In almost all countries of the world, lockdown has provoked annoyance, frustration and protest. It is almost impossible to bear the financial, physical and mental strain of replacing normal lifestyle with suffocating restrictions. But the fact remains that no one has come up with an alternative to lockdown in order to bring the spread of coronavirus under control. Even Sweden, which had applied the herd immunity theory, last November admitted that the strategy had been a mistake. Latest reports show that Sweden now has the highest rates of coronavirus transmission in Europe, at 625 cases per 1 million persons.
The countries that had been in a dilemma about lockdown during the first wave of coronavirus and had hesitated to enforce this, have had to pay a steep price. The later the lockdown, the more prolonged it had to be. Britain is a glaring example of this. No other country in the world had to enforce such a prolonged lockdown in the third phase. And even so, the number of deaths has exceeded 127,000 and the economic losses have broken a 300-year record.
In order to ensure a safe festival over Christmas last year, though experts had been advising a limited lockdown from October-November, the government paid no heed. But in December the situation deteriorated to such an extent that a just few days before Christmas the government was forced to declare a full lockdown. That lockdown has been partially relaxed in the second week of April and things will open fully on 21 June. But things are still so strict that if anyone travels overseas without any urgent cause, they have to pay a fine of 5000 pounds. So far 50 per cent of the adults have received the first dose of the vaccine. But the prime minister himself has warned of a third wave if social interactions are uncontrolled.
This trend in the spread of the virus has been observed in the second wave too. The countries which have enforced lockdown timely and correctly, have seen a lesser degree of damage and have managed to emerge from the restrictions in a shorter time.
The manufacture of an effective vaccine may have pushed people’s hopes up a bit too high. On the one hand, it has not been possible to produce as many vaccines as required to meet the demand, and on the other hand, the constant mutation of the virus has increased its speed of transmission and its impact.
Bangladesh is no exception. The government took credit for the relatively lower number of deaths and less economic damages in the first round. But it failed to estimate the degree of danger in the second round and also failed to take adequate preparation. Almost all the epidemiologists agree that this time too, the lockdown came too late and was not enforced as effectively as it should have been.
The question cannot be avoided about how prudent the recent spate of large events had been, notwithstanding all the precautionary measures that were adopted. Other than the authorities, there is no evidence of anyone’s support for the Boi Mela (book fair) to be kept open either. Illogical and uncoordinated directives were issued, and those too had to be amended. Public transport was allowed to move within the city and shops were opened up. The health department turned the medical college admissions into a spree of spreading the virus.
The proposal to open field hospitals was not given due importance. There seems to be confusion about what a field hospital entails. How many weeks would it require to set up tents for a temporary hospital as is done during wars or in times of national disaster?
Meanwhile, 300 ventilators and 1200 oxygen concentrators, bought with donor funds, have been lying idle for 10 months in the airport. That just goes to show what degree of effort our bureaucrats are making in the capacity development of the health sector. The director general of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), Abul Bashar Khurshid Alam, has pointed to the government’s legal tangles. Prothom Alo reported that that 170 modern ICU beds, 170 ventilators and 107 RT-CPR machines were supposed to have been procured with ADB funds. Of this, only 25 RT-PCR were procured. Around Tk 6.78 billion had been allocated this fiscal, but not even Tk 780 million of it has been spent.
It needed the prime minister’s intervention to ensure ICU facilities for actress and former member of parliament Kabori. Veteran journalist Hasan Shahriar was not lucky enough to avail ICU facilities. The pictures appearing in the media are hardly bearable. Patients rush from one hospital to another and die, there is a shortage of oxygen – is the public to blame for this situation? If the present rate of contagion doubles, what will happen then? In Britain last October, the cases doubled every nine days.
The question has arisen over the fact that it is not practical to shut down the means of living for the working and low income people. In response to this, the recommendations made at home and abroad were to provide this section of the population with food and cash assistance. International donor agencies have come forward in this regard. But the experience of the last one year indicates that the government lacks the competence to provide 5 million poor people with Tk 2500 for one month. The secretaries have been put in charge of the 64 districts again. How effective were they in this task the last time? A least they were as successful as politicians in taking pictures like the politicians doling out dal and rice to the people lined up for the handouts.
Has either the ruling party or the government been able to win the confidence of the people regarding their policies and the implementation of these? Simply blaming the people’s so-called irresponsibility or the opposition party’s provocations, will not solve the problem.
All said and done, the government claims credit for the success in tackling the first round of Covid. The government now has two contentions concerning the second round. The health minister says, “The infections have spread as the people are not following the health guidelines.” And the minister for road transport and bridges Obaidul Quader says, “BNP’s irresponsible statements and instigations have prompted people to ignore the health guidelines.” The health minister had made his statement about violating health in the third week of last month, but then no initiative had been taken to implement the recommendations of the experts. The essence of the government’s statements is that the blame of the contagion falls on either the public who ignore the health rules, or on BNP. If BNP actually has so much power as to mobilise the public to violate the government directives, then the government should accept Mirza Fakhrul’s proposal to join hands with all parties and take up a joint initiative to tackle the national crisis.
It is also now evident that the hope projected by the government concerning the vaccine, is hardly realistic. The guarantee given by Beximco about importing the vaccine is now also doubtful. With the 7 million vaccines that have arrived and the 1.2 million doses received as gifts, only 4 per cent of the demand has been met in a country with a population of 180 million. Given the selfish interests of the wealthy nations and India’s own burgeoning needs, no one can say for sure whether Bangladesh will have enough vaccines over the next one year to overcome the risks.
As for those who were shocked to see the teeming crowds streaming to the villages when the lockdown was declared, they have perhaps forgotten the scenes of March-April last year. For a large chunk of the working class in Dhaka, there is no alternative but to return to the villages when out of work. This applies to low income employees too. According to a survey of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics in 2019, before the pandemic, 12 per cent of the poor families in Dhaka did not have food. If they could be assured of food, there would not have been such a mass exodus. Other than the government employees who await their Baishakhi bonus and Eid bonus, the rest of the people are anxious about basic means of living. Has either the ruling party or the government been able to win the confidence of the people regarding their policies and the implementation of these? Simply blaming the people’s so-called irresponsibility or the opposition party’s provocations, will not solve the problem.
*This column appeared in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten for the English edition by Ayesha Kabir
