Health and Family Welfare Minister Zahid Maleque has instructed everyone to be prepared to deal with another wave of pandemic despite the decline in coronavirus infection in the country.
“Coronavirus has not left the country yet, we have to remain careful,” he said.
He made the remarks at an international conference and scientific seminar organised by the Bangladesh Society of Medicine at the Bangabandhu International Conference Center in the capital on Sunday.
The Health Minister said the coronavirus is changing one form after another.
“We need to be prepared for the next pandemic. Vaccination is one of the weapons to combat coronavirus. We were working on vaccines when many countries could not even think about it,” he said.
He further said that in the beginning there was only one lab but now there are over eight hundred labs in the country.
“No one appreciates these issues. Earlier we had less number of ICUs but now the number has increased. The central oxygen system was available only in a few hospitals. However, now many hospitals have this system. We did not have PPE or the medicines for coronavirus. We have tried to make arrangements for everything that was not there before,” he said.
Zahid Maleque said that the best thing was that the doctors and nurses did not back down out of fear.
