C ovid-19 patient was first detected in Bangladesh on 8 March 2020 and since then, we have all success and mistakes in facing two past waves based on which we may now take some precautionary measures for the third wave in the country. At this stage of second phase, Bangladesh has entered into a grim milestone of 7,70,842 coronavirus cases of infection with a death tally of 11,833, and following this catastrophe, the country now entered into a three week’s lockdown with strict restrictions to tackle a new wave of infections and deaths in the second wave.
Read more: Country sees 21 Covid deaths in a day
In global context, Bangladesh's coronavirus caseload at the moment places it in the 33rd worst-affected country in the world, as it is compiled by Johns Hopkins University. In counting the victims and death, April of this year has been most severe period where as many as 2404 persons died in this month, with an average of 80 persons per day; as compared to this previously, the highest death has had occurred in July last year, which in counting is just half of April’s of this year. While the detection of patients stood at one lac in April, 2021; and in this context, last June being the severe month, the total victims was 98,303 at that time, which is almost comparable to April this year.
But if we carefully analyse Bloomberg’s recent Covid-19 resilience ranking scores of November 2020 which identified 53 economies of the world on their excellent performances with containment of virus with the least amount of social and economic disruption within the country, we find that among the 20 best performers, Bangladesh was successful in having its glaring 20th position.
Among these 20 countries which were included in the Bloomberg’s ranking as good performers at that time, New Zealand topped the list being followed by Taiwan, Australia, Norway and Singapore who were ranked the top five ‘rounds out countries’ having shown their excellent performances in taking all protections very carefully. Chronologically, the remaining countries in the list are: Finland, Japan, South Korea, China, Denmark, Canada, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Thailand, Ireland, UAE, Israel, Russia, the Netherlands and Bangladesh.
While all European countries including the United Kingdom and the United States are still facing the upheaval of the second wave of coronavirus, Bangladesh to that context, luckily had slightest improvement of the situation since middle of December until third week of February when on 21 February 2021, the lowest daily count for us was only 327 having a death of five persons. It slowly started to increase again in the beginning of March with a victim of 1773 on March 15, 2021; and the death was 13 on that day. Since then subsequently, it started progressing geometrically having the highest count of 7087 on April 4, 2021 with a death of 53.
People became scared when the death in April, on an average surpassed 100 per day, with a highest of 112 on 19 April, 2021. Now the question comes to our mind that while we started vaccinating the people in the middle of February, why the counting should increase at this time. The answer is clear: perhaps, we became overconfident and started leaving our masks, became careless about keeping distance to each other, started organizing social and religious gatherings most frequently, moved to the distant places as tourists and started hooliganism to obey the destructive mission of the Hefazatis and other religious dogmatists on several occasions, which cannot be denied.
Read more: Covid testing at HSIA to begin tomorrow: Health minister
Furthermore at certain time, in fact, we apparently in our behavior became the real tiger of being careless on the streets and markets, having restarted with our old habits of coughing, sneezing and spitting on the streets, which we like most. For that reason, once in a seminar, I fervently reminded our honorable Planning Minister, requesting him to allow us coming up with our innovative strategies of social planning, side by side with his excellent economic planning for the country.
With this foregoing description of the pandemic situation in Bangladesh, I now want to concentrate on suggestive measures to protect us from the suspected third wave or/and future waves in the country. At the very onset, once again, I must provide some data on changing trends of the victims after we restarted lockdown on April 14, 2021 which now continues prolonging until May 16, 2021. We would say that it is certainly a very wise decision as by now, we started receiving the effectual result of the lockdown, as for the first time after April when our daily count has come down to 1452 on 1st May with a comparable low death of 60 which somehow, is indicative of the beginning of an expected future improvement. We may cite here the case of Germany where their seven-day average of cases per 100,000 people rose to 166 at the weekend and with this number, the government compels the country with stricter restrictions of lockdown until June. We should also formulate integrated policy having a clear vision of healthcare system to bring down the COVID-19 infection to a zero status which will make us healthy and give us a prosperous future.
It can only be done if after completion of the lockdown, we later continue identifying the most affected areas and go for implementing zone-wise lockdown, where it is needed.
The government further has to be very careful in implementing strict corona rules of compulsory mask wearing, maintaining social distance on outside movement, disallowing people spitting and coughing in public on the faces and on the streets and ensuring mass travel with restricted rules. Finally, the government has to bring every adult into the vaccination scheme immediately and also simultaneously the younger in the earliest phases; we must keep it in mind that the rate of infection among the young in Bangladesh has increased recently in our country, for which we cannot just keep them aside from the vaccination programme. It might eventually be fatal for us as they are the ones who mostly visit the shops and markets and thus get contaminated. As such, the markets and the shopping towns also must ensure that everybody enters there wearing mask and also are maintaining other formalities of the Covid requirement.
Meanwhile, the second surge of COVID-19 has become alarmingly devastating for neighboring India where there has been at least 3, 92000 caseload in one day on May 1, 2021 consistently keeping almost the same average increase on everyday from April through May this year; the total death in neighboring India comes to 215452 until now. It is also reported that this cataclysmic Indian variant of Covid is the biggest threat for everybody and for that reason, we suggest that land routes connecting Bangladesh with India should remain closed until the situation gets fully normal; though our government appreciably suspended the borders with India on 25 April, 2021 which should prolong further. Otherwise, we apprehend that pandemic claws of Indian variant might grab us with more severity which will be dangerous for us.
Professor Dr A.H.M. Zehadul Karim is a former Vice Chancellor of a public university in Bangladesh, now teaches at Jagannath University