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The pathetic picture of Sri Lanka’s Heath Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi making a public exhibition of herself last Sunday morn on a lone Ratnapura bridge cuddling a pot of charmed holy water, before throwing the polythene covered receptacle to the flowing Kalu Ganga, and, thereafter, furtively fleeing the scene in a  nondescript vehicle, spoke a thousand times more than rising COVID statistics to dramatically bring home to the people the Government’s despairing  battle to dam the unstoppable coronavirus tide of contagion; and the fast ebbing orthodox options available in its medicinal chest to meet the daunting challenge.

Simultaneously, at other designated bridges two other ministers, namely, Energy Minister Udaya Gammanpila and Tourism Minister Prasanna Ranatunge were enacting the same scene. They took their respective stations on two different bridges over the Kelani Ganga to surrender their pots of charmed water to the river’s inexorable flow to the sea.

Gammanpila, clad in immaculate white, with a helper dressed in all black carrying the holy vessel for him, strolled a few yards along the bridge to find his vantage point to perform the holy duty cast on him. He clasped the pot and held it with obsequious worship before carefully flinging the pot, polythene cover and all, to the Kelani, and strolled back to his vehicle with his pot carrier.

Minister Prasanna Ranatunga was rather casual about his mission on the bridge over placid waters. Clad in a faded pair of dark grey shorts, he alighted from the passenger seat of a small car, and hobbled barefoot to the railings and casually tossed the pot to the river and hobbled back to his kerb parked car without a second glance as to the fate of the bopping pot, as if he had just dumped the weekly home garbage in the Kalaeliya Canal on the sly.

On the previous day, helicopters had taken to the skies to drop gallons of holy water over the Lankan landscape, prompting the public to wander aghast whether, with the rising number of COVID cases fast approaching the danger zone, the hapless Health Minister Pavithra had given up the ghost in believing anymore in the ability of medical science to find answer to the prolonged agony, except to babble ‘stay masked’, ‘stay masked’, to cover up its own impotence.

THE NEW WAVE: Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi, Energy Minister Udaya Gammanpila, Tourism Minister Prasanna Ranatunga standing on designated bridges and throwing pots to rivers below

And whether she had, instead, delved into the occult, strayed into mystical, supernatural realms where disturbed spirits dwelt in  rivers  – even as a mystical king cobra bearing sacred relics in its mouth was said to have mysteriously appeared from the depths of the Kelani river bed at midnight on Il Poya,  the 12th of November last year four days before the presidential election, and had handed it over to an oculist named Udara, heralding a prosperous dawn for Lanka — to fish for quick fire solutions in eerie river waters to end  the crisis that has bedevilled the land for nearly an year.

The people’s darkest fears whether Pavithra had gone off her top in her apparent belief in the mysterious powers of the occult to combat COVID were assuaged on Tuesday when she assured Parliament saying, ‘’The government always followed the advice of medical experts when dealing with the pandemic. We followed the advice of medical experts on controlling the first wave of COVID 19 pandemic.’

But though her Sunday antic on the River Kalu — videoed by her own film crew and released uncut to the social media as were also scenes of Gammanpila’s and Ranatunga’s pot droppings on the Kelani – kept the masses amused through the COVID misery, the grave situation prevalent in the hospitals and the corona’s continuing siege on the landscape were no laughing matter.

In fact, earlier in the week, things had come to a pretty pass that it soon became clear to the authorities a brave new realistic strategy needed to be adopted to meet the changing dynamics.

Three days after the 20th Amendment had safely been passed with a two-thirds majority without a sneeze, a cough or a hiccup from the Government’s ranks, the Government announced on October 26 new measures it had decided upon to meet the COVID crisis in the face of rising numbers.

Lt. General Shavendra Silva, the Head of the National Operation Centre for Prevention of COVID 19 Outbreak (NOCPCO), announced that henceforth, breaking with earlier procedure, the first contacts of COVID-19 infected patients will no longer be rounded and sent to quarantine centres but will be placed under home quarantine.

This move, coming on the instructions of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, after reviewing the quarantine process currently in place in Lanka, was indeed welcome. In one stroke, it removed immense stress from those who feared they would be quarantined at unknown camps merely because they had casually bumped into a person who was later found COVID positive.

Now they were given the opportunity to spend their 14-day isolation period in the comfort of their homes; even though, given the lack of space in many homes, an extra room to spare exclusively for the potential COVID patient may prove hard to come by. And if the person becomes COVID positive during his two-week confinement, the rest of the household, too, will have to be self-quarantined in the same household.

Two days later, Lt. General Shavendra Silva had even more dramatic news to deliver to the nation: the complete evacuation of those in quarantine centres. He declared that, ‘those individuals who are currently in quarantine centres, will be moved for home quarantine in the next 48 hours after they are subjected to a PCR test.’’

After assessing the COVID situation, the Western Province, with Colombo in particular, was declared the COVID capital, forcing the Government to extend the three-day curfew it had declared on the October 30 by another week until 5am on November 9. However, speculation grew that with the rapid spread of COVID and the increase in confirmed cases to 12,000 and active cases to over 5000, the Government might decide to play safe and, like it did in its highly successful strategy then, enforce a month-long curfew not merely to keep the coronavirus spread in check but to isolate it out of existence. But, of course, putting the shutters down on human activity and denying the economy its life blood would come with a high price tag.

The speculation gained credence when the Deputy Director General of Public Health, Dr. Hemantha Herath, warned this Tuesday that it would take at least another month to bring the Minuwangoda-Peliyagoda cluster under control. Speaking to the media, he said considering the situation at present, the situation where cases were being reported in hundreds would prevail for another one and half weeks. ‘Accordingly, the cluster would be completely cleared in another six weeks,” he said.

On the same day, the heads of the six medical faculties in the country’s universities wrote to the COVID Prevention task force headed by Lt. General Shavendra Silva regarding the current COVID situation as they had done earlier in April during COVID’s maiden wave in Lanka.

The high-powered professional group of medical specialists comprising Professors Janaka de Silva, Saroja Jayasinghe, SAM Kularatne, Kamini Wanigasuriya, Sarath  Lekamwasam and Sisira Siribaddana of the Ragama, Colombo, Peradeniya, Sri Jayawardena, Ruhuna and Rajarata Universities respectively, welcomed the Government’s  decision to home quarantine first contacts, saying: ‘The practice of gathering people at short notice and transporting them to quarantine centres, often under the glare of the media, should be discontinued, as this leads to social stigmatisation, mental distress and public resentment and fear. Worse, it will drive the epidemic underground.’ They also expressed their fears as to the adverse economic consequences of a total nationwide lockdown.

The professional professorial body were of the view that, ‘lockdowns and restrictions on transport to and from high prevalence areas are a necessary component of epidemic control. We do not support a country-wide lockdown unless there is evidence of uncontrolled community transmission, as this would very severely affect our economy and the livelihoods of non-salaried and self-employed individuals.’

In conclusion they said: ‘Restrictions that limit infections to manageable levels that do not overwhelm our health resources, we feel, are the way forward in the current scenario. “Complete elimination” of infection can be a daunting task given the contacts that would continue to occur.’

Their advice seems not to have fallen on deaf ears but heeded intently.

On Thursday, November 4, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa offered all corona curfew’s claustrophobic casualties a welcome vista of the broad acres of Lanka and the freedom to roam its expanse and breathe anew its unenclosed sweet air that rejoices in the sunlight: To break free from COVID’s crippling bondage with the message writ large: ’You have nothing to lose but your chains if you follow the drill and abide religiously to the Government issued health guidelines.’

That was the brave new world, the President outlined, for a suppressed people to break through the COVID blockade: to dare its gauntlet of disease and death and emerge free and fortified at the end, in the pink of health, protected by the bible of the Government’s health guidelines: the Government’s Holy Health Writ containing the commandments which, if ignored, will invite not only eternal damnation on oneself but also imperil the entire nation with a COVID Apocalypse on its doorstep.

Addressing a top level meeting, President Gotabaya declared the movement of the people cannot be consistently determined by imposing curfew alone and stressed: ‘the entire country cannot be under lockdown until a feasible solution is found to curb the COVID-19 pandemic.’

The President said the country need not be locked down if the public followed the health guidelines issued to them in preventing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. He said businesses and other operations pertaining to businesses and factories can continue while ensuring that people follow the health guidelines and noted that decision to impose curfews must be made only after taking into consideration the livelihoods of the public, the country’s economy and all other relevant aspects.

The President declared, ‘the people must prepare themselves to go back to their usual routine while adhering to the health guidelines.’

The following day, Thursday, Lt. General Shavendra Silva assured the public that there is the possibility to restore normalcy within the Western Province from Monday, November 9. He said that it is vital to resume normal activities in the country by opening restricted areas. Measures are now underway to lift the quarantine curfew imposed on the Western Province on Monday,’ he said, adding, ‘it is the responsibility of all citizens to adhere to health regulations in place.’

So the evolving new strategy to face the COVID threat seems to be as follows:

n    Starting tomorrow the curfew will be lifted and the people’s movement, even from district to district, will not be restricted henceforth, except in the most extreme instance of a massive outbreak;

n    the people will be responsible for their own safety and strictly follow the prescribed heath guidelines with failure to observe it, considered a criminal dereliction of duty, liable to a hefty fine or imprisonment as provided for in the recently gazetted regulation:

n    first contacts with a COVID patient must undergo home quarantine with the PHIs strictly monitoring the individual, with a basket of food provided by the Government:

n    if one contracts COVID inform the authourities by phone, stay put at home, await ambulance to transport one to hospital:

n    people must return to their usual routine and abide by the heath guidelines.

In marked contrast to Lanka’s lassiez faire approach to economic health and que sera, sera to all else, Britain went to a massive nationwide lockdown on Thursday for the second time since COVID’s debut in the sceptred isle. After initially allowing its citizens the freedom of the cities, the rising COVID toll has forced its government to opt for drastic measures in a drastic situation. With the death toll nearing the fifty thousand figure, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to put lives before pounds much to the ire of the British who bemoaned their loss of freedom.

So thus as things presently stand on Saturday morning in Lanka, the Government’s new dynamic approach to fighting COVID will be not to cow down in cowardice before the viral terror but to meet the spectre head on  in the nation’s stride.

Not to put down the shutters and barricade the ray of enlivening hope from entering the home and hearth and remain in darkness, inert and afraid but spring vitalized from the closet of despair to brave the dread of COVID’s silent tread, with each one for oneself and the government’s talisman of protection, the health guidelines, for all.