Coronavirus suspect dies, 3 more infected in Bangladesh

An elderly woman died in Sylhet with coronavirus symptoms while three more people were tested positive for the virus on Sunday.

On the day, the owners’ association decided to shut all shopping malls and markets, except groceries and kitchen markets, across the country from March 25.

With the three new cases, the total number of COVID-19 patients has risen to 27 in Bangladesh.

With the situation deteriorating every day, the government on Sunday asked all its  officials and employees across the country to stay at their respective work stations round the clock until further instruction to provide assistance necessary for fighting the virus.

The woman that died on Sunday had been in isolation after returning from the United Kingdom and died with symptoms of the novel virus infection before getting tested, said Sylhet civil surgeon Premananda Mandal.

Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research director Meerjady Sabrina Flora said that the woman was buried as per the World Health Organisation protocol as she was suspected to be COVID-19 patient.

Speaking at a press conference in the capital, she said that three more COVID-19 patients – aged between 20 and 40 – were identified with two of them coming from abroad and the other having contact with another COVID-19 patient detected earlier.

Meerjady said that so far two deaths from the disease were confirmed by the IEDCR while 27 others were detected to be infected with the novel virus till now.

Two more people died at Khulna Medical College Hospital on Saturday night with symptoms of COVID-19, but they were not tested, said KMCH director Manzur Morshed.

He said that one of them had visited India. ‘The members of the two families were requested to be in home quarantine,’ he said.

The two deaths in Khulna  created panic among people as they suspected community transmission of the virus. They, however, remained untested and undetected.

The IEDCR is still the sole agency to test for the coronavirus infection in Bangladesh.

Meerjady claimed that no community transmission was detected by their surveillance system though, she admitted, only 40 suspected pneumonia patients were tested from across the country and that they were not infected with the novel coronavirus.

The death of an elderly man in the capital’s Tolarbagh raised the probability of community transmission as the man’s son said that his father did not have foreign travel history and none of their family members had travelled abroad either.

The Tolarbagh neighbourhood has remained on lockdown since Saturday night.

Meerjady said that they were trying to trace the source of the man’s infection and they would settle for community transmission only if any source could not be identified.

‘We are conducting contact tracing and testing suspected patients in the neighbourhood,’ she said.

The man’s son alleged that his father had not been tested despite repeated request to the IEDCR on the grounds that he or his family members did not have foreign travel history.

Several hospitals refused to treat his father as he had symptoms of COVID-19, he alleged further.

The IEDCR, Meerjady said, has changed their strategy of testing such people and now widened the tests for all suspected people regardless of their having foreign travel history.

Bangladesh on Thursday locked down Shibchar upazila in Madaripur as the health minister said that the area was vulnerable to COVID-19 since many expatriates have returned home in the area.

On Sunday, Gaibandha’s Sadullahpur upazila nirbahi officer Nabi Newaz wrote to the higher authorities seeking directives for locking down the upazila as two COVID-19 patients in the area had attended a marriage ceremony and mixed with community members who participated in Gaibandha-3 bypolls on Saturday.

Nabi Newaz confirmed the incident to New Age but Gaibandha’s deputy commissioner Abdul Matin said that the UNO mistakenly wrote the letter to him and that no lockdown was enforced.

As a further precaution, the government on Sunday postponed the Higher Secondary Examination scheduled to start on April 1.

The shopping malls and markets, except the groceries and kitchen markets, were closed across the country Sunday evening.

Bangladesh Shop Owners’ Association president Md Helal Uddin said that they took the decision to keep all super shops, super markets and markets closed between March 25 and March 31 at a meeting of the association’s executive committee to prevent the spread of the virus.

 He, however, said that the kitchen markets, groceries, shops of daily essentials and medicine shops would remain open during the period.

Dhaka South City Corporation on Sunday, in an anti-coronavirus measure for Kamrangirchar, ward 57 of the city, closed all restaurants, street food shops and tea stalls in the ward until further notice.

The government on the day also suspended all international flights except to the UK, China, Hong Kong and Thailand and closed all land and seaports as people from various countries continued to enter Bangladesh with the government failing to ensure home quarantine for all.

In another development, the government suspended a special session of the Jatiya Sangsad, scheduled from Sunday, while the Monday’s weekly cabinet meeting was also cancelled.

The Cabinet Division in a circular on Sunday asked all government officials and employees at the divisional, district and upazila levels to stay at their respective work stations round the clock until further instruction.

The instruction was issued to them for providing assistance necessary to fight the corovirus and tackle any critical situation due to its spread in the country.

The circular has been dispatched to all divisional commissioners, deputy commissioners and upazila nirbahi officers.

As panic gripped the nation, thinner movement of people was seen in the capital on Sunday.

People opted to stay at home, but many went out searching for essential medicines for fever and cold and rushed to kitchen markets for daily essentials.

COVID-19, which is believed to have started spreading in late December from a market in Wuhan, China, that sells wild animals, has already appeared as a pandemic, killing over 11,000 people and infecting nearly three lakh others.

Bangladesh has started responding slowly as people from different coronavirus affected countries entered Bangladesh.

Nearly 6.3 lakh people have entered Bangladesh since January 21 and over 6,000 people entered the country every day in the past weeks.

The government said that they were quarantining people, but the number quarantined was less than 20,000.

On Sunday, 40 people, who were suspected to be COVID-19 patients, were in isolation at hospitals.

The government so far tested 564 people as the testing facilities were not yet decentralised and still only the IEDCR was testing the suspected patients.

As the number of the suspected patients increased, many hospitals, including government ones, were refusing to treat such patients as the doctors said that they were not provided with personal protective gear.

Health secretary Ashadul Islam on Sunday said that adequate protective equipment for doctors were in stock and that 10 lakh more were in the process of procurement.

The government has 13,000 testing kits in stock and 30,000 more in the pipeline, he added.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net