Mohammad Al-Masum Molla

At 32, Rana Shikder is waiting for death, but he is content because he is at home.

A Sikder Group air ambulance left Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport for Bangkok on May 25 with two passengers amid the coronavirus restrictions.

The mighty desert sun beats down mercilessly on the sand; the thermometer reads 50 degree Celsius; humidity stands at only five percent -- that’s the unforgiving Saharan climate for you. That’s the West African country of Mali for you.

Haemoglobin, blood glucose, urine protein, urine glucose, and urine pregnancy tests -- these are the five basic diagnostic tests that one can expect to be done at healthcare facilities across the country.

Already downgraded to Category 4, Cyclone Amphan could weaken further by the time it makes landfall close to the western Sundarbans, experts said yesterday.

Health officials in the country are making predictions about the coronavirus outbreak based mostly on assumptions, not scientific analyses, experts said.

The national technical advisory committee on coronavirus has recommended that all hospitals dedicated to Covid-19 treatment should be brought under a network to reduce the sufferings of patients.

Fifty-three-year old Anisur Rahman has been suffering from fever for the last few days. He also had cough, muscle pain and breathing complications.

The government is hopeful that it would be able to “experimentally start” using convalescent plasma therapy for treating coronavirus patients from next week.

Around 14,500 tonnes of hazardous plastic waste have been produced from the single use surgical face masks, gloves, hand sanitisers bottles, and polythene bags in the first month of the shutdown, says a study report.

Bangladesh is yet to conduct an epidemiological surveillance which experts say is very important to understand the gravity of the coronavirus situation and will help take any policy decision in this regard.

A total of 199 people have died of Covid-19 so far but the details of these deaths have not yet been examined, said health officials.

At a time when many sectors have come to a standstill due to the countrywide lockdown, production and supply of medicines across the country have been going off without a hitch, thanks to a timely plan of action undertaken by the Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA).

While health officials still do not know when the coronavirus outbreak will peak and then plateau, confirmed coronavirus cases crossed the 10,000 mark with the announcement of a record 688 new cases yesterday.

Though countries around the world, including Bangladesh’s South Asian neighbours, are unraveling and analysing the genome of the coronavirus to better know its nature and behaviour, the country is yet to embark on genome sequencing.

The authorities were only able to provide an insignificant number of American N95 masks to healthcare professionals fighting Covid-19 in the country. Now they have supplies of imported masks “equivalent” to N95 respirators, mostly from China.

Twenty-five-year old Farzana Aktar has been suffering from fever, cough, sore throat, and muscle pain for the last five days.

More than one and a half months after the detection of first Covid-19 case in Bangladesh, the government on Tuesday gave nods to three private hospitals for conducting coronavirus diagnosis tests on a limited scale.

The intensive care units for coronavirus patients have yet to become functional in many of the 17 hospitals dedicated to Covic-19 treatment, even a month and a half after the authorities reported the first case in the country.

Directorate General of Health Services has started working to scale up its coronavirus testing capacity with a target of testing over 5,000 people daily by the first week of next month.