Moudud Ahmmed Sujan

The government will inoculate in phases nearly 14 crore people against Covid-19 with double-dose vaccine from the COVAX facility under a Tk 6,786 crore pandemic preparedness project.

The BSMMU authorities are considering approving Chinese pharma Anhui Zhifei’s proposal for the third phase trial of its Covid-19 vaccine.

“Today we are unable to say what we had been saying until now. We have found three patients...” These were the words of the then IEDCR director Prof Meerjady Sabrina Flora on March 8 after the first detection of coronavirus cases in Bangladesh, which changed everything, most probably forever.

Experts have anticipated that coronavirus infections will spike in late January and early February and urged people to abide by the rules and avoid “super spreader events” at all costs.

Almost a year after harmful heavy metals like cadmium, chromium and lead were found in dozens of pesticides, the government is yet to enforce mandatory tests to prevent imports of the adulterated chemicals, widely used in the country’s vast agriculture sector.

Scientists in Bangladesh have reported a new Covid-19 strain, which is a bit similar to the one found in the UK recently.

Air travellers from the UK without Covid-19 negative certificates would be quarantined for seven days.

Bangladesh will get six crore shots of Covid-19 vaccines between May and June next year from the COVAX facility, Cabinet Secretary Khandker Anwarul Islam said yesterday.

With the government finalising the Covid vaccine deployment plan, a number of speakers yesterday warned that there may be chaos if the plan is not consistent with field-level reality.

The rate of daily positive coronavirus cases dropped yesterday to 8.6 percent, the lowest it has been in more than eight months, while the recovery rate continued to increase.

As the number of Covid-19 infections has been rising since November, the demand for ICU beds at hospitals in the capital has almost doubled.

After assurance from the officials of the directorate general of health services about better payment, some 26,000 health assistants will join work from today.

The poor and people living on the fringes have been enduring inadequate access to coronavirus testing and treatment facilities and now they are likely to have to do the same for vaccines.

Uncertainty looms large over the expanded programme on immunisation (EPI) under the health directorate and possibly Covid-19 vaccination as around 26,000 field-level health assistants are on strike since November 26 demanding better pay.

As the number of Covid-19 cases keeps rising with the advent of winter, people aged between 20 and 40 are the super spreader of this highly contagious virus, experts said.

Amid the significant rise in the number of new coronavirus cases, the health directorate is all set to start antigen-based rapid testing in 10 districts from today.

The country yesterday reported 2,525 new cases of Covid-19 -- the highest for a single day in nearly three months.

With winter sweeping over the country, Covid-19 cases have risen by 32.5 percent this month compared to the number recorded last month.

The total number of deaths for coronavirus surpassed 6,500 mark in the country as 37 more died of the virus in the last 24 hours till 8:00am yesterday.

Although hospitals across the country struggled during the first wave of Covid-19 transmission due to a lack of central oxygen supply, the authorities said they were still relying on cylinder-based oxygen supply.