Number of critical patients surging

The number of patients at the intensive care units in hospitals, getting treatment for Covid-19, has been on the rise.

Experts said the recent rise in new cases could be linked to a new variant of the coronavirus and people flouting the health rules.

The percentage of occupied ICU beds jumped to 42.76 yesterday from 28.18 on February 13, according to surveillance data from the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

There are 566 ICU beds for Covid-19 patients in hospitals across the country. Of these, 281 are in 10 government and nine private hospitals in the capital.

On July 2 last year, the day when the highest, 4,019, number of people tested positive for the virus, 53.57 percent of the ICU beds were occupied.

"We noticed that the number of patients requiring critical care or intensive care has been rising in recent days," Farhana Wahab, a consultant at the Kuwait-Bangladesh Friendship Government Hospital, told The Daily Star yesterday.

"Too many patients are in critical condition. We have no space left in the ICU, and are turning patients away," she said.

According to health ministry's supply chain management portal, the government health facilities have 228 ventilators, 393 oxygen concentrators, and 425 high-flow nasal cannulas. Fifty of those ventilators are in Dhaka. Public hospitals in Chattogram have 10 ventilators, according to the dashboard. There are no ventilators in 40 districts.

Health officials said they will be able to accommodate the increasing number of Covid-19 patients with the existing ICUs and oxygen support equipment.

"We can treat a rising number of patients on the existing ICU beds. Our oxygen supply is enough. We have already set up central oxygen supply systems in many medical college hospitals and the hospitals with 250 beds. We have increased the number of oxygen cylinders by many folds," Farid Hossain Miah, director (hospitals and clinics) at the DGHS, told The Daily Star yesterday.

At the peak of the pandemic, the government took an initiative to set up central oxygen supply systems at every hospital in the country. Unicef was to support 30 of those.

Farid said that that project will be implemented in a few months.

TRANSMISSION RISING

A total of 6,512 new cases were detected through 1,16,232 tests between March 6 and March 13.

In the week before that, 3,893 out of 1,01,497 people tested positive for coronavirus. The number of tests increased by 14.52 percent.

The percentage of positive cases -- termed as the positivity rate -- indicates a rise in infections.

Between January 20 and March 4, the positivity rate stayed below five percent.

Yesterday, the positivity rate was 6.26 percent, slightly down from 6.62 percent the previous day. It was 5.82 percent on Thursday.

IEDCR consultant Mushtuq Hussain said, "Transmission is definitely on the rise probably because of multiple reasons. More people are going outside these days. But we cannot dismiss the probability of the spread of a new variant."

Twelve people have died from Covid-19 in 24 hours ending at 8:00am yesterday, according to a press release issued by the DGHS.

The total number of deaths has now reached 8,527 and the death rate stands at 1.53 percent.

At least 1,014 new infections were recorded in the meantime, taking the total number of people infected to 5,56,236.

At least 1,138 Covid-19 patients have recovered during the period. The total number of recoveries now stands at 5,10,310.