Recovered COVID patients left stranded near Dambulla Police Station

Three recovered COVID-19 patients were left stranded without a means to travel home yesterday when they were dropped off by an army bus near the Dambulla Police Station.

The three recovered patients, residents of Pallepola and Yatawatta Divisional Secretariat Divisions in Matale, had been treated at the Kandakadu Rehabilitation Centre. They had been put on an army bus last morning along with a group of other recovered patients but the bus had dropped them off at the Dambulla Police Station instead of taking them to their homes, some 50 kilometres away. 

The patients told police that they were instructed to travel home via police vehicles as the bus was proceeding with the other patients to Colombo. 

The three also charged that a second PCR test was not conducted on them prior to being discharged, in clear violation of Health Ministry guidelines. 

Dambulla police provided meals to the starving patients, who said they had not eaten anything the entire day. However, police were also left in a predicament as their vehicles too had been dispatched to various areas for essential duties. Given the travel restrictions, they noted that finding private vehicles to take the group home was also a challenge. 

In the end, police said they had no option but to advice the patients to somehow find a private vehicle willing to take them home. 

A senior police officer said they were increasingly seeing situations where recovered patients were being dropped off near police stations and told to make their own way home. This was making it extremely difficult for police, though they were taking whatever measures possible to send the recovered patients home either in police or private vehicles. 

Text and Pix by Kanchana Kumara Ariyadasa