{"id":120739,"date":"2021-11-29T17:12:45","date_gmt":"2021-11-30T00:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=120739"},"modified":"2021-11-29T17:12:45","modified_gmt":"2021-11-30T00:12:45","slug":"a-frightening-revelation-of-the-nations-health-defences-against-the-corona-variants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/11\/29\/a-frightening-revelation-of-the-nations-health-defences-against-the-corona-variants\/","title":{"rendered":"A FRIGHTENING REVELATION OF THE NATION`S HEALTH DEFENCES AGAINST THE CORONA VARIANTS."},"content":{"rendered":"

Lankaweb Editorial<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Nov. 30th 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There seems to be a frightening revelation of the\nNation’s Health Defenses according to the latest information reports where due\nto lax testing at the National Airport Katunayake the country could be\nvulnerable to the latest Covid Variations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quoting from the Island News<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.”Due to the lax testing at the Bandaranaike\nInternational Airport (BIA), there is a strong possibility that any new variant\nof COVID-19 entering the country, College of Medical Laboratory Science (CMLS)\nPresident, Ravi Kumudesh commenting on the detection of a new Corona virus\nvariant spreading in South Africa.According to this – Even a travel ban would\nbe useless unless the country enhances its testing and surveillance capacities,\nKumudesh said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report suggests that PCR tests were not conducted on\npassengers on arrival and that it was likely that even those not fully\nvaccinated were entering the country. Gene Sequencing with respect to those\ninfected with COVID inside the country was at a minimal level, and therefore,\nthere is no way we can find out whether a new variant has entered the country\nuntil it is too late.“end quote<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why is it that – despite there being two\nstate-of-the-art labs at the BIA no tests have been done there ! The country\nappears to be unprepared where several nations are imposing bans on travel from\nSouth Africa and the region where the time factor in implementing bans could\nprove vital due to the speed at which these variants propagate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka has presently imposed a ban where having\ndelayed it rather than acting promptly although even a travel ban might be\nineffective now due to the delay and appears to be gross neglect or\ninefficiency on the part of the authorities concerned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To add to the consternation and anxieties related, the\nreport indicates that the number of PCR tests conducted had dropped to such a\nlow level that reagents used in some labs for PCR testing are now nearing the\nexpiry dates. The attitude of health officials at the airport is such that\neveryone operates on the basis that testing of passengers is not important.This\nsuggests apathy and needs to be acted upon stringently and those responsible\nbrought to task!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Institute of Health concludes that the detection of\nthe new South African variant `Omniron` \nis potentially hazardous and a danger for all countries especially for\nSri Lanka which is vulnerable from many perspectives including the lax\nresponses from the authorities and, dwindling resources which could prove to be\ncalamitous and  have dire ramifications\nfor all citizens already caught up in a vortex of uncertainty both from a\nhealth perspective as well as financially as the administration teeters on the\nbrink of uncertainty and perhaps seen as scrambling to steady the ship in a\nmaelstrom of confusion and the patience of the population wearing thin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report quoted earlier also bears further chilling\nnews that “Countries like South Africa, Peru, etc., who had such high levels\nof infection that much of their population was infected more than once, still\ncontinue to suffer new waves of infection. Because most of the world is\nfollowing the misguided strategy of just accepting the virus,  it has plenty of chances to keep on mutating\nmore. It has also been observed that the virus is circulating more than ever\nbefore.Furthermore despite a lot of speculation about how T-cell immunity is\ngoing to protect us, there\u2019s really no evidence that either infection or\ncurrent vaccines and boosters will ever give us long-lasting immunity. We\nsimply don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this is bad news for all of us humans on planet earth,\nbut very definitely for us in Sri Lanka. Why? Because based on how our medical\nestablishment and govt authorities think, we will be slow or refuse to put the\nnecessary border controls in to prevent this entering. And when it does enter-which\nis inevitable if this variant spreads globally\u2013we will be slow to detect its\nentry, we will refuse to sound the alarm, and we will do everything but\nactually attempt to stop it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s been our track record, so why would it change?\nWorth noting that if this starts a new wave in Southern Africa, it\u2019s just three\nto four months after their third wave. So just as immunity starts waning\nappreciably from natural infection (or vaccines). That gives us a strong hint\nof what our future holds unless we end this pandemic.\u201d end quote veritably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka having been the cynosure of the world once,\nabout how the pandemic was handled admirably has now lost that status and at\nthe mercy of the elements where the authorities seem to be pathetically\nclutching at straws where it is up to the Leadership of the President and his\nteam to seek out the panacea towards restitution which now seems no mean task\nbut the Nation  certainly depends on his\nmanoeuvrability and choices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lankaweb Editorial Nov. 30th 2021 There seems to be a frightening revelation of the Nation’s Health Defenses according to the latest information reports where due to lax testing at the National Airport Katunayake the country could be vulnerable to the latest Covid Variations. Quoting from the Island News .”Due to the lax testing at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120739","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=120739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}