Army Commander Lt. Gen.Shavendra Silva yesterday denied reports on social media claiming a group of Indians were brought to the Minuwangoda Brandix facility without being quarantined.

He was responding to a question by a journalist at a media conference held at the Government Information Department.  The Army Commander further said that the cluster around the Brandix factory in Minuwangoda was found as a worker who was treated at the Gampaha hospital was randomly tested under a procedure used in state hospitals under a protocol followed by health authorities in Sri Lanka.

But the original source of the infection is still not known.

“It won’t be an easy task to find the source of infection since the number of individuals tested positive is comparatively high. But we cannot say that the virus is now spreading rapidly in the society since the number of individuals reported positive yesterday were results of PCR tests conducted within the garment factory and the PCR tests for all the factory workers scheduled to be completed today (7) evening.” said the Army Commander.

He further said that another 196 individuals from the apparel factory in Minuwangoda tested positive for the novel coronavirus yesterday and the total number of positive cases detected from the Minuwangoda cluster thereby shot up to a staggering 1,034. As a result of that the total number of COVID 19 infections confirmed in Sri Lanka has risen to 4,452.