Staff Reporter :
Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) on Wednesday said coronavirus is spreading fast in the country due to new variant that contributes the rise of both fatalities and infection in recent days.
“Bangladesh has been passing through the second wave of coronavirus infection and the rising of fatalities are due to the new variant,” Dr Md Robed Amin, spokesperson of the DGHS said this in a daily bulletin on Wednesday.
He urged the media not to create confusion over vacant beds in government’s covid dedicated hospitals.
The spokesman said, “Different media published news that there is no empty beds in government hospitals. It is not true. Some 1,200 more beds are still vacant in government’s covid dedicated hospitals in the capital. You can easily know about the number of vacant beds and ICU seats.”
He informed that some 243 ICU beds out of 1,005 remained vacant for Covid treatment.
He also urged the law enforcing agencies to make the movement of health workers obstacle free.
The DGHS official also urged all to abide by the health safety rules strictly to cut infections.
Meanwhile, the country registered 95 more Covid-related deaths in 24 hours until Saturday that pushed up the total fatalities to 10,683.
Besides, 4280 people were found infected during the period after testing 28,408 samples, the Directorate General of Health Services said in a handout.
With the latest figure, the mortality rate rose to 1.46 percent while the infection rate declined to 15.07 percent from Tuesday’s 16.85 percent.
On Monday, the country had broken all the previous records of Covid-19 deaths registering 112 fatalities.
Bangladesh reported its first coronavirus cases on March 8 last year and the first death on the 18th of that month.
Health authorities have so far confirmed 732,060 cases. Among them, 635,183 people – 86.77 percent of all patients – have recovered. The virus claimed 568 lives in January this year, 281 in February and 638 in March.
Dhaka division remains the worst-hit region of the country since the start of the pandemic.
Sixty of the 58 deaths reported today are from Dhaka division while 17 from Chatogram and eight in Rajshahi, three each from Rajshhai, Sylhet, Rangpur, two in Barishal and one in Mymensign division.
Among the total deceased, 6237 died in Dhaka division so far which is 58.38 percent of the total fatalities.
Besides, the government has extended the ongoing lockdown by another week from April 22 in an effort to bring the situation under control although people still seem apathetic towards health guidelines and safety rules.
Concerns about the spread of more contagious and deadlier variants of the virus were raised by experts.
Research by the icddr,b has found that the South African variant accounted for 81 percent of the positive cases in Dhaka since the third week of March this year.
That is not good news for Bangladesh because the country has managed to procure only the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine which offers as little as 10 percent protection against the South African variant, researchers suggested.
Additionally, hospitals are now grappling to accommodate the increasing number of patients and are running low on beds and oxygen.
A countrywide vaccination drive, launched on Feb 7, is underway.
Bangladesh is receiving vaccine jabs from India as the country signed an agreement with the Serum Institute of India Pvt Ltd for 30 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
So far, 5,761,902 people have received the first dose and 18,15,987 have got their second jab, according to official figures.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s vaccine supplier India has shifted from being a mass vaccine exporter to a major importer after the country saw a record number of daily cases.
Although Bangladesh is yet to receive its March consignment of 5 million doses, Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said they will arrive as promised by India.
