The South Asian nation has recorded one of the lowest fatality rates, while consistently maintaining adequate testing. Its 21-million-strong population seems to have dodged the community transmission bullet.
By Tariq Hashmat
Sri Lanka reported its first case of COVID-19 on January 28, 2020 – just two days before India recorded its first. The second case was only reported 44 days later, on March 12. 230 days later, the nation has dealt with a little over 3200 cases, and only 13 deaths.
In order to contain the spread of the virus, the Sri Lankan government initiated a series of lockdowns and curfews in hotspot areas in March, culminating in a nationwide lockdown that lasted till May 11. Restrictions were eased, although a resurgence of cases meant curfews were re-imposed in select areas.
On June 28, however, the nationwide lockdown was completely lifted. This was soon followed by the biggest wave of cases, reaching a record high of 256 cases on July 10. The infection has since been markedly curbed through proactive and aggressive testing.
Testing the way out
Between March and April, Sri Lanka conducted 930 COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests per million of the population. It’s South Asian neighbours, meanwhile, had a much lower number to show – Pakistan (703), India (602) and Bangladesh (393). Since the lifting of lockdown, testing has been significantly ramped up – averaging 1700 tests a day in July, and over 2100 since August 1. As of September 14, 2020, a total of 257,477 tests have been conducted, at 12,014 tests per million population. This rate is now among the lowest in the world.
Sri Lanka does seem to have overtaken the infection through testing. A critical indicator of this is the overall positivity rate – the ratio of confirmed cases to total tests conducted. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends the positivity rate remain below five percent. For Sri Lanka, this number has been consistently below five percent since March 31.
With the infection locally controlled, most of the fresh cases of COVID-19 in Sri Lanka are occurring amongst passengers coming from abroad.
As of September 15, 2020, 1252 of the total 3263 cases were detected in quarantine centers for overseas arrivals. 241 of the 251 cases detected in September alone, came from overseas returnees. These included 228 Sri Lankans returning home and 13 foreigners. Community transmission seems to have spared this island nation and its 21 million people.
