Moudud Ahmmed Sujan

At a time when the rate of Covid-19 cases is on the rise in the country, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said the number of new cases and deaths decreased.

It remains a mystery why Bangladesh government is still in a fix about allowing a clinical trial of the Chinese Covid-19 vaccine here when health experts are saying the trial can help the country access the life-saving vaccine quickly and build national capacity for advanced research.

As the government brings changes at the DGHS top end to improve the image of the health sector, tension among officials is apparently causing sluggishness in Covid-19 response and hampering daily activities of the directorate.

Following weeks of controversies and a day after the director general of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) quit, the government has decided to make some reshuffles at the top end of the directorate.

As the number of Covid-19 tests across the country yesterday dropped to a record in recent times, about 54 percent respondents -- mostly doctors -- of a survey said people were not going for tests due to unavailability and inaccessibility of the testing facilities.

The health directorate might soon announce the standard operating procedure of locking down small zones, ignoring the expert suggestions for sealing larger areas.

As the health ministry asked the health directorate on Wednesday to inform the Covid-19 test results to the patients in three days, officials of the directorate said that would be difficult due to human resource shortage.

The rift between the health ministry and the health directorate over the Regent Hospital scam will seriously hurt the government efforts to contain the Covid-19 outbreak, say experts.

The coronavirus positivity rate in the country has soared in the last few days despite a decline in the number of tests during this period.

The health services division of the health ministry knew that Regent Hospital’s licence had expired years ago but it still went ahead and signed a deal in early March for treating Covid-19 patients there.

The Covid-19 outbreak may prolong for the next several years as the country is not taking scientific measures to control it, said a public health expert.

A little over two months ago, the chief of the country’s health directorate in an interview with an Indian magazine narrated Bangladesh government’s position on Covid-19 testing, saying the tests were free of costs.

As the official coronavirus death toll in the country surged past 1,700 yesterday, experts said the actual figure of death would be much higher had those died with Covid-19 symptoms been taken into account.

When Gazi Sabiha Chowdhury, a 70-year-old heart and kidney patient from Sreemangal, fell in the bathroom on May 31, her family felt something ominous was going to happen.

As the number of Covid-19 deaths crossed the 1,500 mark yesterday, experts said transmission may not decrease anytime soon unless it is actively controlled.

Over three weeks ago, the government had planned to enforce containment zones in the capital and three other major cities amid a spike in Covid-19 infections and deaths that came after the nationwide shutdown was lifted.

The Directorate General of Health Services has no data on the whereabouts of almost half the people who tested positive for coronavirus.

As Covid-19 cases kept going up in mid-April, the government formed a national technical advisory committee to find ways to prevent the spread of the deadly virus in the country.

As confirmed Covid-19 cases in the country passed the one lakh mark yesterday, the director general of health services said the virus might continue to spread during the next two to three years.

A record 4,008 cases of the novel coronavirus were reported in the country yesterday.