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Special team to tackle coronavirus threat; first patient cured and cleared
As health officials fine-tuned Sri Lanka’s multi-pronged campaign to face the threat posed by the new coronavirus, the Chinese tourist who was detected with the infection (2019-nCoV) has been declared safe to be discharged from hospital.
“She doesn’t have the virus now,” Director-General of Health Services, Dr. Anil Jasinghe told the Sunday Times on Saturday evening.
The ultra-modern coronavirus test, which Sri Lanka has at the Medical Research Institute, has now come negative in the case of the Chinese tourist, it is learnt.
A senior health official, Dr. Hemantha Herath, meanwhile, has been appointed as the overall coordinator to oversee all operations with regard to combating the nCoV, while a three-member committee has also been set up drawing from three crucial institutions which are in the frontline. The committee members are from the sectors of health, airport and aviation and immigration and emigration. Dr. Herath is well-equipped and conversant in handling this crisis, Dr. Jasinghe said. He is the coordinator of the ministry’s disaster preparedness unit and oversaw the work at Menik Farm in Vavuniya as the North-East conflict was drawing to an end.
Thirty-three Sri Lankans, including 25 students, who were living in the locked down city of Wuhan, China, arrived at Mattala airport last morning and have been quarantined in well-equipped rooms specially built by the army in Diyatalawa.
As the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on Thursday, all those entering Sri Lanka were required to fill detailed Health Declaration Forms. “These forms are given to all passengers onboard the flights,” said Dr. Jasinghe, adding that they are also issued an information sheet with details about the virus, how to protect themselves and hotlines to call if needed.
When contacted by the Sunday Times, Sri Lanka’s SARS buster based in Hong Kong, Prof. Malik Peiris said that 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,” he said, adding that there is hope that the strong measures put in place by mainland China would reduce the transmission sufficiently to bring the outbreak in China under control.
Reiterating that what other countries need to do is to avoid the chance of the virus getting established, Prof. Peiris expressed worry over reports from Germany and Japan that there were some local transmissions from imported cases.
However, detection of the first case of nCoV or possibly even some more cases does not mean that the virus is transmitting within Sri Lanka. At the moment, there is no reason for panic, he added.
Meanwhile, the Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal, has published online on January 24, the first study conducted with regard to the nCoV by Chaolin Huang et al titled ‘Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China’.
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