43% population have received either one or both vaccines: Army Chief

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At least 43 per cent of the population has received either single vaccine or both doses as of up to now, Army Commander General Shavendra Silva said.

He said Sri Lanka has so far received 19.7 million doses of five types of vaccines and out of those the authorities have completed the vaccination of 14.97m doses.

The number of persons who had received both doses is 5 million.

"Even though we have vaccination centres, we find some are not willing to come to the vaccination centres. So, we launched mobile vaccination centres through the Army, in which we facilitate and prioritize 60+ people and those with different health issues and complications and the mobile fleet has also gone to Gampaha and Kalutara districts to expedite the vaccination project, " General Silva said yesterday addressing the Task Force of the National Operation Centre for Prevention of COVID-19 Outbreak (NOCPCO).

General Silva said that their first priority was to cut down the number of deaths in the country.

"The second is to reduce its spread in the country, the third is the management of hospitals and the fourth priority is the economy by asking essential staff to contribute to economic prospects," he said.

There were management issues in some hospitals with capacity issues as the hospital capacity was overcrowded. If the hospital capacity exceeds, the surplus should be transferred to another since clear directions to that effect have been issued as per directions of the President about the Patient Management System. So, we all including DG Health Services are doing our best to implement it," the Commander said.

He also highlighted the implications of of the several restrictions that came into effect from last Friday. "There are some speculations going around the country more than the speed of the transmission of the virus, on social media. "When we go through the death rate, it was found that most of the dead personnel had not taken even a single dose of the vaccine. For example, we had 160 deaths on 13th August and all of them had not taken any vaccine. Death rate as well as positive cases is reaching its peak compared to the figures in the last 1 and half year. Still we are doing 19,000 PCR tests and 25,000 plus rapid antigen tests every day, " General Shavendra Silva added.

Director General Health Services, Dr Asela Gunawardene and other attendees also joined the discussion.