In a bid to assess the real situation of the country, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has ordered the concerned authorities to test at least 1,000 samples of suspected Covid-19 patients across the country.
"As per the prime minister's directive, samples will be collected so that we can have at least 1,000 samples by Thursday and test those by Friday," said Dr Habibur Rahman, director of Management Information System at Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
The director was attending an online live briefing from Mohakhali in Dhaka on Thursday.
However, Director General of Directorate General of Health Services Professor Abul Kalam Azad later in the day told BSS that the health official’s comment during the briefing was an “inadvertently made erroneous remark.”
Azad said the government actually decided to expand Covid-19 testing facilities countrywide while he simultaneously disowned Rahman’s comments that “we’ve collected 1000 samples, and the samples will be tested tomorrow (Friday).”
"We are trying to increase the number of tests," he said.
The move came as health experts have been stressing on the need for more tests to assess the actual situation as they fear the number of infected people could be higher.
The country tested around 1,900 people from late January till Thursday.
Two more tests positive for Covid-19
Two more new Covid-19 positive cases were detected in the country over the last 24 hours, while no death was reported during the period, according to Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR).
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“Two more persons have tested positive with Covid-19 in Bangladesh in the past 24 hours, taking the number of the confirmed cases to 56,” said Dr Habibur.
No new death was reported between 12pm Wednesday to 12pm Thursday, he added.
A total of six people have died of Covid-19, a new strain of coronavirus.
Talking about the newly infected persons, Dr Habibur said: "Both are male. One of them is aged between 30 to 40 years, while the other is between 70 to 80 years of age."
However, he did not disclose their location and identity over security concerns.
However, a total of 141 samples were tested in the last 24 hours from across the country.
Meanwhile, five more people have been taken to isolation in the last 24 hours, while a total of 374 people were kept under observation until now. Out of the total, 295 were released and 78 remain under isolation across the county.
6,200 isolation beds in 8 districts
Dr Habibur said the government has prepared 6,200 isolation beds in eight districts in the country.
“We’ve arranged two types of quarantine — one is home quarantine, and the other one is institutional quarantine. A total of 62,127 people were kept in both home and institutional quarantine,” he said.
“Of them, 243 were kept in institutional quarantine,” he added.
A total of 45,427 people have so far been released from quarantine, Dr Habibur said, adding, now 16,700 people are kept in quarantine.
“As many as 323 institutions are being prepared for keeping 18,900 people in quarantine,” he said.
“The number of total people, who were kept in isolation, was 373, now 78 people continue to be kept in isolation,” Dr Habibur said.
Pointing out that the government has opened hotlines and health web portal for providing healthcare services to the people, the director (MSI) said 10,42,952 people have so far received healthcare services from hotline mobile numbers and health web portal.
He noted that the country has sufficient logistic equipment, including Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and kits.
“We’ve already distributed 3, 57,250 PPE at different hospitals of the country and we’ve enough stock of such essential protective gear,” Dr Habibur said.
Dr Habibur said the government has formed a group of medical professionals comprising of 12,448 physicians to provide medicare services to the people.
“They’re voluntarily providing treatment to the people through mobile phones … the number of such medical professionals are increasing every day” he added.
Covid-19, which was first reported in China's Wuhan last December, has claimed the lives of over 47,000 people and infected at least 936, 204 worldwide.
Meanwhile, a Covid-19 detecting machine has been installed in Rangpur Medical College (RMC) on Thursday as to test suspects from eight districts, said Principal Dr Nurunnabi Laizu.
He also said that the RMC hospital has the capacity to test 90 people every day and the result will be available within 5 hours.
