxity in doing its part to defeat COVID-19.

Daily Mirror Editorial

COVID-19, vulnerability and false certainties

On March 3, 2020, coronavirus or COVID-19 made its first appearance in Sri Lanka when a foreign national tested coronavirus positive. However, despite the country’s state of unpreparedness to face what was to become a world-wide pandemic, local doctors were able to save the patient’s life and she was able to leave the country.

Sadly, a few of the people whom she had interacted with, were soon found to be coronavirus positive. Our people almost and immediately went into panic mode, with questions being raised as to why the government was not blocking the entry of foreigners into the country.

Today, around three weeks after that unfortunate day, the day-to-day life in the country has radically changed. For the past two weeks, our country has been placed in virtual lockdown, a country-wide curfew has been imposed. But pharmacies and supermarkets were permitted to function. Unfortunately, as is common in our country, a few selfish persons abused the privilege and today only the state-owned pharmacy, the Osu Sala is permitted to remain open on a daily basis. Supermarkets too have been ordered close down except on particular days, resulting in further burden being imposed on the populace.

According to statistics, around 25% of our people receive Samurdhi benefits and live below the poverty line. Most of these people depend on a daily wage. The island-wide curfew means that at least 800,000 people do not now have the means of purchasing their basic needs, especially food requirements. For this section of the population, the coronavirus pandemic is disastrous and leaving them on the brink of starvation. At present, the government has not implemented a scheme to help them keep their body and soul together. 

Globally, at time of writing, 30,880 people have died of the virus, over 663,749 persons have tested positive to COVID-19. However,142,184 have completely recovered. A tiny silver lining, indicating the virus can be controlled if guidelines are strictly followed.

The US, probably the richest country in the world, has more confirmed coronavirus cases than any other country at present, with over 100,000 confirmed cases, according to Al Jazeera and 2,000 deaths. 

Yet, the US has spent about $3.5 trillion on healthcare expenditure in 2019 alone, but has yet been unable to protect its people.

But then again, the US has been in denial regarding the spread of the disease and refused to implement World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines to prevent the spread of the virus, fearing market repercussions.In our own Sri Lanka, nearly 3,500 people have been in quarantine in 45 quarantine centres. This number includes 31 foreigners from 14 countries, but most importantly, only a single patient succumbed to the virus.

Whether we be in the US or in little Sri Lanka, today we are, one and all, living in fear. Fear has gripped our hearts and minds. The roads, streets and parks are deserted and run empty. Whether we be rich or poor we are all so-to-say in the same boat.

Making populist remarks, like linking the virus to China and making false claims as to how prepared one particular country, is over the other in the battle to defeat COVID-19 is not going to win anyone brownie points.

We have to realise that we can no longer think only of ourselves. We are in this battle against the pandemic together and we need to pool our resources. COVID-19 has exposed our vulnerabilities and the false certainties we have created. 

For example, the US defence budget today stands at a phenomenal $750 billion, its healthcare budget for 2019 was in the region of $ 3.6 trillion, but the coronavirus, has exemplified the fallacy of these beliefs. Today the US has over 100,000 confirmed cases with over 1,700 deaths as at 28 March. Whereas Sri Lanka with a total budgetary expenditure of Rs. 3,149 billion for 2019, was able to better cope with its confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases, save a single fatality.

According to Sri Lankan doctors who treated the first COVID-19 case, they were constantly in contact with doctors in China’s Hubei province. They were not ashamed to ask for help and gave credit to where it was due, when the patient recovered. 

Again, the Sri Lankan government led by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was not afraid to take hard decisions like the imposition of curfew to stop the movement and gathering of people at particular places.

This is direct contrast with the so-called developed western countries, who condemned methods used in China to halt large gatherings and movement of people citing human rights violations.

The Island Editorial

Small is useful

Tuesday 31st March, 2020

Time was when there were retail shops, or sillara kades, at every nook and cranny of the country, selling various commodities, including grocery items, at reasonable prices. Catering as they did mostly to low income groups, they could keep prices low as they had no overheads as such. They were open, from morn till night, daily. They stood the ordinary people in good stead in that essentials were available at affordable prices. But, most of these small businesses could not withstand the tide of consumerism, which paved the way for the rapid expansion of giant supermarket chains.

The need for ensuring the existence of the sillara kades is felt today more than ever, thanks to the current countrywide lockdown, coupled with a strictly enforced curfew. When the curfew, which is in force to prevent mass gatherings on account of the spread of Covid-19, is relaxed, people, desperate to buy essentials, throng streets and line up near supermarkets, which get stripped bare in next to no time. There can also be seen lines of people near the existing retail shops, where goods are cheaper than at supermarkets. Fashionably dressed men and women also join these queues, which are not long, for want of a better alternative.

We have, in this space, urged successive governments to take action to protect retailers as their elimination will place the ordinary public at the mercy of giant businesses. Supermarkets are, no doubt, necessary, in the modern society, and the state is duty bound to look after their interests, as well, but the existence of small businesses, which cater to the ordinary people, must also be ensured. It may be recalled that the Rice Mafia is now exploiting both the farmer and the consumer, having driven most of the small-time millers out of business. No government can control the big-time rice millers, who have become a law unto themselves. This is what happens when small businesses go belly up.

We peddle no argument that retailers are driven by altruism; they, too, seek to maximise profit, which is the name of the game, but they are capable of keeping prices relatively low and making goods freely available at the grassroots level. Hence the need to protect them.

Meanwhile, what would have been the situation if Sathosa had been privatised and the co-operative outlets closed down? The state would have had no way of controlling the distribution and sale of essential commodities. Sathosa is playing a vital role in making goods available to the ordinary people at the prices prescribed by the government.

Former Minister Basil Rajapaksa, who is heading the Presidential Task Force, appointed to manage the current situation, said, the other day, that the co-operative outlets had to be strengthened to streamline the distribution of essential commodities, at the grassroots level. Following the 1977 regime change, which led to the unbridled economic liberalisation, the co-operative movement was neglected and left to wither on the vine. Its survival has been a miracle.

Now that the country has realised the value of the co-operative outlets and Sathosa, once again, the government should consider developing them a top priority. Similarly, action should be taken to help retailers stay afloat. It is hoped that the lessons learnt during the Covid-19 crisis won’t be forgotten when normalcy returns.

Let all political parties make a written pledge, in their election manifestos, to develop Sathosa and the network of cooperative outlets and ensure the protection of retailers.