President Gotabaya Rajapaksa addressing the nation said that the people should be prepared to make sacrifices if the government has no other option but to prolong the lockdowns due to the spread of Covid 19.
Outlining his government’s programme to vaccinate almost everybody to overcome the pandemic, the President said a lockdown would cause enormous damage to the economy.
“The country is heavily dependent on garment exports, and tourism both these avenues were blocked due to the lockdowns imposed in the recent past.
We controlled the first wave effectively and planning to arrest the current crisis through the vaccination drive”.he said
It is the opinion of the WHO and of international experts that vaccination is the only way to overcome the present global crisis. He said he was in touch with the leaders of India and China to obtain the necessary vaccines, and there was a delay on the part of the NMRA to approve the Chinese made Sinopharm vaccine. He said we are getting ample stocks of vaccines every month, that include, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna Sputnik and Sinopharm.
Our target is to fully vaccinate the entire population above 30 years of age by the 10th of September, he said, adding the majority of the fatalities were over the sixties.
