News
Kandakadu COVID cluster: Major contact-tracing ops underway
View(s):A search for those linked to the Kandakadu Drug Rehabilitation Centre in the Polonnaruwa district was expanded yesterday with the detection of two more COVID-19-infected instructors.
One instructor who is from Rajanganaya in Anuradhapura tested positive after he was admitted to the Anuradhapura hospital. Two of his children have also been afflicted with COVID-19, while his wife’s PCR report was due last night.
Another instructor at the Kandakadu centre infected with COVID 19 was detected yesterday. He is a resident of Habaraduwa, Galle and has been admitted to the NIID.
The first Kandakadu rehab centre instructor to be infected with COVID-19 was a resident of Marawila.
More than 300 Rajanaganaya residents in the area were put on self-quarantine yesterday while further contact tracing was underway.
Separate operations were being carried out to track down others who had contacts with the inmates of the Kandakadu drug rehab centre where there are more than 1,000 inmates.
The health authorities were yesterday searching for more than 100 people, including relatives who had visited the inmates.
The first to be diagnosed with COVID-19 on July 6 from the Kandakadu cluster was an inmate in his thirties. He had been brought to the Welikada Prison on June 27 for a court hearing. He was found to be positive when tested before being sent back to Kandakadu. He is being treated at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID) in Angoda.
“The contact tracing is being carried out with major support from the State Intelligence Service (SIS), while extensive RT-PCR testing is also being conducted,” Health Services Director-General Dr. Anil Jasinghe told the Sunday Times.
Around 472 with links to the Kandakadu inmate have been tested with 339 being confirmed positive, the Sunday Times learns.
Explaining that the Kandakadu cluster had mushroomed quickly, unlike the navy cluster, Dr. Jasinghe said that this cluster had a positivity rate of 71 percent.
When asked how the infections could have started at the Kandakadu centre, the Health Ministry’s Chief Epidemiologist Dr. Sudath Samaraweera said that drug addicts from Suduwella, Ja-ela cluster, were sent to this centre after their quarantine period.
“We are suspecting that some must have not been detected then and it started to spread from there,” he said.
The Kandakadu quarantine centre in the vicinity of the Drug Rehabilitation Centre has been turned into a field hospital for those testing positive in this cluster.
Dr. Jasinghe said those confirmed cases who are asymptomatic at the Kandakadu field hospital would be transferred to the Welikanda Hospital if they develop symptoms.
As of Saturday morning, there were 339 confirmed cases at this field hospital.
The Kandakadu cluster erupted as many health experts expressed serious concerns over the non-adherence to the four major preventive measures of hand hygiene, social distancing, wearing of face masks and avoiding public gatherings.
Another Welikada Prison inmate who had been in contact in the same ward with the first positive case between June 27 and 30 also tested positive on Friday and was sent to the NIID, the Sunday Times learns.
As this 58-year-old prisoner had been assigned cleaning duties at the Welikada Prison Hospital, all hospital inmates and staff are now being subjected to RT-PCR testing, it is understood.
Officials, meanwhile, requested people not to panic over rumours but get their information from trusted government sources, as talk of a lockdown in Pettah and COVID-19 positive cases being detected in a suburb of Colombo spread like wildfire on Friday evening.
These rumours are unfounded, officials added.
(See Page 8 for related stories.)