The Directorate General of Health Services on Sunday ordered all the hospitals across the country to prepare for a fresh wave of COVID-19 infections as the pandemic situation has again taken a grave turn in recent days.

The civil surgeons and the directors of medical college hospitals have been asked to keep ready the intensive care units and the general beds dedicated to COVID-19 patients under their jurisdiction to deal with a possible second wave of infections.

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on March 9 once again asked all concerned to ensure the mandatory use of masks and maintaining social distancing as a second wave of coronavirus infections was feared in the coming summer.

Presiding over the weekly cabinet meeting virtually from her official residence Ganabhaban, she said that all should compulsorily use masks whether they got vaccines against the COVID-19 or not in the wake of further rise in the number of deaths from COVID-19-induced infections.

‘All hospitals in Bangladesh have already been advised to stay prepared for a second wave of coronavirus infections. We’ve sent letters to the offices of civil surgeons asking them to keep all the ICUs ready,’ said DGHS director general ABM Khurshid Alam.

‘We sat with the directors of all the hospitals in Dhaka and the divisional cities and heard about what situation they were in. We asked them to keep all their beds ready,’ he told reporters at an event in the capital on Sunday.

The local administration, Khurshid further said, has been instructed to strengthen the health rules.

According to the DGHS daily update on Sunday, the number of COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, 1,159, was the highest in 73 days.

With the new cases, the country has tallied 5,57,395 cases.

In the past 24 hours, 16,206 samples were tested and the test positivity rate of 7.15 per cent was the highest in 63 days.

Besides, 18 more people died of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 8,545.

The weekly number of COVID-19 cases also went up by 67.27 per cent in the 53rd week ending on Saturday.

The test positivity rate soared to 5.60 per cent in the past week from 3.84 per cent in the 52nd week.

The number of cases and the test positivity rate in the 53rd week were the highest in 10 weeks and eight weeks respectively.

Bangladesh started its COVID-19 vaccination on February 7 and has so far inoculated 43.98 lakh people, including about 95,000 people on Sunday.

After two months of a relatively better COVID-19 situation, Bangladesh has witnessed a sudden surge in  COVID-19 cases and in the positivity rate since the beginning of March.

Experts said that government leaders, including the health minister, publicly claimed ‘early success’ against COVID-19, giving a false message to the nation that the country had passed the COVID-19 crisis.

‘The health minister and other people in high government positions in recent months spoke in a way that Bangladesh had succeeded in beating COVID-19 when many rich countries has failed,’ said noted virologist and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University’s former vice-chancellor Nazrul Islam.

‘Such un-pragmatic and unscientific remarks gave a wrong message to the nation, showing an unrealistic confidence over COVID-19,’ he said.

‘It’s the beginning of the second wave of infections and it’s time both the government and people gave a real fight against the infections,’ said Nazrul, also a member of the National Technical Advisory Committee on COVID-19.

He said that the government had failed to strictly enforce the health rules like wearing masks and maintaining social distancing.

‘People must wear masks and the government must enforce the health guidelines at public places like markets, transports and offices,’ he emphasised.

Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research principal scientific officer ASM Alamgir said that it was an unpleasant development that the COVID-19 situation deteriorated further.

‘We’ve started surveillance and are conducting studies to ascertain the reasons behind the surge in cases and the positivity rate,’ he said.

‘But we must now adhere to the health practices religiously to keep the virus at bay,’ he said.

DGHS chief Khurshid also warned of looming dangers amid people’s flagrant disregard for the COVID-19 restrictions.

‘There will be bad news if people do not follow the health rules to stem the spread of COVID-19,’ he said at the inauguration of a one-stop TB centre at Shyamoli’s tuberculosis hospital on Sunday.

Those who are now catching the coronavirus are mostly young people and the infected are requiring ICU support, he disclosed.

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