President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has directed the health authorities to make arrangements to administer the first dose of Sinopharm vaccines to those aged above 30 years at any vaccine centre rolling out the second dose.

The government has placed purchase orders for COVID vaccines in order to achieve the target of fully vaccinating the citizens above 18 years of age before this September, the President’s Media Division (PMD) stated in a statement.

The government is even ready to roll out a booster dose for the vaccinated individuals, the PMD added.

An increase has been observed in the number of admissions at hospitals in Colombo and other main cities due to novel coronavirus. Accordingly, the President stressed that any patient arriving at hospitals with COVID-19 symptoms should not be inconvenienced by this congestion.

He went on to instruct the ministers, state ministers and health officials to directly intervene to put together a mechanism to prevent the inconvenience caused to the public at hospitals.

The President’s remarks came during the meeting of the special committee on COVID-19 mitigation held at the Presidential Secretariat this morning (Aug. 06), the PMD said further.

Meanwhile, the intelligence officials who attended the meeting pointed out that at least 1,500 people had attended a total of 120 protests carried out within the past month. They stressed that these public assemblies held in violation of health regulations have accelerated the spread COVID-19 in the country.