{"id":101571,"date":"2020-04-26T14:51:35","date_gmt":"2020-04-26T21:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=101571"},"modified":"2020-04-26T14:51:35","modified_gmt":"2020-04-26T21:51:35","slug":"coronavirus-sri-lanka-extends-lockdown-as-virus-cases-spike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/04\/26\/coronavirus-sri-lanka-extends-lockdown-as-virus-cases-spike\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronavirus: Sri Lanka extends lockdown as virus cases spike"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy The Straits Times<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>COLOMBO (AFP) &#8211; Sri Lanka has reversed plans to end its virus lockdown on Monday (April 27), extending it for another week after a spike in coronavirus infections including at a naval base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Within hours of announcing that&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.straitstimes.com\/asia\/south-asia\/sri-lanka-imposes-curfew-as-south-asia-steps-up-coronavirus-battle\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the nationwide restrictions imposed on March 20<\/a>&nbsp;would be lifted, the government revoked the order and extended the restrictions until May 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Health officials said there had been a jump in cases, including in a densely populated area in the capital Colombo where 81 people tested positive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There has also been an increase in the number of sailors found to be infected with the coronavirus at the Welisara naval base to 65, the officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The entire naval base in the Colombo suburb of Welisara where 4,000 sailors and their families live was placed into quarantine late last week after 30 sailors tested positive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One officer at the camp died late on Saturday night, but the cause of death was leptospirosis or &#8220;rat fever&#8221;, said navy spokesman Isuru Suriyabandara.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His body was still immediately cremated under the quarantine rules for coronavirus victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The island nation on Sunday reported 460 positive cases in total with seven deaths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy The Straits Times COLOMBO (AFP) &#8211; Sri Lanka has reversed plans to end its virus lockdown on Monday (April 27), extending it for another week after a spike in coronavirus infections including at a naval base. Within hours of announcing that&nbsp;the nationwide restrictions imposed on March 20&nbsp;would be lifted, the government revoked the order [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}