First coronavirus death in Bangladesh
A septuagenarian has become the first victim of the novel coronavirus outbreak in Bangladesh. Prof Meerjady Sabrina Flora, director of the government’s disease monitoring arm, IEDCR, on Wednesday said the man, over 70-year old, was suffering from multiple diseases from hypertension to kidney problems.
“Our team is helping the family for the burial maintaining WHO protocol so that the infection does not spread,” she said, adding that they had detected four new cases in the last 24 hours. Three of them came from abroad – two from Italy and one from Kuwait – and the other got the virus from an infected family member. With that, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases rose to 14 in Bangladesh.
The person who died is a family member of an expatriate who tested coronavirus positive after returning home. The director asked people to avoid crowd and wash hands frequently with soap. People have also been asked to cover cough or sneezes. The IEDCR tracks all the contacts an infected person came across in the last four days from the detection. The director said they do not have any scarcity of testing kits. “We’re getting supports from many places including the WHO. Singapore also donates kits to us. So nothing to be worried,” she said, adding that so far the virus infection remained limited to the family members of the infected expatriates.
“We’re not calling it community transmission,” she said, “But we’ll expand our testing facilities outside the capital in a week.”
“But everything will be done under the supervision of the IEDCR because after any new case detection we need to trace all people who came to his/ her contacts in the last four days (of detection). Only the government can do it. So all testing facilities must be coordinated by the IEDCR,” she said.
The government earlier closed all schools across Bangladesh until March 31. The WHO on Tuesday called on member states in Southeast Asia Region, including Bangladesh, to urgently scale up aggressive measures to combat COVID-19, as the confirmed cases continue to rise.
