About 33 patients had Covid-19 symptoms before woman worker was detected

Head of the National Operation Centre for Prevention of COVID-19 Outbreak (NOCPCO), Commander of the Army Lt General Shavendra Silva stated that information had been received to the effect that there had been 33 employees at the Brandix Apparel factory suffering from cough and cold before the woman worker with symptoms of Covid-19 was found at the company.

"It is suspected that these employees would have contracted the disease around the period September 10 - 20," Shavendra Silva said.  

He said that the definite date of the virus been observed at the institute cannot be confirmed and accordingly the definite origin of the sickness cannot be established. There is evidence that before the woman concerned had contracted the disease, 33 employees of the company had been suffering from cough and cold, these signs were visible only on September 21, and had shown these symptoms on September 15, this leads us to arrive at a conclusion that the virus had been there during this period.

First, our target was to monitor ten persons and following them we were led in several ways and on reaching the Prisons we found that it has not gone that far. We have followed the routes taken by the woman worker and the places she had visited. We are continuing this operation to locate the origin of this virus.

Presently there are more than 10,500 under quarantine, and we have now added quarantine facilities for another 2,000. Already we have tested more than 51,000 and released them to the society. We will continue our mission to bring in normalcy to the country, he further said. (Sujith Hewa Julige)