Wasim Bin Habib

The rift between the health ministry and the health directorate over the Regent Hospital scam will seriously hurt the government efforts to contain the Covid-19 outbreak, say experts.

The health ministry and health directorate are at loggerheads over signing of a deal with Regent Hospital after the disturbing discovery of the hospital’s involvement in issuing fake Covid-19 test results.

The fake Covid-19 tests have not only posed a risk to public health but also put the Bangladeshi expatriates in trouble.

The health services division of the health ministry knew that Regent Hospital’s licence had expired years ago but it still went ahead and signed a deal in early March for treating Covid-19 patients there.

The committees formed by the government to help it make policy decisions to put the brakes on the pandemic have not been working properly or their recommendations were ignored.

He was a paragon of business ethics.

It was a quiet Friday evening at the Holey Artisan Bakery towards the end of Ramadan in 2016.

A little over two months ago, the chief of the country’s health directorate in an interview with an Indian magazine narrated Bangladesh government’s position on Covid-19 testing, saying the tests were free of costs.

When Gazi Sabiha Chowdhury, a 70-year-old heart and kidney patient from Sreemangal, fell in the bathroom on May 31, her family felt something ominous was going to happen.

For 50-year-old Md Mostafa and his wife, last weekend was nothing short of a nightmare. He shuttled from one hospital to another in the capital with his ailing wife Sathi Khanam, a kidney patient, only to be turned away.

Over three weeks ago, the government had planned to enforce containment zones in the capital and three other major cities amid a spike in Covid-19 infections and deaths that came after the nationwide shutdown was lifted.

As Covid-19 cases kept going up in mid-April, the government formed a national technical advisory committee to find ways to prevent the spread of the deadly virus in the country.

There was confusion all around. As the news of the government preparing a list of virus hotspots to be categorised as red zones spread, the city residents got puzzled and panicked.

With numbers of reported new cases and deaths growing almost every day, Bangladesh has overtaken China in terms of confirmed coronavirus cases.

“Good decisions come from experience, but experience comes from making bad decisions.”

Ever since Belayat Ahmed completed his graduation two years ago from a college under the National University, he applied to different private companies and submitted his resume to a few job boards.

Ensuring uninterrupted oxygen supplies at hospitals appears to have emerged as the latest choke point in the battle against the coronavirus outbreak, which is bearing down on the country.

While the country’s healthcare system remains under severe strain following record surge in coronavirus infections almost every day, a team of researchers warn that the total number of confirmed cases could double by the end of this month.

The government is likely to put the capital, Narayanganj and Gazipur in the “red zone” with severe restrictions in the wake of rising Covid-19 deaths and infections in the city areas.

The country saw its highest one-day death toll from Covid-19 and a record new cases of infections yesterday, the day the government eased the nationwide shutdown ignoring warnings from experts.