Mobile Vaccination Centers to be Launched - Head NOCPCO

COLOMBO (News 1st); Sri Lanka has planned to launch mobile vaccination centers in Colombo municipality.

"We are planning to go from one neighborhood (Watten Watta) to the other for vaccinating people in order to further enhance numbers of vaccinated people," General Shavendra Silva said, according to the Sri Lanka Army website.

The Army Commander made this comment at Thursday's (05) session of the Task Force in the National Operation Centre for Prevention of COVID 19 Outbreak (NOCPCO).

Touching on the national vaccination project, he said that more than 1 mn of Sinopharm vaccines have been kept reserved for the 2nd dose.

"We have observed that some of those who had the 1st dose are not interested in getting the second dose even though we had 24-hour open vaccination centers," said the Army Commander adding it was found that a majority of dead people reported had not taken a single dose of vaccination.

'Even though the vaccination is on, people have to continue to follow basics, like wearing face masks, keeping social distance, washing hands, etc.' he added.

The Army Commander said that on Wednesday (04) a wedding in Anuradhapura was attended by 350 plus, and 50-60 of them were confirmed positive, so this is the situation with protests going on in the country.

"We are very grateful to doctors and the health sector during this difficult task and it is going to be further difficulties in the forthcoming months. All that we can do is to establish centers but the problem lies with the supply of oxygen, etc. People also panic and seek to go to the hospital but we need to look after our medical staff and health sector workers to sustain these emergencies," he added.

He also pointed out the risks involved even with smaller numbers getting together and said that different categories of vaccinations covering overseas students, foreign employees, etc in the Army hospital these days.