Features
COVID-19 Pandemic in Sri Lanka: Contextualizing it geographically – Part I
By Dr. Nalani Hennayake and
Dr. Kumuduni Kumarihamy
Department of Geography, University of Peradeniya
The emergence of a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic was inevitable, although the sudden outbreak in Minuwangoda took us by surprise. We now see that it is steadily spreading outside of Colombo. The districts of Nuwara-Eliya and, Trincomalee have been declared as areas not suitable for tourist activities, and pilgrimage to Sri Pada is discouraged. Kandy, where we live is the fourth district in terms of the total number of COVID-19 positive cases detected. The actual reality of the COVID-19 pandemic, changing nature of the virus, how many are infected, detected, tested, and identified as infectious, where they live, work, and move around, could be far beyond what statistics and dashboards may reveal.
Along with the health and security personnel, the government successfully managed the first wave with a series of controlling strategies from travel restrictions, imposed quarantines, self, and institutional isolations. Interestingly, all such strategies, have been territorial or spatial measures. In other words, the management of the COVID-19 pandemic requires a set of spatial strategies that affect human spatial behaviour, relations, and attitudes. Inspired by this, in this article, we 
Current situation: What is reported, recorded, and represented?
In its Situation Report on February 3, 2021, the Epidemiology Unit at the Ministry of Health reports 65,698 as ‘the total number confirmed’ and 59,883 as ‘the total number recovered’ COVID-19 cases. Thus, we have only 5485 patients as confirmed and hospitalized, with 548 added as suspected and hospitalized patients. The other basic information provided on this website is the district-wise and hospital-wise distribution of the total number of confirmed patients. The highest number of COVID-19 patients, nearly about 42 percent, comes from the Colombo district, while Gampaha and Kalutara record respectively about 23 and 8 percent (see Table 01) Nuwara-Eliya-Ratnapura. The number of COVID-19 infected seems to increase in the districts of Kandy, Kurunegala, Puttalam, Nuwaraeliya, Rathnapura, Kegalle, Galle, Badulla, and Kalmunai.
Table 01: District Distribution of Confirmed Patients (as of February 3, 2021 -10 a.m, Situation Report)
Note:
Considered only the individuals who contracted the disease from the districts
How the COVID-19 pandemic is reported and represented in the media and various sources is all the more confusing. The statistics coupled with the newscasters’ tone (depending on which channel you watch the news in the evening) determine the outbreak’s nature for the day. Frequently, in the middle of the regular news reporting, we hear, “Here we received some new information right now” – new COVID-19 cases added – leaving us with a sense of uncertainty as to how this coronavirus proliferate daily. Generally, during the first wave, the media played a crucial role in raising awareness about the COVID-19 pandemic and sensitizing the people towards the situation with their frequent announcements and reminders. Such an effort is not noticeable during the second wave. Perhaps, the ‘new normal’ has become normal. The new cases are generally attributed to the four clusters. As of February, 2021, the Minuwangoda cluster has proliferated up to 61,705 cases, as it is reported on the relevant official websites. At different phases of the second wave, Peliyagoda and Prison clusters were also added to the Minuwangoda cluster. In the popular memory, informed by the official line and the format of reporting by various channels and mainstream media, such reporting creates an impression that it is still the Minuwangoda/Peliyagoda cluster that is expanding as if it has not yet spread to other parts of the country.
The first wave of the outbreak that began with the case of the Chinese tourist and lasted until almost late April 2020 was well controlled before the general election, through strategies such as physical distancing, quarantine, contact tracing (social, temporal, and spatial), lockdown, and isolation of villages and communities and travel restrictions. The first wave witnessed that restricting and controlling human spatial conduct and mobility are the determinants of preventing further transmission of the coronavirus. The government took strict measures to control human spatial mobilities through curfew and prolonged lockdowns at the provincial and, at times, even at the national level. It is reasonable to say that controlling human spatial mobilities has been a successful strategy in curtailing the first wave, enhanced by the commitment and dedication of the health, security, and various other sectors. However, during this first wave, the coronavirus carriers were identified as foreigners of two kinds instead of locals. They are the immigrant workers who had returned from the Middle East and Italy and a small number of actual foreigners visiting Sri Lanka. The exception to this was the Welisara Navy outbreak and small groups of the infected in a few low-income localities in Colombo. Thus, the coronavirus had not fortunately been ‘socialized’ into the local society.
At present, the second wave that began in early October, when an employee from a garment factory in Minuwangoda was found positive for COVID-19, is different. Although it was debated in the early days whether the coronavirus had still come through ‘foreigners,’ it is clear that the virus is, by now, ‘indigenous‘ to us. It took a while to acknowledge that the coronavirus is ‘socialized‘ – meaning that it is out there with us. It is imperative to know the geographical spread of the COVID-19. This is important for the decision-makers to enact necessary controlling mechanisms (i.e., isolation, lockdown, inter-regional restrictions on mobility, etc.) in the relevant regions, places, and localities on the one hand, and on the other, for the individual citizens to safeguard themselves from the coronavirus and to prevent its further transmission. Looking at the COVID-19 pandemic geographically is far beyond a simple exercise of mapping where the COVID-19 cases are found and located. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the geography of the world. Under pre-pandemic normalcy, spatial and geographic barriers are removed within the capitalist system to facilitate a smooth expansion and circulation of capital and commodity markets. The resultant flat geographical surface is what made the globalization of the COVID-19 pandemic possible. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed this as the countries resort to spatial and geographical restrictions (lockdown areas, restricted mobilities, isolated villages, high- risk, low-risk areas, etc.) to control the pandemic. Thus, we must contextualize and unravel the geographical dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic to gauge its extent, scope, and severity and reevaluate the efficacy of the controlling strategies and problematize it further.
Geographical contextualizing of the pandemic
Contextualizing the COVID-19 pandemic in Sri Lanka would involve a range of geographical inquiries, analysis, and interpretation that spans from a simple mapping exercise to analyses of socio-cultural, economic, and political dynamics of the communities/ localities where the infected are detected. Geographers’ holistic and integrative perspective allows any phenomenon to be viewed in an interdisciplinary manner and a synthesized form. A geographical line of inquiry, on the one hand, enables the decision-makers to foresee and plan for the future scenarios in terms of, especially, risk areas (for containing the COVID-19 as well recovering the economy) and also to implement the controlling strategies more efficaciously and in a socially more responsible manner. On the other hand, such an exercise helps the public to understand the extent, scope, and severity of the crisis and to reflect individually upon the ethics of personal conduct necessary to prevent the further social proliferation of the coronavirus. Here we use the three themes of infection, vulnerability, and immunization to focus on COVID-19 in Sri Lanka geographically; out of seven themes (infection, vulnerability, resilience, blame, immunization, interdependence, and care) introduced in the Editorial, the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (volume 45 of 2020). In addition, we introduce ‘social distancing’ as a form of micro-geography of COVID-19 since it enfolds a set of human spatial interactions involving spatial distancing at the individual level.
Geographies of infection
: With the first wave, particular places, except for Atalugama and a few low-income localities in Colombo were not identified with COVID-19. A majority of the infected were detected from those retained at the quarantine centres. Now, with the second wave, it is different. The questions of where the infected have been found, where they live, where they have been, and what kind of neighborhoods they have been found from are critical information relating to the transmission and control of COVID-19. At the global level, universities, research institutes, and various geo-visualization sites have produced maps demonstrating the global nature of COVID-19. They are mapped not only at the national scale but also covering the regional and local scales. In these global maps, Sri Lanka was earlier highlighted as a country that managed to control the COVID-19 successfully in the first wave with an insignificant number of fatalities. With the second wave, we are now reported as “at peak and rising at a rate of 16 infected per 100K people during ‘the last seven days’ (See the REUTERS COVID-19 TRACKER). Sri Lanka is classified as a country at 75% of the peak of the infection curve with a daily average of 523 new infections. In these global analyses, Sri Lanka places itself at the lowest end, compared globally and within Asia and the Middle East, regarding the total infections, deaths, average daily reported, and total per population. The relatively low position of the country’s outbreak in its region and the world should not be used, especially by the politicians, to downplay its severity at the national level. It is interesting to note that most of the news channels, immediately after reporting the outbreak’s national situation, instantly turn to the pandemic’s global standing, highlighting its severity, almost making the Sri Lankan situation, so to say, uneventful and insignificant. The politicians often tend to overemphasize this as a GLOBAL pandemic to escape from criticisms and lessen its significance at the national level.
(To be continued)