SJB urges people to adhere to self-imposed travel restriction

• Mistrust among people regarding various statistics on COVID

Main Opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) Parliamentarian Eran Wickramaratne yesterday emphasised that the Government must abandon what he labelled its stubborn arrogance, follow the advice of the health authorities and take immediate steps to protect the country and its people from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“If the Government does not impose travel restrictions as it did in May 2021 as a solution to this rapidly spreading COVID catastrophe, people should make self-imposed travel restrictions for their own safety and take precautions,” Wickramaratne told journalists.

Speaking further, Wickramaratne said in a short period of time, the number of corona infections as well as the number of deaths was increasing daily. A group of independent medical experts opined at a meeting convened at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Colombo office that if the country’s travel restrictions were strictly enforced in the next few weeks, as done in May 2021 for four weeks, about 18,000 lives could be saved by January 2022. They further noted with great concern that the current surge in COVID-19 overwhelming the country’s healthcare system was posing a major health crisis islandwide.

The SJB MP also said a statement made by the daughter of a COVID patient at the Karapitiya Hospital in Galle being widely circulated on social media. The daughter had said that it was important for a relative to be with a COVID patient every time they were hospitalised, adding that four out of five people who had died while she was in the ward with her mother had died because there was no one to care for them. She said there were occasions where the death had occurred after the oxygen tube had been slightly removed from the nose and there was no one to fix it.

Wickramaratne also pointed out that there was mistrust among the people regarding the various statistics on COVID patients and deaths, and that it was unfortunate that the statistics on COVID in Sri Lanka were released by a COVID Dashboard established at the Presidential Secretariat. 

“Statistics for any country are not collected or released by the office of the Head of State. Data is a public resource, and the very fact that it must be obtained from the office of the Head of State is a cause for suspicion. In that case, the transparency and the credibility of the data would be lost.” 

He said that despite the economic hardships faced by the people due to the reckless economic management of this Government, the Government was still acting arbitrarily, ignoring the advice of the health authorities. As life is more important than the economy, he appealed to the people to realise their responsibility at this juncture to enforce self-imposed travel restrictions on their own.

Wickramaratne said it was time for the people to protect themselves by imposing travel restrictions on themselves, as health officials have said the next few weeks could be crucial with nearly 6,000 people having died from COVID-19 to date in the country.