coronavirus situation
Workers’ lives have little value to govt: Fakhrul
BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Tuesday alleged that a chaotic situation has been created by reopening RMG factories amid the ongoing lockdown as workers’ lives have no value to the government.
"RMG workers went through extreme sufferings while joining thier jobs. The government has created a messy situation by allowing the workers to go home and again bringing them back to work. Their lives seem to have no value,” he said.
Speaking at a virtual discussion, the BNP leader said the government whimsically allowed the workers to go home amid Covid transmission before Eid-ul-Azha and thus helped spread the virus across the country. “They now asked them to come back amid the lockdown. The workes returned to Dhaka from Mymensingh, Manikganj, Munshiganj and other areas on foot to join their jobs. This is too much.”
Read: Govt deceiving people over Covid vaccines: BNP
Mannan-Nilufar Memorial Foundation arranged the programme, marking the first death anniversary of late BNP vice-chairman and ex-state minister Abdul Mannan.
Fakhrul alleged that the government is least bothered about the sufferings of people and their lives and livelihoods as it is not elected by them.
"This is the high time to stand up against this misrule. We have to stand up against this monstrous regime that has been running the country without public mandate,” he said.
Read: Covid situation turned terrible: BNP
The BNP leader said a truly democratic government must be established to 'restore' people’s rights. "We all have to work together and move forward to make it happens.”
Fakhrul recalled the contributions of Mannan to the country and BNP as an honest and responsible politician.
Mannan, who served as the state minister for Civil Aviation and Tourism from 1991 to 1996, died on August 4 last year at the age of 78.
Looking for hotels for Covid patients as hospitals struggle: Minister
The government is going to rent hotels for providing treatment to Covid patients with mild complications as hospitals are under an unprecedented crisis with huge patients, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said on Tuesday.
“Already 90 percent of the seats in hospitals have been packed. And 95% ICU beds are also occupied. We’re preparing a field hospital at Bangabandhu Medical University where we can immediately arrange 500-600 beds,” he said.
The minister said, “Everyone infected with corona needs not to be hospitalised. So, we’re thinking of renting hotels for dealing with the patients who’ve mild complications. We’ll have doctors, nurses, medicines, and some oxygen in those hotels.”
He came up with the remarks while talking to reporters after an inter-ministerial meeting at the Secretariat with Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Haque in the chair.
Read: Bangladesh’s Covid nightmare: 235 more die, 15,776 infected
Maleque said they have started looking for hotels as they will no longer be able to accommodate the growing number of patients in hospitals. “If we can give treatment to the Covid patients with mild infections at hotels, they’ll be able to go back home after recovery from there, and it will help reduce the pressure on the hospitals. So, we’ve taken this step.”
Another EC official dies of Covid in Mymensingh
Additional regional election officer of Mymensingh ABM Saifuzzaman died of Covid-19 on Tuesday. He was 45.
“He breathed his last at 11:20am at Mymensingh Medical College Hospital,” Mymensingh regional election officer (REO) Md Shahedunnabi Chowdhury told UNB.
Read: Bangladesh’s Covid nightmare: 235 more die, 15,776 infected
Saifuzzaman was admitted to the hospital on Thursday last as he tested positive for Covid-19.
He left behind wife and two daughters to mourn his death. He will be buried at his village in Atpara Upazila of Netrakona district.
With Saifuzzaman, eight EC staff died of Covid-19 and some 200 staff got infected with the virus.
Read: Chattogram EC official dies of Covid-19
Of them, four EC staff died in July.
Sylhet REO Md Israil Hossain died on July 25 while Rajnagar Upazila election officer in Moulvibazar Alif Laila on July 7 last.
Bangladesh’s Covid nightmare: 235 more die, 15,776 infected
Amid the merciless onslaught of Covid-19 in Bangladesh, the country recorded 236 more deaths linked to the virus in 24 hours till Tuesday morning.
According to a handout issued by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), 15,776 more people came out positive with the virus during the period after the test of 55,284 samples.
The fresh numbers pushed the country’s death tally to 21,397 today with the caseload mounting to 1,296,093.
Meanwhile, the daily test positivity rate fell to 28.58 % from Monday's 29.91%, while the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a 5% or below rate.
The country has been seeing over 14,300 cases and 230 deaths every day on average for the last seven days.
The recovery rate, however, rose to 86.80%, and the case fatality remained unchanged at 1.65% compared to the same period, said the DGHS.
Read: Covid in Bangladesh: Seniors far more likely to face the worst
Amid the growing concerns about the highly infectious Delta variant, Dhaka division reported the highest 73 deaths, Chattogram 65, Khulna 32, Rajshahi 21, Sylhet, Rangpur and Mymensingh each 12 and Barishal eight deaths.
Of today’s deceased, 140 were male and 95 were female.
Hiring hospitals
The government is going to rent hotels for providing treatment to Covid patients with mild complications as hospitals are under an unprecedented crisis with huge patients, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said on Tuesday.
“Already 90 percent of the seats in hospitals have been packed. And 95% ICU beds are also occupied. We’re preparing a field hospital at Bangabandhu Medical University where we can immediately arrange 500-600 beds,” he said.
Dhaka’s traffic overload that never ends, not even in lockdown!
Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is known for its traffic congestion. One will see it, no matter whether there is a shutdown or bad weather because its chaotic traffic -- still too mild a term -- is its identity.
On the 12th day of lockdown, UNB correspondents saw the streets of Dhaka flooded with vehicles bringing back its chaotic days. Everything except public transports were plying city streets and people wandering around with little or no regard to the health guidelines.
The government, meanwhile, has extended the current lockdown till August 10 amid a surge in the delta variant of Covid-19 across the country.
Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Haque disclosed the decision of the government while talking to reporters after an inter-ministerial meeting on Tuesday.
He said shops, factories and offices will be reopened from August 11 while public transport will be allowed to ply roads on a limited scale once the lockdown is over.
After a reality check at different parts of the capital, including Shabagh, Uttara, Mohakhali, Mirpur, Kalabagan, Biijoy Srani, Badda, Farmgate, Shyamoli, Karwan Bazar and Bangla Motor, the UNB correspondents saw the capital almost returning to normal with, with an increased number of vehicles and people on the streets.
Read: People find 'easy excuses' to defy lockdown in Dhaka
Usual traffic jams were also seen at most of these places during office hours from 8:30 am to 11 am.
Public engagement missing in govt policy to fight Covid-19: Speakers
Speakers at a virtual dialogue on Sunday said it would not be possible to tackle the existing coronavirus situation with only the government’s initiatives as the public engagement is crucially needed here, which remains missing in the policy of the State.
“If all want to face this adverse situation bureaucratically, it’ll not work. Social engagement and initiatives will be required here alongside the government’s initiatives. Otherwise, I think Bangladesh would be affected so immensely,” said Bangladesh Workers Party MP Fazle Hossain Badsha (Rajshahi-2).
Citizen’s Platform for SDGs and the Hunger Project jointly arranged the dialogue titled “’Initiative for local people engagement in tackling Corona” through an online platform.
Badsha said the administration was entrusted with the responsibility (to deal Covid-19 pandemic). “The concept of public engagement is not there in the decisions of the State (Government),” he added.
“I think that it is not possible to reduce the Covid-19 infection (rate) without public engagement and their organised power…. A trained volunteer group is needed today to serve the people in this crisis,” said the lawmaker.
Convenor of the Citizen’s Platform Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya said now there is no alternative to a public engagement initiative in combating the pandemic.
“But the biggest obstacle here is the absence of necessary framework and guidelines on the part of the government for such a public engagement initiative. This absence is also undermining the effectiveness of various government stimulus delivery and awareness-raising about vaccination and health protocols,” he said.
Read: Bangladesh faces harder days as Covid kills 231 more
He questioned whether there is any ‘mental barrier’ among political leaders to engage the country’s non-government development initiatives or whether the political leaders consider them (non-government organisations) as their competitors not thinking them as partners.
Noting that it is the administration not political leaders who play the greater role in tackling the pandemic now at the local level, he also questioned if the administration also feels any sort of discomfort or mental barrier to engage private initiatives.
To fight the pandemic in a coordinated way, it is urgently needed to have a national guideline over public engagement shunning the narrow attitude towards private ventures, said Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya.
Noted economist Prof Rehman Sobhan stressed the need for collective action in coordination of the government and private initiatives to fight the pandemic. “Civil Societies are not competitors rather they are partners (of the government),” he said.
Country Director of the Hunger Project Dr Badiul Alam Majumdar in his keynote presentation said the Corona Resilient Village (CRV) initiative is essential to check coronavirus transmission in the grassroots.
He said now the coronavirus has already spread throughout the country due to community transmission. It’ll take a long time to bring all the people under the vaccination coverage. Besides, there is still uncertainty even about the effectiveness of vaccines.
Read: Bangladesh to resume administering AstraZeneca jabs Monday
“So, this coronavirus problem will not go away so easily. We’ll have to lead life coping up with it…This is why we took the CRV initiative last year,” said Dr Majumdar explaining that the CRV initiative is based on volunteer work and run by the community leadership.
Noted personality Prof Rounaq Jahan said people are much aware but don’t practice the health protocols. “So, it is essential now to reduce the gap between awareness and practice,” she said.
Mentioning that the government frequently changes its Covid decisions, Prof Jahan said, “The government will have to stick to its policy (not changing it frequently), if it wants to enforce more successfully and reduce the awareness-practice gap.”
Swapan Kumar Das, Chairman of Fakirhat Upazila in Bagerhat, said the coordination between the public representatives and the administration in the fight against coronavirus was not seen in many places.
“But the lack of coordination is not seen here in my place (upazila), though the public representatives don’t have so much responsibility here as they are just assisting the administration,” he said.
Awami League MP (Meherpur-2) Mohammad Shahiduzzaman and public health expert Dr Lelin Choudhury, among others, address the dialogue presided over by Dr Mushtaque Raza Chowdhury.
Bangladesh faces harder days as Covid kills 231 more
With the Delta variant of Covid-19 tearing through Bangladesh, the country reported 231 more deaths in 24 hours till Sunday morning.
Besides, 14,844 people came out positive for the virus after the test of 49,529 samples, said a handout issued by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
It said the fresh cases took Bangladesh’s total fatality to 20,916 while the caseload to 1,264,328.
Meanwhile, the daily test positivity rate marked a negligible fall to 29.97% from Saturday’s 30.24 %, while the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a 5% or below rate.
On average, the country has been seeing nearly 14,000 cases and over 200 deaths daily for a week.
However, the recovery rate rose to 86.47% from the previous day’s 86.29 % and the case fatality rate fell to 1.65% from last day’s 1.66 %, said the DGHS media release.
Also read: Covid-19: What life is like when hospitals refuse admission!
During the 24-hour period, 15,054 patients recovered from the fatal disease.
Among the latest fatalities, the highest 77 deaths were recorded in Dhaka division followed by 53 in Chattogram, 44 in Khulna, 18 in Rangpur, 13 in Rajshahi, 11 in Mymensingh, six in Barishal, and nine in Sylhet divisions.
Of them, 139 were men and 92 women.
Study: Vaccinated people can carry as much virus as others
In another dispiriting setback for the nation’s efforts to stamp out the coronavirus, scientists who studied a big COVID-19 outbreak in Massachusetts concluded that vaccinated people who got so-called breakthrough infections carried about the same amount of the coronavirus as those who did not get the shots.
Health officials on Friday released details of that research, which was key in this week’s decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend that vaccinated people return to wearing masks indoors in parts of the U.S. where the delta variant is fueling infection surges. The authors said the findings suggest that the CDC’s mask guidance should be expanded to include the entire country, even outside of hot spots.
The findings have the potential to upend past thinking about how the disease is spread. Previously, vaccinated people who got infected were thought to have low levels of virus and to be unlikely to pass it to others. But the new data shows that is not the case with the delta variant.
The outbreak in Provincetown — a seaside tourist spot on Cape Cod in the county with Massachusetts’ highest vaccination rate — has so far included more than 900 cases. About three-quarters of them were people who were fully vaccinated.
Travis Dagenais, who was among the many vaccinated people infected, said “throwing caution to the wind” and partying in crowds for long nights over the July Fourth holiday was a mistake in hindsight.
“The dominant public messaging has been that the vaccine means a return to normal,” the 35-year-old Boston resident said Thursday. “Unfortunately, I’ve now learned it’s a few steps toward normal, not the zero-to-sixty that we seem to have undertaken.”
Dagenais credits being vaccinated with easing the worst of the flu-like symptoms in a couple of days. He has recovered.
Like many states, Massachusetts lifted all COVID-19 restrictions in late May, ahead of the traditional Memorial Day start of the summer season. Provincetown this week reinstated an indoor mask requirement for everyone.
Leaked internal documents on breakthrough infections and the delta variant suggest the CDC may be considering other changes in advice on how the nation fights the coronavirus, such as recommending masks for everyone and requiring vaccines for doctors and other health workers.
Read: Do I need to get tested for COVID-19 if I’m vaccinated?
The delta variant, first detected in India, causes infections that are more contagious than the common cold, flu, smallpox and the Ebola virus, and it is as infectious as chickenpox, according to the documents, which mentioned the Provincetown cases.
The documents were obtained by The Washington Post. As they note, COVID-19 vaccines are still highly effective against the delta variant at preventing serious illness and death.
The Provincetown outbreak and the documents highlight the enormous challenge the CDC faces in encouraging vaccination while acknowledging that breakthrough cases can occur and can be contagious but are uncommon.
The documents appear to be talking points for CDC staff to use with the public. One point advised: “Acknowledge the war has changed,” an apparent reference to deepening concern that many millions of vaccinated people could be a source of wide-ranging spread.
An agency spokeswoman declined to comment on the documents.
The White House on Friday defended its approach to rising virus cases and shifting public health guidelines, repeatedly deferred to the CDC while stressing the need for vaccinations.
“The most important takeaway is actually pretty simple. We need more people to get vaccinated,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said.
Pressed about the changing guidance, Jean-Pierre repeatedly said, “We don’t make those types of decisions from here.”
People with breakthrough infections make up an increasing portion of hospitalizations and in-hospital deaths among COVID-19 patients, coinciding with the spread of the delta variant, according to the leaked documents.
Although experts generally agreed with the CDC’s revised indoor masking stance, some said the report on the Provincetown outbreak does not prove that vaccinated people are a significant source of new infections.
Read: Should vaccinated people mask up with COVID-19 cases rising?
“There’s scientific plausibility for the (CDC) recommendation. But it’s not derived from this study,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins University public health researcher.
The CDC report is based on about 470 COVID-19 cases linked to the Provincetown festivities, which included densely packed indoor and outdoor holiday events at bars, restaurants, guest houses and rental homes.
Researchers ran tests on a portion of them and found roughly the same level of virus in those who were fully vaccinated and those who were not.
Three-quarters of the infections were in fully vaccinated individuals. Among those fully vaccinated, about 80% experienced symptoms with the most common being cough, headache, sore throat, muscle aches and fever.
Dagenais said he started to feel ill the evening he returned home and initially chalked it up to long nights of partying in packed Provincetown nightclubs.
But as the days wore on and the fever, chills, muscle aches and fatigue set in, he knew it was something more.
In the report, the measure researchers used to assess how much virus an infected person is carrying does not indicate whether they are actually transmitting the virus to other people, said Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan.
CDC officials say more data is coming. They are tracking breakthrough cases as part of much larger studies that involve following tens of thousands of vaccinated and unvaccinated people across the country over time.
Covid kills 218 more in Bangladesh as its catastrophe continues
As health authorities scramble to prevent the spread of the Delta variant, Bangladesh added 218 fatalities to its national tally on Saturday.
The country registered over 200 single-day fatalities for the last six days as it is fighting a horrific wave of the pandemic that overwhelmed its healthcare systems.
The country recorded 9,369 new cases on Saturday after testing 30,980 samples, and reported the highest daily Covid-19 fatality number – 258 – on July 27 and 16,230 infections the next day, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
There have been 1,249,484 positive cases and 20,685 coronavirus-related deaths here since the pandemic began, the DGHS said.
Meanwhile, the daily test positivity rate took a negligible fall to 30.24% from Friday’s 30.77 %, while the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a 5% or below rate.
However, the recovery rate rose to 86.29% from the previous day’s 85.81 % and the case fatality rate to 1.66% from last day’s 1.65 %.
Read: No decision yet on lockdown extension: Farhad
As many as 14,017 patients recovered from the fatal disease in the 24-hour period.
Among the latest deaths, the highest 67 deaths were recorded in Dhaka division followed by 55 in Chattogram, 27 in Khulna, 22 in Rajshahi, 16 in Rangpur, 12 in Mymensingh, 10 in Barishal, and nine in Sylhet divisions.
Of them, 134 were men and 84 women. Among them, one was between 0-10 years of age, six between 21-30, 17 between 31-40, 37 between 41-50, 37 between 51-60, 66 between 61-70, 33 between 71-80, 15 between 81-90, four between 91-100 and two over 100 years old.
Astrazeneca’s fresh rollout
On a positive note, Bangladesh will resume vaccination with Astrazeneca shots within the next few days, said Health Minister Zahid Maleque.
“We’ll resume vaccination with Astrazeneca jabs within the next 2-1 days. Those who failed to take the second dose after getting the first one will be able to get it now,” he said.
He said the government has an overall stock of 2 crore 60 lakh vaccine doses now.
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen and Health Minister Zahid Maleque on Saturday received the second consignment of AstraZeneca vaccine doses from Japan under the COVAX facility.
Read: Vaccination with Astrazeneca jabs in Bangladesh to resume within days
The second consignment contains 7,81,320 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine.
A cargo flight of Cathay Pacific that carried the vaccine doses from Japan landed at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 3:15 pm.
The third consignment that will contain 6,16,780 doses of the vaccine is scheduled to arrive here on August 3.
Bangladesh records 212 more Covid deaths setting off alarm bells
As Bangladesh races to head off a surge in Covid-19 cases driven by the Delta variant, the country added 212 fatalities to its national tally on Friday, up from 166 logged a week earlier.
The country has been shattering the records of daily cases and deaths almost every other day, reporting over 200 single-day fatalities for the last six days as it tries to prevent the spread of the Delta variant.
The rapid rise in cases and fatalities in July is enough to set off alarm bells, showing the pandemic is far from slowing down in Bangladesh.
The Covid-19 infections are at their peak now, with 12,293 new cases reported on average each day, plunging the country into uncertainty.
As the worst days of the pandemic are not over, Bangladesh recorded 13,862 new cases on Friday after testing 45,044 samples, up from 6,364 logged a week earlier on 23 July.