Lower testing will provide a misleading picture of coronavirus transmission in the country while making it difficult to take proper control measures, health experts warn.
Although more than 150 days have elapsed since the first case was detected on March 08 last and more than three months into the community transmission, the authorities have eased movement restrictions and overlooked contact tracing, institutional isolation needed to flatten the curve, thus deepening pubic fear about how long the pandemic will ravage the country, they said.
In contrast, the state-run Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) is blaming the people's reluctance to test and lack of awareness about the current situation.
In the last meeting of National Technical Advisory Committee, experts suggested ramping up tests up to 24,286 per day or weekly one person per 1,000 population. The number of tests is scientifically calculated to understand the infection situation in a country of 170 million.
But the government has been conducting 10,000 to 12,000 tests per day.
Besides, there is no scientifically-proven information about how the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) is doing contract tracing, sentinel surveillance to understand the pandemic situation.
The lower rate of test will also accelerate spread of infections, because the Covid patients who will skip testing cannot be isolated and contract tracing cannot be done.
Additional director general of DGHS Professor Dr Nasima Sultana said there has been no decision to lower testing, rather people are not interested in undergoing test now. She also said second tests are not done now, which is also a reason for lower rate of tests.
"We have been encouraging people with symptoms to come up for tests. But they are not aware or not afraid of corona infection as we see they do not wear masks and move from one place to another unnecessarily," she said.
She dismissed the widely-held views that the people in general have low confidence in testing done in government-run laboratories.
Dr Sultana also subscribed to the general fear that the movement during the Eid-ul-Azha will drive up transmission after two to three weeks.
Noting the DG Health is prepared to conduct adequate tests and provide treatment, she urged the people to be more cautious, wear masks and come forward to do testing when needed.
Former IEDCR principal scientific officer Dr Mushtaq Hossain said people with mild symptoms are not taking the transmission seriously.
Besides, they are now more careless, want to avoid the long queues, hassle in testing and wait longer for the test reports to arrive.
"Low test should be allowed in no way. If the test rate is high, more cases will be detected and infected people can be isolated," he said adding that in such a situation contact tracing can be done and Covid patients can be put into quarantine.
However, he is opposed to the idea of home isolation as people will not follow health guidelines.
Predicting another danger of low test rate, Dr Hossain said the authorities will get a false impression that the number of cases is falling.
He warned of increased transmission of the lethal virus during the Eid festival because of the movement of holidaymakers and public transport and gatherings at the cattle market.
The infection rate will be visible after two weeks of Eid and fatalities will be evident after three weeks.
Seeking anonymity, another expert said Bangladesh's mismanagement in containing the Covid pandemic has reached its highest level. The mixing of sick people, asymptomatic corona virus carriers with healthy people would worsen the situation after two to four weeks of Eid.
He also said there is no specific information about the asymptomatic Covid patients in Bangladesh, but the rates of such patients are 80 per cent in India and 30 per cent in China.
"To get the real picture of whether the infection rate is decreasing or increasing, there should be a sentinel surveillance system. If there were sentinel sites in various divisions, we could have go a scenario," he said.
But a person close to the IEDCR insisted that the agency and the ICDDR,B have been jointly conducting surveillance at the eight influenza sentinel sites across the country, the results of which are not made public.
Another report adds: The number of Covid-19 tests in Bangladesh dropped sharply as 38 more people died and 2,520 tested positive in the 24-hour period till Saturday morning.
Some 10,446 tests were conducted during the period which was the lowest in the last two weeks, according to the data available with Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Even DGHS urged the people to approach the laboratories for doing tests in an effort to prevent the spread of coronavirus across the country.
At the daily health bulletin, DGHS additional director general Prof Dr Nasima Sultana said the laboratories are now receiving a decreased number of samples. She said, "If anyone shows Covid-19 symptoms or come to close contact with infected individuals, you must have your sample tested."
The official also said sample collection facilities have been made available across the country including upazila level.
In the last 24-hour, some 9,615 samples were collected during the reporting period, she said, adding that with some older samples, 10,446 tests were done.
A total of 2,520 people or 24.12 per cent of the tests were found positive during the reporting period while the overall detection rate against tests was 20.08 per cent, she said.
With new deaths, 2,874 people have so far died from the coronavirus in the country since March 18.
The tally comprised 29 males and nine females while three were between 31-40 years old, six between 41-50, seven between 51-60, eight between 61-70, nine between 71-80, four between 81-90 and another above 100 years.
In the 24-hour period, 34 people died in the hospital, three at home and another was brought to the hospital dead.
Some 649 people were taken to isolation during the reporting period and 417 were released from isolation.
With a total of 221,178 cases reported since March 8, Bangladesh is now the sixth worst-hit country in Asia, according to information available with Worldometer, an information portal.
India has topped the regional list with over 1.3 million cases so far, followed by Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
In terms of global scenario, Bangladesh is the 17th hardest-hit nation, followed by Turkey (224,252) and Columbia (233,541) till filing of this report around 6.00pm on Saturday.
More than 0.64 million people died from coronavirus with 15.9 million infection cases across the globe.
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