The Epidemiology Unit needs total restructuring as it has failed to reduce the Covid-19 death to case ratio due to the weaknesses of the vaccination program implemented by it, the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) Assistant Secretary Dr. Navin De Zoysa said.
He told the media in Colombo last week that the unit can distort Covid-19 PCR data to show that Covid-19 has reduced or increased because PCR testing is not done and analysed in three categories separately.
The three categories are contacts, patients with symptoms and random individuals. The Unit can purposely mislead the Government or the public by not providing and analysing the data of the three categories separately.
According to Dr. Zoysa, the current PCR positive rate is 14.2 percent and it is only a minor reduction from the 15 percent and 16 percent reported during the peak of the third wave. The PCR positive rate was 9.8 percent to 10.7 percent before the third wave began.
Dr. Zoysa said that a disciplinary inquiry should be conducted on the decision-making at the Epidemiology Unit which affected people and those concerned should be prevented from operating in the unit until such investigation is over. Otherwise, they can return and make a mess again.
The Covid-19 vaccination program should give priority to health workers and frontline staff, people over the age of 60, people in the age group of 18-60 with Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), pregnant mothers, workers of essential services and people working in factories, but that is not happening, he said.