Bangladesh: Covid deaths, infections alarming, says minister

Health minister Zahid Maleque on Saturday said that the current rates of Covid deaths and infections in Bangladesh were alarming.

The comment came on the day when Bangladesh reported the highest daily positivity rate at 32.55 per cent and deaths crossed the 19,000 mark.

Addressing an online exchange of views on Saturday, the minister said that currently the number of Covid deaths, test positivity rates, bed occupancy and oxygen requirement rates had increased many times higher than that of the past.

‘Earlier the test positivity rate reduced to five per cent which is now 30 to 32 per cent and the number of deaths has also increased by around 10 times,’ he said.

Earlier the country used to witness 10 to 15 Covid deaths and while the country at present witnesses around 200 Covid deaths, he said.

‘It is alarming, it is not acceptable,’ he also said.

The minister said that the bed occupancy rate also increased by around 10 times and oxygen requirements rose by four to five times.

The country witnessed only five deaths on February 5 and 292 cases on February 7 this year.

At the virtual opinion sharing meeting Zahid Maleque said that at present the number of vacant Covid-designated beds in the capital was decreasing day by day.

The number of ICU beds was around 800 to 1,200 while the demand for ICU beds was very high as the patients’ families were demanding ICU facility even if the patients did not need that, he said.

He also said that about 90 per cent of the Covid patients undergoing treatment at public hospitals are non-vaccinated people and 75 per cent of them are from rural areas.

Most of the elderly people died of Covid are male, while most of the middle-aged people died of Covid are female, he added.

The minister blamed not wearing masks as the main reason for increasing the rate of infection.

He also blamed the prevalence of delta variant for the situation.

‘In India we saw that the severity of delta coronavirus variant reached its highest level and then fell within three months,’ he said, adding, ‘It seems that same thing will happen in Bangladesh too.’

The online programme was attended, among others, by Directorate General of Health Services director general professor ABM Khurshid Alam and Bangladesh Private Medical College Association president MA Mubin Khan.

New Age