The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) DG warned of experiencing a major spike in coronavirus infection, caused by the highly infectious Omicron variant, in the country in March and April.
Considering the possible risks, Professor A B M Khurshid Alam said they are working hard to strengthen healthcare facilities across the country that already witnessed a sharp rise in positivity rate over the last several days.
"We guess that the Omicron variant may cause a major rise in transmission in March-April here. That's why, we're working to strengthen the existing hospital capacities across the country," he said at a meeting with the Bangladesh Health Reporters Forum members at his office on Monday afternoon.
The DGHS DG said they have to increase supply of oxygen that put the country's healthcare facility in trouble while facing the coronavirus second wave, caused by Delta variant in June-July last year.
"Installation of 40 oxygen generators in different hospitals is at the final stage. Apart from these, we also managed to set up more oxygen generators from different sources."
But the DGHS DG did not mention the quantity of the additional oxygen generators.
He informed that those who have any co-morbidity or major health complications would get booster vaccine doses even without receiving SMS.
"In that case, the individual has to show necessary documents, proving his/her underlying health condition. We have already instructed all vaccination centres in this regard. Age will not be a barrier in those cases."
Information regarding co-morbidity was collected during vaccine registration, and can be checked before booster doses are given, according to the DGHS director general.
If someone had not mentioned co-morbidity during registration, the person would have to show proof.
"There are many co-morbidities. But I am greatly concerned with those people, who have cancer or are taking anti-cancer drugs, getting radiation treatment and chemotherapy. Their immune systems are weak. These are the kinds of people we want to give the vaccines to."
The DGHS chief also added that they were considering reducing the age limit from 60 years for people to be eligible for getting Covid booster doses.
He shared the directorate's preparations at a time when the country recorded the highest spike in infections in 13 weeks.
According to the DGHS data, some 674 more people tested Covid-19 positive in the last 24 hours until Monday morning.
The latest number of single-day infections was the highest since October 6, 2021.
With the detection of the new cases after testing 19,980 samples from 852 labs across the country, the daily test positivity rate jumped to 3.37 per cent from Sunday's 2.91 per cent.
The daily caseloads in the previous days (January 2, January 1, December 31, 30, 29, 28, 27 and 26) were 557, 370, 512, 509, 495, 397, 373 and 268 respectively.
In the last 24 hours, four more people died of the respiratory disease. With them, the entire tally of coronavirus-related fatalities rose to 28,081, while the total caseload stood at 1,587,140.
During the same period, health authorities also reported that 214 patients recovered from Covid-19 across the country. It took the total number of recoveries to 1,549,771.
