COVID-19 test
10-year-old India returnee tests positive for Covid in Jashore
A 10-year-old boy, who returned from India with his mother and maternal uncle on May 5, has tested positive for Covid-19.
The child, a cancer patient, was admitted to the dedicated Covid care facility at Jahsore General Hospital on Wednesday night, said Sharsha Upazila Health officer Dr Yusuf Ali.
Read:11 more India returnees test positive for Covid-19
The boy had gone to India for treatment, along with his mother and maternal uncle. On May 5, the trio returned home through Benapole Port and were sent to Jashore Quarantine Centre.
"Following government directives, the samples of the three were sent for testing and the report came on Wednesday night. Only the boy has tested positive for Covid-19," said Sheikh Abu Shahin, Jashore Civil Surgeon.
Meanwhile the 14-day mandatory quarantine period of the family is now over and the local administration has provided a release order to the boy’s mother and uncle.
As India has been experiencing a new strain of Covid-19, the government imposed restrictions along the border areas of Bangladesh. According to the World Health Organisation, the Indian variant has already spread to 60 countries across the world.
Read:36 India returnees sent to Cumilla for institutional quarantine
Bangladeshi citizens currently travelling to India for treatment and having visas with validity for less than 15 days could enter Bangladesh only through Benapole, Akhaura and Burimari after taking permission from Bangladesh diplomatic missions in New Delhi, Kolkata, and Agartala, and with a mandatory Covid-negative certificate.
'Over 58k tested for Covid at SUST lab in one year'
As many as 58,541 Covid-19 tests have been carried out at the Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) in the past one year. Of the suspected patients, 9,527 have tested positive.
Sources told UNB that the university has been getting samples of suspected Covid patients from hospitals and clinics across the four upazilas of the district and Sylhet city since it set up a specialised laboratory in May last year. "We also get samples of overseas returnees in Sylhet," sources said.
Researchers at the laboratory have also unvieled the genome sequence of Covid-19 after collecting samples from four districts of Sylhet division.
Last year only, they submitted 10 genome sequence to the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Database (GISAID), which was published on December 31.
Read: SUST team's genomic data on Sylhet Coronavirus strains published by GISAID
Prof Dr Mohammad Shamsul Haque Prodhan, Head of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Department, said, “Like many developing countries, we are proud of providing necessary health services to the people of Sylhet. Our big achievement is ‘confidence and reliability’ and we assure hundred percent transparency. Till now, no faulty results have been published and the team is working relentlessly and even during holidays like Eid."
Prof Farid Uddin Ahmed, vice-chancellor of SUST, said, “The SUST laboratory is a reliable place for people of the north-eastern region. Those who work at the laboratory are dedicated researchers."
On May 18 last year, the specialised laboratory for detecting Covid-19 was inaugurated at the Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) under the Department of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology for providing health assistance to the people of the division.
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen had inaugurated the laboratory virtually.
The government had earlier asked education authorities to set up RT-PCR test facilities at SUST, Dhaka University, Jashore University of Science and Technology, Chittagong Veterinary and Animal Sciences University.
Situation in Bangladesh
Covid-19 claimed 32 more lives in Bangladesh in the past 24 hours till Monday morning, raising the number of fatalities to 12,181.
Read: Covid-19 claims 32 more lives in Bangladesh, new cases 698
Besides, health authorities found 698 more people corona positive over the same period after testing 10,347 samples.
With the latest figure, the total number of positive cases in the country has now climbed to 780,857, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
‘Horrible’ weeks ahead as India’s virus catastrophe worsens
COVID-19 infections and deaths are mounting with alarming speed in India with no end in sight to the crisis and a top expert warning that the coming weeks in the country of nearly 1.4 billion people will be “horrible.”
India’s official count of coronavirus cases surpassed 20 million Tuesday, nearly doubling in the past three months, while deaths officially have passed 220,000. Staggering as those numbers are, the true figures are believed to be far higher, the undercount an apparent reflection of the troubles in the health care system.
The country has witnessed scenes of people dying outside overwhelmed hospitals and funeral pyres lighting up the night sky.
Infections have surged in India since February in a disastrous turn blamed on more contagious variants of the virus as well as government decisions to allow massive crowds to gather for Hindu religious festivals and political rallies before state elections.
Read Also: Impact of devastating Indian virus surge spreads to politics
India’s top health official, Rajesh Bhushan, refused to speculate last month as to why authorities weren’t better prepared. But the cost is clear: People are dying because of shortages of bottled oxygen and hospital beds or because they couldn’t get a COVID-19 test.
India’s official average of newly confirmed cases per day has soared from over 65,000 on April 1 to about 370,000, and deaths per day have officially gone from over 300 to more than 3,000.
On Tuesday, the health ministry reported 357,229 new cases in the past 24 hours and 3,449 deaths from COVID-19.
Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health in the U.S., said he is concerned that Indian policymakers he has been in contact with believe things will improve in the next few days.
“I’ve been ... trying to say to them, `If everything goes very well, things will be horrible for the next several weeks. And it may be much longer,’” he said.
Jha said the focus needs to be on “classic” public health measures: targeted shutdowns, more testing, universal mask-wearing and avoiding large gatherings.
“That is what’s going to break the back of this surge,” he said.
The death and infection figures are considered unreliable because testing is patchy and reporting incomplete. For example, government guidelines ask Indian states to include suspected COVID-19 cases when recording deaths from the outbreak, but many do not do so.
Read Also: 24 die in southern India hospital due to oxygen shortage
The U.S., with one-fourth the population of India, has recorded more than 2 1/2 times as many deaths, at around 580,000.
Municipal records for this past Sunday show 1,680 dead in the Indian capital were treated according to the procedures for handing the bodies of those infected with COVID-19. But in the same 24-hour period, only 407 deaths were added to the official toll from New Delhi.
The New Delhi High Court announced it will start punishing government officials if supplies of oxygen allocated to hospitals are not delivered. “Enough is enough,” it said.
The deaths reflect the fragility of India’s health system. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party has countered criticism by pointing out that the underfunding of health care has been chronic.
But this was all the more reason for authorities to use the several months when cases in India declined to shore up the system, said Dr. Vineeta Bal of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.
“Only a patchwork improvement would’ve been possible,” she said. But the country “didn’t even do that.”
Now authorities are scrambling to make up for lost time. Beds are being added in hospitals, more tests are being done, oxygen is being sent from one corner of the country to another, and manufacturing of the few drugs effective against COVID-19 is being scaled up.
The challenges are steep in states where elections were held and unmasked crowds probably worsened the spread of the virus. The average number of daily infections in West Bengal state has increased by a multiple of 32 to over 17,000 since the balloting began.
“It’s a terrifying crisis,” said Dr. Punyabrata Goon, convener of the West Bengal Doctors’ Forum.
Read Also: Indian leader’s party takes electoral hit amid virus surge MAY 03, 2021
Goon added that the state also needs to hasten immunizations. But the world’s largest maker of vaccines is short of shots — the result of lagging manufacturing and raw material shortages.
Experts are also worried the prices being charged for shots will make it harder for the poor to get vaccinated. On Monday, opposition parties urged the government make vaccinations free to all Indians.
India is vaccinating about 2.1 million people daily, or around 0.15% of its population.
“This is not going to end very soon,” said Dr. Ravi Gupta, a virus expert at the University of Cambridge in England. “And really ... the soul of the country is at risk in a way.”
'Cannon fodder': Medical students in India feel betrayed
Since the beginning of the week, Dr. Siddharth Tara, a postgraduate medical student at New Delhi’s government-run Hindu Rao Hospital, has had a fever and persistent headache. He took a COVID-19 test, but the results have been delayed as the country’s health system implodes.
His hospital, overburdened and understaffed, wants him to keep working until the testing laboratory confirms he has COVID-19.
On Tuesday, India reported 323,144 new infections for a total of more than 17.6 million cases, behind only the United States. India’s Health Ministry also reported another 2,771 deaths in the past 24 hours, with 115 Indians succumbing to the disease every hour. Experts say those figures are likely an undercount.
“I am not able to breathe. In fact, I’m more symptomatic than my patients. So how can they make me work?” asked Tara.
The challenges facing India today, as cases rise faster than anywhere else in the world, are being compounded by the fragility of its health system and its doctors.
There are 541 medical colleges in India with 36,000 post-graduate medical students, and according to doctors’ unions constitute the majority at any government hospitals — they are the bulwark of the India’s COVID-19 response. But for over a year, they have been subjected to mammoth workloads, lack of pay, rampant exposure to the virus and complete academic neglect.
“We’re cannon fodder, that’s all,” said Tara.
Also read: India bans all electoral victory rallies
In five states that are being hit hardest by the surge, postgraduate doctors have held protests against what they view as administrators’ callous attitude toward students like them, who urged authorities to prepare for a second wave but were ignored.
Jignesh Gengadiya, a 26-year-old postgraduate medical student, knew he’d be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week when he signed up for a residency at the Government Medical College in the city of Surat in Gujarat state. What he didn’t expect was to be the only doctor taking care of 60 patients in normal circumstances, and 20 patients on duty in the intensive care unit.
“ICU patients require constant attention. If more than one patient starts collapsing, who do I attend to?” asked Gengadiya.
Hindu Rao Hospital, where Tara works, provides a snapshot of the country’s dire situation. It has increased beds for virus patients, but hasn’t hired any additional doctors, quadrupling the workload, Tara said. To make matters worse, senior doctors are refusing to treat virus patients.
“I get that senior doctors are older and more susceptible to the virus. But as we have seen in this wave, the virus affects old and young alike,” said Tara, who suffers from asthma but has been doing regular COVID-19 duty.
The hospital has gone from zero to 200 beds for virus patients amid the surge. Two doctors used to take care of 15 beds – now they’re handling 60.
Staff numbers are also falling, as students test positive at an alarming rate. Nearly 75% of postgraduate medical students in the surgery department tested positive for the virus in the last month, said a student from the department who spoke anonymously out of fear of retribution.
Tara, who’s part of the postgraduate doctors association at Hindu Rao, said students receive each month’s wages two months late. Last year, students were given four months’ pending wages only after going on hunger strike in the midst of the pandemic.
Dr. Rakesh Dogra, senior specialist at Hindu Rao, said the brunt of coronavirus care inevitably falls on postgraduate students. But he stressed they have different roles, with postgraduate students treating patients and senior doctors supervising.
Although Hindu Rao hasn’t hired any additional doctors during the second wave, Dogra said doctors from nearby municipal hospitals were temporarily posted there to help with the increased workload.
India — which spends 1.3% of its GDP on healthcare, less than all major economies — was initially seen as a success story in weathering the pandemic. However, in the succeeding months, few arrangements were made.
A year later, Dr. Subarna Sarkar says she feels betrayed by how her hospital in the city of Pune was caught completely off guard.
“Why weren’t more people hired? Why wasn’t infrastructure ramped up? It’s like we learnt nothing from the first wave,” she said.
Belatedly, the administration at Sassoon Hospital said last Wednesday it would hire 66 doctors to bolster capacity, and this month increased COVID-19 beds from 525 to 700.
But only 11 new doctors have been hired so far, according to Dr. Murlidhar Tambe, the hospital’s dean.
“We’re just not getting more doctors,” Tambe said, adding that they’re struggling to find new technicians and nurses too.
In response to last year’s surge, the hospital hired 200 nurses on a contractual basis but fired them in October after cases receded. Tambe said the contract allowed the hospital to terminate their services as it saw fit.
Also read: India records 320K cases as foreign help arrives
“Our primary responsibility is towards patients, not staff,” the dean said.
Cases in Pune city have nearly doubled in the last month, from 5,741 to 10,193. To deal with the surge, authorities are promising more beds.
Sarkar, the medical student at Sassoon Hospital, says that’s not enough.
“Increased beds without manpower are just beds. It’s a smokescreen,” she said.
To handle the deluge, students at Sassoon said authorities had weakened rules meant to keep them and patients safe. For instance, students work with COVID-19 patients one week and then go straight to working with patients in the general ward.
This increases the risk of spreading infections, said Dr. T. Sundararaman of the University of Pennsylvania’s National Health Systems Resource Center.
Students want Sassoon’s administration to institute a mandatory quarantine period between duty in the COVID-19 and general wards.
Over the last month, 80 of the hospital’s 450 postgraduate students have tested positive, but they only get a maximum of seven days of convalescence leave.
“COVID ruins your immunity, so there are people who are testing positive two, three times because their immunity is just so shot, and they’re not being allowed to recover,” said Sarkar.
And after a year of processing COVID-19 tests, she says she knows everything there is to know about the virus, but little else. Nationwide, diverting postgraduate students to take care of virus patients has come at a cost.
At a government medical college in the city of Surat, students said they haven’t had a single academic lecture. The hospital has been admitting virus patients since March of last year, and postgraduate medical students spend almost all their time taking care of them. The city is now reporting more than 2,000 cases and 22 deaths a day.
Having to focus so heavily on the pandemic has left many medical students anxious about their future.
Students studying to be surgeons don’t know how to remove an appendix, lung specialists haven’t learned the first thing about lung cancer and biochemists are spending all their time doing PCR tests.
“What kind of doctors is this one year going to produce?” said Dr. Shraddha Subramanian, a resident doctor in the department of surgery at Sassoon Hospital.
Khaleda undergoes fresh Covid test
BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia underwent a fresh Covid test on Saturday to know whether she has recovered from the virus as she has been doing well with no visible symptom, said her personal physician Mohammad Al Mamun.
Talking to UNB, Mamun said Khaleda’s medical team members will make a decision about her next course of treatment once they receive her Covid test report.
He said eight other people who were infected with the virus at Khaleda’s residence also underwent the new Coronavirus test in the morning as they also have no symptom of the virus. “We first arranged the test for them in the morning, and then for Madam in the afternoon.”
Khaleda’s medical team member and party vice-chairman Dr AZM Zahid Hossain said the BNP chairperson’s health condition is fine.
“Madam is now doing very well. She has no visible symptom of Covid,” he said.
Asked whether the BNP chief is now out of danger, Zahid said they still cannot say this without conducting her fresh tests. “Madam entered the third week of infection of the virus on Thursday last. In some cases, the condition of the virus-infected patients may deteriorate in the third week. So, we’re now looking forward to her fresh test report."
He said the BNP chief’s body temperature is normal. “Her breathing and saturation level are very good. Her taste in food is the same as before.”
Khaleda Zia underwent the Covid-19 test on April 10 as eight other people at her residence were infected with the virus and her report came out positive.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, the government freed Khaleda Zia from jail for six months through an executive order suspending her sentences on 25 March last year. Later, the government extended her release order twice.
CAAB issues circular on quarantine procedure of spl flight passengers
The Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) on Saturday issued a circular on the quarantine procedure of the passengers of the flights operating under special consideration.
The order will remain in force until 12 pm on April 28..
All incoming or outgoing passengers shall mandatorily posses PCR based Covid-19 negative certificate. The PCR test shall be done within 72 hours of the flight departure time, according to the circular.
Also read: Biman to run special flights to 5 countries from Apr 17
Arriving passengers who have received two doses of Covid-19 vaccine and possess PCR based Covid-19 negative certificate along with the proof of vaccination shall have to complete a 14-day home quarantine.
The local administration will ensure their home quarantine.
Arriving passengers carrying PCR based Covid-19 negative certificate and either received 1st dose of vaccine or not yet vaccinated shall have to complete a mandatory three- day institutional quarantine at government nominated facilities or at hotels on passengers own expenses.
Upon completion of 3- day institutional quarantine, sample will be collected for Covid-19 PCR test. The passengers will be released to complete a total of 11 days of home quarantine if the PCR based Covid-19 test result is cound negative.
The local administration will ensure their home quarantine.
Also read: Domestic flights resume Wednesday
In case of positive result of PCR based Covid-19 test, the passenger shall have to go for isolation at government nominated facilities at own expenses, it added.
The Airlines concerned shall issue boarding passes to the passengers only after getting confirmed about the vaccination.
Airlines must ensure that seats are available for the passengers at the government institutional quarantine facilities or the passengers have the proof of hotel reservation for institutional quarantine.
If seats are not available at the government institutional quarantine facilities, the passenger will board flight only after ensuring hotel reservation.
Pretorius takes field after returning negative in 2nd Covid-19 test
Ireland Wolves’s batsman Ruhan Pretorius, who had tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday, took the field on Sunday in Chattogram against Bangladesh Emerging team after he was found negative in another test.
U.S. reports over 470 cases of coronavirus variants
Over 470 infection cases of coronavirus variants have been reported in at least 32 U.S. states as of Sunday, according to the latest data of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
25 UK returnees test Covid negative after retest in 24 hrs
Twenty-five Bangladeshis who arrived in Sylhet from the UK five days back now tested negative for Covid-19, just a day after they came out to be positive.
Dubai orders hospitals to cancel surgeries amid virus surge
The government of Dubai on Wednesday ordered all hospitals to cancel nonessential surgeries for the next month as coronavirus infections surge to unprecedented heights in the United Arab Emirates.