The numbers of coronavirus deaths and infections kept rising in Bangladesh with the nine new deaths and 434 confirmed new cases in the last 24 hours till 8am Tuesday. Two more patients made recovery during the period. With that, the pandemic has taken 110 lives, and infected 3382 people in Bangladesh so far. Only 87 patients recovered.
Most of the deaths were patients aged above 60 while young people between 21 years and 40 years were mostly affected. Bangladesh confirmed the first coronavirus death in the country on March 18, ten days after detection of its first coronavirus cases on March 8. But the cases rose sharply in the last 12 days with the increase of number of testing.
Additional Director General for health service Prof Nasima Sultana in the virtual media briefing said 29,578 samples have so far been tested since the detection of first COVID-19 cases on March 8. “We tested the highest number of 2974 samples in the past 24 hours,” she said on Tuesday.
She said they are testing samples in 21 labs. Among the nine fatalities, three are in their 60s, three in their 50s and three in their 40s, she said, adding five of them are male and four female. The government earlier alerted people that the entire country is at risk of the virus and asked people to stay at home and maintain health guidelines such as washing hands with soap frequently.
Gazipur, Mymensingh, Munshiganj, Chattogram, Narsingdi and Keraniganj witnessed the rise of patients recently as people travelled from the Dhaka and Narayanaganj hotspots. Prof Nasima said Gazipur has been identified as a new hotspot for coronavirus as a large number of positive were found there.
“Chapainawabganj has been included freshly in the list of COVID-19 infection-prone districts,” she said. She urged the law enforcement agencies and organisations concerned to take strict measures to make the nationwide shutdown more effective. Analysing infected history of COVID-19 cases, Nasima said rampant movements of coronavirus patients are mainly responsible for being infected with virus.
According to the IEDCR, people aged above 60 years made up only 10 percent of coronavirus patients in Bangladesh. But they account for 50 percent of deaths from the virus. They analysed the data as of Sunday when the death toll was 91. They found that around 10 percent people are in the age group of 60 or above while over 60 percent are in the age group of 21 years to 50 years with 21 years to 30 years most affected.
The IEDCR, referring to the WHO’s instructions, earlier said the mild-infected patients should take treatment from their homes and they must stay at home isolation. In such cases, family members have to maintain safe distancing from the patients. The IEDCR also advised the COVID-19 positive patients with mild symptoms not to visit hospital or get admitted, which will eventually reduce pressure on hospitals creating a scope for providing treatment of critical cases.
Critical COVID-19 patients need special facilities such as ICU and dialysis units in hospitals. But Bangladesh at present has 192 ICUs and 40 dialysis units. The government opened hotlines and asked people to contact - 16263; 333; 10655 and 01944333222 – to receive information and treatment facilities on COVID-19.
The additional director general said 160,806 people were kept at both home and institutional quarantine and over 83,802 people were released from quarantine, while the number of people who currently remain in quarantine is 77,004. She said a total of 488 institutions have been prepared across the country for keeping over 26,000 people in quarantine, adding 765 people have now been kept in isolation.
As the healthcare workers continue to complain about the shortage and quality of PPEs, Prof Nasima said there was no crisis of those personal protective equipment. The government has collected 1,4,98,150 PPEs so far, of which 11,39,079 were distributed and 3,59,271 are in stock, she said.
Every day the government is collecting nearly one lakh PPE and of those, 60,000 to 70000 PPE are being distributed among healthcare providers, she said. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina earlier on Monday asked the health ministry to look into the issue of supplying ordinary items in the box of N95 masks. The virus first emerged from China’s Wuhan city in December. The WHO declared it pandemic on March 11.
