COVID-19 death eclipses recovery in Bangladesh

More people are dying from COVID-19 in Bangladesh than the number of recovery as the novel coronavirus fallout begins to take its toll on the people of the country.

The number of deaths from the novel virus rose to 91, including seven in the past 24 hours till 8:00am Sunday.

The death rate now stands at 3.70 per cent as the number of infections rose to 2,456 as of Sunday morning, including 312 in the past 24 hours.

So far 75 people recovered from their infections, including nine in the past 24-hour period.

Currently, 2,290 people are living with coronavirus infections in Bangladesh.

The countries witnessing a high number of coronavirus cases have high number of recovery, according to latest statistics of Worldometer as of Sunday.

In the USA, the number of infected rose to 7,38,923, with recovery of 6,00,746 people and deaths of 39,015 people as of Sunday.

In Spain, the number of infections was 1,94,416 on Sunday, with recovery of  74,797 people and deaths of 20,639 people.

In Italy, the number of infected people rose to 175,925, of which 44,927 recovered and 23,227 died.

Germany witnessed 143,724 infections, with 88,000 recovery and 4,538 deaths.

In China, where the novel coronavirus emerged, the number of infections rose to 82,735, with 77,062 who recovered and 4,632 deaths.

Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research principal scientific officer ASM Alamgir said that the patients in Bangladesh were taking a longer time to recover from their infections.

 

 

He told New Age that the patients’ duration of hospital stay was spanning between two weeks to six weeks.

‘The slow recovery is the reason for having such a low number of recovered patients at this moment,’ he said.

Alamgir said that the majority of the deaths in Bangladesh were aged persons having comorbidity, but he could not give any a percentage of age-specific deaths in the country.

Health minister Zahid Maleque said on Sunday that 80 per cent of the patients in the country required no hospital admission and that only 15 per cent were in need of only observation.

The rest 5 per cent were taking treatment and a handful of them was needing ventilation, he said.

But, the minister said, the outcome of providing ICU support to the patients was ‘not good’.

‘We have provided ventilation support to nine patients but unfortunately eight of them died,’ he said.

On the allegations raised by the patients of not getting proper treatment, Directorate General of Health Services additional director general Nasima Sultana said that the country has 1.5 lakh hospital beds for 170 million people and that it was not possible to ensure satisfactory treatment if everyone rushed to the hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.

Bangladesh on March 8 confirmed the first COVID-19 infections in the country and the first death on March 18.

The number of infected people and deaths are soaring every day.

On April 11, the number of single-day infections was 94, which jumped to 209 on April 14, and 292 on April 16.

In the past two days, the number of single-day infections remained above 300, with 306 on Saturday and 312 on Sunday.

Health minister Zahid Maleque said the number of daily-infected people went up to 300 in recent days and that Bangladesh would be lucky if the number does not go higher.

He said that people were not following the government’s instruction to stay home during the lockdown and that many people were going from the infected areas to the non-infected areas.

‘Community transmission is increasing due to the movements,’ he said.

The minister said Bangladesh was now on the seventh week since the detection of the first cases of infection and at this stage, the countries in Europe and the USA suffered a lot.

He criticised the mass gathering at the funeral of an Islamic cleric in Brahmanbaria.

 ‘It is totally an irresponsible act,’ he said, ‘We are afraid that many people may have gotten infected at the mass funeral.’

‘The administration has completely failed to tackle the situation in Brahmanbaria,’ he said.

Zahid further said that many people from the infected areas of the capital and Narayanganj are secretly leaving for their homes in other districts.

The minister urged people to have more test so that the government can ‘get a chance’ to control the spread of COVID-19.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net