Ramped-up vaccination drive crucial to curbing the outbreak, officials say DHAKA: More than 50 percent of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infections and nearly 44 percent of virus-related deaths across Bangladesh have been traced to the highly transmissible delta variant of the disease, health authorities confirmed on Tuesday. The government’s Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) on Monday said over 15,000 infections and 246 deaths were reported in the past 24 hours, taking the total caseload to 1,280,317 and death toll to 21,500 since the pandemic began in March last year. “Some of our organisations, including the Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), conducted genome sequencing on small-sized samples. It shows that more than 50 percent of recent infections are caused by the delta (variant),” Dr. Mushtuq Hussain, an adviser to the IEDCR, told Arab News, adding: “Of the recent deaths, around 44 percent were infected with the delta variant.” The worrying trend comes amid several warnings by health experts that the outbreak might worsen after authorities relaxed the COVID-19 curbs ahead of the Eid Al-Adha festival in late July. Tens of thousands of Bangladeshis traveled from various cities, including the capital Dhaka, to their home villages before lockdown was reimposed for two more weeks until Aug. 5. Speaking to reporters at the time, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said the crisis was “most difficult,” citing a nearly 90 percent occupancy rate at hospitals, before calling upon the public to follow health restrictions to curb the outbreak. “We failed to follow the health safety protocols and the lockdown initiative also failed miserably since factories and banks were in operation during those days,” Prof. Robed Amin, a DGHS spokesperson, told Arab News. “Most people were reluctant to comply with health safety measures, especially wearing masks while going outside. We should have engaged people more in building awareness in this regard,” he said, adding that a strict lockdown was necessary to “reap good results.” Bangladesh, which shares a long border with India, began experiencing an upward trend in delta variant cases in mid-May, which peaked two months later as the country started recording more than 200 daily deaths in the first week of July. Dr. Hussain said that while the variant has impacted eight bordering districts, Dhaka remains the “worst affected.” “If the current trend continues, it may take a couple of weeks to reduce the infection rate,” he said. However, despite a surge in delta variant cases rattling several parts of the country, Hussain said Bangladesh was “still doing better than other regional countries” grappling with the pandemic. “Compared to neighboring India, Nepal, and some other regional countries, Bangladesh is not lagging in managing the COVID-19 outbreak. In India, it took three months to contain the surge caused by delta,” he said. In April, the South Asian nation of nearly 170 million was forced to suspend its nationwide inoculation drive after a halt in exports of the AstraZeneca jabs from India. Bangladesh resumed the vaccination campaign with China’s Sinopharm and the Pfizer vaccine supplied by the Covax facility, a global vaccine sharing initiative. However, less than 3 percent of the population had been fully vaccinated as of Aug. 1. Prof. Amin said it was imperative to achieve herd immunity against the deadly virus with a “massive vaccination drive.” “If we can inoculate around 10 million people per month according to the plan which will begin from next Saturday, the infection rate will reduce soon,” he said. “In the next two months, we will be able to inoculate around 20 million people with the vaccines sourced from the Covax initiative and purchased by the Bangladesh government.”