Alaul Alam :
It is obvious that the Covid-19 pandemic could not make Bangladesh as vulnerable as was supposed by the experts around the globe. In most cases, the country tackled all the challenges and came out with a model amid the world in battering coronavirus while many developed countries were still undergoing unprecedented corona woes.
Last year during the winter the country was supposed to enduring more vulnerability but even that time corona infection rate was under control. The government of the country was acclaimed enormously in regard to contain the covid-19. However, initially we had some challenges to go through.
Again taking concerted step to ensure mass vaccination in the country against Covid-19 is really a note-worthy initiative from the government as many developing countries are still fighting to take such an initiative as the developed countries have earned the ownership of the lion’s share of the vaccine produced in some countries leading to unequal distribution that makes the developing nations face challenges to vaccinate their people.
However, for some days the country has been undergoing a rapid surge in corona cases that make us think anew. The fresh surge is breaking the last year records in all aspects as the rate of infection along with death rate has increased dramatically. Truly, if we analyze the first wave of corona situation, we see how helpless we were in case of everything to ensure the quality protection from the clutches of Covid-19.
We could observe how helpless we were during our lockdown situation. Turning away patients from hospitals and losing livelihoods were common among the many problems that could cause a heavy blot amid the financially vulnerable communities. But we are fortunate that under the prudent leadership of our premier we had overcome the worst situation. Not only that, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported that the per capita income of Bangladesh was recorded even amid Covid-19. The country is likely to suppress India in regard to the per capita income, rising like a Phoenix from the ashes. By this time we have learnt many good lessons out of corona experiences.
But it is very unfortunate that those lessons cannot work or we cannot do all those work is a question of the time. It is obvious that with considering the fresh surge of Covid-19, the government has taken many initiatives. But it is really daunting for any country irrespective of the developed or the developing one to support huge number of corona-infected in case of covering all necessary medical facilities but hopefully, the concerned is alert to monitor all these things with the facilities available in the country.
By the time the state has announced 18 directives focusing on health guidelines to abide them strictly by its population but how far we are maintaining health guidelines is still a question. What we see from the overall scenario that people are violating health guidelines tremendously including wearing of facemasks and social distancing, to fight the fatal viral disease.
Things get tougher when we see that this new surge has developed some unique characteristics than the previous surge of Covid-19. For example, earlier we saw that the infected groups were mostly from the unimmunized raw population but the recent time the immunized people who have the antibody are rapidly infected that is really worrying. In many cases, the comparatively young people are being found infected with the new variant of coronavirus.
The causes of new surge may be many but one thing is very apparent and that is the people’s indifference to the health rules. Amid the first wave of corona, it was assumed that people would cling to the new normal socialization rules but in really they have almost discarded the new normal socialization rules. Obviously, the experts have blamed that the gross violation of health guidelines as the major cause of corona spike in the country. Even amid the heavy surge of covid-19, this time we cannot solely say that people are equipped with safety measures to strictly contain it.
Directives have been introduced to maintain by the people but we seldom see the concerned authority to make people force to follow the government health directives. A question may be pertinent to raise; who is bothered abut health guidelines when none one is there to compel them to do so.
However, according to experts, there is no alternatives to ensure extensive tracing, strict quarantine, isolation, adequate and repeated testing to prevent the further spread of the virus. Apart from this, we have to go through the health guidelines strictly to protect us from the new surge.
(Alaul Alam teaches at Prime University& research scholar at the IBS. Email: [email protected])
