Govt trying to find 'soft' alternative to 'lockdown'

The government is trying to find alternatives to imposing complete lockdown in the 'red zones' in the capital with a view to striking a 'balance' between life and livelihood, officials concerned said.

This indicates that the government is reluctant to impose complete lockdown in the city's 45 selected 'hotspots' having the maximum number of infections.

However, more than three weeks have gone by since the start of mapping the city into zones according to the intensity of Covid infections. The DGHS says it is still preparing a map marking coloured zones. But none knows for

sure when the task will be accomplished. Except for Rajabazar none of the areas in Dhaka city has come under lockdown.

In the meanwhile, as part of the new plan to contain quick transmission of the highly infectious virus, officials at the ministry of health and family welfare are busy consulting experts in the relevant field to find out a suitable alternative, sources said.

Seeking anonymity, an official at the health ministry said they recently decided not to execute complete lockdown in the red zones considering the livelihood issue of the low-income people.

He said the officials are now engaged in discussion with the experts to find out a suitable alternative that would not hurt livelihood.

"We're discussing partial lockdown or only imposing lockdown around the coronavirus patient's residence," he said.

Instead of complete lockdown, the government is now considering how to engage public representatives and volunteers effectively in each locality to ensure a comfortable atmosphere for the isolated people, another official said.

He said the issues of testing the people who would come into contact with the infected patients and regular monitoring of the confirmed cases were also discussed.

"If we go for complete lockdown, it will put a huge financial burden on the lower income groups, businesses and people who work in private enterprises. So, we do not want that to happen," he added.

Director general of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Dr Abul Kalam Azad said a consultative committee was doing the cost-benefit analysis of the lockdown in the red zones.

He said they have already sent a letter to the ministry concerned to experimentally execute lockdown in the selected areas of Wari, a red zone under Dhaka South City Corporation.

Early this month, the ministry of health divided coronavirus -- infected areas in the city into three coloured zones -- red, yellow and green, and suggested lockdown there.

Based on the intensity of the viral infections, it identified 45 areas (28 under DSCC and 17 under DNCC) of the capital as red zones. It means these areas have the highest number of infected people.

But it did not make specific demarcation or maped the infected areas, making it difficult for the authorities of both the city corporations to go for lockdown.

However, the number of infections and fatalities kept rising with 3504 new cases along with 34 deaths recorded across the country in the last 24 hours ending on Saturday morning, the DGHS in its regular briefing said.

In Saturday's health bulletin on coronavirus, DGHS additional director general (administration) Prof Dr Nasima Sultana said a total of 15,157 samples were tested in 58 labs across the country in the last 24 hours. Nine other labs did not submit their reports.

With the latest number of tests, a total of 712,098 samples have so far been tested across the country.

In the last 24 hours, some 3,504 samples were found Covid-19 positive along with 34 more deaths recorded across the country, she said.

"With these numbers, the overall tally of confirmed cases and deaths rose to 133,978 and 1,695 respectively," she said.

Thirteen of the latest deaths were recorded in Dhaka division followed by ten in Chattogram, four each in Sylhet and Rajshahi, two in Rangpur and one in Khulna division, Dr Sultana said.

The DGHS sources said 63,913 people now remain in both home and institutional quarantine and 14,267 others in isolation.

Simultaneously, some 1,185 people recovered from respiratory problems caused by the virus, taking the overall number of recovery to 54,318, according to the sources.

Globally, almost 10 million people were infected by the novel coronavirus and 497,555 died until 6:30 pm Wednesday, according to Worldometer info on coronavirus.

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