Committee on Parliament to decide arrangements to prevent COVID in the House

The Committee on Parliamentary Business will meet at 9.30 tomorrow (8) to finalise arrangements for parliament's first sitting week for this month and to discuss further measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in parliament.

The committee will review the situation when it meets tomorrow and decide on whether parliament will meet over four days of the week or if the number of sitting days will be reduced as was the case during the last sitting week in January.

With seven MPs and five parliament staff confirmed to have been infected with the virus so far, officials have been discussing the possibility of further preventive measures to minimise the potential spread of infection.

A senior parliament official stated that they were still in discussions with health authorities on the possibility of getting a mobile unit to collect samples for PCR tests to be deployed to parliament on a sitting day in the upcoming week. So far, PCR tests in parliament have been carried out on non-sitting days.

Parliament has also noted that random PCR tests are conducted once a week for its staff and has invited MPs to make use of this facility to get themselves tested.

Current Parliamentarians Dayasiri Jayasekara, Rauff Hakeem, Vasudeva Nanayakkara, Piyal Nishantha, Pavithra Wanniarachchi, Wasantha Yapa Bandara and Arundika Fernando have so far tested positive for COVID-19.