The most number of new COVID-19 cases that were identified in the past two days was from the Western Province, says Army Commander and Head of National Operations Centre for Prevention of COVID-19 Outbreak (NOCPCO) Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva.

He mentioned this speaking on the process of imposing quarantine curfew on the TV Derana breakfast show ‘Derana Aruna’, this morning (02).

The Army Chief pointed out that once a COVID-19 positive person is identified, they are hospitalized while their first contacts are subjected to self-quarantine at their homes.

“If there are one or two houses quarantined in this way in a small area, we can isolate the area. That is what we mean by declaring a village isolated.

However, if there is a spread of such quarantined houses, we cannot just isolate one area. We have to go beyond one village and imposed quarantine curfew on a police division or more.”

Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva added that 397 new cases have been identified yesterday (November 01) and the day before (October 31).

“Among them, 179 of them are from Gampaha district. Meanwhile, 93 are reported from the Colombo District and another 33 are from the Kalutara District. A small number of cases are reported from Eheliyagoda, Kurunegala, and Kuliyapitiya.

Therefore we can see that the majority are found mainly in the three districts of the Western Province.”