Sri Lanka’s first localised COVID-19 case was detected in March 2020 right around the time the official declaration by the WHO confirmed it as a pandemic. As nations around the world began shutting down en masse in a desperate effort to rein in surging infection rates and control the mounting death toll, the Sri Lankan government also announced an island-wide lockdown that lasted from March until May in a bid to control its first wave.
The timing of the decision however could not have been worse, as it came at a time when the local economy was only just recovering from the spillover effects of the April 2019 Easter Sunday terror attacks that had threatened to unravel the country’s delicate social fabric and derail years of solid economic progress.