Three COVID-19 deaths were reported from the country yesterday at the time of going to press.

The 17th COVID-19 death was of a 41-year old male from Ja-Ela who was treated at the IDH Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The 18th and 19th deaths are also said to be COVID-19 related according to the Health Ministry.

The Health Promotion Bureau confirmed that the victims were a 19-year-old youth from Keselwatte, and a 87-year-old woman from Slave Island.

The National Operations Centre for Prevention of COVID-19 Outbreak (NOCPCO) yesterday stated that a total of 541 more persons were confirmed positive to COVID-19 on Monday and all of them were from locally-identified persons.

 By 6.00 am yesterday morning (27), the total number of COVID-19 positive cases reported from Minuwangoda garment factory stands at 4,941. Of them, 1041 are factory employees and other 3,900 are locally-identified contacts of those garment factory-infected employees.

The flight EY 264 from Abu Dhabi with six passengers and the flight QR 688 from Doha, Qatar with 11 passengers have arrived in Colombo.

All of those passengers were referred to Quarantine Centres, managed by tri-services after formalities at the airport. Within the day (27), 88 quarantined individuals after PCR tests are set to leave for their homes. Of them, 12 persons are from Hotel Sheraton Kosgoda QC, 57 persons from Dharganagar Teachers’ Training Centre QC, 9 persons from Koggala Resort QC and 10 persons from Horana Teachers’ Training Centre QC.

To date, 57,814 individuals have left for homes after quarantining.As of yesterday morning (27), 8,090 persons in 75 tri service-managed QCs are still in quarantine.Around 7,682 PCR tests were carried out during Monday (26) across the country and the total PCR tests conducted so far stands at 458,518.