President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is to make a special statement tonight 8.30pm.

Sri Lanka government imposed a lockdown till August 30. Sri Lanka imposed island-wide lockdown from 10pm today to August 30. All essential services will function as normal, tweeted Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella.

Quarantine Curfew will be imposed from today 10PM till 04 AM Monday 30 August. Essential services, Agriculture, Apparel sector & pharmacies will function normally says Army Commander. He further says that Sri Lanka Army and Health sector will continue vaccination of those over 60-years of age against Covid-19 during the quarantine curfew period.

Grave concerns of the medical professional organizations on the current situation of COVID-19 Sri Lanka.

Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) says that Sri Lanka is now at Community Transmission (CT) Level of the pandemic / WHO Situational Level 4 at present. GMOA further says to mitigate the current rising trend and to bring about a reduction in future caseload the following 4 actions must be adhered to:

  1. Strict travel restrictions and stepwise exit
  2. Vaccination of 70% of population
  3. Implementation of 3rd dose of vaccine
  4. Improving testing capacity

Recently, Sri Lanka Medical Association SLMA requested from government to declare a very severe mobility restriction amounting to a lockdown for a minimum of 2 weeks while maintaining essential services and the programme for vaccination uninterrupted. Also they requests from government to allocate vaccines that provide some immunity even with a single dose to all elders and to people with comorbidities.

Chief Prelates of the Asgiri and Malwathu chapters requested the President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and the Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to lockdown the country for a period of 1 week to control the spread of Covid-19.

Also 10 government backed political parties requested the President to impose a lockdown.