Editorial

The overworked, underpaid Public Health Inspectors (PHIs) have taken advantage of the limelight they find themselves in since the outbreak of COVID-19 to fight for their rights. Unlike those in many other vocations, they are not asking for pay hikes or objecting to private universities, rather they are lobbying to activate the Government to regularise the onerous assignment entrusted to them to combat the spread of the deadly virus.

Without a Parliament to pass laws, they are asking that powers vested in them by an archaic law to prevent infectious diseases be at least gazetted to make them legal. Citizens have every right to question the legal basis on which PHIs are visiting them and making inquiries with powers to impose punishments. There are cases of PHIs being assaulted and they have no recourse to the law if they are not backed by it. At the same time, there are those who masquerade as PHIs and citizens need to be vigilant to ascertain the bona fides of those visiting their homes. It shows that the PHIs themselves feel there is a lacuna in the law as it stands today.

With elections round the corner, PHIs have been given added responsibilities. In these cases one can expect political party supporters, given their propensity to indulge in thuggery and violence, especially those inebriated by alcohol and power, to ride roughshod over these PHI officers expected to do their duty by the nation. They have no safeguards against such persons who will have the protection of their political masters.

Crisis talks with the minister this week have not proved conclusive and the grievances of these PHIs are still unresolved with the very real possibility of them refusing to take on election work.

No doubt the ministry was overwhelmed by work, coordinating the safety of the public, but not ensuring that PHIs were protected by law is a bad miss on its part. The fact that Parliament remains closed to pass enabling laws adds to the situation, but at least gazetting these powers would have covered the PHIs with a cloak of legality in what they have been asked to perform in these trying circumstances.

Think thrice  before reopening the country’s borders

He says in a tweet this week that though Sri Lanka has achieved a “remarkable victory” in combatting COVID-19, and while other countries are suffering from it, the virus has not been liquidated in this country.

The fact that the economy had to be loosened from the grip of a lengthy curfew is undisputed. Many countries took the attitude that the closure of the economy had a more debilitating impact on the lives of their people than the virus itself. There was an element of truth in that argument. However, some right-wing leaders, in the United States and Brazil in particular, went to the extent of dismissing COVID-19 as just another flu and pushed for their economies to remain open for business ignoring the advice of medical experts. Now their people are paying the price for this error in judgement with deaths from the virus rising sharply in their respective countries.

There has been a spike, as was anticipated these recent weeks in many countries, not just in the West but closer home in India as well. The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned this week of a ‘second wave’ with countries reopening their economies prematurely.

In the UK, the British Medical Journal has issued a warning of a second wave as their PM said he was lifting what he called “national hibernation”. He had ordered the opening up of the hospitality, culture and tourism sectors on July 4. Several US states are getting slammed by this ‘second wave’, so much so that the European Union (EU) is weighing whether to ban American travellers from entering Europe.

New Zealand which declared itself COVID-free is now wondering if it had a victory lap too soon. Fresh cases have been reported there — “imported cases”, by allowing, on humanitarian grounds, some foreigners from the UK to visit the country.

Sri Lanka is hoping to open its borders for tourists in August, seemingly under pressure from the tourism sector. Many European countries rely heavily on tourism to bolster their economies and they have a race against time as the sun shines only for three months of the year (June, July, August) and once that is over, they have lost it all for 2020.

Sri Lanka has no such limitations as the sun shines all year. It should therefore, consider a ‘wait and see’ policy without rushing to open its borders for the sake of promoting the tourist sector and thereby rejuvenating its economy, however much in shambles it may be. All the positive gains achieved so far in tackling COVID-19 could be dashed as a result.

Lessons must be learnt from having delayed closing the country’s borders even when COVID-19 was known to the world in February and March. There were no cases internally until it was “imported” from abroad. The peak tourist season in Sri Lanka is usually the November-April period when it is winter in the Western Hemisphere and even though nowadays tourists from India and China fill hotel rooms all year round, waiting a little longer to open borders might still be a prudent thing to do.

Scientific evidence on asymptomatic transmission is still not conclusive making the ‘test and trace’ strategy for those carrying the virus all the more difficult. In the meantime, there are thousands of Sri Lankans, especially migrant workers marooned abroad unable to return. The Government has an obligation to bring them back home. There is also an exercise awaiting locally; i.e. the re-opening of schools and universities. Even if a fraction of these persons are COVID-positive there’s going to be a massive strain on hospitals and a huge demand on quarantine centres. Tourists are only going to add to the burden unless more hotels are converted into quarantine centres.

With a global ‘second wave’ anticipated, the Government will need to think thrice before re-opening the country’s borders too soon.