How Lanka’s tender loving care saved island’s first corona victim
The mask couldn’t hide the smile that beamed straight from the heart of Lanka’s first (and hopefully the last) coronavirus victim after doctors on
Wednesday certified her as being corona cured and discharged her from their care. With clasped hands held in traditional eastern style that said a resounding thank you, she expressed her undying gratitude to the doctors and the nursing staff of the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Mulleriyawa who had nursed her back to the pink of health with naught but tender loving care from the deadly jaws of the bat borne virus for which there’s still no known cure and which has so far claimed over 2000 lives in its unstoppable rampage throughout the far flung regions of China.
The unnamed 43-year-old Chinese woman had arrived in the island in early January as a member of a Chinese tour group. The ordeal began for her when she developed corona symptoms and tested positive. While she was immediately kept and treated in isolation at the IDH, the nation was understandably horrified that a coronavirus victim was existent on its soil. Chinese tourists who had been most welcome a few weeks earlier were suddenly turned into pariahs and viewed as walking corona carriers of death.
Many were refused entry at restaurants as the sudden entry of one caused the rest of the clientele abandon their meals midway and flee the site leaving unpaid bills. Many hotels, too, refused to accept Chinese nationals as their guests and shut the door on them, provoking the Chine Embassy to issue a strongly worded statement condemning this insensitive racial discrimination.
While paranoia fed panic roamed the streets and lurked at public places, an angelic group of nurses and doctors were day and night tending to the coronavirus victim, braving death by going beyond the call of duty to save her life, which they did.
And when the happy occasion dawned when she was declared completely cured and free of the coronavirus and could return home to her loved ones, guess who turned up to partake in the golden photo opportunity? Why, Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi, of course.
After a nurse who had tended to the victim with love and care had fondly kissed her goodbye Pavithra couldn’t help but show the full set of her ivory and pose for a selfie with her, while news, whilst news camera’s flashed to capture the moment.