What the people need to do, gathered from trusted and reliable health sources:

Keep washing your hands with soap and water & don’t touch your face – the mouth, nose and eyes. This is because any virus which can cause a respiratory illness can get into your body when you touch a contaminated surface (like a door knob, telephone etc) which has been infected by someone who is already ill and touch your face.

Unless someone sneezes or coughs right into your face, the germs are unlikely to enter your body, if proper hand-washing practices are followed and the face is not touched.

An alcohol-based hand sanitizer may be used if soap and water are hard to come by.

If you are ill – try not to sneeze, cough and spit all over the place. Follow cough and sneeze etiquette – sneeze or cough into the crook of your bent arm. Use disposable tissue to wipe any secretions or phlegm and discard them into a shut bin until removed. Wear a surgical mask as a courtesy to others.

If you are ill – seek medical advice.

With a run by the public to buy face masks and some pharmacies hiding stocks or making a quick extra buck by fleecing the people, the Chairperson of the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA), Prof. Asita de Silva stated the actions they took immediately.

The NMRA is authorized to waive registrations (as well as take other steps) in emergency situations in the interest of public health under section 109 of the NMRA Act No 5 of 2015. As such, we had discussions with seven importers as well as five local manufacturers to supply face masks urgently. As most have been imported from China in the past, but with the outbreak of the epidemic supply from China has dried up, importers will get masks for the local market from other countries.Using provisions in Section 109 of the NMRA Act, we have already issued waivers of registration (WOR) to many companies including the State Pharmaceutical Corporation (SPC) to import face masks from any country. All have agreed to import adequate quantities and market them below the maximum retail price (MRP).The MRP for face masks has been gazetted by the Health Minister.  The price of a disposable face mask or a surgical mask is Rs. 15 each and an N-95 face mask is Rs. 150.

There is no necessity to cancel sport meets. We will monitor the situation closely and take appropriate action if and when necessitated and advised by the Health Ministry, a top official of the Education Ministry told the Sunday Times.

Categorical that they are not recommending or promoting face masks for schoolchildren, the ministry’s Director, Health and Nutrition Unit, Renuka Peiris said that the necessary hygienic practices such as constant hand-washing and not touching the face have been circulated among all schools and teachers have been asked to be vigilant about any child.

If a child is ill, she requested parents to keep him/her at home and seek medical advice.

In the worst-case scenario of the new coronavirus spreading in Sri Lanka, the Education Ministry which is in constant touch with the Health Ministry will take all action to safeguard Sri Lanka’s schoolchildren even by closing schools, the Director assured.

Meanwhile, the Education Ministry has taken measures to make Provincial, Zonal and Divisional Education Authorities and National School Principals aware about the nCoV.

For any information, parents have been requested to call the Health and Nutrition Branch of the Education Ministry on: 011-2784872 or 011-2784163.  

 

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This is the results showing real-time PCR machine of 1st clinical samples run

MRI has in-house ultra-modern test to detect 2019-nCoV

We have the capability of detecting whether a person is infected with the 2019-nCoV, assured Consultant Medical Virologist Dr. Jude Jayamaha who is the Head of the National Influenza Centre at the Medical Research Institute (MRI) in Colombo.

Pointing out that the in-house corona virus real-time PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) is an ultra-modern test to detect two genes of the novel coronavirus – N and ORF1a, he said that they are screening and confirmatory genes respectively. The sensitivity and specificity are 100%.

The processing of a sample takes 2-3 hours, while the PCR test takes only about 1½ hours, he said, adding that he had received 21 samples as of last morning of which only one was positive. The samples are nasopharyngeal aspirate and nasopharyngeal and oro-pharyngeal swabs.

Appreciating the immense support extended by Prof. Malik Peiris of the Hong Kong University, in securing re-agents, Dr. Jayamaha explained how they raced against time to establish this in-house assay in the shortest possible time after the appearance of the nCoV.

It was only Sri Lanka and Pune in India in this region that had this testing facility within a few days of the disease outbreak, he says with justifiable pride, adding that as a result suspected patients’ samples did not need to be sent abroad. It also cut the time taken to make a diagnosis which in turn assists in taking prompt measures to control the disease and ease unnecessary panic.

PCR, the Sunday Times learns, is a method widely used in molecular biology to rapidly make millions to billions of copies of a specific DNA or RNA sample allowing scientists to take a very small sample and amplify it to a large enough amount to study in detail.

Dr. Jayamaha paid tribute to the Head of the Department of Virology, Dr. J. Abeynayake who helped them a lot and his team, Senior Registrar Dr. V.H. Withanage, medical laboratory technologists D.H. Priyantha Ekanayake and Chandima Jayathunga and orderlies R.M. Jayanthi and Geethika Sanjeewani who put the shoulder the wheel to get the assay going.

Prof. Malik Peiris

Here is a detailed description of the nCoV and its symptoms from international expert in virology, Prof. Malik Peiris. He is Professor of Virology at the School of Public Health, Hong Kong University and is known as the Sri Lankan SARS buster. A virus similar to the 2019-nCoV has been detected in bats (Rhinolophus bats). It is certain that bats are the natural ‘reservoir’ of this virus but how the virus got from bats to humans is unclear. It is possible that this was directly from bats to humans (bats are also sold for human consumption and as medicinal treatments in China; but usually these are the larger fruit bats rather than these small Rhinolophus bats). Alternatively, there may have been an intermediate animal which allowed the virus to jump to humans.

In Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), this was from bats to civet cat and other similar animals sold in game animal markets. With nCoV, we are not sure yet. There is clearly human-to-human transmission with the nCoV. At this point we are not sure how efficient this is. But clearly, most of the recent cases are as a result of human-to-human transmission. Not new bat to human jumps.

The question of whether it will become a pandemic is unclear. We hope that the strong measures put in to place by mainland China will reduce the transmission sufficiently to bring the outbreak in China under control. What other countries need to do is to avoid the chance of the virus getting established in their own countries.

The reports from Germany and Japan that there were some local transmissions from imported cases are worrying. What the Australians announced was that they had got the virus growing in culture. But actually, we (the HKU lab) already had it growing in culture last week, though we did not make a big news announcement about it.

There are specific antiviral drugs for some viral infections such as influenza or HIV. But given that this virus is new, there is no specific antiviral drug for this new virus although there are efforts to develop something. Having said that, even without a specific antiviral drug, there is a lot of medical treatment that can be helpful for the patient.

New coronavirus grown in the HKU laboratory

If you take the example of dengue, again there is no specific antiviral drug against dengue. But appropriate medical supportive care can reduce mortality (death) dramatically. Similarly, there is supportive care for patients with severe pneumonia that is helpful in reducing the severity of the disease. In terms of severity and mortality, the nCoV is less in severity than SARS and more than that of the 2009 pandemic. In terms of transmissibility, nCoV is more transmissible than SARS. That is the concern.

Detection of the first case of nCoV or even some more cases does not mean that the virus is transmitting within Sri Lanka. At the moment, there is no reason for panic or for widespread wearing of masks in the community. The symptoms of nCoV can range from a mild fever and respiratory disease (cough) to a severe pneumonia. Although a wide range of ages have been infected, deaths appear to be mainly in those who are older or who have underlying heart or lung diseases.