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No new coronavirus patients in 2 days


Published : 29 Mar 2020 09:56 PM | Updated : 06 Sep 2020 11:03 PM

Bangladesh did not find any coronavirus patients in the last two days, the government’s disease monitoring arm, IEDCR, said on Sunday, despite increasing the number of testing facilities. Director Prof Meerjady Sabrina Flora said at the 12pm briefing that they did not find any patient in the last 24 hours. “We have tested 109 samples in the IEDCR and also in Chattogram. None of them were positive,” she said.
The IEDCR earlier on Saturday announced to have no new case, confirming that the number patients remained the same, 48. Of them five died, 15 went back home after recovery. Their average hospital staying was 16 days.

Health Minister Zahid Maleque also joined the briefing and said they had expanded the testing facilities to 11 centres across Bangladesh.
“Six centres have already started working,” he said, adding that assuring people of taking adequate measures for taking care of coronavirus pandemic.

“After coronavirus cases were detected in China, we are taking necessary preparations since the first week of January this year to contain the disease in the country.” “As part of our efforts, we have formed four committees including a national committee to take necessary preventive measures on COVID-19,” he said.

The minister said the measures include quarantine arrangements, treatment protocol, providing training for medical professionals and health technologists, among others. He said 3,000 beds have been readied in Dhaka division for managing coronavirus patients. There is no shortage of kits. “Now we have over 45,000 kits. We’ll get 85,000 kits very soon.”

He said the government has also distributed 300,000 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to healthcare providers at different hospitals. “We are distributing 20,000 to 25,000 PPE to doctors and nurses every day,” he said, adding that they have 500 ventilators for the seriously ill patients.

He, however, said despite increasing the number of testing facilities, people are not coming for test. “We have a testing centre at Cox’s Bazar. But so far not a single patient went there for test”. The IDEDCR director said their teams are collecting samples from different hospitals for confirming coronavirus cases.

They will also collect samples from private hospitals. She urged people to follow social distancing measures announced by the government alongside maintaining individual health and hygiene. She said foreign countries including China and Singapore, different development partners and local companies and organisations are extending their helping hands through providing protective equipment and hygienic materials.

“At the initial stage, we were testing only foreign returnees. Now we are expanding our testing areas. All potential groups of people including professionals, who have remained with public contacts, have been brought under testing facilities to detect COVID-19 cases.” The director also urged people, who went to their village homes from Dhaka, to follow home quarantine for containing the spread of the virus.

In Dhaka, the diagnosis facility has been expanded to Gonoshasthaya Kendra, Dhaka Shishu (Children) Hospital, Dhaka Medical College and Hospital and Sir Salimullah Medical College and Hospital. People have also been urged to call only two numbers – 01944333222 and 10655 – which will connect the callers to other toll free numbers. One can also email them - [email protected] – for queries and connect to Facebook account of iedcr.