Reza Mahmud :
A year after identifying the first case of Covid -19 transmission in the country, Bangladesh has recorded over half a million infections and nearly 8,500 deaths.
On March 8 last year, three cases were identified for the first time after the fatal disease broke out in the Wuhan province of China in December 2019. It became a global pandemic within three months.
Human health experts said Bangladesh learned and achieved enough from the global pandemic.
“In first stage, when the first cases were detected in the country we, the human health experts as well the government got nervous knowing nothing how to combat against the pandemic. But gradually, government and the health experts have overcome the situation and fought back successfully,” Professor Dr. Muhammad Shahidullah, Chairman of the National Technical Advisory Committee on Covid-19, told The New Nation on Sunday.
He said Bangladesh has learnt enough from the pandemic. “Enormous things we have learnt from the pandemic which hit the world severely,” Professor Shahidullah said.
“There were no arrangement of centrally controlled oxygen supply in most hospitals in the country but nowadays, most of the hospitals have the system. It is a result of the pandemic. Patients of covid and non-covid indiscriminately will get the facility anytime,” the Chairman said. Besides, human health experts was unaware of high-flow nasal cannula which may be very useful for respiratory problems. In the covid-19 pandemic we learnt it which would be very helpful for every patients suffering from respiratory problem including asthma.
The experts said also that in first days, covid patients were in acute sufferings while they were looking for a covid dedicated hospital, but nowadays most of the hospitals have a covid unit so that such a suffering has already been eradicated mostly.
When contacted, Professor Dr. Nazrul Islam, a prominent Virologist and former Vice-Chancellor of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University told The New Nation, “Government has many successes in combating the pandemic. Creating awareness of following health safety measures including washing hands, using sanitizers would be long term positive impact in the country.”
He asked the people to follow all the health safety measures to stay safe from several diseases.
According to the Directorate General of the Health Services (DGHS), 606 new infections were recorded in the last 24 hours to Sunday, taking the total caseload to 550,330.
Bangladesh reported its first death on March 18 last year. Since then, 8,462 people have died including 11 fatalities were recorded in the last 24 hours.
Less than a year after the pandemic unfolded in the country, Bangladesh kicked off a nationwide vaccination campaign in February 7 this year. As of Sunday, a total of 37, 89,352 people have been inoculated in the country.
Besides, 50,17,804 persons have registered for taking a covid vaccine.
DGHS said that daily infection rate stood at 4.30 percent, up from 4.13 percent on Saturday.
The overall infection rate, however, fell slightly, to 13.27 percent with a total of 4,146,205 tests being conducted across the country till now.
Meanwhile, the mortality rate against the total number of cases detected has so far remained steady at 1.54 percent for the past several days.
The DGHS said that a total of 1,037 people had recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours.
So far, 503,003 patients which are 91.23 percent of all infected – have made full recovery across the country.
