The worsening face of Covid-19 in Bangladesh

The coronavirus situation in the country is deteriorating day by day, with over 3,000 new cases being detected regularly. The death toll is also going up steadily.

Experts fear the country may have to pay dearly if this trend continues. Already, different parts of the country have seen a crisis of testing kits, with many patients even dying without treatment.

There is also a shortage of intensive care beds countrywide while the existing ones lack enough manpower. Not only that, a crisis of enough skilled technicians in many testing labs is making the system harder to run while healthcare providers are also contracting the virus frequently.

About 80 percent of the population of Bangladesh may get infected with the Covid-19 in a few months if the virus transmission is not checked immediately, warned experts.

Prof Dr Sultana Shahana Banu, a virologist and an infectious disease specialist, said most of the people are not still following the hygiene rules properly.

She also said as the number of tests increases in Bangladesh, so do the new cases. It means many infected people, who have not been tested yet, are moving about within the community and they are the super-spreader of the virus.

"Ours is a developing country, and it will be hard for the country to sustain if the virus stays for a long time here," she added.

Dr Sultana said more tests and isolating the infected are now the only solution to shrink the virus exposure while the zoning system will have to be applied soon.

However, 3,462 new cases were confirmed through testing 16,433 samples in the country in the last 24 hours (Tuesday 8 am to Wednesday 8 am), taking the total cases to 122,660 so far.

During the same time, 37 more deaths from the deadly virus were reported, raising the total death toll to 1,582.

"Among the new death cases, 28 were men and nine women. Of them, 10 were from Dhaka, nine from Chattogram, seven from Khulna, six from Rajshahi, three from Mymensingh and one each from Rangpur and Barishal," Prof Dr Nasima Sultana, additional director general of the Directorate General of Health Services, made the disclosure during a regular bulletin on Wednesday.

Besides, 2,031 patients recovered from the disease during this time, increasing the tally to 49,666.

Nasima Sultana stated that, so far, 40.49 percent coronavirus-infected patients – both symptomatic and asymptomatic – have recovered while 1.29 percent have died. Meanwhile, the rate of infection is slightly over 21 percent.

Bangladesh currently has 399 intensive care beds and 112 dialysis beds dedicated to novel coronavirus patients. Globally, the virus has killed 480,095 people and infected 9,369,576 till date.