Experts call on the government to impose a tougher restriction on the movement of public amid the sudden rise in coronavirus infection rates.
Experts said that without a well-designed tighter restriction controlling the transmission of the virus could be very difficult and suggest an early action.
They said that the government, while trying to ensure the safety of people, is struggling to save the economy amid a sudden surge in the number of Covid-19 infections.
They also cited examples of chaos with coronavirus related infections in India where the infection rates are now beyond control of the authorities and it may even worsen.
Shafiun Shimul, one of the members of the Covid-19 International Modelling Consortium (CoMo Consortium) team and Associate professor of Health Economics at Dhaka University, told Bangladesh Post, “Although the double mutant variant is being blamed for the steep rise in coronavirus cases in India, it has not been proved yet. The South African variant of coronavirus is still dominant in most of the cases, which has been already found in our country. The main reason behind the surging cases is being considered to be the election campaigns and religious festivals where people gathered in large numbers in an irresponsible manner.”
CoMo Consortium, created by researchers at the University of Oxford, together with academic colleagues at Cornell University is partnering with infectious disease modellers and other public health experts from more than 40 countries.
According to their projection, the Covid-19 transmission that has been going down over the last few days, will continue until the second week of May due to the ongoing restrictions. It may go up again as there will be increased public movement ahead of Eid.
The health economist further said that the current positivity rate, which is around or less than 10 percent, is the impact of the stricter lockdown that was enforced from April 14. Since the shopping malls reopened, people have started thronging these places.
“Most of the people are seen wearing face masks which is a good sign and this might reduce the estimated number of cases that are expected to rise due to the gathering,” he added.
Regarding the resumption of public transportation, he said that even if public transportations start operating with 50 percent capacity, the virus can transmit easily due to the distance between the seats.
“We are in a dangerous situation even with 10 percent positivity rate but it is relatively better as public transportations are not operating currently. We should not be complacent with this rate. It can increase to 25 or 30 percent at any time”, said Shimul.
He emphasized on how it’s important to enforce a strict lockdown now, while everything is still under control.
He said “It would be better for us if the restrictions on transportation could be maintained till Eid. Lockdown won’t be of any use once the infection goes out of control. India has been imposing lockdown in many states for the last few weeks but it’s too late.” He warned that Bangladesh should be prepared for the worst-case scenario. India’s health system, which is much stronger than ours, has collapsed under the weight of Covid-19. The country is already struggling to provide treatment to the existing patients. If infections spread at the same rate according to the proportion of the population, the circumstances will be unimaginable.
