Mitigating the pandemonium of the Covid pandemic: Critical observations on Sri Lanka

Abstract

Covid-19 emerged as a new epidemic in 2019 in Wuhan province in the Republic of China. In early 2020, the disease spread rapidly worldwide resulting it to be classified as a pandemic. This new disease is due to SARS-Cov2 virus and is a new challenge for the medical fraternity, world health authorities, all countries, to the society and every individual on earth. At present, the mortality of 2019-nCoV is 2.3%, compared with 9.6% of SARS and 34.4% of MERS epidemics as reported by WHO. SARS-Cov-2 is a very contagious disease spreading at an extremely rapid rate and has created turbulence in the world. It has led to closing down of all educational institutes, trade stalls, business organizations and government institutions. Social distancing has been maintained to break the chain of transmission of the virus, hence all social gatherings; parties, pilgrimages, weddings, funerals and religious functions have been cancelled. The public places of entertainment; parks, cinemas, theatres, beaches, restaurants, pubs and gymnasiums have been forced to close which has led to tremendous social distress. The low infection and low death rate of 0.29 per million in Sri Lanka is maintained throughout the country with the efforts to counteract the pandemic must be considered satisfactory. The attempts have been commended by those at the highest levels of the World Health Organisation, and the European Community Covid-19 monitoring agency. Sri Lanka mobilised the entire government workforce with police, military, state intelligence and civil service to boost the health services in combating the pandemic. Some of the drastic steps taken by Sri Lankan authorities were, early closure of airports, closing down of all government and non government institutions, tracing of contacts and screening them for the disease, pre-emptive quarantining, locking down geographical pockets after diagnosing patients and imposing island wide curfew. We have experienced only the early stages of the calamity that the Corona virus has caused. It is very likely that its global impact will escalate at an exponential pace over the next few weeks to months bringing a pandemic of social distress.