THE WAR AGAINST COVID-19

Why Sri Lankans should be proud about the nation’s track record

In what is a highly fluid landscape both here in Sri Lanka and across the seas, against a backdrop of the highly contagious coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, we have surely done exceptionally well at the time of going to press; if that is, one were to consider the end game, meaning the number of fatalities.

Among the success stories in the global war against COVID-19 so far are Vietnam (zero deaths), Hong Kong (4 – that’s 0.5 for every million inhabitants), Taiwan (6/0.3), Singapore (14/2) and New Zealand (19/4).

Sri Lanka’s seven deaths (at 0.3 for a million people) therefore, puts us among the world beaters as far as fatalities go. And the fact that we have not suffered any fatalities since 8 April together with only two patients being in intensive care lends serious weight to this contention.

That the credit goes to the nation’s medical professionals and support staff, together with the security forces and astute leadership, isn’t in doubt although the popular belief is that we could have contained the spread of this deadly virus during the thus far six week curfew if only the citizenry had been far more disciplined.


That being said, this glowing appraisal of Sri Lanka’s performance to date comes with two qualifications: first, we know not what the future holds (the world out there doesn’t either); and second, Sri Lanka has lagged woefully behind others in the testing arena – around 700 tests for every million people (that’s less than 18,000 tests in sum) at this time compared to New Zealand’s 26,143, Singapore’s 20,815 and Hong Kong’s 19,426, although Taiwan (2,590) and Vietnam (2,188) are closer to where we are.

And for argument’s sake, while more testing will undoubtedly raise the number of cases even exponentially, it may not necessarily lead to a corresponding spike in the fatality rate.

The bible of COVID-19 tracking, the Worldometer, has Sri Lanka at around the halfway mark of the 210 or so nations on its ‘live tracker,’ which perhaps is another indication of where we stand on a global scale.

On the other side of the coronavirus scale at this time are some of the richest nations on Earth – led by the US (with more than a million cases and nearly 57,000 deaths), Spain (approximately 229,000 and 23,500 cases and deaths respectively), Italy (200,000 and 27,000), France (165,000 and 23,000), Germany (160,000 and 6,000) and the UK (155,000 and 21,000), while the corresponding numbers from China – the original epicentre of the virus – are reportedly 82,000 and 4,600.

Interestingly, Sweden has thus far adopted a ‘life and business as usual’ approach in the wake of COVID-19 – its counts are less than 19,000 (cases) and 2,300 (deaths) with a tests per a million citizens standing at less than 10,000.

Ah yes, and there’s also the proviso that the numbers are only as reliable as how they’re collated and by whom – for instance, war-torn Yemen sits at the very bottom of the table with just one reported case so far.

May the world see some light at the end of a dark as can be tunnel – even a ray of light will do until a vaccine is available to us all.

– Editor-in-Chief