The first case of COVID 19 was detected in Bangladesh on 7 March 2020. Now it has crossed two thousand (218; 8 April). Of these 218, 20 has already died, 33 recovered. As of 7 April 2020, the Government of Bangladesh has confirmed testing 3610 samples.
On 31 December 2019, China reported to the WHO cases of pneumonia with unknown causes. On 12 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China.
On 22 March, Bangladesh declared a 10-day shut down effective from 26 March to 4 April.
As of 9th April, about 52 residential areas in Dhaka have been kept under lockdown.
A series of hotline numbers, email address and the Facebook page of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) are provided for people to contact if they suspect Covid-19 infection or need more information.
If the current containment strategy fails, the country will enter stage-4 of the coronavirus outbreak and then the strategy will be to mitigate the impact, which will be very devastating health officials said.
“We are now at stage-3. We have to strictly maintain social distancing right now. Otherwise, the virus will spread widely…,” Prof Meerjady Sabrina Flora, director of Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), told The Daily Star yesterday.
The country is moving towards stage-4, health officials said. So, it’s a very high time we stop moving.
