PCR delays and new variants

The procurement and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines has understandably grabbed headlines for weeks. However, with virus numbers remaining stubbornly high, testing facilities being inadequate, and mismanagement leading to administration gaps, there are growing concerns that Sri Lanka may be falling behind in its pandemic battle. 

Vaccines are important but they are expensive, hard to procure and time consuming to deploy. Therefore, it is imperative that virus numbers are controlled through proper implementation of guidelines and social distancing measures. An irate public have observed multiple times that guidelines, often stringently imposed for large segments of the non-privileged public, are scantily enforced for the rich and famous in Colombo. 

What is perhaps more worrying are the multiple and growing administrative gaps in the Government’s response. Health professionals are complaining of inadequate equipment, administrative blind spots of the Health Ministry and scarce resources despite the existence of a COVID-19 fund that was, ostensibly, set up to provide solutions to these same challenges.    

Government health officials have repeatedly warned that infection rates outside of the Western Province have tripled, leading to worsening community spread. There are also many concerns over the delays in PCR test results, which have left many people confused and even more vulnerable. Ironing out these administrative bottlenecks is essential for Sri Lanka to continue scaling up PCR testing, especially since reducing infections is at the core of promoting economic growth. 

Earlier this week the Government issued a statement calling for tourism officials to chart policies to earn $ 1 billion from tourism but officials have pointed out that equipment brought to conduct rapid COVID-19 tests at the airport are not yet installed and laboratory facilities are poorly coordinated. Even though the Government declared the “war” against COVID won months ago, it appears the virus is far from discouraged. 

Another danger of escalating infections is that there could be virus variants already circulating in Sri Lanka, but health authorities do not possess the testing facilities needed to identify them. South Africa has already stopped their Oxford-AstraZeneca roll out after studies showed it had almost no impact on the new variant, indicating the danger of spending large amounts of public money on vaccines when they could have limited impact. 

The Government has already said they will attempt to immunise both groups of over 30 years and 60 years. This is a sound strategy as the former category are most at risk of getting infected and make the strongest contribution to the country’s economy. However, focusing only on vaccines will not reduce infections. As seen elsewhere in the world, infection rates are climbing and vaccines will likely take years to catch up. 

COVID-19 has already shown policymakers the importance of maintaining multiple policies moving forward at the same time. Unfortunately, health guidelines are difficult to implement and require constant vigilance. But no one can deny that it is the best course of slowing down the virus. For this the Government has to redouble its efforts and shake itself out of the current stupor it appears to have fallen into. If infection numbers continue to climb at current rates and underlying issues are not fixed then Sri Lanka’s hopes of a swift recovery could well end up on the rocks.