We can’t let our guard down in Covid response

After a period of soaring infections, the past few weeks have seen a slow but steady decline in numbers related to Covid-19 in the country. The health directorate on Saturday reported a daily death toll of 152 people from the virus—the lowest death count in the last 51 days. The last week's record showed a 27 percent drop compared to the week before. Other related week-by-week figures also showed a similar trend, with the cases of infections declining by around 35 percent, while the daily positivity rate on Saturday came down to 16.71 percent, the lowest in more than two months. While we're still far from the situation deemed by WHO as "under control" (where the positivity rate remains stagnant below 5 percent for at least two weeks), the latest numbers are encouraging, and they make us hopeful.

But if our previous experience is any indication, this is also the time when we need to expedite our efforts so that the current trend holds, and because the price of complacency can be costly. By now, we know the danger of letting our guard down too quickly. We had lifted restrictions only to re-impose them after another surge in Covid-19 infections. This has been a recurring theme of our long battle against the pandemic. It's understandable that people are getting tired of taking precautions. Problems like Covid-19 burnout and pandemic fatigue can affect both individuals and the state similarly. This is precisely why the hard-earned gains of the past few weeks should be preserved and carried through at all costs.

Even though the nationwide lockdown has now been totally lifted—implausibly, one might add—the government must not rule out the possibility of zoning off regions where infections are still very high. In fact, periodic regional lockdown is a tactic we should have employed more frequently given the impracticality of a prolonged nationwide lockdown for a poor country like Bangladesh. This is also easier to enforce. The government also must try harder to ensure that individual safety precautions and vaccination attempts are given equal priority, because both are essential to curb the spread of this ever-evolving virus.

   In terms of vaccine procurement, there is not much good news. Although the government has recently struck a trilateral agreement for bottling, labelling and dispensing China's Sinopharm vaccine, making it more accessible, it may take, we are told, around three months before we start getting the jabs from this deal. Progress has also been slow on the procurement front. This makes it all the more important that the government doubles down on its current vaccine efforts. Without ensuring individual safety precautions and quick vaccination of the majority of citizens, especially those more vulnerable, we cannot allow any fatigue or slackening to mar our future safety prospects.