COVID-19 Alarm Rings in Sri Lanka

‘Patient Zero’ is a 44-year-old foreigner

The great poet had one of his most tortured characters say: “When troubles come, they come not single spies but in battalions.”

But while this was true for the later stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a ‘patient zero’ in Sri Lanka’s case as with every other nation where people were diagnosed with the acute severe respiratory illness pathogen SARS-CoV-2.

And it was no little irony that she – a 44-year-old woman – was from China where the novel coronavirus is thought to have originated.

That was on 27 January 2020 when a Chinese national from Hubei was admitted to the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, a.k.a. Infectious Disease Hospital (IDH) in Angoda, to become the first officially detected case of the virus in Sri Lanka. The first case of a Sri Lankan national to have contracted the dreaded disease overseas was reported in Italy on 3 March 2020, eight days before the WHO declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic.

In almost a fortnight later (on 23 March), it was reported that 45 establishments belonging to the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) had hastily been converted into makeshift quarantine centres – in an early response preventative measure to pre-empt the rapid spread of the disease – where nearly 3,500 persons had been placed in isolation under observation including 31 foreign nationals from 14 countries.

Two days later, Sri Lanka’s health authorities – a tandem of public health inspectors (PHIs) and military intelligence – had tracked down some 14,000 citizens who reportedly come into contact with other people infected by the deadly virus, which was an unknown in the initial stages of its discovery, exploration and containment.

By mid-April however, and despite the sterling efforts of the Sri Lankan authorities in combatting the first wave of the epidemic in the island (where it was considered easier to contain the putative rapid spread of any viral disease), the tropical nation was ranked as the country with the 16th highest risk of contracting COVID-19.

This assessment was based on an analysis by an internationally reputed scientific research organisation received its data from the WHO, Johns Hopkins University, and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US.

It was no little irony that she – a 44-year-old woman – was from China where the novel coronavirus is thought to have originated