Manzur H Maswood |New Age Apr 02,2020
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina. — New Age file photo
Amid a growing demand for widespread tests of COVID-19 suspects, prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday ordered to conduct at least 1,000 tests per day, including at least two from each upazila across the country.
‘The prime minister has ordered us to conduct at least 1,000 coronavirus tests per day, including two samples from each upazila,’ said Health Services director Habibur Rahman at the daily press conference on COVID-19.
‘We will conduct the tests as 10 laboratories – six in the capital and four in different divisions – has been prepared for testing samples of COVID-19 suspects,’ he said.
Bangladesh already confirms 56 COVID-19 patients, six of whom already died.
The government’s testing facilities of people still remained limited, raising questions by public health experts about the actual number of infected patients.
So far 1,896 people were tested, although the number of test seekers was growing and many people were dying with the symptoms of coronavirus in recent days.
The sources of infections in seven people also remained undetected, which the IEDCR director Meerjady Sabrina Flora described as ‘limited-scale community transmission’.
The World Health Organisation suggests ‘tests, tests and tests’ as a means of identifying COVID-19 patients and isolate them to prevent the spread of the highly contagious deadly virus.
WHO former regional adviser Muzaherul Huq told New Age that the actual picture of COVID-19 patients in Bangladesh was unknown and that many others were remaining outside the tests due to the government’s strategy of testing a limited number of people.
‘It will be disastrous if the infected people spread among communities,’ he said.
The government is advising people to call to the IEDCR or the health call centres if they found symptoms of COVID-19, but the response from the government is still minimal, Muzaherul said.
Top government health officials are repeatedly discouraging people to go to the hospitals or test centres in person as the already infected people would spread the disease to others on they the way to health facilities.
Although over 10.42 lakh people called to the hotlines, only 1,896 of them were tested, according to the Health Services.
Health secretary Ashadul Islam said on Wednesday evening that the number of tests would be increased significantly as 28 tests centres would be installed across the country within a short time.
As of Thursday evening, six tests centres were now performing tests – five in the capital and one in the port city of Chattogram.
Six other tests centres – three in the capital and one each in Rajshahi, Rangpur, and Mymensingh — were prepared for testing, according to the COVID-19 Control Room of the government.
Professor Nazrul Islam, a virologist and former vice-chancellor of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, welcomed the prime minister’s order to test at least 1,000 people every day.
‘The implementation of this order would help us to understand the prevalence of COVID-19 patients in our country,’ he told New Age.
Nazrul said that the death rate from COVID-19 in Bangladesh was over 10 per cent because of the low number of identification of infected patients.
The confirmation of COVID-19 patients through widespread tests will also help people to get treatment at dedicated COVID-19 hospital, he said, as many fever and asthma patients are being denied treatment and shuttling between hospitals and even dying.