Amid a surge in Covid cases, the government warned that the situation was set to turn grim, putting a strain on the country’s healthcare system. It is feared there will be massive spike in daily cases of pandemic virus and deaths. On top of this, the allegations are heard often from various sources that some hospitals are causing unbearable financial hardship to the patients in the name of expensive tests and use of ICU.
In this backdrop, the government has issued several guidelines — wear masks outdoors, maintain physical distance, and more importantly, get vaccinated as soon as possible to curve the spike.
If the situation worsens, daily patient may increase expotentially that may overcome hospital bed capacity of 20000 in total for Covid patients. Around 1,300 Covid patients were admitted to hospitals as on Wednesday. We are likely to see a massive spike in the number of patients over the next five to seven days. So far 33 Omicron cases have been confirmed in the country. The variant can transmit 70 times faster than the original novel coronavirus that emerged in China’s Wuhan in December 2019.
A total of 4,558 cases were detected last month, whereas 15,766 cases have already been confirmed so far this month. On Thursday, 3,359 new infections were recorded and 12 people died from Covid-19. The current positivity rate is 12.03 per cent while the total positivity rate stands at 13.62 per cent. Around 6.5 million students have so far been jabbed against the targeted 1.28 crore. The Directorate General of Health Services has labelled Rajshahi, Natore, Rangpur, Lalmonirhat, Jashore and Dinajpur as ‘yellow zones’, and Dhaka and Rangamati as ‘red zones’. The government has asked to cancel all public gathering and wearing masks at outside the home.
Ramming up vaccination rate will increase Covid resistance among the vaccinated people. We think, the government, non-government and social organizations should come up again to aware people to comply with health emergency protocols and vaccine. The hospitals should complete their preparedness quickly and avoid any loopholes, shown earlier. We must put healthcare first before profit to fight against Coronavirus.
