Unmasking a Fabricated Health Ministry Statement on Dengue’s Alarming Spread

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With dengue cases past 50,000 and several districts nearing epidemic levels, Sri Lanka spent early July 2026 on edge over the outbreak. Into that anxious moment dropped a card carrying the News 1st logo and dated July 5, which quoted Health Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa as saying the government bears no blame for the spread of dengue, that salaried officials, not the public, should be handling the cleanup. We investigated. Here is what we found.

Social Media Posts

Facebook (1)  |  Facebook (2)

The card spread fast at a time when dengue transmission was surging and public anxiety was already running high.

Fact-Check

We first went through the statements Minister Nalinda Jayatissa had actually made to the media over the preceding days. Nothing of the kind appears among them.

What the minister has said is that the sustainable answer to dengue lies in people keeping their own premises clean, with public support, and that even amid the challenges of the rainy season a raft of environmental cleanup programmes is being run with the whole state machinery, the security forces, health authorities and the community working together.

He has stressed on several occasions that stopping dengue mosquitoes from breeding demands proper, coordinated responsibility from both the public and institutions, across government offices, schools, religious sites and factories alike.

News 1st Never Reported Any Such Story

Because the card was built to mimic the Sirasa News 1st format, we checked whether News 1st had in fact run such a report. No such post appears on the News 1st official Facebook page, and the channel’s Digital Manager confirmed to us that they had reported no such story.

The photograph used in the card was itself taken on July 2 at a special discussion with the All Ceylon Government Pharmacists’ Association at the Ministry of Health and Mass Media. No media report indicates that any such statement was made at that discussion either.

Minister Nalinda Jayatissa

We also put the circulating posts to Minister Nalinda Jayatissa directly. He said the claims were false, that releasing this kind of misinformation during an epidemic cannot be condoned under any circumstances, and that it could undermine the ongoing dengue-control effort.

The Government Has Mounted a Multi-Agency Dengue Response

Far from washing its hands of the outbreak, the state has rolled out a series of measures:

• June 23: The President deployed the tri-forces for operations to clear dengue breeding sites.
• June 22: Nalinda Jayatissa chaired a dengue-response discussion at the Presidential Secretariat, launching a dengue surveillance unit, tightening legal enforcement and rolling out a three-day eradication drive across 600 Grama Niladhari divisions.
• June 24 to 26: Dengue operations centres were set up, along with a national dengue hotline (0117 966366).
• June 16: Meetings were held across 14 districts, with inspections at schools and institutions.

The Latest Dengue Status

According to Sri Lanka’s National Dengue Control Unit, the trend has continued to climb since. By July 5, NDCU surveillance figures put the 2026 total at 61,060 cases with 39 deaths, a case-fatality rate of 0.06%, with the Western Province alone accounting for 52.5% of all cases.

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Conclusion

The card dated July 5 and carrying the News 1st logo, which presents Health Minister Nalinda Jayatissa as saying the government bears no responsibility for dengue’s spread, is fabricated. News 1st ran no such report, and the minister himself has confirmed the statement is false.

Minister Jayatissa has repeatedly stressed the opposite: that curbing the outbreak takes the combined effort of the entire state apparatus, health and security services included, alongside the collective responsibility of the public. We therefore rate the circulating statement misleading.