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Cremation vs. burial report: Covid-19 Minister bypassed

03 Jan 2021

  • Report sent to Health Minister

  The Ministry of Justice and the State Ministry of Primary Healthcare, Epidemics, and Covid-19 Disease Control appears to have been kept in the dark about the expert committee report on Covid-19 death burials that was handed over to the Ministry of Health last week. When The Sunday Morning contacted Ministry of Health Media Secretary Viraj Abeysinghe, it was confirmed that the report was handed over to Minister of Health Pavithra Wanniarachchi. “The content of the report will be made public once the Health Minister studies the contents of the report and takes the recommendations into consideration. Hopefully, she will make an announcement about the decisions after 4 January,” Abeysinghe explained. Media reports suggesting that burials for Covid-19 deaths were being allowed seem to have popped up recently, causing a stir and confusion among the public. The Sunday Morning contacted Minister of Justice Ali Sabry PC to clarify whether such a report was submitted or whether the Ministry of Justice has been briefed about such a decision. “We have not received any update on the expert committee decision yet, and the report is supposed to be handed over to the Ministry of Health once all the recommendations have been drafted into the final report,” Sabry responded. State Minister for Primary Healthcare, Epidemics, and Covid-19 Disease Control Dr. Sudharshini Fernandopulle stated: “To our knowledge, no such report was officially handed over to the Ministry of Health or our State Ministry, although there were some media channels reporting on such a decision.” Last week, the College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka (CCPSL) had issued a position paper on the debate about compulsory cremation of victims of Covid-19, in which the CCPSL had indicated that there was no solid evidence found that dead bodies of Covid-19-infected persons could increase the spread of the virus once buried. The paper established that the latest scientific brief updated in October 2020 by the National Centre for Immunisation and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), Division of Viral Diseases, Centre for Disease Control clearly confirms that the spread of SARS-CoV-2 is primarily through respiratory droplets. Although contact transmission and airborne transmission are also possible, they are not the main mode of transmission of the virus. Moreover, with more than 85,000 published scientific papers on Covid-19, not a single case has been reported due to virus transmitted through a dead body. The claims on the SARS-CoV-2 virus spreading directly through groundwater have not been scientifically substantiated. As per viral biology, these viruses need a host cell to survive for a long period. The principal sources and routes of potential transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in water systems could be hospital sewage, waste from isolation and quarantine centres, faecal-oral transmission, contaminated surface and groundwater sources, and contaminated sewage, but not dead bodies. Coronaviruses die off rapidly in wastewater at 23 degrees Celsius, within two to four days, and the process is rapid in higher temperatures as in Sri Lanka.


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