THIS IS VERY BAD NEWS.
Indicates a SERIOUS FAILURE of authorities to protect our public health and economy.

The UK B117 variant has been detected by Prof @GMalavige team in #lka community in more than one sample from different parts of island.

1/13 https://www.newsfirst.lk/2021/02/12/uk-covid-strain-found-in-sri-lanka-dr-chandima-jeewandara/

Minuwangoda outbreak started before October. UK B117 only started spreading out of UK in October. So this detection means that there has been 1+ more quarantine leaks since then. If MOH keeps on maintaining this is one cluster, it is WRONG. The media should call it out.

2/13

We have warned since December that relaxing quarantine for tourists represented a clear danger to country as it increased risk of dangerous variants entering. It was known that B117 was in Ukraine. Have the authorities acted to protect our national security? @SilvaShavendra
3/13

In the face of these dangerous new variants, the only way to protect our national security, public health and economy is to tighten our borders. Not to open them. The entry of B117 is proof that our borders need to be tightened more immediately.

4/13

IMPLICATIONS

1. UK B117 is 30% more infectious than the original virus.
It will spread faster than our local variant, and it is likely to be the dominant variant with 2-3 months.

5/13

2. As B117 starts to dominate, virus transmission in Sri Lanka will increase. Overall daily cases will start to increase faster, and deaths will accelerate, unless our response is improved. We need much more testing now.

6/13

3. With B117, it is NOT POSSIBLE to achieve herd immunity w/ Oxford Astra-Zeneca vaccine. Only vaccines able to do that are Pfizer, Moderna, Sputnik.

4. If herd immunity is not possible, then we cannot return to normality. We will need to maintain/increase restrictions.

7/13

5. B117 is quite capable of mutating further. In UK it has mutated several times to become more like South African variant which is resistant to immune response. This is even worse. Only way to stop this happening is to kill the virus. Ie zero virus.

8/13

6. Sri Lankan ministers, MOH and the Sri Lanka Tourist Development Authority @sltda_srilanka gambled with our economy and we, the people, have lost the gamble. Costs of managing this will be billions, far more than profits that few made from Tourism Project.

9/13

President @GotabayaR is the President of all Sri Lankans. His first duty is to protect the country. He needs to act now and to act wisely.

My advice to him (on Twitter since I have no other direct contact):

10/13

1. Immediately suspend Tourism project, and make 14d quarantine mandatory for all arrivals.
2. Order audit of quarantine system to find and address weaknesses.
3. Instruct MOH to genome sequence all arrivals in future and invest to expand lab capacity.

11/13

4. Instruct MOH to take whatever actions are necessary to increase testing to 60K/day ASAP, with genomic sequencing on systematic basis.
5. Appoint new technical leadership to head the health response, because MOH is clearly lacking in ideas and plans to stop the virus.

12/13

MOH has good people who understand what we need to do. But has made mistake after mistake. Nothing has been learnt. We cannot continue this way.

@GotabayaR should understand that if he cannot reverse this, he will spend rest of term battling COVID and nothing else.
13/13