41 more die, 1,765 new cases in 24 hours

With the number of Covid-19 new cases rising every day over last several days, a team of researchers said Bangladesh may observe another peak of novel coronavirus infection in mid-July.

They projected that the daily cases might reach the highest -- 9,698 -- on July 11, if the test figure increases to 50,000 daily.

If the government's test capacity remains as it is, the new cases may be 7,743 on that day.

Since mid-May, daily new cases and deaths started rising steadily following a downward trend from the latest peak in mid-April.

In 24 hours ending at 8:00am yesterday, 41 more people died from Covid-19 -- which is the highest since May 9, when 56 people breathed their last, said a press release of health directorate.

During the period, 1,765 new cases were detected against 18,250 tests -- the highest since May 6, when 1,822 people were found positive.

Compared to the population size of more than 160 million, the number of daily tests has remained stagnant around 15,000 most of the time since the Covid-19 broke out in the country on March 8 last year.

Only on April 12 this year, the daily tests rose to the highest 34,968, says the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

If daily tests increase, daily cases may go up to 5,263 on June 15, while the daily case detection may hit around 9,000 by June 30, according to the projection.

Experts, however, apprehended that the country may observe the peak much earlier -- by the end of June -- due to the community transmission of the Indian variant and for not adhering to the health safety guidelines.

Proportionately, the death toll and hospital admissions will also rise, they said.

"The peak will be in mid-July with daily cases up to 10,000. If the government's test capacity stands as it is, we will not be able to detect so many cases," Shafiun Shimul, an associate professor of health economics at Dhaka University, who leads the projection team, told The Daily Star yesterday.

The other team members are: Mofakhar Hussain of the University of Toronto, Abu Jamil Faisel, member of the public health and epidemiology committee of the DGHS, Prof Syed Abdul Hamid and Prof Nasrin Sultana of Dhaka University, and Abdul Kuddus of James Cook University, Australia.

"As the Indian variant is highly transmissible and infects the young people mostly, I think we will observe the peak much earlier -- may be by late June," Abu Jamil Faisal told this correspondent.

He said there is no alternative to enforcing strict lockdown in the districts with higher positivity rate immediately.

On March 8 last year, the health directorate reported the first three cases of Covid-19 in the country. Since then, the country observed the first peak during June and July last year and the second one during November and December.

During January and February, the daily Covid-19 cases and the death toll from the viral disease decreased to the lowest since the first peak. That time, the positivity rate was below 5 percent for around two months.

But from the second week of March this year, the transmission started rising again, marking the second wave of Covid-19 due to lax enforcement of health safety guidelines. This time, the daily number of new cases surged to the all-time highest -- 7,626 -- on April 7 and so the number of deaths to 112 on April 19.

To curb the transmission, the government imposed partial movement restriction from April 5 for a week, which was later extended several times and is scheduled to end on June 6.

Prof Mushtuq Hussain, consultant of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), told this paper, "As the movement restriction has become eased in reality, there is a chance for spike of Covid-19 cases. In this context, we need to increase the number of tests and isolation cases."