Countrywide Lockdown: Better late than never

COVID cases are detected in large numbers throughout the country. There is no province or district that has been spared. The transmissibility of the current strains of the virus in circulation is quite high. In such a situation a lockdown on a provincial basis is meaningless. It is as if allowing the people to move freely spreading the disease within their province without taking it outside the province. The reason given for this view is that the economy cannot be brought to a standstill. However when the disease is already rampant, people will not be in a position to engage in any economic activity. As opposed to short term losses, wider spread of the disease will guarantee economic shutdown for a very long time.

The few countries like Australia and New Zealand which have achieved almost total eradication of the disease did so by imposing strict lockdowns even when a single case was detected in a locality. Vaccination is being carried out only now to prevent the epidemic raising its head again. It is meaningless to expect a vaccination programme, chaotic at best, to control the spread of an already rampant epidemic while allowing people to move freely, ignoring basic public health guidelines.

Hence it is imperative that the island-wide shut down imposed over the weekend is continued indefinitely until the epidemic abates significantly. People are used to such restrictions imposed early last year. Learning lessons from that experience, systems should be in place to ensure that essential services are maintained and people are able to obtain basic provisions like food, thus avoiding unbearable hardship. Daily wage earners should receive a cash handout to ease their loss of income.

I feel the medical professionals, who met the President recently, should have insisted on this rather than accepting the limited shutdown suggested by the authorities.

Dr. Sarath Gamini De Silva