Bangladesh still lags behind in virus testing

Though it has been 118 days since the first Covid-19 case was detected on March 8, Bangladesh still lags behind in terms of increasing the testing facilities in comparison with the other South Asian countries.

According to the latest World Health Organization's report on the Covid-19 situation in Bangladesh, the country is carrying out 4,409 tests per million people whereas the rate is 4,727 in Sri Lanka, 6086 in India, 6,707 in Thailand, 17,902 in Nepal, 23,366 in Malaysia and 89,933 in the Maldives.

According to Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), a total of 14,650 samples were tested in 63 labs across the country in the 24 hours since Thursday and 3,114 were tested positive for the virus, said Dr Nasima Sultana, additional director general (administration) of DGHS yesterday during the regular briefing.

The total number of infected people now stands at 1,56,391.

Nasima said 42 people died from coronavirus infections on a single day in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 1,968.

Of the deceased, 32 were male and 10 female. Eighteen of them were from Dhaka, 10 from Chattogram, three from Khulna, three from Rajshahi, four from Rangpur, three from Sylhet and one from Barishal division.

Of them, one was between 11-20 years old, three between 21-30, one between 31-40, five between 41-50, 11 between 51-60, 11 between 61-70, seven between 71-80 and three between 81-90 years old, she said.

Meanwhile, the DGHS is going to put capital's Wari under lockdown from today while Dhaka South City Corporation will implement it.

According to the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), a total of 173 people were infected in this area until June 30.

There are some areas which have higher number of infections but are yet to put under lockdown.For example, Mirpur saw 1,415 cases till June 30 while Uttara and Jatrabari had 716 and 547 cases respectively.

Visiting Wari yesterday morning, the correspondent saw people erecting bamboo fences at the entrances of the area.

Earlier, the health department enforced lockdown in East Rajabazar of Dhaka.

At a high-profile meeting on June 1, the government decided to divide all the areas hit by the Covid-19 pandemic into three zones -- red, yellow, and green -- based on the severity of infections and death rates.

In the last seven days, a total of 26,671 new cases were recorded in Bangladesh, making it the eighth country in the world in terms of the weekly increase in coronavirus cases, as per WHO.

At the DGHS yesterday's briefing, Dr Nasima said a total of 1,606 Covid-19 patients recovered in the 24 hours while 877 people were put under isolation during this period.