Disease
Dengue: 31 patients hospitalised in 24hrs
Thirty-one more dengue patients were hospitalised in 24 hours till Friday morning amid a rise in the mosquito-borne disease in Bangladesh, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Among them, 30 patients were hospitalised in Dhaka, it said.
As many as 186 dengue patients, including 145 in the capital, are now receiving treatment at hospitals across the country.
The dengue cases are rising in the capital allegedly due to insufficient measures taken by the two Dhaka city corporations for preventing mosquito-borne diseases like dengue.
Read: 48 more dengue cases reported in Bangladesh
On June 21, the DGHS reported the first death of the season from the mosquito-borne viral disease.
This year, the DGHS has recorded 1,610 dengue cases and 1,423 recoveries so far.
Although dengue – a leading cause of serious illness and death in some Asian and Latin American countries – was first reported in Bangladesh in 1964, the first epidemic occurred in 2000, claiming 93 lives that year. It has since become endemic in the country, with outbreaks recorded every year since. Although for a three-year period at one point, the number of deaths from the virus fell almost near zero, its most fatal year yet was in 2019, when 179 died experiencing the severe form of the disease.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, it seemed to take a backseat, as only three deaths were reported from dengue that year.
However, 105 dengue patients, including 95 in Dhaka division, died in 2021.
Dengue is found in tropical and sub-tropical climates worldwide, mostly in urban and semi-urban areas.
About 4 billion people, almost half of the world's population, live in areas with a risk of dengue, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Each year, up to 400 million people get infected with dengue while approximately 100 million get sick from infection, and 40,000 die from severe dengue, it says.
"There is no specific treatment for dengue or severe dengue. Early detection of disease progression associated with severe dengue, and access to proper medical care lowers fatality rates of severe dengue to below 1 per cent," according to the World Health Organization.
Bangladesh logs 6 more Covid deaths with 1,324 cases
Bangladesh logged six more Covid-linked deaths with 1,324 cases in 24 hours till Thursday morning amid a surge in cases again in the country.
The new numbers took the country's total fatalities to 29,223 while its caseload to 1,993,382, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
The daily case positivity rate however declined to 11.82 per cent from Wednesday’s 13.79 per cent as 11,126 samples were tested during the period.
Four of the deceased were men while two were woman.
Three of them were from Dhaka while another three were from Mymensingh division.
The mortality rate remained unchanged at 1.47 per cent. The recovery rate rose to 96.28 per cent as 1,747 patients recovered during the period.
Read: Bangladesh must stay alert against Covid-19 infections: Minister
In June, the country reported 18 Covid-linked deaths and 20,201 new cases, according to the DGHS.
Bangladesh reported its first zero Covid death on November 20 last year since the pandemic broke out here in March 2020.
The country registered its highest daily caseload of 16,230 on July 28 last year and daily fatalities of 264 on August 10 in the same year.
Bangladesh reports 4 Covid deaths with 1,728 cases Positivity rate now 16.89%
Bangladesh registered four more Covid-linked deaths with 1,728 cases in 24 hours till Wednesday morning amid rapid surge in new infections.
The fresh numbers took the country's total caseload to 1,984,700 and the total fatalities to 29,185, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Read: Covid-19 cases in Bangladesh surge to 425,353; 19 more die in 24 hrs
The daily case positivity rate rose to 16.89 per cent from Tuesday’s 16. 74 per cent as 10,175 samples were tested during the period, said the DGHS.
Among the deceased, two each were men and women. Of them, three were from Dhaka and another from Chattogram division.
On Tuesday, the country recorded seven Covid-linked deaths with 1,998 cases.
The mortality rate remained unchanged at 1.47 per cent. The recovery rate declined to 96.23 per cent from Tuesday’s 96.28 per cent as 526 patients recovered during this period.
In June, the country reported 18 Covid-linked deaths and 20,201 new cases, according to the DGHS.
The country reported its first zero Covid death in a single day on November 20 last year, along with 178 cases, since the pandemic broke out here in March 2020.
The country registered its highest daily caseload of 16,230 on July 28 last year and daily fatalities of 264 on August 10 in the same year.
What Covid taught us about risk in a complex, inter-connected world
From the mangroves of West Bengal to the vast archipelago that makes up Indonesia, and from the bustling port city of Guayaquil, Ecuador, to the tropical shores of southern Togo, systemic risks from the Covid-19 pandemic have been exposed in stark human terms.
Millions of people who were already struggling to make ends meet, often working in the informal economy in agriculture and surviving below the poverty line, had to contend with a host of new risks that they could not possibly have foreseen.
These included joblessness, debt, civil and domestic violence, children's education derailed, and opportunities severely diminished. In many locations, women suffered disproportionately due to pre-existing gender biases in society.
Taken together, these human experiences are not just a catalogue of suffering from places in the world that are not often in the headlines. They also bring into sharp focus a very real challenge: how to better understand and manage the cascading, systemic risks that resulted from Covid-19 as it spread across borders.
The new UN report "Rethinking risks in times of Covid-19" shows how a clear picture emerges of a domino effect, resulting from the outbreak of Covid-19 that rippled across societies far beyond the immediate effects of the pandemic itself.
This starkly illustrates that the world is interconnected through systems that come with associated, volatile risks that have revealed, and reinforced, vulnerabilities across society.
In Guayaquil, for instance, families already living in overcrowded housing suffered more from stay-at-home orders than those in more favourable living situations.
The city's healthcare system reached a tipping point in a matter of weeks after the first case was detected in February 2020, resulting in a high number of bodies being left unattended in hospitals and care homes, as well as on the streets.
Read: Covid-19: Bangladesh reports 36 new cases, zero death
The images of bodies accumulating in the streets that circulated in the global media were among the first to show what happened when Covid-19 arrived in densely populated urban areas.
Yet before Covid-19, the interconnectedness of such risks may not have been immediately obvious in people's daily lives. Nor was the systemic nature of these risks, meaning how they affected, or can potentially affect, whole societies beyond the initial problem.
For one thing, people tended to think about systemic risks in relation to what happened as a result of the 2008 financial crash, where the failure of big banks rippled across the global economy, leaving millions out of work and sparking a global economic recession.
Other examples can be seen in how climate change, natural hazards and, more recently, the global consequences of the war in Ukraine have brought home how the world relies on a complex, often fragile, web of interdependent factors that, if destabilised, can have devastating effects on whole societies.
For example, Ukraine and Russia are both key global cereal and fertiliser producers. One of the ripple effects of the war can be seen in rising global food prices, resulting in higher costs of living for those who can afford it and pushing those who cannot deeper into a food crisis.
The emergence of Covid-19 has forced a broadening of perspective on systemic risks. The good news is that it has expanded people's understanding of these risks, and how to address them.
Hazards and shocks can emerge from outside and within the system. Exposure to them can be indirect, meaning that effects can be felt in places that are not directly affected by the hazard – in this case, Covid – but end up being affected as a result of interconnectedness. Finally, the vulnerability of one system can also turn into a hazard or shock for other interdependent systems.
Read: Covid-19: Dhaka, Chattogram among 29 districts with higher transmission
The cascading effects originating from Covid made it possible to spot the interconnections that exist in many such systems and to assess whether a system is functioning as intended.
Another is to identify the trade-offs implicit in policy measures: several measures to combat Covid, such as school closures, stay-at-home orders or travel restrictions, had widespread effects.
This highlights the need to assess and evaluate possible trade-offs and cascading effects involved in introducing such measures because they can have unexpected repercussions and can exacerbate existing societal vulnerabilities.
A third action is to focus on processes for systemic recovery while leaving no one behind. The interconnected nature of systems presents an opportunity for positive turning points, by creating positive effects. In the pandemic context, this was made real through the job creation that followed the provision of financial assistance from governments, charities and NGOs, or advances in digitalisation following stay-at-home orders.
Today's interconnected world is an evolving system, and disastrous events are often the results of systemic failures.
Read: Bangladesh reports no death from Covid-19, new cases 56
The UN report shows that it is time to develop a deeper understanding of systemic risks, and how they trigger other hazards and shocks, often in unpredictable ways.
It also demonstrates that managing these risks needs to be properly embedded in how policymakers, planners, and other stakeholders approach risk management, to create more resilient, equitable and prosperous communities and societies around the world.
Bangladesh reports 2,241 new cases amid resurgence of Covid
Bangladesh registered 2,241 new Covid cases with zero death in 24 hours till Wednesday morning amid an upward trend of Covid infections.
The fresh cases took the country's total caseload to 1,971,602 and the total fatalities remained unchanged at 29,145, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
The daily-case positivity rate slightly dropped to 15.23 per cent from Tuesday’s 15.47 per cent as 14,912 samples were tested during the period, said the DGHS.
On Tuesday, the country recorded 2,087 cases with three deaths from Covid-19.
Read: Bangladesh must stay alert against Covid-19 infections: Minister
The mortality rate remained unchanged at 1.48 per cent. The recovery rate declined to 96.73 per cent from Tuesday’s 96.84 per cent as 152 patients recovered during this period.
In May, the country reported only four Covid-linked deaths and 816 new cases, while 7,356 patients recovered from the disease, according to the DGHS.
Among the four deaths during the period, one was vaccinated with a single dose of Covid vaccine while three were vaccinated with two doses.
The country reported its first zero Covid death in a single day on November 20 last year, along with 178 cases, since the pandemic broke out here in March 2020.
On January 28, Bangladesh logged its previous highest positivity rate of 33.37 per cent.
The country registered its highest daily caseload of 16,230 on July 28 last year and daily fatalities of 264 on August 10 in the same year.
40 new dengue patients hospitalized
Forty new dengue patients were hospitalised in 24 hours till Wednesday morning as cases are rising again in Bangladesh during monsoon.
Among them, 38 new patients were hospitalised in Dhaka and the remaining two patients outside it, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
As many as 128 dengue patients, including 121 in the capital, are now receiving treatment at hospitals across the country.
On June 21, the DGHS reported the first death of the season from the mosquito-borne viral disease.
This year, the DGHS has recorded 1056 dengue cases and 927 recoveries so far.
Dengue – a leading cause of serious illness and death in some Asian and Latin American countries – was first reported in Bangladesh in 2000 and claimed 93 lives. In three years, the fatality number almost fell to zero.
Read: Dengue: 24 new patients hospitalised
However, 105 dengue patients, including 95 in Dhaka division, died in 2021.
Dengue is found in tropical and sub-tropical climates worldwide, mostly in urban and semi-urban areas.
About 4 billion people, almost half of the world's population, live in areas with a risk of dengue, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Each year, up to 400 million people get infected with dengue while approximately 100 million get sick from infection, and 40,000 die from severe dengue, it says.
"There is no specific treatment for dengue or severe dengue. Early detection of disease progression associated with severe dengue, and access to proper medical care lowers fatality rates of severe dengue to below 1 percent," according to the World Health Organization.
Monkeypox not global public health emergency right now: WHO
Monkeypox is not yet a global health emergency, the World Health Organization (WHO) said recently, though intense response efforts are needed to control the further spread of the rare viral disease.
The announcement came Saturday – two days after WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus convened an emergency committee on the disease, under the International Health Regulations (IHR), to address the rising caseload.
"The WHO Director-General concurs with the advice offered by the IHR Emergency Committee regarding the multi-country monkeypox outbreak, and, at present, does not determine that the event constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC)," the UN agency said.
The PHEIC declaration is the highest level of global alert, which currently applies only to the Covid-19 pandemic and polio.
Monkeypox occurs primarily in tropical rainforest areas of Central and West Africa, though it is occasionally exported to other regions.
Since May, more than 3,000 cases have emerged in 47 countries, many of which never previously reported the disease.
The highest numbers are currently in Europe, and most cases are among men who have sex with men.
There have been few hospitalisations to date and one death.
"The Committee unanimously acknowledged the emergency nature of the outbreak and that controlling further spread requires intense response efforts," the WHO said.
Members also recommended that the situation should be closely monitored and reviewed after a few weeks.
"What makes the current outbreak especially concerning is rapid, continuing spread into new countries and regions and the risk of further, sustained transmission into vulnerable populations including people that are immunocompromised, pregnant women and children," Tedros said.
He underscored the need for both collective attention and coordinated action through public health measures including surveillance, contact tracing, isolation and care of patients, and ensuring vaccines, treatments and other tools are available to at-risk populations and shared fairly.
Also read: Monkeypox: Global situation cannot be ignored amid uncertainty, says WHO chief
Dengue: 17 new patients hospitalised
Another 17 dengue patients were hospitalised in 24 hours until Monday morning.
All the new patients were admitted to different hospitals in Dhaka during the period, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
As many as 114 dengue patients, including 105 in the capital, are now receiving treatment at hospitals across the country.
On June 21, the DGHS reported the first death of the season from the mosquito-borne viral disease.
This year, it has recorded 959 dengue cases and 854 recoveries so far.
Dengue – a leading cause of serious illness and death in some Asian and Latin American countries – was first reported in Bangladesh in 2000 and claimed 93 lives. In three years, the fatality number almost fell to zero.
However, 105 dengue patients, including 95 in Dhaka division, died in 2021.
Read: Dengue: 24 new patients hospitalised
Dengue is found in tropical and sub-tropical climates worldwide, mostly in urban and semi-urban areas.
About 4 billion people, almost half of the world's population, live in areas with a risk of dengue, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Each year, up to 400 million people get infected with dengue while approximately 100 million get sick from infection, and 40,000 die from severe dengue, it says.
"There is no specific treatment for dengue or severe dengue. Early detection of disease progression associated with severe dengue, and access to proper medical care lowers fatality rates of severe dengue to below 1 percent," according to the World Health Organization.
Monkeypox: Global situation cannot be ignored amid uncertainty, says WHO chief
The World Health Organization (WHO) chief recently said person-to-person transmission of monkeypox was ongoing and likely underestimated.
He was addressing the WHO's Emergency Committee Thursday on the global monkeypox outbreak.
Members of the committee could announce their decision on whether or not the outbreak constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, as early as Friday.
However, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the spread of the disease both in non-endemic and endemic countries cannot be ignored.
The first mysterious cluster appeared in the UK just over six weeks ago, when the WHO was told of a family cluster of three cases, without any recent travel taking place.
Read: No monkeypox case detected yet in Bangladesh: Health Ministry
"Since then, more than 3,200 confirmed cases of monkeypox, and one death, have been reported to the WHO, from 48 countries including Nigeria, and in five WHO regions," Tedros said.
The outbreak in newly affected countries continues to be primarily among men who have sex with men, and who reported recent sex with new or multiple partners, he added.
However, in Nigeria, the proportion of women affected is much higher than elsewhere, and it is critical to better understand how the disease is spreading there, the WHO chief said.
So far this year, almost 1,500 suspected cases of monkeypox and around 70 deaths have been reported in Central Africa, primarily in the Democratic Republic of the Congo but also in the Central African Republic and Cameroon, Tedros added.
"Few of these cases are confirmed, and little is known about their circumstances. While the epidemiology and viral clade in these cases may be different, it is a situation that cannot be ignored."
The WHO chief said all countries had to remain vigilant and strengthen their capacities to prevent the onward transmission of monkeypox. "Many countries will likely have missed opportunities to identify cases, including cases in the community without any recent travel."
COVID vaccines saved 20M lives in 1st year, scientists say
Nearly 20 million lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines during their first year, but even more deaths could have been prevented if international targets for the shots had been reached, researchers reported Thursday.
On Dec. 8, 2020, a retired shop clerk in England received the first shot in what would become a global vaccination campaign. Over the next 12 months, more than 4.3 billion people around the world lined up for the vaccines.
The effort, though marred by persisting inequities, prevented deaths on an unimaginable scale, said Oliver Watson of Imperial College London, who led the new modeling study.
“Catastrophic would be the first word that comes to mind,” Watson said of the outcome if vaccines hadn’t been available to fight the coronavirus. The findings “quantify just how much worse the pandemic could have been if we did not have these vaccines.”
The researchers used data from 185 countries to estimate that vaccines prevented 4.2 million COVID-19 deaths in India, 1.9 million in the United States, 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France and 507,000 in the United Kingdom.
Read: UNICEF finds Bangladesh as Covid-19 vaccine success story
An additional 600,000 deaths would have been prevented if the World Health Organization target of 40% vaccination coverage by the end of 2021 had been met, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The main finding — 19.8 million COVID-19 deaths were prevented — is based on estimates of how many more deaths than usual occurred during the time period. Using only reported COVID-19 deaths, the same model yielded 14.4 million deaths averted by vaccines.
The London scientists excluded China because of uncertainty around the pandemic’s effect on deaths there and its huge population.
The study has other limitations. The researchers did not include how the virus might have mutated differently in the absence of vaccines. And they did not factor in how lockdowns or mask wearing might have changed if vaccines weren’t available.
Another modeling group used a different approach to estimate that 16.3 million COVID-19 deaths were averted by vaccines. That work, by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, has not been published.
In the real world, people wear masks more often when cases are surging, said the institute’s Ali Mokdad, and 2021′s delta wave without vaccines would have prompted a major policy response.
“We may disagree on the number as scientists, but we all agree that COVID vaccines saved lots of lives,” Mokdad said.
The findings underscore both the achievements and the shortcomings of the vaccination campaign, said Adam Finn of Bristol Medical School in England, who like Mokdad was not involved in the study.
Read: Vaccine Diplomacy: Why it’s important for Bangladesh!
“Although we did pretty well this time — we saved millions and millions of lives — we could have done better and we should do better in the future,” Finn said.
Funding came from several groups including the WHO; the UK Medical Research Council; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.