The Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA) urges the President to continue the current travel restrictions without interruptions.

The Association mentioned this in a letter addressed to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in response to the government’s recent decision to relax the island-wide travel restrictions for two days from June 21.

The SLMA says that it foresees that the release of the current lockdown even for a few days will lead to the uncontrolled free movement of people and thereby leading to an ‘alarming ‘ increase in transmission, with the rapid spread of the new Delta variant found among the community.

‘The epidemic will thereby escalate to an unprecedented level causing increasing numbers of cases and unacceptable mortality on a scale that would completely overwhelm the health system’, the letter read.

The eventual ease of lockdown will have to be carefully phased on a district basis, grounded on real-time data at the district level rather than in the country as a whole, SLMA stated.

SLMA says that an ‘exit strategy’, which is currently under development, will be handed over to the government during the course of this week.

Thereby, SLMA urges the government to continue with the current lockdown measures uninterrupted, during this crucial moment, as lifting the lockdown even for a few days would take the country back to the major epidemic situation that prevailed in April this year.