COVID-19: Govt. looks ahead
The number of COVID-19 ‘positive’ cases rose to 235 last evening but the medical experts are beginning to be quietly hopeful that the spread of the disease has been curbed to some extent. At the same time, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa yesterday met with top health administration and security officials to assess progress in the management of the pandemic and its social and economic repercussions.
The medical experts point out that all the recent new detections are people who had been in contact with expatriate Sri Lankan returnees who became COVID-19 patients.
This trend seems to indicate that, other than the several hundred Sri Lankan expatriate returnees, there has been no other source of further infections – yet. But medical experts also note that our tally of infection cases is based more on those who have reported symptoms and not so much on detections by a systematic regime of testing of the populace.
The Government has already launched a systematic COVID-19 testing programme in order to quickly identify the exact extent of the pandemic here.
At present, the pandemic hotspots are the Western Province and, the Puttalam, Jaffna and Kandy districts. What the authorities need to quickly learn is the direction, if any, of the spread of the virus inspection beyond these hotspots. Experts point out that the new detections all seem to be from that original foreign returnee pool. Each returnee who carried the infection has, inevitably, interacted with scores and even hundreds of people. And those among their contacts who became virus carriers themselves, then interacted with other people in their own networks.
These findings by the experts are based on painstaking ‘contact tracing’ work done by thousands of police, health workers and, supporting public administrators. They have to quickly trace every single one of the persons with whom each infected person had interacted. Each contact had to be tracked down. Most of these contacts, and sometimes entire villages or urban neighbourhoods, are then placed in ‘isolation’ either in special quarantine centres or in self-isolation in their residences.
This is an immense task that is over and above the normal course of public administration or maintenance of law and order that also must be carried out. Despite all this pressure, our civil service has successfully provided reliable data on which the experts can build their scenario of the pandemic’s evolution.
The GMOA, true to their sense of professional responsibility for society’s health, are yet pressuring the authorities on the need to further strengthen testing. Sri Lanka is not an affluent country and, while the systems are in place and functioning, we simply do not have at hand the quantity of test kits needed. The requisition of test kits is under way and, friendly countries have come forward to quickly supply what is needed.
No doubt, it was these encouraging trends that enabled the President to make an overall assessment of the management of the disease and begin to look ahead to its aftermath. The meeting concluded that most immediately, the current measures should basically continue even as the administration begins to facilitate a revival of normality in large parts of the country yet only marginally affected.
Some of the rich countries, even though far worse affected than ours, are thinking of ‘re-opening’ their national economies. But President Rajapaksa has followed the advice of experts and administrators and remained focused on countering the pandemic. This is in line with the World Health Organisation’s global pandemic management strategy which is followed by the vast majority of the world community.
This consistent Governmental outlook and strategy will reassure a population currently under a bewildering ‘internal siege’ by an invisible enemy.
Saving our lungs
One fortuitous outcome of the pandemic has been the reduction of atmospheric pollution due to the (temporary) halting of certain kinds of human activity – namely the large scale operation of fuel-burning transport systems and factories.
One after the other, the world’s urban complexes and whole countries have begun reporting a sharp lessening of atmospheric pollution. The air that we breathe has got far sweeter and healthier. No longer are we breathing a toxic smog that is slowly or rapidly (depending on age and physical condition) destroying our lungs, among other things. Even better, the clearing of the air in some parts of the world is enabling us to see further and appreciate the natural environment more than we have done previously.
COVID-19’s threat to our respiratory system has also meant a drop already in the habit of tobacco smoking. This will make smokers much healthier while reducing the public cost of treating the negative health effects of smoking.
But will the world’s political and business leaderships take this into account when re-starting the global economy or, do we simply get back to an environmentally disastrous ‘normalcy’?
The number of COVID-19 ‘positive’ cases rose to 235 last evening but the medical experts are beginning to be quietly hopeful that the spread of the disease has been curbed to some extent. At the same time, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa yesterday met with top health administration and security officials to assess progress in the management of the pandemic and its social and economic repercussions.
The medical experts point out that all the recent new detections are people who had been in contact with expatriate Sri Lankan returnees who became COVID-19 patients.
This trend seems to indicate that, other than the several hundred Sri Lankan expatriate returnees, there has been no other source of further infections – yet. But medical experts also note that our tally of infection cases is based more on those who have reported symptoms and not so much on detections by a systematic regime of testing of the populace.
The Government has already launched a systematic COVID-19 testing programme in order to quickly identify the exact extent of the pandemic here.
At present, the pandemic hotspots are the Western Province and, the Puttalam, Jaffna and Kandy districts. What the authorities need to quickly learn is the direction, if any, of the spread of the virus inspection beyond these hotspots. Experts point out that the new detections all seem to be from that original foreign returnee pool. Each returnee who carried the infection has, inevitably, interacted with scores and even hundreds of people. And those among their contacts who became virus carriers themselves, then interacted with other people in their own networks.
These findings by the experts are based on painstaking ‘contact tracing’ work done by thousands of police, health workers and, supporting public administrators. They have to quickly trace every single one of the persons with whom each infected person had interacted. Each contact had to be tracked down. Most of these contacts, and sometimes entire villages or urban neighbourhoods, are then placed in ‘isolation’ either in special quarantine centres or in self-isolation in their residences.
This is an immense task that is over and above the normal course of public administration or maintenance of law and order that also must be carried out. Despite all this pressure, our civil service has successfully provided reliable data on which the experts can build their scenario of the pandemic’s evolution.
The GMOA, true to their sense of professional responsibility for society’s health, are yet pressuring the authorities on the need to further strengthen testing. Sri Lanka is not an affluent country and, while the systems are in place and functioning, we simply do not have at hand the quantity of test kits needed. The requisition of test kits is under way and, friendly countries have come forward to quickly supply what is needed.
No doubt, it was these encouraging trends that enabled the President to make an overall assessment of the management of the disease and begin to look ahead to its aftermath. The meeting concluded that most immediately, the current measures should basically continue even as the administration begins to facilitate a revival of normality in large parts of the country yet only marginally affected.
Some of the rich countries, even though far worse affected than ours, are thinking of ‘re-opening’ their national economies. But President Rajapaksa has followed the advice of experts and administrators and remained focused on countering the pandemic. This is in line with the World Health Organisation’s global pandemic management strategy which is followed by the vast majority of the world community.
This consistent Governmental outlook and strategy will reassure a population currently under a bewildering ‘internal siege’ by an invisible enemy.
Saving our lungs
One fortuitous outcome of the pandemic has been the reduction of atmospheric pollution due to the (temporary) halting of certain kinds of human activity – namely the large scale operation of fuel-burning transport systems and factories.
One after the other, the world’s urban complexes and whole countries have begun reporting a sharp lessening of atmospheric pollution. The air that we breathe has got far sweeter and healthier. No longer are we breathing a toxic smog that is slowly or rapidly (depending on age and physical condition) destroying our lungs, among other things. Even better, the clearing of the air in some parts of the world is enabling us to see further and appreciate the natural environment more than we have done previously.
COVID-19’s threat to our respiratory system has also meant a drop already in the habit of tobacco smoking. This will make smokers much healthier while reducing the public cost of treating the negative health effects of smoking.
But will the world’s political and business leaderships take this into account when re-starting the global economy or, do we simply get back to an environmentally disastrous ‘normalcy’?
