There is no community transmission of the coronavirus in Sri Lanka despite the existence of a large cluster, a senior health official said on Monday.

The country’s chief epidemiologist Sudath Samaraweera attributed the recent spike in COVID-19 cases since October 4 to two clusters, a clothing export factory in Minuwangoda and the Colombo wholesale fish market in the suburb of Peliyagoda.

“As the World Health Organization (WHO) has defined it, community spread occurs when you find unrelated infections and when they don’t know how they got infected,” Samaraweera said.

All of the cases, which have been identified, have been reported either by Minuwangoda or by the fish market clusters, he said.

There is so far no evidence of community spread and contacts could be traced to establish the origin of the cases, he said.

Nearly 800 fish sellers have been identified as positive cases as Sri Lanka recorded its 17th death from COVID-19 on Monday.

More than 60 police divisions from various parts of the island have been placed under quarantine curfew with restrictions on the movement of the public.

The island has registered more than 8,000 cases to date, nearly half of which have been cured, according to health authorities.

(Only the title and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)

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