Specialist Paediatrician and President of the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) Dr. Anuruddha Padeniya has stated that some of their concerns and proposals on the ongoing viral outbreak has been disrespectfully neglected by the Ministry of Health (MoH).
In an interview given to a TV channel, He also expressed that even though Sri Lanka is equipped with conducting PCR tests, only up to 70% of the Covid-19 infected patients can be identified through PCR tests and there is uncertainty about how to identify the rest of probable Covid-19 infected patients.
Speaking further, he said that Sri Lanka must comply with WHO’s request by conducting rapid, regular and repeated PCR tests in order to find out Covid-19 positive persons.
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Adding more to his criticism, he stated that although the 4 teams deployed to research about the outbreak, particularly the national intelligence units, Grama Niladhari officers and administrative officers alongside the Disaster Management Centre of the Ministry of Defence have traced 22,625 contacts of suspected carriers of the virus so far, the MoH has spoken to a tv channel saying that their data align with only 2000-2500 patients.
“As far as I know, we have about 12,000 PCR test kits with MoH. They have the capacity to conduct the tests too, but the Epidemiology Unit hasn’t recommended approval for such rapid testing as of yet,” he said.
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