Sri Lanka's health authorities were in for a rude shock when they noticed that the first tourist who visited Sri Lanka after March this year was not wearing a face mask properly.

The man led the first barch of Ukrainian tourists who visited the Mattala International Airport this afternoon. A chartered aircraft carrying 185 Ukrainian tourists arrived at the Mattala Airport marking the reopening of Sri Lanka's airports for tourists after a prolonged closure since March.

However, it was clear that the tourists were not briefed on Sri Lanka's health regulations and laws were not strictly enforced on visitors.

Meanwhile, local medical experts have sounded the alarm over the government's decision to allow tourists from Ukraine to arrive at the Mattala International Airport due to the country's poor COVID19 management strategy.

They claim that Ukraine has an abysmal trackrecord with regard to COVID19 management and the decision to open up the country for Ukrainian tourists could expose Sri Lanka to the new strain of coronavirus spreading in the United Kingdom.

"Tourist industry and the government are gambling with lives and our economy by letting in tourists with relaxed quarantine arrangements exactly at a time when other countries are tightening their restrictions," Dr. Ravi Rannan Eliya, a prominent medical researcher, said.

COVID-19 incidence is 10-20 times higher in Ukraine than in Sri Lanka. Ukraine's testing rates are abysmal (TCR=3), it doesn't quarantine international arrivals, and it does very little genomic sequencing of new cases. So, the spread of the new variant of the virus to Ukraine very likely," he further added.