News
‘Not bad, not good’
The COVID-19 situation in the country is not bad but not good as well, a senior health official said.
“We cannot say that the situation is bad but at the same time we have to admit that it is not good as well, because we are still getting over 2,500 positive cases,” the Health Ministry’s Head of the Disaster Preparedness and Response Division, Dr. Hemantha Herath pointed out.
He reiterated that if there are around 2,500 cases today, that means that the country needs to have at least 25,000 beds. Now, there are 30,000 beds available which means that we can manage 3,000 cases per day, but if it becomes 3,500, the country may not be able to do so.
“So we have to control COVID-19 and reduce the number of new cases,” he said, adding that “it’s not by reducing testing but controlling the infections and reducing the positive numbers”.
He added: “Our strategy should be to reduce the cases as much as possible (reduce transmission) and then manage the existing RT-PCR capacity.”
How many positive patients are at home?
Stating that he does not know the exact number, Dr. Herath said that according to information from Dr. Anver Hamdani (Coordinator of COVID-19 Control), the maximum period a patient stays at home is 48 hours and in “extreme cases” it may be 72 hours. These extreme cases were only isolated incidents due to problems such as geographic location.
Vaccine roll-out
Dr. Herath said that the vaccine roll-out began from the Western Province and from there to other health areas. Even though all people in a particular area have not been vaccinated, about 2 million have got one dose at least.
1st Phase – Colombo, Gampaha and Kalutara with AstraZeneca and Sinopharm. A very small proportion in Gothatuwa had got the Sputnik V.
2nd Phase – Galle, Matara, Kurunegala, Jaffna and Ratnapura with Sinopharm and Kandy with Sputnik V.Kelaniya will also receive Sputnik V
3rd Phase – Sinopharm in 12 health districts
4th Phase – The balance five health districts needs to be covered when the next vaccine consignments arrive