Govt. to bolster COVID-19 testing

SL not Advanced to community transmission yet 

• Separate operation underway to detect unidentified clusters in high-risk districts

by JAMILA HUSAIN

Health officials said yesterday despite a steep rise in the number of COVID-19 cases in the country, a majority of new patients were from identified clusters and that Sri Lanka had still not advanced into the community transmission of the pandemic. 

Daily Mirror learns that testing has increased to 1,200 per day within identified clusters, hence the larger number of positive patients and medical workers were hoping to increase testing in coming days. Meanwhile, a separate operation is underway to detect unidentified small clusters in high-risk districts including Colombo. 
Commenting on this, Health Services Director General Dr. Anil Jasingha said regardless of the sharp rise in COVID-19 cases, the situation in Sri Lanka was under control and that eight clusters had thus far been identified. 
“Healthcare and supportive staff are continuing contact tracing. Investigations have found that all cases identified to date were connected and none were sporadic. We know how they contracted the virus and how it spread. These are confined cases which is why we call them clusters. There is no community transmission as yet,” he said.  
Sri Lanka presently has test kits which it received from China as part of medical aid, with the latest donation made yesterday. However, officials from the Health Ministry said a request had been made for more test kits. 
Meanwhile, a government official said a majority of test kits presently being used were those donated from China in recent weeks as they were of  ‘good quality’ and had been validated by the Health Ministry here.