The number of people calling the government hotlines to get health tips or related inquiries has come down significantly in very recent days, official data showed.
It is giving an indication that either people are losing confidence over the service, or first spell of the Covid-19 transmission is going to be over here.
According to statistics of the state-run Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), the number of received hotline calls reduced to below 100,000 per day in the last couple of days after around three months.
In the last 24 hours, ending on Sunday morning, a total of four hotline numbers of the government received 96,283 calls.
Even a week ago, the number of such calls averaged over 160,000 each day. In last month, the number reached almost 200,000 on a few occasions.
Healthcare professionals have become surprised over the steady fall in the number of hotline calls, as the daily infection rate is still at a high level in the country.
They think several factors like recent Regent and JKG scams as well as imposition of fees on COVID-19 test might be discouraging people to get health-related services.
When contacted, DGHS director (MIS) Habibur Rahman said (the daily number of) people's calls to their hotlines gone down significantly in recent days.
Citing current statistics of the COVID-19 outbreak, he said the numbers of tests, confirmed cases and fatalities are also declining steadily.
"All these indicate slowdown of the disease. May be the first spell of the pandemic is going to be over," he added.
Dr. Rashid-e-Mahbub, former president of Bangladesh Medical Association (BMA), said the daily infection rate is still as high as 24 per cent despite substantial fall in the number of tested samples.
"So, we cannot say that things are improving."
Talking about the people's reluctance regarding hotline calls, he said the nation recently witnessed some bad events like Regent and JKG scams.
"These factors might be impacting people, and it is reflected in the number of calls. If we look at the statistics, the number kept falling sharply after these scams got exposed," he added.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh on Sunday surpassed Germany, another major global hotspot as far as coronavirus infections are concerned.
With 2,459 new cases, the entire tally of confirmed cases in the densely-populated country in South Asia rose to 204,525, and it secured 16th position in the global ranking by surpassing Germany having 202,572 cases.
On Sunday's health bulletin on coronavirus, DGHS additional director general (administration) Prof Dr Nasima Sultana said a total of 10,625 samples were tested in 80 labs across the country since Saturday morning.
With the tests, a total of 1,028,299 samples have so far been tested across the country.
Of the tests, some 2,459 samples were found COVID-19 positive along with 37 more deaths recorded across the country, she also said.
"With these numbers, the overall tally of confirmed cases and deaths rose to 204,535 and 2,618 respectively," she noted.
At the same time, 1,544 more patients recovered from the disease, taking the total number of recovery to 111,642.
Globally, over 14.4 million people have been infected by the novel coronavirus, and 605,618 have died until Sunday 6:10 pm, according to Worldometer info.
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