Former Minister of Health Rajitha Senaratne says that the epidemic has now reached to the point where four people die every hour and the worst time has not yet come.
He says that while the Delta Covid strain was being controlled in other parts of the world by lock down policy in its initial stage, but in Sri Lanka when the Delta virus began to spread we opened the country which was closed for months.
The former ministry of Health states that the country had to be opened on orders from authorities and not on the advice of the health sector. He pointed out that the public health division of the Ministry of Health able to control the epidemics and not the Presidential Task Force. He said that the epidemic was spread due to the activities of the Presidential Task Force. He emphasized that the epidemic was not a war and that only the health sector knew about the epidemic.
Mr. Senaratne said that he had warned about this about two months ago and that if the government had been able to correctly identify the danger at that time, such an unfortunate situation would not have arisen.
Rajitha Senaratne recalled that Prof. Suneth Agampodi had pointed out that the government was not preparing the people to face the Covid epidemic but they challenged to the epidemic. He further states that the government has failed to heed any of the warnings given not only by him but also by many medical and viral experts.
He stated this at a media briefing held in Colombo yesterday (10).
Shani