COLOMBO: Despite Sri Lanka’s lack of previous experience in handling a pandemic like Covid-19, a global health review magazine has praised its success in preventing the disease from spreading in alarming proportions.

Sri Lanka is setting a global example by taking swift and impressive response to the global epidemic of Covid-19, a report by the Health Review Global has stated.

“We have studied the responses of many countries to the coronavirus pandemic. We at health reviewglobal.com decided to select Sri Lanka for its swift and impressive response to the global epidemic despite being a second world economy,” it said.

Meanwhile, mid last week Sri Lanka pioneered the use of indigenously manufactured robots called Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) to be used to assist the treatment of persons suspected to have been infected by the virus.

The functional use of the robots, designed by the Sri Lankan company Atlas, a subsidiary of the Hema’s group, using mostly locally sourced materials began at the Homagama Base Hospital near Colombo with orders placed by Sri Lanka’s health authorities for more robots.

The robots been custom built for the explicit purpose of looking after patients in isolation wards. Built with sensors, the appliance can stop in its tracks without colliding with objects and persons in front of its path and each bed in the ward tagged with a specific identification to facilitate recognition and to send medicines and other substances to the patient.

Using the camera and speaker in the robot, communication is facilitated with the patient without medical staff coming into close contact.

On Sunday Sri Lanka imposed full isolation in three new locations on Sunday amidst fears that three small groups of Covid 19 patients had moved freely in the areas. As such all persons in the area of Kadayankulam in Puttalam was put into a 14 day quarantine, and the area of Atalugama in Kalutara and in Akurana in the Kandy district sealed off and declared as complete isolation zones after it was found out that batches of infected persons who had returned from prayer related events in Malaysia and Indonesia had been in those areas.

At the forefront of the coronavirus prevention and mitigation process, is Army Commander, Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva who spearheads the National Operation Center for Prevention of Covid- 19 Outbreak, said. The government has arranged for door to door delivery of essential items and several districts reported that the initiative was being carried out.

Around 6,250 persons have been arrested for violating the curfew so far, with 206 people arrested from 6 am to 12pm, according to police media division reports.

Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2020