Overwhelmed by Covid-19: Sri Lanka confines itself to ten days
A medical officer transports the body of a Covid-19 victim to the premises of the forensic pathologist in Colombo on August 20, 2021. REUTERS - DINUKA LIYANAWATTE
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
Faced with an unprecedented Covid-19 outbreak, the Sri Lankan government has just resolved to a ten-day confinement.
Hospitals are overflowing and 186 people died on Thursday, a record that experts attribute to the arrival of the Delta variant.
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With our correspondent in Bangalore,
Côme Bastin
According to official statistics, the Indian Ocean island and its 22 million inhabitants were for the moment rather spared by the pandemic.
But for several weeks, Sri Lanka has been overtaken.
In the capital Colombo, public hospitals no longer follow and must deal with two or three patients per bed.
The death toll is skyrocketing in the country: 186 this Thursday, August 19 against a maximum of 124 during the previous peak in June.
The government has therefore decreed a total containment of ten days in the country, from this Friday evening, August 20.
The head of state Gotabaya Rajapaksa was to address the population in the evening.
Oxygen reserves
Many considered the measure inevitable when a curfew and assembly restrictions were already in place.
On August 17, a military boat was dispatched to stock up on oxygen with the Indian neighbor, where the situation is currently under control.
About a quarter of people in Sri Lanka have been vaccinated, mostly with the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine.
The first cases of the Delta variant were detected there on June 17.
Since then, the virus has been circulating at high speed in the country.
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See also: Sri Lanka is experiencing its worst recession since its independence
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Sri Lanka
Coronavirus
Confinement