Moudud Ahmmed Sujan

The Chinese government will soon send five lakh jabs of Covid-19 vaccines, developed by their state-owned drug maker Sinopharm, to Bangladesh as gift, health officials said.

The government yesterday started administering the second dose of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine amid a steep rise in deaths and infections.

The South African variant of Covid-19 is dominant in Dhaka, revealed an icddr,b study last night.

A recent study by the icddr,b revealed that the South African variant of the novel coronavirus is dominant in Dhaka.

The Covid-19 infection rate hit a new record yesterday as a total of 7,087 people tested positive in the past 24 hours till 8:00am yesterday.

With no sign of Covid-19 going away any time soon, accurate and sufficient surveillance data is more important than ever to help inform public health policy in fighting the pandemic, said Dr Nazrul Islam, member of the UN-WHO Technical Advisory Group on Covid-19 Mortality Assessment.

With the number of infections and deaths from Covid-19 getting bigger, inadequate high-flow oxygen support at public hospitals has become a serious cause for concern.

Experts say the 18-point directive that the government issued on Monday to curb the rapid surge in Covid cases is not only a delayed response but it also lacks clarity.

As the positivity rate jumped to 17.69 percent against 22,136 tests in 24 hours ending at 8:00am yesterday, there is no alternative to enforce transmission control activities immediately, experts have said.

In the wake of the second Covid-19 wave in the country, the government’s efforts to check virus transmission and ensure treatment are still inadequate in view of the ground reality.

The health directorate yesterday reported the highest number of new Covid-19 cases in nearly nine months.

As deaths from Covid-19 and the number of new cases continue rising, experts fear the transmission rate may rise further in the coming weeks.

Jahur Ali, a 44-year-old worker at a stone quarry in Tetulia, was utterly clueless about the ongoing Covid-19 vaccination campaign.

As coronavirus transmission has been rising from the second week of this month, the demand for ICU beds in the capital’s hospitals has also increased.

Bulbul Ahmed Kajol heard an explosion near ICU bed-12 at the Covid-19 unit of Dhaka Medical College Hospital’s (DMCH) new building around 8:10am yesterday.

The government is not considering lockdown right now but has directed the health department to intensify awareness campaigns and ensure strict enforcement of health safety rules amid a rise in Covid-19 transmission.

Following detection of the UK variant, the South African variant of coronavirus has been detected in Bangladesh, according to global genome-sequencing database GISAID.

The number of patients at the intensive care units in hospitals, getting treatment for Covid-19, has been on the rise.

Dr Farhana Wahab still cannot believe how scary those days were when the coronavirus pandemic hit the country in March last year.

The government is racing against time to achieve the lofty target of inoculating 70 lakh people in the first month of its Covid vaccination campaign.