President Gotabaya Rajapaksa instructed the members of the Special Committee on COVID-19 Control to take necessary steps to complete the administration of booster doses within the next two weeks to control the spread of the virus during the upcoming festive season.

The President made these remarks during the meeting of the committee held at the Presidential Secretariat, this morning (December 10).

All those who have completed three months after receiving the second dose are eligible to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as the booster dose. Accordingly, eligible persons have the opportunity to receive the vaccine starting tomorrow at any inoculation centre.

Observations have revealed that the vast majority of confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in the recent days are from among the unvaccinated people and that most of them are youngsters, the health officials said.

Vaccination is mandatory to minimize the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care as well as to reduce mortality rate. Accordingly, the President gave directives to educate the youths in this regard and then to take steps to provide the vaccine as soon as possible.

Legal advice has been sought with regard to preventing those who have not obtained the vaccine from entering public places in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Taking this into consideration, the Special Committee on COVID-19 Control today decided to make the vaccination card mandatory when entering public places in the future.

The approval has been received to administer the second dose for children between the ages of 16 and 19 and the first dose for all children between the ages of 12 and 15. Accordingly, the President instructed to devise plans in collaboration with the Ministry of Education to immediately provide the vaccine.

The arrival of foreign tourists has increased and the airlines have increased the number of flights, the President noted while instructing the officials to further relax the restrictions imposed on tourism, taking into account the development of the sector.