Urgent call for 14-day lockdown by powerful medical professionals
Number of infections and deaths on the rise
From the south, the Sunday Times hears of an active fruit seller from whom many including healthcare staff used to buy mangoes. She would personally choose the most luscious of the mangoes and in her own small way give a discount of a few rupees. Suddenly, she is not seen at the small lean-to shop in front of her home.
She was the fourth expectant mother to succumb to COVID- 19 in this third wave. A family with three other heartbroken children left without their mother.
From Sabaragamuwa, the Sunday Times learns of healthcare staff having to make the “chilling” decision of whom to attend to in their battle against life and death. If the patient is older, say over 70 or 80, they would have to let him/her go, in a terrible choice to save a younger patient.
From another hospital which is not a COVID- 19 treatment centre, comes a report of a patient gasping for breath seeking succour there, being kept in an isolation unit until a bed becomes free, finally being transferred, but even after much effort on the part of both hospitals, dying after about two weeks.
It is in this critical reality that an urgent call was issued by a powerful group of medical professionals on Friday morning, as the country went into a four-day lockdown that night.
The medical professionals urged an immediate lockdown or curfew, not for four days but 14 days at least, warning that otherwise the consequences would be disastrous.
These medical professionals were from the Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA); the Sri Lanka Medical Intercollegiate Committee representing all the medical professional colleges; the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA); and the Association of Medical Specialists (AMS).
The SLMA was represented by its President Dr. Padma Gunaratne, the Intercollegiate Committee by Dr. Harsha Sathischandra, the GMOA by its Vice President Dr. Chandika Epitakaduwa and the AMS by its President Dr. LakKumar Fernando.
A strong and high- level team with experts from all fields but led by technically-sound health experts which the country has a plenty, to guide the pandemic response, is also the need of the hour, the medical professionals agreed, when asked.
Such a team can take science- based decisions on the run. These decisions can guide the government in making the right strategy promptly with implementations coming soon after without a lag time, they said.
They were in consensus that such a team should comprise experts from all fields, from health to security forces to economics to agriculture, and should meet daily to respond speedily to the race of death and disease being run by the virus.
Earlier, the group strongly justified with images of the ground reality, why short lockdowns and small- area lockdowns will not work. The moment the lockdown is lifted, they pointed out, people will crowd together and continue to spread the disease. The scientific basis on which at least a 14- day lockdown is being called for, is that it covers one incubation period of COVID-19.
In one voice they pointed out that when the detected number of cases in the community is over 3,000 daily, the actual number in the community is more than three times those detected. When the infection is spreading this extensively, there is no country that has managed to contain the infection without a strict lockdown (or curfew).
“As such, while acknowledging the very significant short- term hardships the common man will have to face, we see no option other than a strictly implemented mobility restriction as an effective strategy to contain the infection,” they said.
It would also give hospitals a breathing space to make use of this interval to streamline and upgrade their services including special care and intensive care facilities and optimal supplies of oxygen, they added.
The ground reality, according to the group is – it will not be long before hospitals are flooded with patients, completely inundating these facilities and the medical staff is stretched way beyond their capacity, resulting in a serious breakdown of the health sector all over the country.
According to the group, a 14-day complete lockdown or curfew at this crucial juncture – rather than isolating sections of the country randomly or by interprovincial travel restrictions – will have a healthier impact on the economy, in the formal as well as the informal sectors, and the health sector.
The briefing also heard the plight of the healthcare workers – a doctor of a Colombo hospital who had just concluded his isolation, coming home only to find that his mother had died of COVID-19 and not even being able to attend her funeral to bid her goodbye.