As the country’s daily Covid-19 cases crossed the 1,000 mark on Wednesday after nearly four months, experts feared that the fourth wave of the pandemic has begun in some clusters in the capital. They said two Omicron sub-variants--BA.4 and BA.5--are probably fuelling the fresh spike in Covid infections like in some other countries in the world, and warned that coming weeks could see exponential growth in daily Covid-19 cases as the community transmission may begin soon. Read: COVID vaccines saved 20M lives in 1st year, scientists say The public health experts, however, think the new wave is unlikely to be as virulent as the previous ones since a very large number of people have some sort of antibodies gained either by infection or vaccination. DGHS spokesperson Dr Robed Amin, IEDCR adviser Dr M Mushtuq Husain and former World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Advisor Muzaherul Huq made the observations while talking to UNB. They emphasised on strict maintaining Covid-19 protocols, including the cent per cent use of masks and ramping up of vaccination to bring the most elderly persons under the coverage of the booster dose of the Covid vaccines to slow down the infection. Bangladesh recorded 1,319 new cases and one death on Thursday while one death and 1,135 cases on Wednesday. The country recorded over 1000 Covid cases (1409 cases) with 11 deaths last on February 25. The daily-case positivity rate jumped to 14.32 per cent from Wednesday’s 13.30 per cent as 9,214 samples were tested, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).