COLOMBO – Sri Lanka on Sunday (23) recorded its 12th COVID-19 related death, a 47-year-old woman who had returned from Chennai, India, on August 20 and had been receiving treatment at Infectious Disease Hospital (IDH) in Angoda.
Chief Epidemiologist, Dr Sudath Samaraweera, confirming the death said the women was a cancer patient and had died of heart failure on Sunday.
The Health Ministry identified the woman as a resident of Mawathagama in the Kurunegala district, and said she had been at the Iranawila Treatment Centre before being transferred to the IDH hospital on Saturday (22) night.
It said the woman, accompanied by her husband, had gone to Chennai for cancer treatment, and had been confirmed as COVID-19 positive upon her return to Sri Lanka on August 20.
As of 10:00 a.m. Sunday, Sri Lanka had recorded 2,947 COVID-19 patients, 23 of them confirmed in the 24 hours ending Saturday. All recent confirmations, according to the Ministry of Health, have been Sri Lankans repatriated or returning from foreign countries.
Sri Lanka has been aggressively contact tracing infected persons and quarantining them but there had been some testing weaknesses in the early stages. However, it is now also doing community testing.
The government has been commended for the manner in which it has tackled the COVID-19 pandemic wreaking havoc in most parts of the world. It successfully held a general election earlier this month and reopened all school last week.
-ENCL